NDSP Quad Cortex

[laxu]

the cloud infrastructure is extremely well implemented for purposes of distributing firmware updates, managing backups, and (finally) brokering plugin content

I think that's a super low bar these days. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort for a competent dev to spin up a few AWS S3 buckets (file storage), apply AWS permission management to it, and make your software download that content as needed. These cloud services are built to make that relatively easy.

I don't know if it's improved over the years, but afaik sharing content between users was always more cumbersome. Especially for those who sold captures and wanted to give a buyer access to specific captures.

That's where a marketplace type system would've really helped, but it again raises the complexity because now you need stuff like payment processor integration which can be its own can of worms.

 

[mbenigni]

I think that's a super low bar these days. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort for a competent dev to spin up a few AWS S3 buckets (file storage), apply AWS permission management to it, and make your software download that content as needed. These cloud services are built to make that relatively easy.

That covers the server side, but I still think the client side implementation on the QC is pretty slick. I'm not talking about sharing (or selling) captures and presets here so much as the other things WiFi to cloud brings to the table, e.g. standalone firmware upgrades, backups, and restores. (Especially helpful when you're managing more than one QC.)

 

[laxu]

That covers the server side, but I still think the client side implementation on the QC is pretty slick. I'm not talking about sharing (or selling) captures and presets here so much as the other things WiFi to cloud brings to the table, e.g. standalone firmware upgrades, backups, and restores. (Especially helpful when you're managing more than one QC.)

Sure, but again it isn't very complex. Ask some server endpoint for fw download URL if there's a newer than reported, upload backup to another endpoint and so on.

For the user it's certainly a convenient process when you don't have to hook up a USB cable to do all that.

Is it still limited to one single bulk backup or can you restore some older backup, or e.g partial backup (say captures, or presets)?

 

[mbenigni]

Sure, but again it isn't very complex. Ask some server endpoint for fw download URL if there's a newer than reported, upload backup to another endpoint and so on.

I understand it's not rocket science (I'm a programmer as well), but the devil is in the details. The QC UX - simple as it may be - relating to these features has managed to not piss me off in the course of 4 or 5 years, and that has got to be a record.

Is it still limited to one single bulk backup or can you restore some older backup, or e.g partial backup (say captures, or presets)?

You can upload and download individual presets and captures now (and I believe presets will automatically bundle any embedded captures), but I don't think you can extract presets, etc. that have previously been compressed into a backup file. They're essentially two different paradigms.

 

[Mikael Dez]

Akshually - you mean Linux? I would be very surprised if it ran Unix.

Linux, Unix, Unix-like, macOS tomato tomato

 

[sleewell]

fuck me dead the QC sounded really good last night at rehearsal into the fx return on my 6505

 

[DrewJD82]

I work with a lot of companies that do acquisitions, and they generally are smarter than that. Modern due diligence reports often include research on the company and any product brands perception which is really easy to mine online these days. Anyone buying NDSP would know about their reputation and client satisfaction issues.

A buyer that plans to take the QC hardware, rewrite or significantly update the software, and rebrand it might not care. Others will look at it and start chopping their offer price.

I’d still imagine that most of that due diligence would be spent looking at the bigger picture though; when the owner of my campus was going to sell a few years back I was meeting with the potential buyers to walk them around the campus. These guys had zero care about any details, their entire focus was “Do companies rent here, is the campus in a condition that will allow us to step in and make profit or will we have to invest before we can see profit, what licenses does the campus hold and will it keep them without additional costs?”

I’d imagine any buyer of NDSP would be looking to see what the NDSP name brings to the table as far as sales and they have no problem selling shit. If anything, a new company might see NDSP’s lack of progress as a winning ticket to boosting sales all over again if they came in with a “Hey, we know progress was slow for a while, but we’ve got the manpower to kick into high gear so be prepared!”

That’d be a pretty great turn of events, really. A new company takes over and doesn’t give a shit about the marketing side and just go HAM on the QC. It’s already a well-known and well-loved device by the majority who use it, cramming it full of content is just going to prop it up even more.

 

[mbenigni]

That’d be a pretty great turn of events, really. A new company takes over and doesn’t give a shit about the marketing side and just go HAM on the QC. It’s already a well-known and well-loved device by the majority who use it, cramming it full of content is just going to prop it up even more.

This would be fantastic. Stadium is still the elephant in the room, however. :)

 

[Mikael Dez]

This would be fantastic. Stadium is still the elephant in the room, however. :)

Oliphaunt*

 

[Mongillo19]

Oliphaunt*

 

[sleewell]

a lack of synths tho???? the synth o matic in the helix was fun to click on for noise bits

 

[Jarick]

IMO there's enough track record of success with the QC both hardware and software. It seems much more likely that their issues really stem from mismanagement of the overall roadmap or development execution. A really good software development team should be able to pick up the pieces and continue with the product if it were a possibility.

Now maybe the plugin compatibility needs to be dropped completely or some other changes may need to be made. But for the first couple years of QC there was a lot of progress until they started in with the plugin stuff.