A Proposal

[goldenanalog]

Hello, all,

This is something that I've been thinking about for several months-I've been unsure how to present it, so my decision has finally been to bring it to the Origin owners' community that that inhabits this forum from time to time.

OK, I'll jump riight into it:

There is a contingent of Origin owners who seem to range from less-then-satisfied to largely unsatisfied with what Arturia has brought to the origin to date. Understandable.

So: What can we do about it?

What about changing the paradigm about how updates are handled for the Origin? My proposal would be to implement a 'Group Buy' of sorts, with the expectation that Arturia would match (or better) the groups' monetary committment. Also: What about creating 'tiers' where for each level of committed funding that was reached, those particating in the Group Buy would receive a V software, as an example. 

[goldenanalog]

Further:

I think that if owners are to help fund upgrades for the Origin, that it should be the Origin owners that drive specific upgrades that are done to the Origin. As an example: if there are enough Origin owners that want the Oberheim oscillators modelled in the Origin, then this is what Arturia should install.

Also: The Origin group should be told up front, if at all possible, what is feasible by the developer(s) who is(are) actually doing the work.

What I believe would be healthy for all parties concerned is a true partnership existing between Arturia and Origin owners, where the owners themselves can leverage the Origin's future.

[goldenanalog]

How would this work?

Let's say that there are 100 Origin owners each willing to commit $100 US dollars to developement of Oberheim oscillators in the Origin. Let's also say that Arturia has agreed to give each of the Origin owners a V soft because of the tier reached.

That's $10,000 dollars that Origin owners have committed in funding to developement of said Obie Osc's, and Origin owners each get a V soft for their committment.

Arturia then matches it with a ratio of say: 1.5 to 1, so for every $1.00 that the group commits to developement, Arturia commits $1.50.

In this scenario, we both as a group and Arturia now have $25,000 committed to developement of Obie Osc's.

This (in theory, anyway) should greatly extend the life and health of the product, since both present and future owners/users of the Origin should benefit.

[goldenanalog]

The other idea that may go with this will create an Origin 'roll-call' list-that's something that might look like an 'Ambassador Program'.

Origin owners would sign up for it with an Origin serial/bio info.

If you think about each Origin owner as being a micro-investor in Arturia; collectively: 100 Origin owners would have spent (conservatively) $150,000 to $200,000 USD.

With FURTHER potential monetary committment on the part of Origin owners to improve the machine, I think that it warrants special treatment on the part of Arturia, which could take the form of deep discounts/special buys etc. through an Ambasador program.


Have you seen this yet?

http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/2012/07/11/frank-serafine-academy-award-sound-designercomposer-transforms-films-into-immersive-experiences/

[goldenanalog]

From The above article:

'Some years ago, Serafine moved out of a 10,000-square-foot Venice, Calif., studio. He had eight rooms full of equipment, including some 53 synthesizers. “I didn’t want to be in that real- estate business, and I wanted to lighten up,” he says, “so I sold all of my synthesizers on eBay.” The plan was to get leaner on hardware, but not on capability. Serafine unloaded the analog synthesizers in favor of software synthesizers. The advan- tages of software synthesizers over analog are debated between purists and digital mavens, but some benefits are clear. Serafine is an advocate of the Arturia MiniMg V and Arturia Mg Modular V, among other software tools. He had been an avid user of the original MiniMg analog synthesizer since he got one in his teens.

That MiniMg was one of the most innovative instruments when it was created, but it had some drawbacks, among them, like most analog synthesizers, the tuning could become unstable as the oscillators heated up. That made the MiniMg notoriously difficult to keep in tune. Says Serafine, “Mg went to Arturia to develop the MiniMg, and they were able to correct its problems by making it a software synthesizer, and they did a great job.” The Arturia MiniMg V, which is being reintroduced as the Arturia Mini V, doesn’t have these drawbacks, of course. Serafine also makes extensive use of the Arturia MiniMg’s hundreds of programmed presets. (Arturia recently announced the end of an agreement with Mg Music, so in addition to the change to the Mini V, the Arturia Mg Modular V is being reintroduced as the Arturia Modular V.) One drawback of software synths comes from the interface. Pushing a mouse is okay for getting an idea down in the laptop, but Serafine uses the Arturia Origin in the studio. It’s a hardware synth using DSP algorithms that models the various modules from different synths (Mg, Roland, Yamaha and more), which can be combined inside the Origin to create new synths in a modular system. “The Origin reincarnates yesterday’s systems into a single synth system,” he says. “Back when I was playing analog synthesizers, I was playing the control knobs.

When software came around, it was pushing a mouse. The Origin takes me back to the analog playability.”

[goldenanalog]

In synth world: The Origin is an extremely important player, as articulated by such professionals as Mr. Serafine, who relies heavily on it in his work. IT MAKES SENSE then, that if a sizeable contigent of Origin owners/users are disatisfied or worse, that stepping up and offering to help Arturia in a reasonable way with developement costs in exchange for getting what we want...

The dirty little (not so) secret of the Origin is that the resource outlay on the part of Arturia was ENORMOUS-that it's buy price is so reasonable is a small miracle.

It is brilliant; it is a jewel; it is a goldmine of great sounds. But it can be better.

But: Are we willing as Origin owners to help Arturia with the costs of making it better?

[hermitnerd]

Wow, Frank Serafine. That's a great endorsement. He's like the Hans Zimmer of the sound design world. I remember reading an Electronic Musician article on him in the mid-80s and drooling over the collection of synths he had in his studio. He's probably had every synth known to man.

[synthguy99]

While this proposal is well meant, I think it's misplaced.

It assumes that Arturia has a staff of software engineers which have a number of possible improvement options which they are dallying with, or even throwing darts at, as far as deciding where to proceed.  And because of this, the roadmap is muddled and time is being wasted.

Apparently, this isn't the case.  It seems that there is a staff of one software engineer, Phillipe, who is working to give us additional features (oscillators, filters, sequencer features, effects, templates etc) on his own, with possible help from others at Arturia when time gets out of hand.  It also seems like they are listening to us, as among the many things we want to have added to Origin such as Prophet or Oberheim OSCs and filters or what have you, the most often asked for addition is the Yamaha CS-80 template.  And Phillipe or Sean W have mentioned the CS-80 template as something upcoming in the "not too distant future."  After having some of us beg for the SEM V OSCs and filters - and getting the filter in just a few months, this does make me hopeful that we are going to have one or two substantial additions like the CS-80 template and more OSCs and filters per year.  The ARP 2600 template had been proposed as coming in the 1.4 update, and I'm VERY glad it was postponed, because making a 2600 patch in the Origin is very simple to do.  In contrast, my CS-80 recreation uses a lot of CPU overhead, so it's capable of only seven note polyphony.  A proper CS-80 template would not just be tuned to work with the DSP in the Origin better, but the performance controls on the actual CS-80 would be available in some fashion.

We would have to throw a LOT of money at Arturia before they could think of using it to hire a second software engineer familiar with machine code programming for dedicated DSP units.  And no matter how much money we gave, I doubt it could make Phillipe work any faster.  At least I'd hope!  

I think the most useful thing we can do is buy Arturia products themselves, and encourage our friends to do the same.  At some point I will be doing this, as I would like to have the entire Vintage Collection 3.0.  I just need that music computer running a DAW first...

[goldenanalog]

synthguy99:

Whilst all good points (and I had assumed as much about dear Philippe) what I'm really talking about is somewhat of a revolution-all of your points were already considered over the past few months.

So: What if we were able to have Philippe all to ourselves, so all he did was to work on the Origin? It would put unprecendeted pressure on the company (Arturia) if we as owners put up our own money to force bug fixes, revisions, etc. with Phillipe himself telling us directly about the bug/update status, feasibility....

The bottom line is that this stategy would DIRECTLY affect Arturia's bottom line, especially in wake of a somewhat unique (and visible) business model where the company/user/product relationship was cemented by genuine funding on the users' part...consider that the box might yearly go through revisions which would be equivalent to version upgrades in software-examples: cs80v 1.0 to 2.5, prophet v 1.0 to 2.5, etc.

[goldenanalog]

From the position of a professional: If such was the case where the owner's themselves paid what might be logically seen as a 'subscription' fee to fully support a world-class product like the Origin (the Origin has few peers) and that said professional would also have a voice in the on-going evolution of the product (platform)...

Understand that many pro's already pay regular fees to Avid (Pro-Tools) for even minor upgrades-this has going on for years-

I would see this as an attractant from a pro's standpoint in wake of so much WYSIWYG...

Besides: From my (limited, 35-year) synth experience, I see Philippe as a BRILLIANT DSP programmer, perhaps on par with Bob Mg but living in the DSP synth world....what if he could work uninterrupted specifically on the Origin, further honing his skillset as he explores/refines what is one of the best synths on the planet...

[goldenanalog]

My belief is that if Arturia Origins' ongoing developement was in part funded by the Origin owners/users themselves, and that the part of the keyboard community that cared about such things knew this, and saw progress in the instrument that both delivered on initial promises, and continued to exceed them, that Arturia would not only sell more units, but would see the perceived value of the instrument increase since the support would prove itself to be complete.

I would also like to see a onsite or offsite web structure (spreadsheet-style) that lists machine by serial, and the status of said machine.

Is it working? If not, why not-what is wrong with it? 

And what is the present status of the repair required; what is (or will) Arturia do(ing) to repair the machine?

[Tig]

How about suing Arturia for misleading advertising.

[holografique]

You guys all need to wake up and smell the coffee. Any company that leaves a flagship product to a single lone developer who is doing it on his own time is a clear example that the company has no vested interest in pushing the product any further. Seriously.

From my perspective Origin was an ingenious and amazing instrument that was plagued by bad marketing, early quality control issues & stability problems and likely high production costs with a complicated product design. You simply CANNOT have those types of things happen when you launch a product, cause if you do, then the life of that product is spent "catching up". From that point forwards it's nothing but an uphill battle trying to fix consumer perception.

All of those problems combined likely made it impossible for Arturia to make any profit on Origin sales at all. And with the product originally being priced as high as it was, it simply made things worse. Bottom line: if a company can't be profitable with a product, then they simply cannot invest further into it, that's just how business works folks. If Arturia was truly interested in reviving Origin, they would have more than one lone developer dedicated to it....period. So let's stop all this dreaming and just face what it is.

That being said, let's just sit back, enjoy the synth, and be grateful for whatever additional time and development they put into the product. The SEM additions are amazing and definitely put some life back into the platform. Let's see what they can do next.

[JacksonP]

I agree with holografique, let's just enjoy this great synth and cross our fingers to hope that they won't stop developing it. And from my perspective, this thing has developed quite a lot since its first release. There are quite a lot of more or less pricey products that had kind of great potentiality and they were released with more or less pronounced "promises". Take Roland V-piano for example. It had IMO huge potentiality to run different things (e-pianos for example) but those japanese decided to not develope it any futher. After all these years, It is still just an extremely heavy and pricey a-piano. I am glad that I did not put my money into it. It was a clear mistake from Arturia that they promised those templates and without no doubt there are Origin owners who bought their unit because of those promises.

What I fear most is the day when my Origin gets broken (I'll do my best to avoid this). What is obvious that this thing isn't easy to fix. What will I do then, should I send it to France? How much does it cost? How long does it take? Do they have spare parts? Does this company even exist etc.?

So let's hope that they will keep developing it and selling it. In my opinion the more users it has more it makes them responsible to keep its service alive too. If we are just few then it's more easy to forget us.

[dwp2659]

i would have no problem paying for updates