Hey guys, new to the forum

I represent a group of musicians and programers that wants to start a commercial project related to a groovebox.

We are in the phase of explore the routes we can have to achieve our goals and implement our concept.

What is your opinion about using PD for this type of project, the project is related a lot to complex sequencers, samplers, synthesis and basic audio processing.

Looking forward to your opinions.

Thanks

@oid If "commercial" is the driver then I stick with my point.
Fax machines are still used massively in some sectors.... and young people, who have never seen one, have polled as thinking "fax" could be the next "big tech thing".......
But software will spit out a fax to the printer in the background so the hardware is dodo-ised.

I know that flashing buttons are nice to have but from design to production it is very expensive.
Then the cost needs to be doubled for a profit for the manufacturer.
Then doubled for your profit.
Then doubled for distribution.
Then doubled for retail so that a potential buyer can play with the "real" item and like it enough to buy it.
So at $300-400 (the price of all complex domestic hardware from a washing machine to a TV..... since forever) it needs to be produced (cost from the Chinese manufacturer including their profit) for a maximum of about $50 including their R&D.
That can be achieved for a massive market.
For a groovebox I reckon it will be very hard for new entrants.
For software, that most people use happily nowadays, the profit is all yours and new features can be added and sold with negligible marginal cost.
Users sway from software to hardware and back....... you will need to hit a sweet spot.
Put your effort into the software, put it out for free and work up the hardware design with a forum for users. Draw them into your net and direct sales will increase your profit.
Use that to discover your user base, and if it is large enough go the startup funding route with them for the hardware.
When a user feels that they are a part of your "team" they will be more likely to spend their cash.
Don't forget after-sale service, legal guaranties, admin, tax, international shipping, etc....... there is a lot involved.
Good luck.
David.

@plutoro P.S.
Take a long hard look at Mixing console manufacturers.
As they incorporated computers in their consoles they found that touch panels were cheaper than buttons, and then that remote control was a great selling feature.
You can sell touch control (make money) very easily through licensing on the enabling software platforms..... android, IOS etc.
Software protection is hard in the PC market.
That would be a good intermediary before you consider actual hardware.
You absolutely need to know your potential buyers before you introduce the hardware.
And if you can introduce demand for "live faders" that will be the strongest "pull" for hardware.
Buttons are too easy with a touch surface.
David.

@whale-av Isn't the Organelle successful?

https://www.critterandguitari.com/organelle

@ingox I remember it going the same slow route, but I could be wrong.
I think it has been around since at least 2007...... but maybe 2015..... I am usually wrong about everything.
New product release was much easier the further you go back in time......
It had more "save the planet" niche appeal when it started than full tech blowout I think (and they have built on that).
Niche can do it, but a user base is still a fundamental for sales, and will be smaller.
Organelle is certainly an established strong competition for a new entrant.
It was around in 2015.... https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/9570/organelle
and manufactured by an established synth company.... so they had the resources.
I was not 100% mistaken. Not the same principle, but the same design from 2009/2011.......
https://encyclotronic.com/synthesizers/critter-guitari/pocket-piano-r1216/
And they have done the "flashing buttons" too.......
https://encyclotronic.com/synthesizers/critter-guitari/critter-guitari-onda-musical-instrument-computer-r1792/

@whale-av Surely starting a business in the field of electronics is entailed with risks. I think your points are all valid.

But the specific question if Pd is suited for such a project if the general market risks can be mitigated can probably answered with yes, as the Organelle proves that it can be done using Pd.

Of course the Organelle uses Pd as a special feature to support custom patches. If Pd together with a single board computer is cheaper with the same quality of sound as using electronics may be another question that i cannot answer.

@whale-av Grooveboxes start at about $300 and go up to over $2k, most are $600-$1400, these are largely not general consumer products but specialty items and are more expensive on average. That idea of doubling cost at every step is really more the formula of large scale production with its massive overhead like buildings full of employees which it needs to cover. Small shop will be more around double to triple manufacturing cost of the first run being finale sale price. First run is the most expensive because of setup and tooling fees. First run has no profit but it covers the second run and banks some money. There is a good reason why we have been seeing an increase in midrange gear from new upstarts and small names who traditionally only made expensive boutique gear, it has become affordable, you no longer need a small fortune or the work ethic of a draft horse, the whole eurorack/pedal obsession setup the overseas manufacturing chain for small scale production of music gear and has gotten even the big retailers like SweetWater to work with the small guys and sell their products despite there being almost no profit in it for them.

@ingox @old Good to see you both on this.
I agree.
I think the Organelle, although @EEight found it expensive in 2015 is about as far as anyone can go with a small workshop production, and obviously returns a profit (with manufacture probably in the US..... Pennsylvania?).
I would still go the Pd + touch route first and tack the hardware on later when it is a developed product..... mistakes predicting customer needs will be costly..
If it costs them $100 to produce (I would expect more) then I suppose that they could be built to order at first but the tooling and first workshop run would probably need to be say 200 units. So $20,000+ for the first run and I would want to know that I could sell most of them quickly.
All speculation of course.

I still think that $600USD is expensive but I'm cheap I don't know about the commercial viability of a groovebox... but I will share 2 interesting products for inspiration.

ELK audio (low latency 1ms custom kernel) - not sure about the boot time - me I don't mind when I need to wait 40sec before making noise... It doesn't say PD on the website, but of course it would be possible. That's a commercial products AFAIK. https://elk.audio/audio-os/

Zynthian - https://zynthian.org/ & https://shop.zynthian.org/shop/product/zynthian-kit-v4-1-358?category=13

Guys thanks so much for you replies, interesting topics especially on the business side.

So to give you a bit more details about the project:

It will be an embedded linux based project, most probably ARM cpu, 16 channels of fixed instruments, and I agree with you about the originality of the concept an here we have in mind many improvements and simplified controls vs the actual and old concepts of grooveboxes to make the musicians feel musicians and not engineers and programers. Obviously its a subjective impression and test it internally by us and we will need gather many other impressions to conclude.

Indeed Organelle was the project made us thinking also about PD but it seems their platform is related to "one time pony patch" and it is not going to a more complex all in one instrument, so thats why my question is coming again, strictly as technical platform is PD reliable for this kind of project?
Also resources wise? Also related to the quality and diversity of the tools available?

Also related to the protection of the work, is there any solution to make the project "closed" ?

@plutoro I don't think you can make it "closed".
There is no current method for compiling patches with Pd and Wish into a binary I think.
But that is not a problem with hardware without any port access to the os. You can simply seal the box and invalidate any guarantee when it is opened.
Any computer file system can be read from disk if you have physical access..
Patents are expensive, and if you continue your R&D and bring new features to your customers on a regular basis then you should stay ahead of any competition..... so you shouldn't need them.
My neighbour supplies smartphone hi-res cameras to a major (Apple or Samsung.... he won't say) and has no patent protection. His business model is simply to always offer a better product than they can design themselves, until they give up and stop trying.
Pd will be reliable as you will have solved any comms/audio/coding problems internally before the box connects to the outside world, and if you do firmware updates they will have been thoroughly tested.
Pd's command line switches allow you to fix the parameters for the audio and midi devices in the box, and ensure their reliable connection to Pd as it starts..
David.

@plutoro The license of Pd is what is otherwise known as BSD-3-Clause or Modified BSD license. It is considered permissive, so i would assume that it is possible to use the Pd code in a non-free environment or even make the Pd code non-free. That is not a legal advise.

Support free software and keep the code free.

Edit: Wikipedia is quite clear about the issue:

The BSD License allows proprietary use and allows the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary products. Works based on the material may be released under a proprietary license as closed source software, allowing usual commercial usages under them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#Commercial_license_compatibility

@whale-av $100 might get you something in the low end Electribe range, but that is pushing it and there does not seem to be a market for low end small manufacture music gear, the big names have that area pretty well tied up, small manufacture is mid range and top of the line. $20k is not much when it is split between 5 or 6 people, which is about the number of people you would need to do such a project in a reasonable amount of time assuming these people enjoy having a life. If that is still too steep there are plenty of ways to trade labor for cost when starting out. Final assembly, installation of thru-hole parts, moving from board mount to panel mount for pots/switches/etc, off the shelf box with custom panels. Some companies have started out with a sort of kit, buyer does final assembly, which generally is just mounting the board, closing up the box and pushing on the knobs, see a fair amount of this in the eurorack world and even Korg has gone down this path. Lots of options.

An aside for touch screens, they dislike wet fingers and that is fairly important to remember here, fine in the studio but not so great on a hot sweaty stage. Products aimed at live performance should have all performance controls as physical controls. This is probably the main reason as to why touch screens have not replaced physical controls and most often serve primarily as a screen which also happens to give easier access to the deeper editing functions.

@plutoro

Also related to the protection of the work, is there any solution to make the project "closed" ?

Not really, and making it closed would kill most if not all of the advantages of going the linux/pd route.

@oid said:

Not really, and making it closed would kill most if not all of the advantages of going the linux/pd route.

Pd seems to run on FreeBSD. So it is possible to create a proprietary bundle OS + Pd.

@ingox I meant more in the practical sense, a license is not really going to stop a thief and a small startup is not going to be able to justify legal expense required to force them to stop. Anything you do to make it more difficult to copy will remove some of the ease of the linux/bsd based system and make it more difficult to keep it user extendable. If the user can not easily edit or add patches and you have to go through that extra work to keep things difficult to copy, what is the point of such a system? You are just adding needless overhead and expense. In the end no one is going to bother with stealing the design unless it is unreasonably priced and the market is there, if the market is there it is because you built it, which will go a long ways to protecting your design and by that point you likely are onto a new design. From my view the main advantage of the linux/bsd and pd platform is you get free development from the user base, the more difficult that is the less they will develop new patches for you.

@oid Surely you can modify the Pd source code, compile it and distribute the binary and it would be difficult to reverse engineer it to get the modified source code.

If this route is beneficial to a business model depends on the business model. I for certain support free software, but wouldn't claim that no successful startups that produce proprietary software do exist.

@plutoro didn't even mention that a community would produce patches for the project or help with the development. Most musical hardware out there doesn't provide this possibility...

@ingox One of us is missing something obvious and I am not entirely sure who, but there is no real need to reverse engineer the software, just copy the binaries along with the entire file system to the cheap knockoffs you had produced.

As far as the community developing patches, if you build you project around linux/bsd and pd you are not going to stop the community from doing it, someone will figure out puredata is buried in there and find a way to start changing things. Might as well just work with them from the start, it is free development.

this person made one with raspberry pi

@oid Valid points. That speaks for keeping the software free.

@plutoro
A journey worth to watch:
https://media.ccc.de/v/lac2018-102-mod_building_a_sustainable_linux_audio_based_business

What is your opinion about using PD for this type of project

I would not use PD for a hardware product like this. Even less if I would start all over again.
The community is small: In the future, the pool of people you could hire would be small.
The documentation could be better.
Even the graphic account is falling a bit short for a patching environment.
And there is a lack of debugging-tools.

While you are struggeling to solve how to get midi-i/o without jitter around the block-boundaries of 64 samples, there are popping up tens of new AI libs in Python.

embedded linux based project, most probably ARM cpu

This might change in the future, as technology moves on

Also resources wise?

PD has overhead, but is running on such a board. You can do very basic multithreading.

Organelle

The reason why someone would buy this, is it's open architecture.

Also related to the quality and diversity of the tools available?

Also related to the protection of the work, is there any solution to make the project "closed" ?

These are two conflicting statements in the PD-world, imho. And once again, having a closed design in mind, I see no reason of using PD instead of more popular languages.

Libraries have different licences. For example [expr] has a different license than PD-vanilla.

Thanks for the input guys, really interesting point of views

Would be interesting to know which specific platforms/languages/toolkits you would prefer instead if you were in our shoes and why?

for example this is a very good argument:

"struggeling to solve how to get midi-i/o without jitter around the block-boundaries of 64 samples, there are popping up tens of new AI libs in Python."