I get angry and depressed by Sound On Sound...

[James Steele]

Interesting stuff you bring up. Well, seems to me Cockos can sort of live in a protected bubble. They have two employees. I don't even know if they have office space outside the home and don't really need much income to stay in business. And taking over marketshare by making the app easy to pirate and the license extremely cheap in comparison to most DAWs, means that they can keep going in this unsustainable "cocoon," all the while adding features and developing the app until it can stand toe-to-toe with the major players that are left.

If/when Reaper reaches or is approaching feature parity and/or superiority in some cases compared to mainstream DAWs, there are a few possibilities that can happen:

1) Cockos adds copy-protection on new versions, raises the price to a level commensurate with the feature set. Thousands of users will have thousands of projects in Reaper's file format. Kaching!

2) Cockos gets approached by a major player and sells Reaper to them for sizeable chunk of change. New owner then implements #1 above. Developer stays on as consultant and continues to develop as well as advise in hiring/training additional programmers and smooth transition.

3) Cockos just keeps charging the same prices and building market share and attracting new users by the cheap price. Apps by companies without infrastructure or diversity to go down and compete on price suffer. I see Cakewalk, MOTU, Steinberg more affected by that. Apple can give away DAWs all day long and it won't hurt their bottom line. Avid has built "The Aura™" and they'll get by on that.

I think #2 is the most likely scenario. Bad part is the recession is going to make that process take longer.

It will be interesting.

[kassonica]

#2 for sure James.

I personally don't have a problem with reaper pricing strategy as it's a free market and it enables many to get into the world of DAWS for little money which I believe to be a good thing.

Audacity has been around longer and is completely free.

The big difference as I see it, although Reaper can do much of what most DAWS can, clients are not going to pay $100 per hour when they walk into a studio running it, but they will for the big 5 (we all know who they are, DP included), this comes down to the psychological effect of it's worth a lot more in $$$ so it must be better (read AVID).

Reaper is for the Hobbyists and the big 5 are for the Pro's (not saying one couldn't get pro results from reaper either BTW).

AS for their payment system, I don't really have a problem their either, the honest folk of the world generally do the right thing, and the dishonest people are not going to buy it or DP so I can't see how that could impinge on many sales for the big 5...

As for SOS It really caters now for the bedroom producers and the behringer crowd

Glad I cancelled my subscription as I'd moved on from the info which is now mainly for the beginner to intermediate and poorly written as well

[bongo_x]

...As for SOS It really caters now for the bedroom producers and the behringer crowd ...

That’s now known as the "Music Business". Everyone caters to them, everyone who wants to stay in business that is.

bb

[goner]

...As for SOS It really caters now for the bedroom producers and the behringer crowd ...

That’s now known as the "Music Business". Everyone caters to them, everyone who wants to stay in business that is.

bb

I have to laugh when I see Behringer brought into the equation because I started out on that. I think a lot of people fail to realize how amazingly craptastic the sonic possibilities are with Behringer.

[kassonica]

...As for SOS It really caters now for the bedroom producers and the behringer crowd ...

That’s now known as the "Music Business". Everyone caters to them, everyone who wants to stay in business that is.

bb

I don't have a problem with it, it's just I've moved on and the info in SOS is not relevant to me.

The only thing that was, was the DP column

[thelonecynic]

This thread is dumb! I've been a long time user of Opcode Vision DSP and I'll never subscribe to SOS or any of the pro audio publications because of their conspicuously intentional decision to avoid any coverage of Vision DSP, which for $50.00 is hands down the best DAW on the market, with Cakewalk Metro (which is also never covered), being 2nd.

[James Steele]

This thread is dumb! I've been a long time user of Opcode Vision DSP and I'll never subscribe to SOS or any of the pro audio publications because of their conspicuously intentional decision to avoid any coverage of Vision DSP, which for $50.00 is hands down the best DAW on the market, with Cakewalk Metro (which is also never covered), being 2nd.

Thanks for a pretty asinine post, cynic. Not even comparable, but I'm happy if you felt clever for a moment there.

[kassonica]

This thread is dumb! I've been a long time user of Opcode Vision DSP and I'll never subscribe to SOS or any of the pro audio publications because of their conspicuously intentional decision to avoid any coverage of Vision DSP, which for $50.00 is hands down the best DAW on the market, with Cakewalk Metro (which is also never covered), being 2nd.

Incredible contribution to the discussion at hand

[thelonecynic]

The sheer absurdity of the response doesn't make it obvious that thelonecynic is being facetious with that one? This confirms why I don't perform stand up comedy or write for tv.

What I do find so unwarranted as to say almost absurd, hence my being propelled to make that response, is getting angry and depressed over Sound On Sound's predictable treatment of a less popular product and its user base which make up a very small, inconsequential group of minorities, amongst which I belong. This isn't my view BTW, but what I assume to be theirs.

The real reason why DP was omitted from the list is the same reason that I don't think about my next door neighbor when I decide to throw a barbeque. He doesn't register in my thoughts for lack of value. Don't know why DP has such an infinitesimal market share in the UK, and as much as that is a shame because DP is such a great product that it remains my DAW of choice even after having worked with Logic the past 2 years for band projects because that's what the band wants to use, I find nothing about that reality over which to get angry AND depressed.

My question is, how much of MOTU's market share relies heavily upon consumption by Brits and Europeans? I have a feeling that that number is inconsequential and the survey of a UK publication reflects that.

I found Hugh's condescension pretty funny seeing as he took every opportunity to demonstrate to James how far a boob he is and needing a lesson in propriety and to carry on about his business, and having done that as though without a clue that that's precisely what was being conveyed only dressed up in gentlemanly language.

Forget Sound on Sound. I would think that by now, James, Shooshie, and the whole community of Unicornation members prove to be far more reliable DP resources than a quarterly (or whatever purported interval) column that can't even keep schedule. SOS holds no value to me as far as being a DP user is concerned. And even if they did, I'm not in the habit of conferring such power to anyone, including SOS, that I'd have taken my liberty that's hard fought for and won on terrifying battlefields by others braver than myself in order to engage in 8 pages of 114 posts of fruitless debate and discourse.

Do we feel better now that we've vented?

[sdfalk]

The sheer absurdity of the response doesn't make it obvious that thelonecynic is being facetious with that one? This confirms why I don't perform stand up comedy or write for tv.

What I do find so unwarranted as to say almost absurd, hence my being propelled to make that response, is getting angry and depressed over Sound On Sound's predictable treatment of a less popular product and its user base which make up a very small, inconsequential group of minorities, amongst which I belong. This isn't my view BTW, but what I assume to be theirs.

The real reason why DP was omitted from the list is the same reason that I don't think about my next door neighbor when I decide to throw a barbeque. He doesn't register in my thoughts for lack of value. Don't know why DP has such an infinitesimal market share in the UK, and as much as that is a shame because DP is such a great product that it remains my DAW of choice even after having worked with Logic the past 2 years for band projects because that's what the band wants to use, I find nothing about that reality over which to get angry AND depressed.

My question is, how much of MOTU's market share relies heavily upon consumption by Brits and Europeans? I have a feeling that that number is inconsequential and the survey of a UK publication reflects that.

I found Hugh's condescension pretty funny seeing as he took every opportunity to demonstrate to James how far a boob he is and needing a lesson in propriety and to carry on about his business, and having done that as though without a clue that that's precisely what was being conveyed only dressed up in gentlemanly language.

Forget Sound on Sound. I would think that by now, James, Shooshie, and the whole community of Unicornation members prove to be far more reliable DP resources than a quarterly (or whatever purported interval) column that can't even keep schedule. SOS holds no value to me as far as being a DP user is concerned. And even if they did, I'm not in the habit of conferring such power to anyone, including SOS, that I'd have taken my liberty that's hard fought for and won on terrifying battlefields by others braver than myself in order to engage in 8 pages of 114 posts of fruitless debate and discourse.

Do we feel better now that we've vented?

Well said

[James Steele]

SOS sells magazines in the United States. They might want to reflect some of that. And already, by your statements, you're buying into perception that DP's marketshare is SMALL. It may not be as large as some of the others, but frankly I think SOS's survey was a pretty dodgy, inaccurate way to measure it, but it's the best they had I suppose.

My problem is that with this put out there, you've already extrapolated the user base to be "infinitesimal." How did we make that leap? Because we repeat what we hear and see, and assume. It may feel small because SOS forgets to even mention it, but now that they're selling magazines over here, they're helping to exaggerate the perception that DP's user base must be "infinitesimal" which simply isn't.

Frankly, you know where it ISN'T "infinitesimal?" All over Los Angeles. Yes, movie capital of the freakin' world and scoring major motion pictures. But that's a quality of user and not quantity argument I realize. As said earlier, the Behringer group drives the market. I can't wait to hear about the next Hollywood feature film that was composed using Reaper, etc.

Let's not use the word infinitesimal here, because again, that's feeding that point of view. Nobody knows with certainty what the percentages are. If it were "infinitesimal" MOTU would spend the kind of money it spends on continued development, would they?

[monkey man]

... Behringer... craptastic the sonic possibilities are...

LOL! Too funny, goner, and true.

James only just introduced the vomit emoticon in time for this conversation, IMHO, seeing as I've always called the company BarfRinger. From now on it'll be BarfRankGear

I still use BarfRankGear, BTW.

[thelonecynic]

I frankly don't know what DP's market share is compared to other DAWs, and to the extent that I care is only spurred by my interest in the product to maintain that degree of success so that the company can continue to develop and sell it. And where I do live in LA, there does seem to be a fine concentration of talented industry folks who please me to no end every time I learn that they are DP users.

A contextual reading of my last response should make it pretty obvious that it isn't I necessarily who believe DP's share to be "infinitesimal," but that holding such a view is what I'm attributing to Hugh and SOS and the bulk of their readership, and this I glean from Hugh's apologetics about the matter, that DP coverage amounts to the little it has become that we've become angry and depressed about it.

[FMiguelez]

.

But SOS is ignoring and dismissing the HUGE DP user base in the USA (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the continent). They sell their magazines over there, so I can't believe they didn't take that into the equation.

Like you said, DP is used by some of the industry's giants. These guys don't have time to participate in stupid polls... they are busy writing music!

I have to check when my subscription ends. I will NOT renew it.

Instead, maybe it's better if I will do to them what Reaper does to the rest of the DAW world: I will become a parasite to them. I'll cancel my subscription, and then I just have to wait what, a couple of months to read the latest issues on-line, FOR FREE?

There are hardly ground-breaking news and articles, so I wouldn't mind waiting a couple of months to read them (if I have the time and desire, of course).
Actually, it was only the DP column and the Mix Rescue column that have held my interest in SOS. Notes from the Deadline has some good entertainment value (a recent article was so funny and hilarious).

So why shouldn't I (or we) do the "Reaper thing" to them? It wouldn't be illegal, and it would be in accordance to their own rules...

This way, they would have a taste of their own medicine
They don't care about what Reaper does to the market place because it does not affect them in the least (on the contrary, it benefits them). But they won't like it much if something similar happens to them!

[SOS Hugh]

I promised I'd report back when I knew which issue of SOS would contain the review of DP 7.2. As it turns out, it was going to press as I wrote...

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec10/a ... p-1210.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And FMiguelez, you are most welcome to read as many of our free access articles as you choose -- there's nothing parasitic about it and we would be very pleased for you to frequent our website as often as you like.

Hugh