[tangousers] Re: The possible future of Tango software : current situation

  • From: Jan Morgenstern <contact@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: tangousers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2015 19:38:59 +0100

Hey Andrew!

Is everything running smooth with Nuendo 7? I've yet to upgrade and I
don't think the "Tango with Neundo 7" thread on the SmartAV forums ever
yielded a reliable answer as to how well they play together...

Cheers,
jan

On Thu, 19 Nov 2015, Andrew Tulloch wrote:

Hello all ( Hi Mike)

Tango 1 with extension bay user based in East London ( first unit
sold in the UK), been a beta tester since the beginning. Running
Pyramix with Oasis protocol and Nuendo 7. Like Mike, I haven't found
anything that works as well as Tango for multi DAW integration (
haven't demo'd Slate Raven, but not sure about virtual faders/Big
iPad vibe??), I would love to keep Tango alive if at all poss.

Best wishes
Andrew Tulloch

The Blue Studio
t: 020 8518 8441
m: 07768 981199
e: info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
w: www.andrewtulloch.com <http://www.andrewtulloch.com/>
skype: andrewtulloch




On 19/11/2015 18:02, Mike Hatch wrote:
Hi Ken

Sorry to hear that you are down an extension bay. I’ve got the install
files for the extension bay of Tango2, but don’t know if that would also
work for the Tango1. I could send them to you if you would like to try.

Are we still all going to do a roll call? Shall I kick off?

I’m a Tango 2 user based in West London and use Pyramix DAW with Oasis
Protocol. I have used many different automated mix systems over 30 years in
the business and nothing comes close to the flexibility and speed that I
have with the Merging/Smart AV setup. I really hope that a solution can be
found to prevent the system becoming a dead end..

Best wishes to all

Mike Hatch


On 19 Nov 2015, at 17:45, Ken Gray <KenGray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It is good to see more users joining the list. I have a Tango 1 and both
the active expansion bay and a passive extension bay. Last week I tried
updating the all 3 units with the latest software. It worked for the main
unit, but the active bay files became corrupted rendering the active unit
inoperable. There was a disk image on the active unit¹s computer so I
reinstalled that. Unfortunately it was an image for the main tango unit
not the active extension extension bay. So now I am down one unit. I hope
this isn¹t the slow death we have to look forward to.

Does anyone know if there was any consideration of SmartAv selling the
business and the IP associated with it? I am sure that since they chose to
go out of business its not worth much if anything, but if it could be
purchased it would clear the way to maybe building off of the hardware
design with new or upgraded software. Who would be the contact at SmartAV?

Ken


Ken Gray
Chief Executive Officer
CAMP Systems International, Inc
Phone: 603-595-0030






On 11/19/15, 6:44 AM, "tangousers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Jan
Morgenstern" <tangousers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of
contact@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hey,

thanks for the recap. Some notes:

On Thu, 19 Nov 2015, Jérôme Heiderscheidt wrote:
1) Ask Niko (from Smart AV) to tweak the software when needed,
possibly through payed updates. It seems Niko is not against the
idea, but one issue is that if he looks at trying fix something and
can¹t, who pays ? It also means that we have to pay for fixing every
issue that occurs and new features would be very unlikely. Also, at
the moment only 56 people signed up to this mailing list, so even if
each of these people contributes, it¹s not exactly a very strong
financial base.
Those are my concerns, too. With only one developer on a presumed
shoestring budget (that, in addition, is likely to falter over time as
some of us will inevitably move on to greener, or at least better
supported, hardware pastures), I can't imagine this route giving us much
more than the occasional emergency bugfix. I'd much rather see Nico
getting involved as the guy who knows his way around the codebase among
a larger pool of developers - assuming he'd be willing to do that, of
course.

The issue here is that the source code is not well documented, meaning
that if a developer was to get involved it would probably require a
lot of support from the Smart AV team, which is not something they are
not keen on providing.
I don't think that's an issue. SmartAV would be entirely in the right to
make it an unsupported take-it-or-leave-it deal and none of us would
blame them for it, considering that giving us access to the source code
in the first place would already be a very accommodating gesture from
them. Also, no matter how much of a muddled and undocumented mess a
codebase is, there's always a way to start at one edge and
systematically comb through it if you have the time and patience. I've
spent the past months reverse engineering a ridiculously entangled pile
of third-party C code for another project, so it might be the built-up
callouses talking :)

I think the bigger issue is that there are likely to be parts of the
codebase that are encumbered by third-party agreements and NDAs that
SmartAV has made with other companies such as Steinberg or Merging, and
that they're simply not allowed to release. For instance, to my
knowledge Steinberg's device modules SDK isn't public (which might be
moot anyway if it turns out to be true that they're abandoning that part
in light of pushing their own Nuage system, which would be major bummer
in any regard). Anyhow, depending on how monolithic their code structure
is, it could be a pretty involved task separating those parts from the
those to which SmartAV has all the rights, and it's possible that
whatever's left wouldn't be very useful on its own. But that's all wild
speculation on my part, we'd really need a comment from someone involved
with the code to clear this up.

So the big question is now : who among us is a developer, who has the
skills and is willing to devote some time towards this ?
As written in my initial message, I'm a C/C++ developer. As for time, I
obviously cannot guarantee anything. But seeing that the source release
thing was my idea (or was it?), I'd consider it a matter of coder honor
to do *something* with it if the opportunity arises. :)

Just for the sake of completeness, there's a third scenario that I'd
like to mention, although it's by far the most unlikely of the three: If
someone puts their mind to it, there might be a non-zero chance of
reverse engineering and reimplementing (parts of) Tango's software
without help from SmartAV. At Tango's heart is a standard embedded PC
board, and depending on how much of its I/O subsystems consist of
documented industry standard hardware, it might be possible to rebuild
some of the functionality in a firmware written from scratch - possibly
even running on an alternate OS like embedded Linux (which would be
likely to make development for non-initiates much easier). Another less
radical approach would be to have a look at whether NetSmart might be
replaced with a re-engineered daemon that mirrors Tango's network
protocols - since Tango's hardware won't change, but operating systems
and DAWs will, NetSmart might turn out to be the bigger issue in the
long run anyway, and we might be fine at least keeping current
functionality going if we could find a way to talk to Tango as a black
box. Anyhow, as said, these are pipe dreams for now - besides that being
a hugely complex undertaking without any guarantee of success, I know
*I* probably couldn't afford to sacrifice my production Tango to become
a devkit! :)

Anyhow, I'd like to hear other's thoughts. Any other developers and/or
people affiliated with SmartAV on this list?

Cheers,
jan

--
Jan Morgenstern >> Composer for media
http://www.janmorgenstern.com >> http://twitter.com/wavecaster
OpenPGP public key at http://www.wavemage.com/public.key





--
Jan Morgenstern >> Composer for media
http://www.janmorgenstern.com >> http://twitter.com/wavecaster
OpenPGP public key at http://www.wavemage.com/public.key

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