Anyone losing patience with Arturia's support for the 16Rig?

Fuse AudioFuse
#1

It’s over 2 years since launch and about a year and 9 months since my purchase and I think my patience has just about run out waiting for Arturia to provide meaningful improvements to 16Rig firmware in terms of addressing the obvious deficiencies that have been raised by people on this forum over and over who’ve been trying to use it as a live mixer or as a dawless centerpiece.

I bought this device on the basis that the 16Rig could be used in this role because I believed Arturia’s marketing (which continues to sell device on this basis) but it’s simply just not up to this task specifically because of deficiencies in its MIDI implementation.

From the very first day I joined this forum, people have been asking for modest improvements in terms of MIDI control but we been given absolutely nothing. Not even something as trivial as being able to set the mute/solo state (without having to blindly toggle) of channels. I can only conclude that Arturia have zero interest in (or seem actively against) providing any improvements to the MIDI control.

I’m not taking this decision lightly - I’ve invested at least a 100 hours trying to make this device the “centerpiece” of my collection of synths and instruments - including writing a considerable amount of custom Python code to overcome the lack of non-banked MIDI control or to provide visual feedback on my controllers on the mute/solo state of channels.

But with Arturias complete lack of interest, I’m just not willing to invest any more time in working around the limitations. Life is too short and I rather spend time on making music. If the next firmware release contains no MIDI improvements, I’m going to cut my losses and sell.

It’s a fine audio interface but it’s effectively useless for dawless live/mixing.

The biggest shame is how simple it would be for Arturia to fix this, how close they are to having a killer product. If I can write a bunch of Python to translate MIDI to provide so that I can use my MIDI controllers to set channel levels without having to guess which channel a slider is going to affect, then I can only conclude that it’s not the development effort, it’s the motivation on Arturia’s part that’s the problem.

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#2

I probably won’t sell mine. It’s working well enough for my needs now, but it is disappointing how many of the distinctive features that made it interesting to me are so half-baked. Particularly the MIDI support and clock out port. I do wish I had listened to the people who told me to buy RME or MOTU instead.

You see a lot of posts like this across the forum for different Arturia hardware products. It seems like many of their customers feel neglected by them, while they continue to launch new products constantly.

I write this as I attempt to download the Pigments update, but ASC keeps crashing or being unable to log in. I guess their server must be overloaded, and their app must not be written to handle that gracefully. Like so many things, they don’t seem to be able to deliver what they promise. It’s a shame, I was such a big Arturia fan a few years ago, but they seem to continually disappoint us. I hope they can find a way to focus on improving their quality and ability to follow through on their promises.

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#3

I told myself I was done with Arturia after I received one of the pre-order Keystep Pro units, and it was a complete lemon (there appears to be a lot of them from that time). Support was great for a while, but eventually after multiple firmware resets, and bugs still persisting, I decided it was a bad product and they clearly weren’t going to replace it. I should have just returned it during my warranty period but I wanted it to work really bad.

It’s a similar thing, too, where one of the main features advertised was the Transpose and Scale features, where the advertising made the transpose look like it latched by default (like the original Keystep), and it took probably 3-4 years for that simple feature to get added at all. I have bought so much used gear and have had many trips to the tech - but I have never been so frustrated with a brand NEW piece of gear.

Nevertheless, I bought the 16Rig for the 32 total available inputs which I wanted, for the low price. So far, I haven’t been disappointed - however I was moving over from a mixer/interface (ZedR16 that I now use as ADAT expansion), and I was hoping to get a little bit of that mixer functionality, albeit no EQ’s and completely digitally mixed. I tried, and realized that yea, it sucks at that. I just make a bunch of presets and will edit using the faceplate if I’m not writing/recording in the DAW.

I think it’s already too limited as a mixer, 4 Aux outs when there are 8 outputs total is not enough. I do wish they’d add some sort of Mackie HUI compatibility. I’d consider it as a live mixer if so. For the last 4 years, I’ve used the KMI K-Mix as a programmable live mixer with 8 outs, and it’s great, just wish it had 16 inputs!

#4

I wanted to get RME as well, and was told to by many others, but for the amount of inputs, you’d be paying twice the price. It could be worth it, but can it function as a mixer? I do know it has TotalMix, but I wasn’t sure how controllable it was/MIDI implementation.

The one thing that DOES get me down about the Arturia vs RME, is the latency. It’s really not the best, but also I barely use plugins and can get away with using lower buffer sizes, and direct monitoring when I need to.