Dave Smith Instruments SYNTHESIZERS

Hi Mr. Julian & Co,

It's no secret that Vyzor Evolver has been 'soon to be released' for 
over a year now. The reasons for the unintended vaporware FX are 
four-fold:

1. The Evolver has been a monster product to virtualize. Psicraft's 
Vyzors are more than just automatable editors. They are closer 
to 're-imaginings' of what the hardware interface would have been if 
the manufacturer had an unlimited budget for metalwork, controls and 
display hardware. Consequently, whenever we encounter a killer 
feature in the instrument that seems difficult to use via the 
established front-panel paradigm, we develop and implement a new 
paradigm that will stoke the creative fire of the user. The best 
example of this in Vyzor Evolver is the sequencer mode 

http://www.psicraft.com/Products/images/VyzorEvolver_Seq.jpg 

which is visually interactive and includes multitrack muting, 
soloing and recording, scalic and chordal arpeggio generation, as 
well as drag editors and keyboard controls as part of its design. 
Incidentally, having to program sequence 'end' steps has also been 
done away with, allowing you to simply set each sequence's length 
and forget about the number codes. Against the standard business 
practice of releasing a basic version early on and then releasing 
paid upgrades over time, I have opted to postpone the product 
release several times in order to implement features such as these 
so we can release a version 1.0 product that (hopefully) thrills and 
excites all who invest in a copy. 

2. A number of these new features actually forced us to go back and 
change the deep functionality of our editor architecture to make it 
totally robust when interacting with the Evolver's Midi clocks, SPP 
messages etc. Much rework and testing was required to do this right, 
which (once again) pushed back the release.

3. We've been very busy this year with OEM Vyzor editors for other 
manufacturers (TC-Helicon and Akai Professional). For Psicraft, 
these projects were critical because they a) paid the bills, and b) 
they allowed us to 'beta-test' our product release and support 
systems on non-paying customers. We're a new company, and 2005 was 
in many ways our 'baby-steps' year.

4. The underlying editor architecture we have had to rework is in 
fact Sound Quest's Midi Quest XL application. Although separately 
owned, both companies have had a symbiotic relationship since 
Psicraft co-designed the Midi Quest 9 & XL user interface in 2002 
(before this I worked for Sound Quest as their product and marketing 
manager). Psicraft is the only company allowed to licence the MQ 
architecture for 3rd party editor products, and as we have an 
ongoing stake in MQ's features, we spend a lot of our development 
time working with Sound Quest to improve and enhance Midi Quest. Of 
course this works both ways - Sound Quest spends a lot of their 
development time working on the features that we request in order to 
make our latest editor designs possible. In the case of the Evolver, 
there have been major changes (indeed!) this year to the Midi Quest 
architecture, most of which will be announced by Sound Quest when 
Midi Quest 10 is released in early 2006.

...And this is why it's taken so long without a release. In-house 
beta testing is underway now, and (no surprise) we are slipping a 
little bit on the release schedule - Late December is now looking 
more like the 1st week of January as members of our team disappear 
for the holidays, but we may still pull a hat-trick and have Vyzor 
Evolver ready before 2005 is over. As I've said before - It will be 
worth the wait, nonetheless.

With regards to Vyzor integration with Midi Quest: All our Vyzor 
editors will also be available as add-on instrument module upgrades 
for MQ 10 and MQ 10 XL owners. OEM Vyzors such as TC-Helicon Vyzor 
VoiceLive will be free (since these editors were paid for by the 
manufacturer), while Vyzors that have been developed as retail 
products by Psicraft will available for purchase from our Web Store. 
As instrument module upgrades, each of these Vyzors will typically 
cost $20 to $30 less than the complete version that runs without 
requiring Midi Quest. 

I hope this addresses some of your concerns as well as casts some 
light on what's going on with Psicraft and Sound Quest. If any of 
you are planning to be at NAMM, please email me off-list and I will 
be happy to meet up with you in person at the show next month!

Cheers and a very happy holidays to all,

Tony

-----------------
Tony Antoniou,
Psicraft Designs, Inc.


--- In DSI_Evolver@yahoogroups.com, "mr julian" <jujulilianan@w...> 
wrote:
>
> 
> From: "bcomnes" <bcomnes@y...>
> 
> > What should an owner of 2 Mono Evolvers with OS 3.0 
polyphonically
> > linked together do?
> >
> > Get the December release?  or wait for the Poly-Release??
> >
> I'd guess you would get the december release, because two mono 
evolvers have
> a different setup to a polyevolver. :-)
> 
> Though monoevolver price plus polyevolver upgrade price is exactly 
the same
> as just the polyevolver price too, so I suppose there will be a few
> polyevolver owners working with the mono editor till the version 
they really
> want is released.
> 
> Personally, I love the idea of being able to run my monoevolver 
with a
> completely VSTi compatible software interface. Think of all the 
crazy
> automation you'll be able to do from cubase, but with a fantastic 
real
> analogue synth.... I'm going to go nuts! Also a decent standalone 
editor
> function will be very much appreciated.
> 
> Though I'm not holding my breath for the new published release 
dates....
> this software has been "about to come out any time now" for what 
seems like
> a year and a half at least...... well, at least we should be able 
to be
> confident that it's had a lot of time to be debugged before we get 
it!
> 
> 
> 
> julian
>