That would depend on one’s definition of reward. A simple life where I get to play music in a small cabin surrounded by trees instead of teslas sounds like a life lived well and very rewarding to me.
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Yeah agreed I’d like to live in the woods, just talking purely in tech lol
This stuff has been moving so fast and honestly, I didn’t realise how comprehensive all of the mods were. Have been digging around and joined the discord. I can’t believe someone has got Outbox 8 working with Octatrack - who knows, maybe Elektron did have plans to release this officially as it looks as if its possible. Still, hard to know if it would fry your internal board from heat output or what have you.
imo the reason all of this is so contentious is because its like a jar of worms everyone just wants to keep holding the lid down on. At some point you have to let the conversation happen and by making it controversial, it remains controversial. Just normalise and let it live, if AI dies, AI dies, if it gets better, it gets better. In the meantime through the vital stages, the emu head in the sand trick is keeping people out of the convo at its most vital times.
Anyway, the world has changed imo. That’s my take, AI is here. You either keep resisting, or you embrace it. There’s a timeline where instead of saying “go somewhere else we don’t condone any of this”, Elektron actually said, “we’re blown away by the community activity and we’re actively looking for a way to support this work, hold fast until we do”. But ultimately I think companies haven’t quite wrapped their heads around those types of approaches (yet).
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Going open source for some stuff would be a cool move, like what Synthstrom did with the Deluge - Deluge goes Open-Source - Synthstrom Audible
At Synthstrom, we are BLOWN away by all of this, we can’t wait for all of our users to try these new features.
When six months ago we made the Deluge code open-source and gave the world the reigns to say where they wanted Deluge development to go, we couldn’t have even imagined the wonderful community that would develop around it and the commitment to not just listening to each other and fleshing out thoughtful and considered features, but a devoted commitment to ensure the stability of the software, refine the existing database and to ensure comprehensive beta testing.
A HUGE, HUGE thank you to all the coders who contributed, you’ve shown the industry that this is not only a possible pathway, but it can succeed far beyond any expectations.
Installing Community or other firmware builds is 100% compatible with your Deluge’s hardware warranty. However, if you use a non-official community build, we won’t be able to provide software support.
In special cases, the Official repository may consider submissions from the Community repository*, where features and their UI have proven universal appeal. However, Synthstrom needs to continue to provide our customers with a stable and high-performance official firmware version, so we need to be responsible for every line of code in this branch.
This could be you, Elektron.
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evergreen post from ess about this from 2016:
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Deluge is amazing. It’s also the only instrument made by Synthstrom. Synthstrom also has 4 employees. How do we scale up their strategy to support a group of 40 employees? That figure is as of over 10 years ago so it’s likely well north of that now.
What does elektron do here specifically, and what does their future product look like?
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Someone please correct me on this or add insight, but is it not the case that a lot of that is now somewhat redundant thanks to AI coding stuff? All kinds of things are being reverse engineered now.
Something like what Synthstrom did? What would the downside be for them? Genuine question.
I’m not imagining or suggesting that Elektron would overnight open source everything, and maybe not for existing products at all, but it seems like a possibly fruitful path for their future boxes at least.
Downsizing to 4 employees and not building new hardware
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Yup. The persistent need for mod intervention has made me question the threads value.
BTW, not my thread, despite my first post… the mods picked my reply out of another thread to let the conversation continue
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I find it interesting that whenever the idea of subscription models or SaaS comes up, people generally get pretty agitated and upset about the idea.
But now we’re being asked to see using LLMs to retrofit new features on all our gear as some sort of punk rock, DIY underground shit…
Do you all really think the three or four companies that completely dominate the LLM landscape will carry on letting you all live out your punk rock fantasies on the cheap once they’ve achieved complete saturation?
You’re doing their work for them.
The future they’re selling you is one where you’ll be completely reliant on them to do anything and it’s going to cost you.
From where I’m sitting this looks like you’re all swimming straight into the whale’s mouth.
Yeah, I get it, the cat is out of the bag, it’s inevitable and all that other shit, but if you can’t see the endgame here then I fear you’re all being pretty short-sighted, blinded by the big shiny thing they’re going to fuck you with.
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Can you please explain why open sourcing would necessitate that?
What I find surprising about all this firmware stuff is the relentless promotion of it via so many individuals, are they actually bots posting on this forum and everywhere else?
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It’s called people being excited about something.
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Idk it’s coming from all angles constantly, all over Facebook and everything.
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Yeah, that’s how it works.
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I’m more worried that it isn’t.
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This! It’s like with xyz dealers: The first shots are free, then …
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Different industries (astro) but very similar situation, see section Are We Closing Doors?:
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It would just be extremely hard. First order of business would be coming up with the major platform for this. Not a single person here would be able to agree on what that should be. You’re going to have to accept losing that elektron character here. I mean all of these current boxes have very specific intentions behind them. The list goes on really.
They could go the way of empress effects, all while dealing with the above hurdles, à la Zoia, and offer one platform that invites this. But wait, we’ve already reached the consensus that all of their other devices are “holding back” and they’ve been lying to us all along.
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I’m no expert, but maybe one of you is a programmer and can explain it:
Right now, usable releases are being published that are based on a request* made in Claude and have been tested at most in an emulator—at least that’s something.
I have this nagging feeling that this is actually just the beginning. Or the beginning of the beginning. Welcome to the realm of alpha testers.
What usually happens next before the product is ready for release?
I mean, the update has to run stably, can’t affect other areas, and has to fit into the overall concept.
It sounds easy, but I imagine there’s a long list of steps to work through here.
*This isn’t meant to be a criticism; there may well be (human?) expertise involved here.