Line 6 mystery product speculation

mbenigni said:
The alternative for a complex MFX unit is a display-only screen and some alternate array of physical controls, which is very possibly a wash in terms of real estate. A screen is almost a given for this class of device; why not make it touch, even if it will only sometimes be used as such?

The only other variable I can see here is scribble strips vs. no scribble strips, but this turns into a straight form factor/ cost bargain. :idk


But the QC doesn't; it displays the state of Stomps and/or Scenes. Same as e.g. a Helix LT. See above: the screen is there; why not touch?
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The QC is better but still not very useful. It only shows you what you can already see on the footswitches anyway. The TMP does have scribble strips which helps a lot.

I have nothing against screens being touchscreens, I just don’t like when the focus is so strongly on touch editing that they forget about everything else you need to use a screen for. Or when it’s just being used as a sales gimmick that isn’t being utilized well.
 
Digital Igloo said:
For clarity's sake, it wasn't a coin flip as much as it was Helix's then-Product Manager being exhausted from arguing with other stakeholders. Not sure I would've been able to push hard enough back then either, as I was UI Designer at the time. Wasn't even in the meetings where it was debated; found out from the PM.

How much you wanna bet? Someone at The Other Place© already lost $500 (but has yet to donate to Agoura Animal Care Shelter).

There will never be a product named "Nexus," just like there's never been a product named "L6 LINK." Nexus is simply one of many R&D projects that may or may not make it into future products; we've developed dozens of cool things over the years that never went anywhere (at least in YGG products; some of the stuff we do ends up in Yamaha products), and at this point, Nexus could very well suffer the same fate. The verbose description in the trademark application is just to cover a superset of all possible scenarios. Very common with these sorts of things.

Remember, YGG also acts as one of many research arms for Yamaha Japan. We'll work on stuff that'll never be branded Line 6, Ampeg, Cordoba, or Guild. In fact, the first Yamaha product I helped design is coming out in a month or two (no idea why it's taken so long; I did that work like 3+ years ago?).

So as exciting as "ooooh, NEXUS—what's that?!" might appear at first glance, I suspect the first potential SKU (or maybe even first two or three SKUs) that could implement it—if it gets deployed at all and isn't shuffled into some massive room like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark—will result in a "Wait, that's it? Meh" from the masses. It's really not sexy at all.

Yep, and no one is holding their touchscreen-equipped multieffects at chest height, walking next to cement street curbs. While drunk.

<challenge accepted!>
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Compliment Fractal's UI twice if Nexus is Line 6 biomimetic AI profiling capture tech
 
Sascha Franck said:
How so? Touchscreens are breaking all the time on phones. Yes, in 2024. There's a reason for umpteenth mobile phone repair shops in my direct neighbourhood (we're talking at least 5 within 500 meters or so - sure, they're doing other things as well, but screen repairs seem to be one of their main businesses).
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I kinda sorta disagree with this, within reason. Phones don't break "all the time", if they're properly secured. Example: I support 1200+ phones, of which 400(?) are cops. Secured in Otterboxes (the beefiest of kind), they're solid.

Same could be said for a modeler's touchscreen. Tempered glass, and/or some other kind of protector, if you're that concerned, would fit the bill just fine, IMO.
 
paisleywookiee said:
I kinda sorta disagree with this, within reason. Phones don't break "all the time", if they're properly secured. Example: I support 1200+ phones, of which 400(?) are cops. Secured in Otterboxes (the beefiest of kind), they're solid.

Same could be said for a modeler's touchscreen. Tempered glass, and/or some other kind of protector, if you're that concerned, would fit the bill just fine, IMO.
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Yeah, that's all fine. All I was saying was that with touchscreens there's another "layer" of risks coming along in addition to the raw display function, namely the touch part.
 
nightlight said:
It’s a more sophisticated and intuitive way of navigating through multiple parameters than turning knobs
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Knobs:
Episode 4 Lightsaber GIF by Star Wars
 
mbenigni said:
I wouldn't want to stumble into that argument without doing some homework, but... Moore's Law is very specifically quantified. It states that CPU power (actually, transistor count) will double every two years with a minimal increase in cost. That stopped being true a few years ago. Chips are still getting smaller, cooler, faster, and cheaper - just not at the rate Moore observed/ predicted.

That, and you've got all kinds of disruptions in supply chains and international partnerships right now. But you've also got advancements that might tip the scales in the opposite direction in the near future: AI, etc.
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In 2017, which I think was a few years after the Helix came out, we gave up on a hardware project because the price point of the DSP we needed made it just not make any sense, but we were still considering it as it would at least let us get into the market.

In 2019, while we were working on other products instead, before the chip shortage or covid, we were offered a DSP system which was WAY way cheaper than what we were looking at in 2017 and its power and the memory available removed a lot of the compromises we were going to make with the previous chip.

I don't believe for a microsecond, that more powerful DSP than in the Helix isn't available for cheaper today, but the chip shortage (which seems to be not so much of an issue at least to the audio interface manufacturers anymore) could throw in a wrench still maybe?
 
Digital Igloo said:
Remember, YGG also acts as one of many research arms for Yamaha Japan. We'll work on stuff that'll never be branded Line 6, Ampeg, Cordoba, or Guild. In fact, the first Yamaha product I helped design is coming out in a month or two (no idea why it's taken so long; I did that work like 3+ years ago?).
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Can you tell us what the current timeline looks like as far as releases/updates? Not dates obviously, but X, then Y then Z.
 
Its not really a question. Chips are faster and cheaper in 2024 than 2015. Pretty much a fundamental law of the universe
 
pipelineaudio said:
Its not really a question. Chips are faster and cheaper in 2024 than 2015. Pretty much a fundamental law of the universe
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Proof that that carries over to SHARC chips? Or are you basing this on Intel/AMD/ARM? I'm genuinely curious if the FM9/QC's chip is actually both faster AND cheaper than the chip in the AX8 was, or if it's just the former.
 
pipelineaudio said:
Its not really a question. Chips are faster and cheaper in 2024 than 2015. Pretty much a fundamental law of the universe
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None of which refutes what I wrote in my post. 2015 (or 2017 or 2019) is more than "a few years ago", and again, Moore's Law is a very specific thing.

That technology improves over time is almost a given.
 
paisleywookiee said:
Proof that that carries over to SHARC chips? Or are you basing this on Intel/AMD/ARM? I'm genuinely curious if the FM9/QC's chip is actually both faster AND cheaper than the chip in the AX8 was, or if it's just the former.
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I don't know if its true for SHARCs but if its not, that's an issue specifically to that company itself, not chip design in general. Yes, there are some serious slowdowns and goofiness going on with CPU power in general, but its not like a 2024 intel (even with all the crazy problems they are having) isn't faster and cheaper than a 2015 one was
 
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