Whilst it is great that new features are added and the dev team are so responsive to our feedback in the forums, a balance needs to be found between moving fast and delivering quality work. I feel I should be invoicing Steinberg for testing this product as clearly it isn’t’ getting much of a check before each new feature/bug fix gets shipped. It appears that if the code compiles and the immediate thing is working, it is shipped with no regard to testing any related scenario and minimal to zero regression testing.
This isn’t an isolated event. Every time something is changed it takes several iterations of users reporting bugs and fixes released before something becomes stable. My most recent example is adding a transpose function to Chords. First release didn’t save anything. That was fixed in the very next week but I found 5 issues in 5 minutes around saving,
Please take this as constructive feedback, not just me having a moan. With thirty plus years in software development and running my own software company for the last five, I have some experience in this game. It isn’t easy to strike the right balance. But right now too much focus is on shipping code and not enough on delivering quality.
To summarise, as a user I would like
Pace of new features and fixes to remain the same or increase
The quality of software to be improved so it is right first time every time
Every feature that I want to be added, without ever having to tell you what my requirements are
To get all this without paying a penny more than the original purchase price - forever.
Good luck!
You can use the stable official released versions (which are available via the Steinberg Download Assistant). There are no surprises and the range of functions corresponds to the official documentation.
By using the “pre-releases”, this is the name given to the versions that are made available here via the forum, every user voluntarily becomes a tester. You can use the versions - but you don’t have to.
Personally, I think the concept and the way this is implemented here is really good and worth imitating. Yes - I also had to wait a week for a fix. I worked as a software developer for a long time myself, so I enjoy using VSTLive (besides actually using it). I think the program has become better and more extensive thanks to the support of the forum users and honestly, how often you wish you could just send the developer a suggestion for improvement.
The point of this thread was to see if others had similar opinions and put the topic of testing into focus. Given there hasn’t been a flurry of posters , it is probably safe to conclude that most users are happy with the current state of affairs and don’t see it as a big issue.
I accept the points raised that I’m using pre-release versions. This doesn’t mean no testing but there is an acceptance of risk that the work may not be perfect. Whilst it hasn’t been the best experience this time, it hasn’t dissuaded me from using these interim releases and participating in the development of the application. Hopefully I’ve not offended the dev team and maybe it has even helped a little to spotlight quality. All software developers need reminders occasionally - I most certainly did in my dev years.
Thanks for clarifying! As said, the vast majority of what you - at least partly quite rightly so - critizised, was due to a poor design decision. Which in turn brought new features asked for by you guys, thanks for helping us to improve continuously!
The program has a lot of bugs, it’s clear, but for the main basic tasks it works great. I Used previous versions in a lot of BIG live concerts, big stages, with multibackitracks, VST intruments (very low latency), sends/returns for in-ear on stage, metronome, lyrics, chords, with my laptot, I will never come back, Vst Live it’s the software I need, no rivals. As you can notice on the video, that’s real!
Of course it would be better without bugs, but they are fixing every week most of the main issues, and I believe that we are near to have a very stable and complete version. I hope this steinberg project will continue, always better, because it’s really the only software with all these features for live performance. Karmamoi - Live at 2Days Prog + 1 Festival in Veruno (youtube.com)
A couple of months back VST Live lost the audio out mapping to my interface just before going on stage. It had been fine all through practice and soundcheck, I left everything on and took a 20 min break. On return there was no sound. I had to make do with the basic piano on the stage piano I was using rather than my VST instruments for the gig. It wasn’t till after that I found the audio connection not set. It happened again a few times at home during the following week but when the next pre-release version came out that seemed to resolve it and I haven’t had a re-occurrence. I never did manage to figure out how to replicate it and fortunately it went away before it caught me again.
There was a bug that if the hold pedal was down when a layer was muted, the next time the layer was unmuted, any notes playing would resume at their previous volume level. Playing in church one time, I muted a pad at the end of a loud song. Later on in the service, during a quiet reflective moment I unmuted the pad to be hit with a wall of sound that woke everyone up.
The fix to this took a few attempts but it did highlight some of the complexities us users don’t usually consider. When attempting to replicate using Halion SE, it turned out the issue didn’t affect Halion. It did affect every other VST I had. The 2nd fix worked well for some of the VSTs like Omnisphere but Zenology took a 3rd pass. So what seemed a simple issue to me behaved differently in multiple VSTs. There were no complaints on testing from me here, the devs did a great job in getting a resolution out.
Aside from these moments, VST Live has remained rock solid over the last 6 months of active use - at least during performance. It has had its moments with crashing whilst creating sets and moving songs, parts and layers around but it seems a lot more solid now. Generally I’m very happy with the direction the software is moving in and the speed new features are getting added. I guess I got frustrated last week having been in need of the chord transpose feature for a while, getting excited thinking it had arrived , reportingt issues with v1, getting a fix only to find it was unusable . All fixed by v3 so happy again,
Hi Valerio
How cool to see you have a set up very similar to mine: Studiologic SL88, Acorn Masterkey 61 (for faster synth-soli) and the Alesis Vortex (haven’t yet used it live though).
And as Karmamoi we are a four-piece band with me on vocal and keys.
The genre? Prog rock, of course.
I haven’t used VST Live in a live situation yet, but for practice it works great and I even practice alone with the band being just a track in VST Live without vocals and keys. Works great!
Flemming
Fall of Episteme
Greetings form Italy! Nice to read your words. Yes, we play progressive rock, but now I use VstLive for any concert I play. I sing different genres of music, from classical, to jazz and rock, and I play piano and guitar, and VSTLive it’s really cool when you have to manage different intruments with backing tracks. I was in Cypro last week, for a recital, crossover Italian Opera Pop music, and I used it, it was great. I had everything under control, lyrics, click, tracks, I will be soon in Russia and Cypro for other concerts, I will use it also for a Queen tribute show in San Petersburg and Moscow. I often play with different musicians around the world and VstLive it’s really an amazing solution when I can use it.
