Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

New O.S.s have proven valuable to companies by extending the life of a
product and allowing them to re-introduce it over and over again as a new
product at music fairs and in literature. Access and the Virus comes to
mind. Also Novation used this with their Supernova a couple of years back.
In those companies' cases, the new O.S. added voices and effects.

E-mu should definately stay with incremental O.S. improvements and fixes as
they really must with all recently released products (at least as long as
they are still selling them!) or they will lose valuable good will of
consumers for future products. On the other hand, I wonder if perhaps us
users are a tad impatient. Who says we are to get new O.S. every 6 months
anyway? I agree we should get one asap to fix bugs. But new features? Sure I
want them, but I do have in front of me what I agreed to buy a few months
back don't I?

Support is a meaningful part of quality and the reason to go with one
company over another in an increasingly competitive market. Especially in
these day's of internet communications where people can easily post their
reviews, and most smart shoppers, an perhaps at least the 10 percent of
music store salespeople who aren't dumber than the dumbest musicians, will
read these reviews before buying or recommending the purchase of new
products.

For a big payoff, however, (selling a whole bunch more units) E-mu should
consider a big 2.0 O.S. release to re-invent or re-release the product, a la
Access or Novation, etc. Add some major features. Megamix comes to mind.
Also related are use generatable beats mode beats. This is like megamix and
can breath new life into a product by allowing 3rd parties to create and
sell beats, much as patches are done.

A robust 3rd party market is always good to sell more units. E-mu could also
look to investing in persons who would create patterns; not just for filling
up new products, but for creating new products, pattern packs, beats packs,
patch packs, etc to sell. I think Sonic Foundry with all their Acid Loops
must find this process valuable to sales. It doesn't always have to be in
the form of highly priced ROM sets. Sure there is the issue of piracy. But I
think Waldorf is selling sound sets and I haven't seen them floating around.
Loyal companies begat loyal customers.

Another cool thing to do (or sneaky, depending on how you look at it), which
would please us users, and appease the bosses at Creative, would be to
consider releasing Command Stations II (sort of like the Turbo models) that
perhaps had a different box or something, to make them a whole new product,
but also allow those of us with older Command Stations to simply apply an
O.S. upgrade to get the same features. Then two birds are killed. New
product (new paintjob?) and new O.S.!

Just my thoughts, Sean. Good luck!

Ravi