emusonacid! legacy

Can anyone tell me the difference between the demo of ZoeOS

and the full product apart from the nag screen


the demo seems real sluggish

so im not really tempted to buy at the moment

Almost nobody is tempted to buy at the moment. The developer has let things slide quite a bit, and some of the members view the situation with quite some bitterness.

The help file is incomplete.
The long promised Mac OSX version has become vapour-ware.

It seems to be basically one guy doing some occasional programming in his spare time, and seems that he doesn't have much of that spare time to focus on ZoeOS. "Seems"... I'm making a bunch of assumptions, but I doubt there's really enough of a market to make this a full time gig for the guy. Might work better as an open-source project, with a community to do the development, but right now it's just one guy trying to sell his hobby (essentially).

I've never gotten around to using the demo myself, even though I installed it over six months ago. I've just gotten more used to doing things on the little screen on the sampler (or even EOS-Link remote). Maybe I'll give it a second chance this summer... of course, lately I've just been using the samples/presets I already have, and playing with my Morpheus more.

Don't get me wrong... I'd love to be able to give the thing a glowing endorsement. It looks like an extremely useful tool, particularly if you're going to take advantage of the ... what did they call it?... DMS - Digital Modular Synthesis. Being able to see all the parameters of a voice all at once instead of paging through them... that could be insanely useful, especially for people doing a lot of sound design. And some of the proposed future features, like being able to save presets and samples locally, being able to audition from inside the program, including peptalk support for remote control... it would be an insanely useful product, but not quite so insanely useful that you'd pay a retail-software price for it. Guy who wrote the (currently freeware) Morpheus editor ran into the same problems, ended up just giving it away... it just doesn't quite pay for itself once the hardware slips off the retail-instrument market. There's really only a small window of opportunity for tie-in products, unless the hardware becomes some huge classic (in which case the manufacturer will have already paid somebody to professionally build them a tie-in program).

Do you think he would make it opensource if we bought him out?

I accept all the criticism of the guy who wrote it, but it is already a good tool. IMO it's worth the money for the features that are already there - just don't expect it to be developed further.

For all the criticism regarding the OSx release, Zoeos is still an excellent tool for controlling Emu samplers. It has become a central part of my working methods, particularly because I can copy and paste parameters bettween presets. Makes setting up presets to respond to the controllers I have defined so easy.

As far as I understand only about 70 copies were sold, which is perhaps why development has stalled. It is going for 55 Euros at the moment, which for the power you get is a bargain IMO.

Making it open source would be great, but who would have the skills and time to take it further? From a control point of view I don't think there is much more that can be done, though the suggested 'vitual sampler' function for making presets remotely would be great.

its a shame cus with a little more work it could have been great


finger crossed it goes open source

thnaks for the replys

It wasn't even really meant as a criticism. These are just the realities of: (a) programming in your spare time when you still have to work a full (or more than full) time job, balance family, walk the dog, etc; and (b) programming for a niche market (we're a very dedicated cult, but we're still a cult).

And I really do like the program. The next time I'm doing some sound design I will definitely be giving it a spin, because from what I saw just wandering through it once it will make things flow a lot easier. It's just that right now I'm only needing a limited front panel remote, and ZoeOS is not that.

And the whole open source thing was just an idea that pop-ed into my head. I don't know how the guy would feel about it, given the time (and time = money) he's already invested in it. Open source seems like a great thing, but it takes a shift in value thinking, and notions about the due compensation for one's skills and resources, blah blah blah, capitalism, communism, little green martians, just ignore most of the rest of this paragraph, because I'm clearly rambling on about things I really don't know about... it's being a strange Sunday morning

I'd like to know why the guy is having such a hard time releasing the OS X version. The thing is written in Java. It's portable. Should only require the installation of a Java virtual machine on any given platform to work. At least that's what Java is intendid to accomplish. Maybe the git used native machine code rather than bytecode?

There are elements of the application that talk to the hardware layer (SCSI device), and this relies on native code or a JNI interface to the device.

Why don't you have a go?

OS9 version or STFU.

om wrote:There are elements of the application that talk to the hardware layer (SCSI device), and this relies on native code or a JNI interface to the device.

Why don't you have a go?

Cus I already paid a git to do it for me ;D