Hey dreamer, I’m essentially just talking about maybe giving mod some proprietary features to please investors, like maybe the AI side project recently mentioned could be proprietary and built in, not a plugin, or maybe a plugin but expensive. I mean maybe that’s the answer, include expensive closed source plugins as ‘free’ with the device. I do know that mod has bundled plugins in the past, but I’m suggesting that there just needs to be essentially something which would make it difficult for someone to take Mod software and just put everything on to a raspberry pi. That way you can stop investors asking “why would anyone buy this when they can just put it on a pi”. There could then be a ‘purists build’ with only free software.
1 Like
This approach was not at all clear from your post, though 
And indeed adding such “premium” features could be done by means of plugins. That are then also made available for sale to other platforms. (which could add extra income streams and would actually make such platforms not competitors, but additional targets)
However someone will still need to develop and design such plugins. Which implies development time and money. Both of which are not realistic in the short term.
1 Like
MOD is an extremely powerful platform, that goes without doubts. Where it went wrong, IMHO, is the lack of focus and marketing/segment directions. What is not clear is: who are the devices intended target?
Take the Duo or Dwarf for example. They look like and at least partially were marketed as a guitar device (floor based, have footswitches…) and that’s why I got in. Fact is, that after a while I noticed some difficulties in using it as I wanted.
Guitarists are a bit of conservative musicians, and most of them are not techies. I’d bet my wallet that the majority of them just want from a floor device that it 1) sounds good 2) can substitute all the pedals he has 3) allows you to replicate a classic guitar tone in zero seconds.
While objectives 1) and 2) are reached, we are far from getting to 3). The opinion I made on the Duo after years of owning is that it makes possible to realize incredibly difficult things, but it makes incredibly difficult to realize simple things.
You need a connected PC for all editing (I tried Bluetooth, too slow), you need convoluted patching to achieve rather basic things, such as turning on 2 effects at a time (using CV plugins or other workarounds).
Things got better with each firmware update, that must be said. Continuous support and software upgrades by the team are VERY appreciated. Thing is they start to roll out too late in the show. Snapshot, for example, solved much of the UX issues I had, but we’re still far from ideal.
EVery time I have a fellow player see the Duo and he asks to me how it works and how he can make a tone, after 5 minutes and after hearing he needs a PC and pull virtual cables around, the answer is: “no way, too complex”.
One thing that MOD missed and was and IS crucial to me, is a good marketplace of selected and curated pedalboards to install. As a guitar player, and I bet I’m not the only one, the killer asset would be a shop where I can instantly get the basic tone I want and then start to fiddle with it. Want a Blackmore Deep Purple tone? Click and get. A Tom Morello RATM tone? Click and get.
ATM the store is (was) a mish mash of everything with very little value. Being public it has been used by basically everyone to upload whatever pedalboard they created, including half created ones, and even for bug reporting! This is NOT the way to handle an official online store for the devices. It’s insane. The official store should have been separated by the “community” store. At most, a promotion of the best user submitted pedalboards could have been promoted to a sort of “featured user pedalboards” store after internal staff validation.
The other thing that is sorely missing is an app or similar way to download, create and edit pedalboards, optimized for use on phones. Phones are deviced we always have with us, even on stage. The regular Web GUI is fine and dandy on a big screen with a mouse, but useless on small touch devices. On top of that is too slow on bluetooth. That was a huge mistake IMHO. A dedicated, optimized app for mobile that could make you at leadt browse and installed official or premium pedalboards from the store with ease would have been a great selling point.
18 Likes
Hi,
I’m sorry to hear that @gianfranco , from a fellow Italian I know how difficult it is to create a profitable company in Italy.
My considerations:
- concentrate on the software side and develop a subscription model/marketplace for the plugins: the base platform maybe should be free but you get money from your plugins and a fee from other developers plugins if they decide to sell them.
- open source: inventivize people to write plugin, create blog post, YouTube video to expand the number of programmers that can contribute to the project(and sell plugins on the marketplace)
- develop collaborations with other pedal makers/plugin manufacturer
- hardware: is too costly for a small company concentrate on some DIY style kits. people that like this project are probably already tech savvy and involved with rpi/similar boards. I suggest you to find an x86 based board (to not recompile stuff) and develop and sell an io card , and a kit with the enclosure. Sell those as a diy kit. And use other kits already supported if there are already.
- leave Italy and start your business again where you can get more financial support and less taxes
1 Like
And that’s something I’ve yet to achieve. I’m pretty much a “traditionalist” in that regard - looking for that BB King “Live at the Regal” or EC “Crossroads” sound t the click of a footswitch.
1 Like
Well, getting to dial exactly a pure analog classic tone with modern digital equipment will always leave something to be desired, I’m afraid.
But I’m sure that with the right combination of plugins in Mod you can get pretty close.
The problem is trying all and every combination of amp, preamp, tube, cab, ir, reverb… and we get back to the point of my post.
2 Likes
I’ll use this as a mantra
8 Likes
And market the same thing as eval board, test kit, and barebone set for building a rack-mounting unit.
1 Like
MOD Devices GmbH is/was based in Berlin, Germany. This is where the majority of the (old) team still resides afaict.
1 Like
Hi @falkTX,
I was expecting your take about this at some point. Thanks for reminding us your priorities in development. After reading some posts suggesting to go proprieritary at the OS level, I thought that beside being unrealistic regarding open source licenses, they hadn’t heard about your story and your contribution to the Linux audio community so I’m glad everybody can, at least, read your position as MOD’s lead software developer.
Furthermore, I think MOD might have missed something in the niche of Linux musicians. Because I’m pretty sure most of them know your name or, at least, some of your work in the KXStudio project like Carla.
9 Likes
Personally, being a KXStudio and Carla user long before I found out about MOD Devices, I confirm that seeing the name “falkTX” in the main developers was a great push in supporting the project.
10 Likes
100% agreed. Especially the space for MOD endorsed pedalboards.
Also I’ve never really understood the limitation with being able to use the same actuator for more than one parameter. But at least this can be addressed via loopback.
Regarding pulling virtual cables, I once proposed the ability to insert a new plugin between two connected ones by being able to drag/drop it onto the connecting cable. It’s a small thing but would have improved the UX by saving the painful task of disconnecting/reconnecting. A Undo/Redo stack could have beeen nice too. Especially since a given pedalboard’s state is not something big to store. And it can even be diffed/version-controlled somehow.
Regarding wireless connection at reasonable speed, the Wifi dongle is a working approach, but configuration of it should be easy and accessible from the UI when connected via USB. I guess Bluetooth speed should be enough however if there was a dedicated app available. It would have all the skins/graphics etc already available on the phone and the data sent through the BT link would just be the logic description of the pedalboard (a bit of compressed json).
Indeed, a mobile version of the UI is a must.
7 Likes
I’m happy that I made a point that seems to be interesting. I hope it to be considered constructive criticism that can lead to better understanding of the shortcomings of the venture and spark ideas for the future.
I’m still convinced that most of the platform is powerful and impressive as it is. What it needs - really needs - is a “newbie user friendly wrapper layer” for new buyers and less skilled users to get full benefits of the device in short time.
Imagine a new GUI (or more than one), parallel to the one we already have, where you can build simpler pedalboard for specialized use, with lesser (informed) choices, which covers the basis use cases that in the end satisfy the needs of the majority of potential buyers.
For example a “Guitarist Pedalboard Builder Wizard” where you can choose 1 preamp of the many installed, 1 distortion pedal, 1 modulation/chorus, 1 delay/echo, 1 cabinet, with each choice automatically connected under the hood so that you can prototype your rig while you create it.
The pedalboard you create this way, at the end, it’s absolutely no different from any other you would create with the regular GUI. In fact you could create it with that (or open it later for advanced editing). Only that it’s simpler this way.
I don’t think it’s science fiction. After all is more or less how other music apps like DepLike or the “user interfaces”, if we want to call them that way, of '90s rackmount guitar processors like the G-Major.
It does not require to rewrite or reengineer anything of what is already existing, since it’s just another way of piloting the (I guess) existing APIs to manipulate pedalboards and plugins stored in the DB, and could well be an android native or WebApp application if said API could be accessed through Bluetooth.
4 Likes
Ditto, that’s #2 in my personal list of “unexplainable design mistakes that were detrimental to MOD”. Only beaten by the fact that you can not reassign an actuator unless you remember what is currently assigned and you go to that parameter to clear the assignation before.
In any case a workaround is not a solution.
Agree. Since moving a parameter can happen by mistake, a simple “compare” button to temporarily recall the last saved state to check the progresses against what was before would have been nice.
Exactly what I think. Even on a tablet or a PC browser, having all graphic elements completely decoupled from the pedalboard engine backend would wave a much better design choice. The backend should only relay business data through BT to the frontend device, and all graphics and other heavy payload should be in the scope of the frontend control device.
4 Likes
I guess that mobile UI accessibility is quite a good topic to raise.
MDX feels great while I sit at home, but in the rare cases when I go with my MDX somewhere - I have to take laptop with me, as otherwise I would not be able to do any changes if required in mobile.
Like it is not “complete” without an external device to configure pedalboard, not self contained. Luckily, these days everyone has a phone, so phone client/app should solve that. In theory.
Bluetooth dongles mostly do not work (v5 seems do not work at all, probably due to old kernel/bluez stack), and are too slow anyway, because all the graphics are quite huge to load via bluetooth.
Also I’ve tried wifi path.
I probably go into category of “advanced” users from the tech side,
and that allowed me to defeat my wifi dongle issue. But even with a working dongle it is still quite tricky to connect to the web interface from my phone via phone’s wifi AP, and termux console commands to determine the MDX ip address. That’s very far from being user-friendly. Like light years far.
And all of these just to find out that UI is not touch-friendly at all. As result I still would prefer to take laptop with me, even while I do not like additional weight.
I would not expect non-tech users to be able to connect wirelessly from tablets or phones currently, but if even they will manage to do that, it is no way convenient to use.
If goal is targeting to the mass market - it is something to fix, imho.
Simplified lightweight UI suitable for touch control and possibility to buy a reliably working compatible dongle somewhere - will do, I guess.
2 Likes
Discovering the unit’s address on the wifi network can be done via the Service Browser App on Android. the main problem is that when you are out and about with your unit, you need to hook it on your phone integrated wifi server (tethering). And you need to have SSID and Key all set on the unit for that. Or have the local Wifi details far in advance to be able to add them to the unit. It is not practical.
Thank you for all you and the team have done so far. Seriously you should not neglect you family - they grow so fast! Don’t miss out.
Like, you I feel it should be possible to provide a great product based on open source. But no examples come to mind from my limited experience. The tension is clear, for example we cannot load the our own moded version of the core - that would break the commerce store… And Collectives I know of provide services not products, Anyway some thoughts, if not answers.
In general business models need to be kept separate from community management. Or else issues arrive such as one community member taking over.
Previously computer box shippers realised they needed software so supported OSS communities which helped them commoditised the code as a non core business asset. However, Sun seemed to get confused and wanted to be both hardware and software (Solaris) and support OSS. They are no more.
Raspberry do sell hardware and support the OSS software they need. Can you learn from Ebon and team? They do have a foundation but they are not easy to setup and run.
Most OS active projects are by developers for developer users. There are a few software “products” for less technical users- eg MuseScore, Libre Office, Web browsers, Inkscape etc. Projects Like React seem to gain traction due to being initiated by massive companies like Facebook. No help for MOD 
The common hardware product business use of OSS seems to be to use pre-existing projects as part of their proprietary stack. Eg Routers. how many do more that provide notices of use in and engage in the community.
So two possiblities occur to me, broadly as you mention
1 Become OSS community leaders providing a platform that can be used on a variety of hardware solutions from other manufacturers. The problem being how many hardware platforms are suitable and open enough? And funding an OSS project is not straight forward, even if key developers come from one company.
2 ship boxes as a business that contributes to a separate OSS platform that you are an active member of. Pick a USP like high quality hardware for musicians and that complements homebrew RaspberryPi like solutions for hackers. The risk is of course the community doesn’t get going or decides to go in a direction that doesn’t support the business.
Sorry I’ve no clear concept of a way forward. I love what you are trying and the platform is fantastic . It’s never easy being pioneers!
3 Likes
Another issue is the limitation in number of controls, normally solved by plugging in a midi foot controller. The problem then becomes that it’s not easy to know the state of the controlled parameter. On the mod itself, you have the leds for that. But not on the Midi unit. It would have been great to be able to have that reflected on the MOD unit’s screens.
Also, I don’t know if the MIDI protocol allows to query the MIDI unit for it’s initial states : when I plug in my cheap controller, I need to tickle the rotary buttons to cause a midi message to be sent to the MOD in order for the current value on the know to be reflected by the plugin parameter.
1 Like
I’ve tried multiple apps that where supposed to show connected devices, and every one of them failed for me. I do not recall if I tried this particular one, but to my understanding there is some kind of new security constraint on the newer android versions, that broke all these apps for me. Anyway, I have enough enthusiasm to try dozen of third party apps to find that IP address, and had found my ugly workaround for that, but you cannot suggest these third party crutches for the wide audience. People will just decide that they have more interesting things to do much earlier.