Comments on: Donner MEDO, new portable battery-powered sampling groovebox available now

By: Underwaterbob

Underwaterbob — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 04:46:32 +0000

A bit hard to justify something like this with Koala Sampler out there IMHO. I guess if you don’t have a phone…

By: Form

Form — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 21:28:26 +0000

In reply to Dongleboob. Kickstarter gets a cut though, so donner probably still made less than they will off the retail units.

By: john

john — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 14:20:59 +0000

ME Don’t.

By: Dongleboob

Dongleboob — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 12:53:29 +0000

So, when factoring in inflation, the people who supported the Kickstarter have actually paid more than the people who waited!
So that answers my question as to why a company like Donner went the Kickstarter route.

By: form

form — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 21:47:06 +0000

In reply to 211001168. Heh, typical Donner pricing - if you look at the website, there's an instant discount that makes it $179.99 plus a 10% discount code on the page that makes it $162.00

By: 211001168

211001168 — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:08:41 +0000

The people who took all the risk and were lured in with a 50% off pitch paid 170, and we pay 200. Explains why a company like this goes Kickstarter. With a slight discount a chunk of the market is covered, money upfront no strings attached, and as a bonus the resale market shrinks.

Anyway this seems funner than the Orba to me, for the price could be a great option for teens who are not allowed their own phones yet but “need” something like Koala. The gyro-mapping feature is cool, looks like the one feature that it has over Koala.

By: René

René — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 12:26:18 +0000

In reply to rdw. So with Kickstarter even a successful company is able to reduce the risk of putting money in developing a product which nobody wants. If not many people are interested and the Kickstarter goal will not be reached so no further development resources will be wasted.

By: Dongleboob

Dongleboob — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 12:01:48 +0000

It seems very strange to me that Donner are crowdfunding this.
If it was a smaller company or an individual then I could support it. Donner however have released a lot of hardware before without crowdfunding.
As for the actual MEDO itself, meh. I’m sure it’s very capable, just not my thing. I’m sure many people will enjoy it and be very creative with it.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 11:10:02 +0000

Interesting.
Agreed that comparisons with Artiphon’s Orba (and Chorda) are unavoidable. Two important differences, to me: the MEDO will sample directly and it’s possible to change scales directly on the device.
It also has 16 pads compared to the Orba’s 8.
Otherwise, it lacks the Orba’s MPE support (including as a hardware synth!) and gestures (which aren’t as well-supported as we all expected).

As always, with such devices, the key will be in the software support. There’s a lot that I really like about Artiphon hardware… which is hampered by software. Got Orba 1 and 2 devices as well as the Instrument 1. Thought that Orba software would eventually support features they had promised (like allowing us to change chords). Never happened. So I didn’t back the Chorda project.

The SEB pricing for Medo makes it tempting, in the same range as Orba 2. Not sure it’ll sell that well at the full price.

As for why they went with crowdfunding… It has several advantages for Donner, I’m sure. It gives them access to quite a bit of data about early adopters in a new product category. It’s also like an interest-free loan. Plus they have a bit of an out which they wouldn’t have with a bank loan, though it might damage their reputation.

I did pledge on this one, because I care a lot about “casual musicking” and I don’t have a negative experience with Donner (or any experience with them, actually). I still might cancel my pledge before the campaign runs out.

By: Synth Anatomy

Synth Anatomy — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 23:02:03 +0000

In reply to rdw. maybe they have not enough budget for it, don't know sorry