James Steele wrote:Have you ever switched DAWs based on a price increase?
No, but I would in a heartbeat if I thought a company was being greedy. I have zero tolerance for price gouging. One of the reasons I moved to Logic 4 from DP2.7 was that VST plug ins cost half the price of MAS plug ins.
As far as the Eastern Block and PCs.... why is that? Because PCs are cheap, and because you can download and STEAL a whole bunch of bootleg software for PCs... that's why. How many "paid for" copies of freely-downloadable R••••• are in the Eastern Block??? LOL I wonder.
Not going there, suffice to say poverty isn't a matter of lifestyle choices in the eastern block. Not saying that justifies theft, just saying that's the fax.
I will tell you this. If DP ends up retreating to being a DAW solely for "composers and film score types" then we're screwed.
Add in small recording studios and that's where we're at. Sorry to state that, but as far as I can tell, DP is in a niche. IMO it can and will crawl out of that niche the further it reinvents itself.
But unless it can push itself as a hip platform for straight pop/rock music recording and is something cool that the 20-something "noodlers" start using to record their *bands* then it's going to recede into a film composer's tool exclusively. I personally don't want to see that happen, because I don't know if DP is viable as such.
I'm there with you, my main reason for upgrading DP and starting to study it in detail again is I see it as the most viable platform for live performance outside of Live, and very realistically it's far more elegantly laid out for working on versions of the same song, whether that be multiple mixdown versions or shorter or longer versions. I see no reason why I have to close and open up whole instances of Live or Logic to get to the 6 1/2 minute version of the 3 1/2 minute song I'm working on.
Perhaps the amp simulator and guitar oriented effects was a step in this direction of trying to up DP's appeal for straight recording of bands, songwriting, etc. But seems to me, that was duplicating things that are already available via third parties and can be easily incorporated into DP via those third party plugs.
Total agreement there, and that's definitely because I've used multiple DAWs, it's a PITA that I can't use Space Designer or Sculpture from Logic in DP without Jack or Soundflower, same with Beat Repeat in Live etc. You realize how lame embedded plug ins are if you want to create in a different environment. VST / AU have their downsides, but it's nothing compared to what it would be like without them!
However, take MIDI objects. That MUST be built in... can't be added by any third party solution. Give me the ability to drag a four bar groove from Addictive drums and have it remain as a block, retaining its name, and then allow me to easily shuffle those blocks around to flesh out a song structure, etc. That's going to appeal to me more than an amp sim and some stomp boxes.
Cool this goes back to the IMO the original intent of this thread! MOTU IMO should embrace and build upon their freaking awesome framework with user interface improvements like editable object oriented MIDI objects in at the very least the Track Overview where it wouldn't even realistically mess with the ability to see all MIDI data as a single flow. A selectable view in the Sequence Editor would be freakin cool too! I really do think this is the biggest turn off to a lot of people about DP. Some people have said they hate Logics Arrange page but once you get into working in it, it's much faster at quickly editing MIDI note data than IMO you can do in the Tack Overview. That's not at all why I switched back to DP from Logic, it's the Chunks VS Folders in Logic that really did it.
Chunks are freaking amazing, and the only thing comparable in any DAW is Session View in Live. I do think what MOTU need to do to generate interest in DP is to go deeper into their strong points, and refine older features into total powerhouses. Things like their pitch time beat detection concepts. There are still parts of those functions that are big Huh? moments,
where the data on the screen becomes beyond messy. Things like the Song Window, make that even less of a playpen and more of a building block area. For instance I'm thinking of transferring my entire live performance set over from Live, but I've already pretty much ruled out using the Song window to string it all into an hour long set. There's no wiper, mackie control style control surfaces don't respond to chunks changing songs in it, busses are a bit tricky to use in it, and you have to manually adjust tempo changes for each Chunk in the set, no quick rearranging of the set.
I don't thing DP will ever appeal to the greater audience of electronic musicians out there compared to Live, or the cheaper DAWs like r36p3r, ReNoise and Fruity Loops. The odd ducks like Autechre and me? hell yes! but I don't think DPs market share will ever be as strong in that area as it could easily be in the home rock band recording, song composing, live performance and film scoring areas.
I apologize for the short novel here, but let's break down the major arenas or reasons that people will buy a DAW:
1. Recording your live band or orchestra.
2. Composing music as a sketch pad for a band.
3. Composing music completely in.
4. Scoring a film.
5. As a sequencer for your electronic music.
6. To use to back up your live performance, host software instruments for live performance.
7. ? <--- I'm probably missing one here.
8. Mix down / Mastering
1. OK, well Pro Tools rule the roost in the Live orchestra category, no doubt IMO about that.
Recording a rock band in any DAW is relatively painless if you aren't one of those people convince you NEED Pro Tools, though MOTU could win some market share here, it's a hard market to win IMO.
2. I think most DAWs are adequate for sketch pad work, hard call there.
3. Composing music completely in? <-- This is where the traditional enemies are still the ones to worry about, Cubase, Logic, Sonar, etc. This is also where DP should be concentrating their efforts to win converts IMO. these people are vested in DAWs in general by nature of what they do.
4. All DP need to do IMO is keep up with Nuendo, and the film market should be a cinch, considering Nuendo is ridiculously expensive.
5. This one is tough, the new generation of electronic music or specifically
dance music, ( and why I put it as separate from "Composing Music Completely" which would of course include electronic music ), crowd is cheap and has a low attention span, it's not the same group of nerds that ran complex hardware set ups and cut and spliced tape to get FX etc. this is an instant gratification, cheap software with absolutely simple GUI/UI loving crowd of folks.
DP is IMO too complex and requires too much thinking for them to get into. I know of two dance music people who have some success who use DP, Android Lust (she does danceable goth/industrial), and Tod Minor who does house music uses DP and Live. I really don't think MOTU will get much penetration into the larger home studio market of people who won't really ever get too far into music besides a couple years of messing around. DP will make it's way into the small market of people who actually end up making money off of this music, but that's a tiny market. Fruity Loops, Live, R36p3r, and Logic by the default of Apple ownership are going to be hard DAWs to uproost here.
6. Live and Mainstage are competition here, if MOTU stay interested in making sure this works properly and even maybe worked a few kinks out here and there, this is a valid area for expansion. Live 8 was a buggy mess, and the direction Live is headed in isn't to everyones liking, so there is unrest in the camp. Mainstage IMO only has market share because of being bundled with Logic, it looks like a total hassle to deal with backing tracks to me.
8. I think this is another total strong point in DP that could be marketed and should be. This is a reason to do IMO some inconsequential changes architecturally, mainly convert to a 64 bit internal engine. (this is different than 64 bit DAW versions like Logic and Sonar, more like Live has an internal 64 bit mix bus). My guess is they do this at the same time they release the 64 bit version of the entire DAW.
beyond that, it should be stressed that DP is designed with mixdown and mastering built right in to the main DAW, no reason to step outside it.
Again sorry for the novel, but this IMO is what the subject was originally about, what can MOTU learn from R36p3r? and my answer is to look at where the market is, who will generate revenue, and what crowd is least likely to be swayed by price tag? I have full copies of Logic, DP, Live, and ReNoise. The only DAW I bought with price in mind was ReNoise, and even then I wanted to get a look at Trackers and how they work. I don't play dance music, but I do play what could be considered electronic music. I've honestly easily spent more on music equipment that I probably ever will make off music, and I am and always will be interested in DAWs for composing music. I'm a target audience, except I'm probably a bit older in my 40's than the real targets, which IMO are the 20-30 something crowd, you know? when people get some morality and stop pirating, with no disrespect meant, teenagers don't count here.
M2 Studio Ultra, RME Babyface FS, Slate Raven Mti2, NI SL88 MKII, Linnstrument, MPC Live II, Launchpad MK3. Hundreds of plug ins.
Funny thought is how many of that user base would Reaper lose if they added CP and raised the price to $395?
The replacement happens automatically. I may change my mind at some point and lift the block. That's the advantage of not running a search and replace on the MySQL database. It's reversible. Either I mellow out on the subject, or Cockos implements a CP a bit stronger than a dismissible, once-daily nag screen-- whichever comes first. 
