The death of Aurora?
About 2 months ago a brand new controller showed up out of no-where and the big three, CDM, SkratchWorx and Dj TT all wrote about the mixer in the same day. The small website dedicated to the controller crashed under the weight of the traffic and the creators of the multi colored Aurora, were surprised to find them selves besieged with requests to buy their new product. The only problem? There was no product.
The Back Story
3 guys from DC were tired of not being able to buy a mixer for Ableton that suited their needs so as is common these days, they built their own. Using all open source software they put together a design, built a prototype, shot some photos and put up a slick little website dedicated to their personal DIY project. They probably didn’t expect it to go much further than that until the blogs got a hold of this new “open source” mixer and started up a chatter storm. Within a week, the question had to be popping- “wait a minute, maybe we can actually build a bunch of things?” So they busted their ass for a few months, found a turn key manufacturing partner, figured out a pricing plan and began to take orders on their web store.
I would like to tell you that you can go buy this controller right now for a great price and have it delivered to your door in a week. Unfortunately, this is the message you will currently find on the website:
We are no longer selling or supporting kits. For those that are interested, we suggest group orders.
-mgmt
So what went wrong? Well, after all the hype simmered down it seems only 20 people were willing to plop down cash to buy the mixer. That was well short of the 50 required for them to have enough money to build them. Something tells me the price might have had something to do with that:
- $250 for a kit that you assemble yourself
- $320 for a pre-assembled kit
While the unit looks unique and promising I could see how people would be hesitant to jump on board given that you can buy other midi mixers on the market for much less. The X session pro for instance can be found for as little as $79. While the X session can hardly compare in terms of shelf appeal, its still an easier sell.
What do we think?
Since you technically cant buy the product I will hold off diving into a full fledged review. Instead lets go through a few of the key pros and cons:
Pros
- interesting layout: the triangle grouping of knobs might be good for remembering mappings
- inexpensive DIY: its great if you want to have fun building your own kit with a minimum learning curve
- opens source software: if you have the know how you could re-write the firmware so the unit will do almost anything you can imagine
- smooth input faders: they have a nice resistance
- programmable lights: the knobs and a RBG LED under the aurora are fully programmable so you can control them with software.
- unique: The laser etched top plate and exposed PCB look very cool and will definitely stand out.
Cons:
- DIY support: since its a small company, reliable drivers and updates might be hard to come by.
- un-even knobs: some of the knobs scrape against the top plate giving them a inconsistent feel. The knobs that don’t scrape however, feel great.
- tad pricey: for the same price you could pick up a lot of other controllers.
- rough cross fader: its not nearly as smooth as some of the comparable mixers on the market.
- no fader caps: they don’t ship with fader caps, so budget in an extra $20 for those.
- cramped line inputs: the small format is good for fitting into small spaces but i felt like the knobs were crowding my hands.
- transport buttons? Your still going to need another midi controller if you want to get wild with loops and transport controls in programs like Traktor.
The Current Deal
The project is not totally dead in the water. if your interested in the mixer and didn’t get an order in during the short time the web store was up, drop them a line here: Aurora Forum.
Matt told us:
“We believed we would see 50 orders within a week, and falling short of that target, we suspended production. With me going back to school, we didn’t have the resources to make 50 without securing all the orders. We would still love to see the review, because it might encourage some work for a second more affordable release, or at least drum up enough interest to compel us to make 50.”
The Lessons Learned
Even though they never shipped a mixer, the guys at Aurora deserve credit for getting this far. Its hard enough to fully design and manufacture a midi controller, but its nearly impossible to do it for a price that people seem willing to pay. To actually get something on the shelves and sell it requires a big investment, some serious marketing and an extra helping of chutzpah. The big guys know this and have an even harder time trying to please us finicky musicians. In a world dominated by corporate music stores and distributors, manufactures are usually left with very little of the pie to actually develop new creative ideas. So when companies like Aurora or Monome try to step up and fill those gaps they deserve our respect and support
September 17th, 2008 at 6:56 am Quote
“So when companies like Aurora or Monome try to step up and fill those gaps they deserve our respect and support”
I totally agree with that, these small companies can sometimes help to shape the future of products. We only need to look at all the monome rip offs that are hitting toe market to see how true that is. One of the things i love about this unit is the RGB LED control, that would be incredibly handy to have, i wish it was used in more equipment!
Really hoping that this project does not die !
Not having fader’s caps with the unit i think was a bad idea, it could not have been that much more to do and i bet they would have seen more people buying units if they could buy one that was ready to go.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:17 am Quote
If you are interested in joining our group order please send an email to:
blandolina@gmail.com
We are attempting to round up as many people as possible over the next few weeks. No deadline or final number has been set as of right now. We will be in touch once the list grows to the minimum for a group order, which is still TBD by mcubed.
Spread the word! The more people on the list, the better your chance.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:55 am Quote
“So when companies like Aurora or Monome try to step up and fill those gaps they deserve our respect and support”
MIDI controllers available today from established manufacturers fall very short of what we need and that any effort to bring new, innovative controllers to the market is an admirable one.
Unless this has changed recently, the units that ship will feature silk screened face plates, not laser etched. ( item #2: http://www.auroramixer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=40&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10 )
September 17th, 2008 at 5:13 pm Quote
Since it’s open source, it’d be awesome to use the design and technology that went into this to build piece of hardware that compliments the VCI-100. DEAR JESUS, I JUST WANT TO SWIM IN BUTTONS AND KNOBS FOR ONCE.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:25 pm Quote
… I really do not recommend trying to go DOWN MARKET with this; the AURORA deserves to become the ROLLS ROYCE of DJ mixers. So I recommend integration with TerminatorX; the Open Sourse software that allows you to ’scratch’ software files! Take a look at my proposal on the Aurora Forum, under GENERAL for a way to overcome the only significant drawback and make the Aurora a truly UNIQUE ‘must have’ item…
September 17th, 2008 at 7:26 pm Quote
Much respect to thw Aurora guys. The MIDI controller market is nascent still. There’s so much to be done still. tis good to see people taking an initiative, making something completely new.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:24 pm Quote
Whats CDM ?
September 17th, 2008 at 10:21 pm Quote
CDM= Create Digital Music, a blog by Peter Kirn
September 18th, 2008 at 12:18 am Quote
@Electrosonic
I think you may be missing the point of this controller a little with your recommendations.
/Suppresses the urge to respond in pink capitals
September 18th, 2008 at 1:05 am Quote
I said this already on the Aurora boards, but the EKS OTUS and the Aurora mixer really should just come bundled with each other!! They appear to complement each other rather perfectly IMO! Hell, if I had enough cash to front, I’d make a killing selling these two together…too bad I can’t get either… yet!
Dammit, EVERYONE put your name on our list!
Email: blandolina@gmail.com to be put on a group order list for the Aurora!
/spam attack
September 18th, 2008 at 1:06 am Quote
Hey midifidler….
Please explain why I should buy this and not the Nocturn; that is cool looking, small with LED’s and Automap @ half the price and available. Now it is planned to drop the fabulous etched front panel, what will go next?
There is a LOT of concern about the lack of transport controls… please take the time to answer on the forum also. Discussion of this ‘darling’ has come to a complete halt, the sooner it is restarted the better. I am not an affiliate, just designer who appreciates the efforts these guys have put in to make a potentially GREAT product.
I am not recommending changing the Aurora in any way, far from it; just add to the product range…
September 18th, 2008 at 5:37 am Quote
Electrosonic, i own a Nocturn and it sucks, the rotaries dont send true rotary data, you dont have acccess to midi from all the buttons and 1 of the knobs. The software that comes with it and the way the mappings change about us only useful if your using automap which doesn’t work with Ableton or Traktor- even in automap mode its a clumsy setup. Sure it gives you alot of button and knob combinations but if you cant easily get to them it doesn’t mean anything. I would gladly fork out the extra cash for the Aurora, i don’t even use my Nocturn, it sits there collecting dust.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:34 pm Quote
The review is totally right. I was really hungry for this one, but the costs, self-assembly and support was too big a downer for me.
September 18th, 2008 at 11:53 pm Quote
Ok so what I gather from your posts here and on the Auroa forum is that you don’t think Auroa’s mixer cuts it, mainly because it cost so much more than its mass produced competition, and that it does not have transport controls.
I concur with your feelings here. The Auroa is however a boutique controller like the Monome. While the Monome now has a cult following the reason it succeeded in the first place is because it was totally unique and presented a paradigm shift in control surfaces, this justified the extremely high cost of the Monome series to the consumer.
While the Auroa has some forwards thinking design in its layout functionally it is still just reinventing the wheel.
However you suggest that the way that Auroa can overcome their problems is to create an additional platter style control, which you assume is easy as you have seen some posts on various ways people have achieved this on the Terminator X website.
Herein lies the fault in your logic, just because a couple of clever enthusiasts have created these at home does not mean that this could succeed commercially without a (very) large investment in tooling. The concept of a rotary encoder which spits out midi data is simple, as is Midi control in general, what makes commercializing controllers difficult is the mechanical element which is intrinsically tied to manufacturing.
Any mechanical component with a complex geometry you utilize in your design that is not an already commercially available part, is going to either going to be expensive as it will have to be hand made, or you are going to have to tool up, from an accounting perspective this up-front tooling cost must be split across each component manufactured so while the raw material and labor cost may be low if you cant achieve economy of scale the part is still expensive.
This is why they chose not to use the engraved top plate
When manufacturing a consumer product at volume the mechanical design must also be centered around making the product easy to assemble, otherwise labor will become the greatest fixed component in the cost.
Auroa have done an extremely good job of this in their design in that they have come up with something beautiful, in-fact probably the most beautiful controller,
using materials & methods which do not require large investments in tooling, yet still allow easy or economical construction.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:40 am Quote
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/09/17/guitar-hero-makers-plan-dj-hero-cross-platform-mash-ups/
maybe this will give you the controller you are looking for.
September 19th, 2008 at 7:26 pm Quote
For those of you that don’t know him, MidiFidler is our resident hardware expert and this guys really knows his stuff. Well put commentary!
September 21st, 2008 at 12:19 am Quote
http://www.ucapps.de
MIDIBOX anyone???
October 10th, 2008 at 2:05 am Quote
Hi guys,
I’m currently organizing a group order for the Aurora 224. If you are interested in buying a fully assembled or DIY kit please email me at:
blandolina@gmail.com
Unfortunately not enough people ordered last time around, they struggled to get 50. It was in part due to the payment system Aurora was using. Google checkout could only receive payments within a week and it just didn’t seem to work out. However this time around there is a huge amount of interest so lets get behind this thing and make it work. We are trying to drum up at least 50 prospective buyers before we move forward with orders. We need 50 to make production viable, the pricing will be reduced in future orders once we get more volume of orders happening.
Help us get this thing off the ground and be one of the first in the world to have this cool and unique device! We all saw the Monome take off as a free source DIY midi controller, there’s no reason the Aurora can’t have a similar success. Monome’s sell on Ebay for MEGA $$$ these days!
So far I believe the pricing is as follows:
$325-$375USD for a complete assembled device.
$250USD for the DIY kit.
Again email me if you want one and jump on the forum to express your interest or ask a question:
http://www.auroramixer.com/forum
blandolina@gmail.com
-Cheers