Breakaway DJ

[silverfox]

[quote author=”Milky”][quote author=”JesseG”]I don’t know how attractive it would be for Breakaway DJ because I don’t know how well it’s selling on the Windows platform. But Leif does. 8)[/quote]

Maybe access to some more presets (especially the latest), would move sales along. 😉[/quote]

Sales will increase based upon 1) Good support / Documentation & 2) additional Features showing constant development.

If both of these happen usually word of mouth will take care of the rest.

Now waiting for 1&2

[JesseG]

[quote author=”silverfox”]Now waiting for 1&2[/quote]
You must have just joined us then. 🙂 You’re welcome.

Also, I know Leif doesn’t have a blog (maybe he should) but it’s been posted a few places that are not visible or high priority enough… that Leif has essentially been "in the bat cave" for almost the last 3 months developing an improved framework for all things Breakaway, and that it’s one that will most likely go un-noticed by everyone at first.

The thing that will be noticed by everyone is if it lives up to its goal of allowing Leif’s time spent working to be much more efficient. From everything I’ve seen, it FAR surpasses that goal. In fact it makes a bunch of new things possible at such a fundamental level, that we’re (all of us commoners) probably going to see some new products come out of his new framework.

As far as updates to features in the already existing & (i shouldn’t have to mention) insanely cheap product lineup… I personally don’t see much coming down the line other than new presets, and improvements on the core’s audio quality. But as I mentioned above, I would expect some new products & new add-ons to existing products.

I’m sure Leif thanks us all for being patient as he’s kicking ass. 8)

[silverfox]

I’m beginning to think what this thing needs the most is a manual 🙂. Am I right?

///Leif

This from Leif’s LAST post in March and since then NADA.. Common guys I expected more…in four months. 🙄

[Milky]

Patience, Grasshopper. Hasten slowly 🙂

I bought the product before it was up on the sales page. Considering it was beta, it has hardly burped since, but I’d love it to ave some more presets at least. I made a comment at the time about it becoming the "Poor Cousin" and was met with derision.

[JesseG]

[quote author=”Milky”]Patience, Grasshopper. Hasten slowly 🙂

I bought the product before it was up on the sales page. Considering it was beta, it has hardly burped since, but I’d love it to ave some more presets at least. I made a comment at the time about it becoming the "Poor Cousin" and was met with derision.[/quote]

In some way you’re right, but it’s like comparing:

-1- a supermodel girlfriend who’s happy with Burger King
-2- a supermodel wife who wants half of your estate

Both are supermodels, but you figure out which one is higher maintenance, and if you have the time… more rewarding. 😉 I guess it depends on which one you would consider more "poor". 😆

[RodeoJack]

Wow… hard to know what to think about some of the posters here. I assume those who can’t get enough new presets, features, skins, sounds, bass (lots more bass), more treble, less treble and squarewaves clipped flat, but sounding silky smooth have never purchased a major manufacturer’s hardware processor for broadcast use. Sure, those boxes might have more control over detail, but few come close to what the BBP products sound like.

Given the insanely (thanks to Jesse) low price for the software, it’s well worth the money just to evaluate whether it fits your needs. If not, fine. Chances are though, you can find a way to nudge one version or another into giving you the sound you want.

Frankly, I’ve made a couple of radio stations (one an AM) and a 3-screen drive-in theatre sound really incredible with BBP. If Leif comes up with a new product that tops this, even if it is more appropriately priced, I’m hoping to be near the front of the line to buy it.

Meanwhile, thanks to Leif and those who are closely supporting him and his efforts (this site, his marketing, etc). I wish I had found you guys before spending major bucks for the boxes I now have sitting around (well, one is running a web stream)… but I guess it gave me an easy way to a/b this stuff! 😕

[silverfox]

[quote author=”JesseG”][quote author=”Milky”]Patience, Grasshopper. Hasten slowly 🙂

I bought the product before it was up on the sales page. Considering it was beta, it has hardly burped since, but I’d love it to ave some more presets at least. I made a comment at the time about it becoming the "Poor Cousin" and was met with derision.[/quote]

In some way you’re right, but it’s like comparing:

-1- a supermodel girlfriend who’s happy with Burger King
-2- a supermodel wife who wants half of your estate

Both are supermodels, but you figure out which one is higher maintenance, and if you have the time… more rewarding. 😉 I guess it depends on which one you would consider more "poor". 😆[/quote]

STILL NOTHING Very disappointing.. 🙄

[JesseG]

A lot of stuff is going on that you guys aren’t privy to, for internal reasons, and also because Breakaway is only one of many things Leif is working on. The new stuff is looking to be fantastic, and brings usability to another level in a way that’ll make processing engineer’s lives way way WAY easier. You have no idea how awesome and revolutionary to the way you use your processor… that the framework can allow. Not to mention quite a few completely new types of product classes.

Breakaway was in progress for way over a year before any version was made public, so considering that a nearly complete re-write of everything other than the processing core, with WAY more features, which will also allow Leif to church out new products WAY more quickly… will only take about 9 months total (about 7-8 months of work already)… is pretty great.

And of course the bonus really is that Leif will be able to release many more products, not just within the Breakaway product line too. Hopefully that balances out to more free time for Leif. 8) This guy needs a break, for real. 😈

—

btw… DJ will be getting full TCV support with the new versions too, including a custom ASIO driver to interface directly with Breakaway so that the latency is the lowest that will ever be possible with ASIO processing. AKA… very very low. 🙂 It should be low enough to do intense (dmc level) scratching through Breakaway if your software (MixVibes DVS) and hardware (RME) and computer is good & stable enough. 😉

Breakaway DJ has a much better support team than you might guess, with experienced working DJs actively helping out.

[silverfox]

[quote author=”JesseG”]A lot of stuff is going on that you guys aren’t privy to, for internal reasons, and also because Breakaway is only one of many things Leif is working on. The new stuff is looking to be fantastic, and brings usability to another level in a way that’ll make processing engineer’s lives way way WAY easier. You have no idea how awesome and revolutionary to the way you use your processor… that the framework can allow. Not to mention quite a few completely new types of product classes.

Breakaway was in progress for way over a year before any version was made public, so considering that a nearly complete re-write of everything other than the processing core, with WAY more features, which will also allow Leif to church out new products WAY more quickly… will only take about 9 months total (about 7-8 months of work already)… is pretty great.

And of course the bonus really is that Leif will be able to release many more products, not just within the Breakaway product line too. Hopefully that balances out to more free time for Leif. 8) This guy needs a break, for real. 😈

—

btw… DJ will be getting full TCV support with the new versions too, including a custom ASIO driver to interface directly with Breakaway so that the latency is the lowest that will ever be possible with ASIO processing. AKA… very very low. 🙂 It should be low enough to do intense (dmc level) scratching through Breakaway if your software (MixVibes DVS) and hardware (RME) and computer is good & stable enough. 😉

Breakaway DJ has a much better support team than you might guess, with experienced working DJs actively helping out.[/quote]

Thanks for the encouraging words:

But That’s all well and good that the product is part of some greater mission, but I purchased "Breakaway DJ" and from this view have seen nothing to get excited about in just about a year.. Release updates / Doc’s included.

You see my point /

BTW I’m a working DJ…..

[JesseG]

I see your point. Maybe Leif shouldn’t have allowed people to buy the beta versions, to avoid this problem? 8) j/k

And you’re right, the product is a small part of something greater. Consider Breakaway to be a "no official technical support, borderline giveaway" of Leif, with the pricing just high enough to basically break even.

As far as "nothing to get excited about" please… don’t expect that. Breakaway, as a consumer/prosumer product, was around for 3+ years before the DJ product was made. It does what it does very well, and already has WAY more features than were ever originally considered at such a price range. There has never been any plans to add features to any Breakaway products, even though that’s what ended up happening, mostly before the DJ product was created.

If it just sits there, and does what it does very well, then WHY would there be updates at all? New presets, and changes to the core, are the only reason I can think of other than to fix any bugs of course. So far no updates have ever been done only to add presets. While there’s some amazing new presets… that’s slowed down a bunch too, for now.

Lastly… I’ll add that this complete recode (8+ months of hard work now) probably wouldn’t have ever happened if Breakaway wasn’t a "trickle down" of some things from Leif’s professional products… which have full 24/7 support on the phone (800#) and online… but also range to well over 10 grand in price. Breakaway users "lucked out" when Leif decided to do this at all. When Breakaway Broadcast came out especially, it was revolutionary within the industry!!! A HUUUUUGE paradigm shift for broadcasters, one that was expected for a while, but Breakaway did it first, and it still the only viable option available as software-only. I’m sorry you didn’t get to appreciate that too, as well as watching war hardened broadcasters getting blown away by how great it sounds. It was and still is something to get very excited about imho, if you consider that broadcast audio processing has been around since the 1930s.

—

I’ll stop addressing these kinds of questions right now, cos I’m repeating myself.

[silverfox]

Consider Breakaway to be a "no official technical support, borderline giveaway"

I find this shocking and if that was stated at the outset I doubt anyone would consider buying any product. (I hope you don’t actually mean that and are not serious)..

It certainly was NOT the impression I got when I jumped on board, I was expecting a DJ product with "Normal" support and a release schedule with some updates and documentation. (Even if it was a sub product of something else)

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

[JesseG]

[quote author=”silverfox”]Consider Breakaway to be a "no official technical support, borderline giveaway"

I find this shocking and if that was stated at the outset I doubt anyone would consider buying any product. (I hope you don’t actually mean that and are not serious)..

It certainly was NOT the impression I got when I jumped on board, I was expecting a DJ product with "Normal" support and a release schedule with some updates and documentation. (Even if it was a sub product of something else)

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!![/quote]

Optionally, you can chose one of Breakaway’s competition, which do come with full support, but even less updates that also are only to fix bugs. (in contrast to Breakaway which *has* been adding new features that were never promised)

You’re looking at spending $1,000 to $3,000 and it’ll still be way more basic than Breakaway DJ… oh and you’ll need to buy two of them of course. So 2-6 grand to get into low-end ballpark for this kind of processing, at latency low enough to be used for DJing.

Or… If you want official 24/7 support for products based on some of the components of Breakaway, you’re welcomed to buy them in a form that is priced to consider this BUSINESS EXPENSE from the start.
http://www.linearacoustic.com/
prepare to write anywhere from $8,000 to $25,000 onto your check, depending on the features you want.

—

"UNBELIEVABLE" or not, this is reality. I tried to tell you how this reality (which didn’t exist before Breakaway) is continuing to become better & better. Part of me says you don’t want to grasp what it means that Breakaway is created by just one guy who’s already super busy creating professional processors that are used on 80%+ of all digital TV right now, not to mention soon to be used on many more radio stations in its hardware version. And he still doesn’t have to deal with any of the support issues from those products, because support was built into the price to cover that business expense, and as such they can hire people to do it.

It would be nice to have documentation & 24/7 support for all of the products more fleshed out. Would you agree to pay 5-10 times more for Breakaway in order to have it?

As far as a "normal" release schedule, would you also agree to having to pay more & more for every single update as features are being added? Do you think that approach is better than free updates that simply fix bugs?

And what would constitute a "normal" release schedule, if updates were only being done to fix bugs, and there wasn’t even any known bugs? (i’m not saying Breakaway has zero bugs, or that no other bugged software effects Breakaway, i’m just proposing the question)

—

Put yourself into Leif’s shoes, where he makes waaaay more money from non-Breakaway products that Breakaway is used within (which also btw happened long before Leif decided to make consumer/prosumer versions available).

You (as Leif) wanted to help out the community of hobbyist broadcasters, as well as average users that just watch videos and listen to mp3s. You also have zero time, and you’re already a work-a-haulic. So… what would you do? Would you make the price way higher to pay for the business expense of paying people to support the product 24/7? Would that then not defeat the whole idea of releasing something super cheap so that hobbyists and regular end users could afford it?

You couldn’t really cut many features (challenger, plugin loading, associated free apps, test tones, scope visuals, etc) because it’s already not too far from "what you need" bare minimums, and that wouldn’t cut the price at all anyways because they are features you already created. The reason you aren’t including a lot of other stuff is because you already make great money from your professional products, and WHY would you ever jeopardize those sales by giving away too many features?

Those are my questions to you Silverfox. You tell Leif how he could have done what he’s doing better than he is now, in a way that’ll make you happy. 🙂 And I’ll make sure he reads it.

[RodeoJack]

Don’t get too worked up over this, Jesse. The idea that any product, much less one like Breakaway, should come with docs, upgrades AND customer support for the kind of money Leif’s charging is what’s "unbelievable".

Example: There are two ‘point of sale’ software packages that generally meet the needs of my theatre. The first one I tried was a buy-out at something like $700. Within 6 months, I had problems with functions the software wasn’t doing well. Unfortunately, the only member of the ‘customer service team’ was the owner, and he rarely returned his phone calls.

I soon moved to another product. This one comes with a yearly license fee. Don’t pay the fee and the software stops selling tickets and snacks. On the other hand, the higher cost pays for 24/7 support, all upgrades (downloaded off the ‘net), and quite a few features that they wrote into the package to suit the needs of a drive-in theatre (which is what I run). I am MUCH happier with this package, even though I pay nearly 2,000 per year to keep it going.

I suspect most of us who have licensed the Breakaway products are well aware of the value we got for the money, especially those of us who have purchased and worked with any other high-end processing.

[JesseG]

At the same time, I do totally understand where Silverfox is coming from. A "normal" release schedule is ESSENTIAL for some methods of development and business models. This is especially true for OpenSource.

Sadly OSS presents two problems for Breakaway. 1st of course is that there simply is not an OSS business model out there that involves anywhere near enough profit to provide free support. In fact, most of the models working very well for companies right now is charging for the support. (see also: Ubuntu, OpenOffice, MySQL, PHP/Zend, etc, etc, etc)

The 2nd problem is obvious to some people, not so obvious to others… Trade secrets. The audio processing scene is very friendly within the group of insiders from the various companies. But at the same time, people are taking some serious measure to prevent the disclosure of secrets within the products, weather it was entrusted to them by someone else or found completely on their own.

I don’t doubt that eventually someone will come up with a solution for the 1st problem of OSS. And if they are able to patent/servicemark that business method, then they will probably be the next Microsoft. 🙂

The second problem will never be solved.

—

The OSS scene is massively effecting the software scene as a whole, so in that regard… I totally understand. 🙂 And as far as updates, new features etc, I’ve done a great job to explain not only why things haven’t been done as often (time) and how that will improve (the new framework), and why new features haven’t been added constantly (self preservation). I’m sorry if I’ve come across as "worked up".

And I did mean it, when I suggested that Silverfox, or anyone else, tells Leif how to do what he’s doing better. Nobody ever has "the best" idea. There’s usually a way to combine in some way with someone else’s ideas, to come up with something better as a whole, and… it would be stupid and silly to ignore such ideas, no? 8) Even bad ideas can be constructive.

[RodeoJack]

Well said. 😀

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