I just bought my dwarf. I have it about a week and after an initial learning curve I’m really enjoying the device.
I think it’s a shame that more people aren’t buying and using it, it’s an incredibly versatile and fun unit, and sounds great.
I’m sure the announcement of the tonex one, and the NAM hardware unit aren’t going to help it’s appeal though.
For me, I wanted it for it’s flexible routing and primarily to add modulation / reverbs to my signal chain. That said, I’ve mostly used it so far with NAM / AIDA-X for impromptu playing… and it works great for this. Once I figured out it’s gain staging I’ve found it takes pedals really well and sound great - no latency, noise or other issues for me.
If the writing is on the wall for the dwarf I’ll be very disappointed but I’ll still have a great little unit that will work for me, and my workflow.
It’s a hugely ambitious project and I think the team should be proud of what they’ve done in a market as crowded as it is with modelers / and multifx units.
I’m hoping there’s some positive response from the team.
everybody… before drawing dire conclusions from the partial quote, above, please go and read the entire post which @dreamer linked. context is important!
I feel like there are two separate issues here. The first is what’s going on with the company. Having worked at startups and in professional audio I can really empathize with this as it appears they are struggling financially. It’s really too bad because MOD has the rare advantage of a second revenue stream in the form of commissions of plug-in sales. In theory that would help fund ongoing development without having to charge for firmware updates. (For the record, I wouldn’t mind paying $100/year for a new feature release every quarter.)
The second issue is a public relations one, i.e. how to communicate during a hard time. I realize MOD has over-promised and under-delivered in the past e.g. with the expressional pedal. But going silent is arguably the worst thing you can do. It makes users think the company isn’t listening, doesn’t care, or is already out of business.
Obviously MOD may be in the middle of confidential discussions that they can’t share yet, or other announcements which aren’t finalized. The solution is simply to say so. Even if it’s just “Hey guys, we hear you, we’d like to get back to Dwarf development but we’re currently 100% on the desktop app.” They don’t have to promise a specific date or make any commitments, just share what they can and let us know the company is still going. I had asked @gianfranco privately a while ago to publish a blog post once a month for this reason, I hope he will reconsider and do so. Otherwise users will naturally start drifting away after a while, and that would be a shame.
I know the silence is kiling some of you but I kindly ask for a bit more of patience, if you can find it.
NDAs are all over the place, so I cannot disclose details at the moment, but there is a very important partnership on the works for more than six months and, very honestly, the snail-pace is killing me too. Literally
I hope to bring positive news here in the next weeks.
Regarding Dwarf updates, it is part of a broader discussion. There are no plans of discontinuing it, but the company needs to sort out a bigger issue before making promises. The “software for the Dwarf” is very broad, ranging from the firmware of the HW controller to the online plugins at the shop, and we need to draw some lines to better organize how we proceed on each of the fronts.
Much of the software is not exclusive to the Dwarf itself. As you can see with the MOD Desktop, the whole Web UI experience can be deployed in different ways. We are putting separations in place, as the development pace, expertise and governance is different for dedicated and shared software components.
The mention of FalkTX to a “final” release refers to being the last before we move into a new topology of software, one which can better acommodate the shared and the dedicated SW components accordingly.
There is a couple of improvements and fixes partially in place for release 14 and it will hopefully soon go out.
Sometimes I wish I had a meme that could explain it all
Gianfranco, thank you sincerely for the reply. I hope the partnership works out. Despite whatever criticisms or worries appear on these forums, please believe we all want MOD to succeed!
I echo everyone’s support here… we want for nothing but success for @gianfranco and all the Mod team and platform! I’m hoping for really really excellent news that pushes Mod to the forefront of innovation in music tech!
