Zolton

Nearing the 1/3rd marker of the IK September GASathon, the pace seems to have settled back to around 10-12 signups/hour since around noon. But yesterday was downright loco:

By far the feedingest frenzy of the extended deal, the sustained average rate of a signup every two minutes served to:

a. push the count over 13k at least a day before the previous rate would suggest,

2. goose the overall September signup rate from around 10/hour over the first eight days to nearly 13/hour and

iii. accumulate enough numbers that if only the "baseline" 10/hour rate holds the rest of the way, the count would comfortably top 18k.

I don't know whose buttons Peter pushed to coax an "extra" half thousand folks into the fold, but if there are more statgasms like that in store over the next three weeks, it should (continue to) be a fun ride.

1 hour ago, Peter - IK Multimedia said:

Finally kicking in again.  I was hoping I wouldn't have to change my prediction.  Another nail-biter was expected but that dip yesterday/last night was not the kind of nail-biter I had expected.  And some people will get paid tomorrow so I'd expect a little bump there too.

Even the worst period -- from around noon yesterday to nine am today -- beat 6/hour on average (barely). That seems to be the baseline, at least until every lost Amazonian tribe and remote Arctic nomads hear of the deal and get in, I guess.

Of course, 6/hour only hits 15 or so -- but 26/hour, which the bump pushed the a.m. average to, that'll pull in a busload of bass amps.

The September signup rate is around 10.5/hour. Here's what it would take the rest of the way to get 20 (or more, or less, depending on your sweet spot):

Jack that jam, indeed.

In case anyone's interested in some numbers to play with as we while away IK Group Buy Phase 2: Electric Amplitubaloo:

We've just completed 20% of September -- 6 days, 144 hours or 12 12-hour periods. Here's how the last of those looks in terms of trends:

As noted in the table, the August signup rate was around 17/hour overall, though there were two distinct periods -- the first 20 days or so, where the rate was around 14.5 per hour, and the "Race to 10k" at the end, where the rate averaged around 26.5 per hour.

The bad news is that the September rate (Ovr Rate above) isn't in the same neighborhood, currently at around 11 signups/hour. That's boosted by two flurries of 20+ signups an hour over 12-hour periods, each coinciding with a mini-race to the next milestone level. Without those, the rate is closer to 8.5/hour in September.

If you're the predicting kind, you could go a lot of ways from here:

If the rate stays as it is, with similar ups and downs throughout the month, the pace is good for 18k.

If the rate jumps back up to ~14/hour as in early August, the total should hit 20k.

If the "bumps" should peter out or the pace slow further, ~8.5/hour the rest of the way would net just over 17k.

If the bottom falls out and the worst 12-hour numbers (7/hr) become the norm, the counter would coast to 16k. 

If there's another feeding frenzy at the end of the month, you could perhaps add a thousand or two to your favorite number above.

That seems to be the ballpark, based on September-so-far. Future mileage may obviously vary.

I'd never heard of bax-shop before, but trying to find more info (I like Melda stuff!), the recent reviews seem... mixed on several sites, including the company's Facebook page.

The folks at "other site" also have some questions about their pricing/discount rates, though at least one who vouches for the store:

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8202347#p8202347

Tread carefully, perhaps.

8 minutes ago, DeeringAmps said:

You've left out Zolton (the artist formerly known as Charlie Hatton) and I'll take a vowel for 16 Pat...

t

Nah, I'm not predicting; I'm just watching the pretty numbers go by.

Speaking of which, there were more signups by noon today than all of yesterday, but the (significant) blip seems to have... um, unblipped in the last couple of hours:

Seems a fair chance the September ride is going to be all roller-coastery throughout. 

Twenty-four hours into September, it looks like the current pace is around 9 signups/hour, which would land right around 17 freebies if nothing changes*.

* Everything changes. All the time.

(Plus, Peter may have something up his sleeve.)

(Besides pizza grease.)

(Aw, now I'm hungry. Booo.)

3 minutes ago, fpoir said:

Don't we have 20 posts per page vs their 15?

Yeah, the post counts are pretty different - 1,791 to 1,323 at the moment.

Most people seem to be focused on the page count, though. Maybe there's a message in there about Cakewalkers willing to work 33% harder? Or something?

5 hours ago, kevin H said:

We need a page count spreadsheet now

5 hours ago, DeeringAmps said:

@Charlie Hatton!

The sane and reasonable part of me understands you two are kidding.

Asked to comment, the other 95% of me said:

The score's 90 to 89 right now, home team winning. Keep swinging, sluggers.

6 hours ago, telecode 101 said:

so basically, you are predicting the final count will hit 19 to 20 free.

Oh, no no no. One of my dearest sayings is "Prediction is futile".

(It goes hand in hand with another favorite, "Hope is for babies". I'm super fun at parties.)

We're in the third phase of the group buy, and the "rampdown data" from the wild rock-all-night throw-your-panties phase was only 8 hours old, or about 1% of the time to come. Here's what those numbers and 14 hours more look like (note the gap in "Hrs left"; all rate calcs are per-hour averages):

In a couple of days, we'll have a better idea of the current rate, which should be a decent ballpark to play in -- future disasters, curveballs, additions, subtractions and night-rockin' bouts of panty-throwin' notwithstanding.

It turns out I have one more nerdy spreadsheet left in me. 

(Who am I kidding? I've always got a nerdy spreadsheet left in me. The laxatives never help.)

For still-interested parties / my own amusement, I want to track how far into 25-for-1 territory we may expect to get. The starting point for that is this:

As of midnight, the count is 10537. Thirty bonus days times 24 hours means 720 hours to accumulate more signups.

The signup rate from the very beginning (9am EST on 8/5, I think) to the "race to 10k" announcement (around noon on 8/26) was 14.6/hour, or about one signup every four minutes.

(The rate from start to finish is higher -- 26.4/hour -- due to the mad rush from around midnight on the 29th through early afternoon on the 31th, a period averaging 33.4 signups/hour, better than one every two minutes. Assuming we're not due -- at least in the next four weeks -- for another mad scramble, the "pre-race" rate seems more realistic.)

It may also be useful to track the September-only signup rate, which could be -- or not? -- a little or a lot slower. That rate doesn't exist yet, but as a starting point, I used the average rate over the past 9 hours, when signups have slowed considerably. That's 12.44/hour, or around one every five minutes.

The last two columns show the estimated final count, based on either the "pre-race" 8/5 rate or the post-10k 9/1 rate of signups. Right now, we're in 19ish-for-1 territory, but with almost no relevant data to lean on. If anyone's interested, I'll post updates periodically to show how the trend is meandering over the course of the month.

3 minutes ago, Max Arwood said:

I have never done one of these group buys before. So....If I buy Modo Drums I could get Mix Box, ARC System 3, some AmpliTube Collections and more for the price of only one product? Where can I find out what is in promo and what is out? How could I add some processors to Amplitube? I saw someone say that they were buying custom shop stuff please explain or send links.

Thanks

The official list of qualifying products is here:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/25gb/

Basically, whatever price you see for an item listed on that page is your signup level. Purchase one, and any other product of that listed price or lower is available as a freebie, up to 10 (right now, but it should grow higher over the next month).

Just be careful of two things: (1) you can use Jam Points and/or Gear Credits to shave some cash off most items, if you have them -- but your "signup level" will remain the listed price, regardless of the discount; and (b) a few items are available as purchases to get into the group buy, but not selectable as freebies in quite the same form -- like the 4-item Electromagnetik package, which you could buy to enter at the $149 level, but can only select the 4 individual components as freebies, at the $49 level or higher.

I'm not so savvy about the Custom Shop, but that's where you'd buy the Gear Credits to buy items available in the Custom Shop, which gives you an advantage because higher Gear Credit levels can be bought at a discount and further reduced with Jam Points, if you have them. Not all qualifying items are available in the Custom Shop, though -- including Modo Drum -- so it's best to strategize if you go that route.

10,001! Huzzah!

5 minutes ago, InstrEd said:

So how many more hours before we reach 10,000 mark?

Five or six, probably. Things have slowed down a little from the max, but still kicking along at a relatively high rate.

If you take the average signup rate (around 26/hour) from the 7k mark when the "race" started until now, you'd expect to reach 10,470+ by midnight tomorrow. Overall, the average rate of signups today is ~39/hour. We may be in "unstoppable force" territory at this point.

Counter update: 9693 / 307 to go.

And 50+ signups/hour (on average) over the past 8 hours. Chugging right along!

2 minutes ago, RSMcGuitar said:

Yeah, I think it must be stuck at 417

It only updates once an hour -- but happily, it just did. I'm seeing 9639 / 361 to go.

I'm seeing 9583 / 417 to go here, and the numbers add up the way they should.

I think the website failed to update around 4pm EST, probably due to the insane traffic. It'll likely be more than a couple of hours to hit 10k, but the average since noon is > 50/hour, so not that long. Probably. Barring catastrophe. I think.

Welp, there's that last-minute bump, woo hoo!

So long as the deadline is 23:59 EST on the 31st (there are questions about that in some... less data-driven corners of the interwebs, but all of Peter's communication here has been spot on with that assumption), the curve is humping way up over the line. 600 left to go in 33 hours, and 400+ signed up in the past 6 hours. My nerdy numbers are definitely no longer of interest. Or put another way:

With 44 hours to go, the count is at 9054. That's now (just) ahead of the average pace that would take the number from 7075 when the "race to 10k" was announced on the 26th to 10k in the final hour of the 31st. (Assuming midnight EST, as Peter has kindly said is the "official" time zone.)

To get over the hump requires an average of 22 signups every hour. Getting to the first 7k happened at a pace of around 14/hour, while 7075 turned into 9054 at a ~22.5/hour clip.  In the past 18 hours, there have been 473 signups, or around 28/hour. So the overall trend is good.

A last-minute surge would hit the mark comfortably; a drop-off could screw the proverbial pooch. The time, she will tell.

Overall, the numbers look really good -- as long as the weekend rate holds steady or thereabouts.

Peter said somewheres that the official clock is Eastern time, which means we're 3 hours away from two days left. If we were at 8800 with two days left, we'd need 600/24hours over each of those days to hit the mark. If we look at a few 24h time periods from the past couple of days:

Midnight 8/28 (7734) - Midnight 8/29 (8302): 568 participants
Noon 8/28 (7989) - Noon 8/29 (8581): 592 participants
4pm 8/28 (8106) - 4pm 8/29 (8715): 609 participants
6pm 8/28 (8156) - 6pm 8/29 (8768): 612 participants
9pm 8/28 (8244) - 9pm 8/29 (8872): 628 participants

So we're currently chugging along at the rate we need -- and still speeding up, apparently -- but (a) there are three "extra" hours to work with and (2) also an "extra" 72 participants. Sprint to the finish!

21 minutes ago, kevin H said:

I bet Charlie has a crypto spreadsheet too and can self fund the remaining participant count in our group buy hahha

Sadly, any math ability I have goes out the window when money is involved. Stick one dollar sign in a spreadsheet and logic goes higgledy-piggledy and it's all 2+2=7, up is down, black is white and WUP makes perfect sense.

Okay, not the last one. Let's not be ridiculous.

Looks like 30+ each hour since noon today. That'd boogie us up the proverbial mesa in a hurry, if it sticks:

1 hour ago, DeeringAmps said:

By my tally that's 419 in 17 hours.
@Charlie Hattonwhere's that put us now?

t

My nerdy datasheet has evolved into its (hopefully) final form, which looks like this:

I'm looking only at the time since the "race to 10k" announcement, which jumped the rate of signups quite a bit -- but there's a lag of about a day before that happened, so we started out "behind" the rate of ~23/hour needed to get from 7075 to 10k in 126 hours.

We haven't hit that rate yet, though the numbers are steadily creeping up. The "ideal count" shows how many signups we'd have if we smoothly got the ~23 signups per hour -- by that metric, we're about 140 people "behind", and the rate we need to catch up is now ~26/hour. That's the bad news.

There is some good news, though. I'm assuming a GMT deadline, so if it's later (likely EST, if so), then we've got another 5 hours to play with, give or take. Also, we've hit the 25+ rate and more in quite a few hours/spans, so it wouldn't take a huge surge to get there consistently. The final column shows where the current rate would get us, and that number creeps closer to 10k nearly every update, with a gap of around 250 now for the first time. 

So we're not home and dry at this point, nor quite home and vigorously toweling off. But we're headed in the right direction, while the clock ticks away. That's a thing, right?

4 minutes ago, Jim Fogle said:

Interesting tidbits:  Available through Amazon for $76.94.  The headphone model number does not show up on the TASCAM website as active or discontinued product.

I happened across this eerily similar thread from 6 1/2 years ago (first I've seen the site, so I couldn't vouch for it) that discusses the same model in the same SDOD sale:

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/sdotd-anyone-know-anything-about-these-cant-find-one-review-online.557043/ 

Folks there seem fairly down on them and may have figured out the equivalent listed model, but I'm not so familiar with the headphone scene myself.

3 hours ago, DeeringAmps said:

I must say that "stats" was the most boring math I was forced to study. I am, however, quite impressed with your analysis Charlie. Especially the entertaining way in which you presented your final conclusion above!

Thanks, DA. I'm only capable of doing math when I'm supposed to be doing something else -- like actually making music from these goodies I'm turning into a museum curator of. (You should see my plugin spreadsheet. I need an intervention. Or possibly an abacus.)

Speaking of which, a nerdier but more practical way to look at the home stretch. Around 8pm GMT on the 26th (count = 7075), the "race to 10k" was announced and we had, I think, 126 hours to go. Looking at both the rate between data points ("current rate", some just an hour apart at this point) and the rate since the announcement (the "10k race rate"), here's where things stand as of noon-plus EST:

So with about 2/3 of the hours left, not on pace for 10k -- but generally increasing the pace going into the weekend, and above the rate needed for some stretches. If the final day or so gets the boost some are expecting, it's within reach -- especially if the overall rate keeps inching up in the meantime. Stay strong. Be well. Nerd out.