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John, I went to download it (it let me see it) and it asked me to buy a subscription when I went to download it.

Obviously something isn't quite right with that. I don't want a big bughunt but clearly something didn't happen with my registration. That might not be your software of course, it might be administrative, so can I leave it with you folks to sort it please.

Bugs will be found, and I'm especially good at stumbling into them if you haven't noticed already. I'll await your further response.

Thanks, John. It is appreciated.

-Paul

John

Yes, it's fine now. Thanks. I did read your original posting and that answered one of my questions which is how long does the subscription last for. Onward.

I think the prices on the subscriptions shop are up to date, i.e. a year will be £249, but the 'year' only starts once eigenD 2.0 reaches a stable release. This means you are guaranteed a year of updates to the stable version, rather than getting a reduced price while not knowing how long it will remain in an experimental version.

The experimental version has a very limited set of factory setups. The next release will be a testing release, so for your subscription charge you are likely to able to play with workbench for a period of time before your subscription officially starts.

Thanks for the replies gents. I think I'll go for the six month option for the time being.

Hi MIke,
Thanks for the warm welcome. I've been watching some of the old hangout videos on YouTube, and would like to contribute once I get my playing up to speed. However, with two young children and another on the way trying to be in a specific place at a specific time is often tricky. I'll definitely do my best though!

Thanks,
Mark.

I will only comment on one issue.

- I was quite disappointed at first by how convoluted the software was. I wanted to get on and make sounds but the software was built by engineers for engineers, it seemed. Not for musicians.

@esperdiv

The clock does not start ticking on either the EigenD Pro or Base subscriptions until the first stable release.

EigenD base will likely contain two new Agents, Fingerer and Strummer and some new bundled content. The full details of the specification of these Agents and the content are not yet finalised, we are still in the experimental release phase of 2.0. The biggest change to 2.0 is a ability to run setups built with Workbench, which is not possible with 1.4.

If you don't want to play with your own setups then right now I'd advise you to stick with 1.4. It's free, stable and well featured. We are still supporting it until the formal stable release of 2.0. The two new Agents will be fun I think, but will be fiddly to use and experiment with without a pre-built setup for them (which is not yet implemented, people are brewing their own so far) and I don't think that the experience would be particularly good as a result.

If you do want to start playing with building your own setups using Workbench please be aware that 2.0 is still experimental which means that things are still in flux - the community is contributing heavily in feedback with each release and this is going straight back into the development process. This means that it is not yet guaranteed that setups will be forward compatible between releases - so far they have been, but you never know what might pop up. It's not yet ready for playing live, the caveats on the download page are real, please take note. I'm the wrong person to ask about it really, if you want to get an unbiased opinion as to if it's worthwhile I'd ask the community on the forums here, they've been playing with it for several months now.

If you are interested in Workbench, you can read the manual and the beginnings of a tutorial series here. The initial manual page for Fingerer is here. Strummer is not yet released in 2.0 (there's an Agent with that name but it's not what it will be as yet) so there's no manual page for it.

Finally, if you're interested in keeping up with news please be aware that we do have an RSS feed as well as an email notification system of forum posts - this is our preferred way of getting updates to you as it is in your full control. Every time I do send an email to our main list (which is quite large) I get a barrage of the normal complaints (each one of which requires a polite reply) about spam (even though it's an opt in list, people have bad memories and forget they're on it) so I really try to keep that down to main formal announcements. The release of 2.0 will be one of those, but I don't want to bother the wider community with it until it's ready for front line use with a stable release. We haven't even given it to the press for review yet, the experimental phase really is a community thing and goes no further as yet.


John

PS: If you're a software developer I'd like to invite you to have a look at the open source EigenD development, you might find it interesting. If you've been out of the loop for a while then you might have missed it, but we released EigenD under the GPL last year and had our first developers conference this year in January, which was a great success. There's now the ability to both build a basic system from scratch yourself along with the ability to write and distribute your own Agents as binaries. There a dedicated forum area and a section of the Wiki dedicated to it as well, you can find links to it all here.

This all seems a bit of a punch in the face for the early adopters.

Wow, I came here after ages again and after adding up all the gear I would have to sell to be able to buy a tau and see this... I registered because most (if not all) comments have come from existing customers. I am not a current customer but a prospective one. Or rather was, until I read this thread.

I have to say a subscription model is something that only makes sense from the seller's perspective. As a consumer, I pay for updates, as in "promised and guaranteed features". Subscriptions, almost by nature, screw the consumer over from the moment you sign up. They are nothing but a vague indication that you may or may not get something within the relevant period. If 2.0 is stable and full featured from the get-go, I'll gladly pay for it and stick with it. If few or no updates come within the first year, that's fine with me because 2.0 ist stable and complete.

But what if it isn't? What if unanticipated problems make it impossible for Eigenlabs to release 2.0 stable (for realism's sake let's say "for windows") within the first year? As a consumer, I'm basically screwed, because I paid for a year of fruitless efforts and I'm stuck with a version that, e.g., won't run stable on my then brand new Windows 8 laptop (or it won't run stable in Windows 7 64bit or my 64bit host host or whatever other must have item I was betting on when I subscribed). I have seen this happen with far lesser software investments and while I'd love to support Eigenlabs just because I think they're awesome, I too have limited funds and need to make sure I am getting my money's worth.

Paid updates make much more sense for the consumer. He knows what he's getting, there are no surprises and any 2.x versions are either fixes or simply a bonus. Subscriptions offer the consumer no guarantees and actually provide negative incentives to the company because they are under pressure to release an "adequate" number of updates for their subscrubers and they may actually start bloating, timing or fragmenting updates to live up to the requirement of "enough updates" but still hold enough back for "just another year" to entice customers to prolong subscriptions. Subscriptions create an incentive to the company to relase "not quite finished" products for as long as you can get away with. Paid updates provide an incentive to innovate. Needless to say I prefer the latter.

If you say "2.0 will feature x, y and z, possibly zx", that's a product. Everything else is just selling hope and speculation and you already pretty solidly swept the carpet from under any of that with this change of business model.

What I'm saying is a "subscription" should buy you all 2.x releases. At least then you'll know what you'll be getting and you have the assurance that what you are getting will work. Eigenlabs would be committed to finishing that particular stage of the product within a reasonable timeframe.

I can absolutely see the financial aspects of this decision, but the thing is, even when it's an objective necessity, you need to sell it to people. This idea was born on a spreadsheed. Sales growth must be down and you have to look at generating revenue from existing customers. I don't think anybody would have complained if 2.x would have been announced as a paid upgrade, but subscription? And then a 'regular' and 'pro'? What if nobody wants 'pro'? Will you drop it or integrate it into 'regular'? Does 'pro' pay for itself or is it cross financed by the 'regular' subscribers? If so, what do they get out of it? Without them, pro would not be possible, on the other hand, everything that goes into 'pro' is lacking in 'regular'. Who pays for the iPad app development? (I don't have an iPad.)

The whole model just makes you uneasy as a consumer. I want to know what I am getting and I want some sort of manifest commitment by the developer that x, y and z will be provided within the relevant timeframe of my investment. A subscription doesn't offer me that and on the contrary makes me constantly uneasy whether I am (or will be) getting what I am paying for or not. It certainly put me solidly back on the fence, because until 2.0 is out and functional, I have no idea what I will be getting.


It's silly, but I feel that a "paid upgrade" model would have caused a lot less antagonism. A little bit of financial uncertainty on the part of Eigenlabs for a huge piece of their customer's trust. And I for one would know that if I buy when 2.0 is out, I'm on board for 2.x and don't have to time my purchase with my guesses at the iOS development cycle or the release of Windows8 or whatever else might influence development.