Hopefully I can confirm and clarify a few points here, even though I understand some of the frustration and know that this will not satisfy everyone.
- CQ has not been abandoned, there will be updates in future.
- Worldwide parts shortages across all products have tied up a lot of our R&D team inbetween new product development over the past couple of years. This generally means rebuilding and retesting product to ensure the same performance, and this has to be our priority, or we wouldn’t be able to continue in business and then there would never be any updates again! This has unfortunately meant we haven’t been able to work on CQ as much as we’d have liked to.
- We never discuss planned roadmaps or suggest ETA’s on firmware releases. This is for the reasons already mentioned - the risk of disappointment if a target date was missed or features don’t make it in (as per the previous point), and because of competition.
- We always recommend making a purchase decision based on the capabilities of the product as it is today. This is another reason not to promise features or extra capability, in case it doesn’t happen for whatever reason.
- Firmware updates and product improvements are worked on when it’s possible to do so, we do not work to a regular timetable, as you might get with some computer and phone updates for example.
- We work on serious bugs (‘showstoppers’) and hardware support as a priority, and put out maintenance releases asap for these, but would never push a feature update with ‘fun stuff’ over these. Yes, I’m sure we would sell more mixers in the short term, but our offering across all ranges is about performance and reliability (obviously with a bunch of the fun stuff too…)
- Of course we recommend running the latest firmware on your unit and encourage this in documentation, it is the way to make sure you are not missing out on features and bug fixes, but should not be taken to suggest the product isn’t finished or will be getting a new firmware every 6 months.
- We do have a feature list, which is almost entirely put together (and prioritised) based on the feedback from you in this forum, along with talking to our distribution and dealer partners around the world. We hope to get to working on this sooner rather than later and I get that you all feel the same.
Thanks, Keith.