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"
wrote:
>
>
> From: "bcomnes"
>
> > 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
>