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