MOD Devices is folding

[Digital Larry]

I've long been on the hunt for an ideal DSP Pedal development platform ever since I bought two (cough) Line6 Tonecore setups right before support just completely disappeared.  I got an Elk Blackboard right before they flipped it to open source to concentrate on other things.  That wasn't a pedal anyway.  I've certainly had fun with the FV-1 but it only lets you get medium-crazy before running out of space.  I had looked at MOD Devices for several years and followed their forum, trials and tribulations with the Kickstarter, power supply noise issues, etc. etc.  So I never bought one.

I also sort of learned my lesson on the Elk Blackboard, mainly that writing VST code for fun really forces you to bend the definition of "fun".  After coming up with SpinCAD I decided that all audio DSP development should at least have something similar as a starting point, but it hasn't happened yet.  The closest I have come so far is "FAUST" which has its own set of challenges to the user.

Here's the discussion at the MOD Devices forum:  https://forum.moddevices.com/t/mod-is-at-a-crossroads-and-needs-your-input/8340

Sad, because I want something like that to succeed.  The mainstream hardware modeler vendors don't offer any way to add your own effects blocks, and I still get a kick out of designing stuff that you would never find in a commercial pedal.

[markseel]

Why did they fold?  They made it the longest but there's not enough uptake to support their business model?  What is the model for them - what keeps them in business?  Honest question since I've never really followed them.

[radio]

I m not a programmer,but since the beginning of Line6 I followed the digital multi effect trend at

the Frankfurt Music Faire (like the Namm in the USA). You always heard comments from guitar players,testers

it was not "the real thing" even year after year with quiet an amount of improvement. But also competition got

harder plus the chip crisis must hit them heavier. I guess  thats how the market got saturated.

[Digital Larry]

Why did they fold?  They made it the longest but there's not enough uptake to support their business model?  What is the model for them - what keeps them in business?  Honest question since I've never really followed them.

To hear their founder describe it, they were stuck in between the "all open source" world and the "straight up commercial" world.  It looks like the Hoxton Owl is still around and their main pedal got as far as a 2nd revision with updated specs.  I have my own thoughts about it, but it mostly comes down to "it's still hard for the average person to develop a plugin" and "there is some optimum number of controls to put on a small device intended for use by musicians" (apparently fewer than one million).  Flexibility vs. complexity.  Covid didn't help I'm sure.  I never could get a straight answer on their latency figures.

DL

[pruttelherrie]

the digital multi effect trend [...] You always heard comments from guitar players,testers
it was not "the real thing"

Sure, until they do a proper blind test.

[Digital Larry]

Interesting development.  MOD Devices had a "fundraising event" to see if they could raise $200,000 from the community.  It looks like they made it.  I did not participate.  Be interesting to see what happens now.

[markseel]

This is going to sound harsh but I don't mean to be offensive; what do they spend the money on?  The hardware platform is well established and I would think, being stable, it doesn't sink much engineering cost at this point.  The firmware is apparently stable too right?  Keeping the lights on to do production costs money of course but how much?  If the financial needs boil down to a scenario of mostly production with minimal NRE costs (engineering time and money) then don't they have good enough sales to keep that production going?  And if not ... if sales can't fund production (being the bulk of the companies operating costs I would expect at this point in time) then is this even a viable commercial product?

[Digital Larry]

Beats me Mark.