MOTUnation.com

My two ducats worth••¦

I have had many opportunities to look a P%$ T@@!$ rep in the face and ask why doesn••™t this do this or that. I have even asked why doesn••™t their ware do what DP could do. And asked it in a Digi class in their Digi house, the one next to Roche (Not recommended) My point is I have frequently had the opportunity to ask, then had been provided the responses needed to resolve issues quickly. Yes, from the ••œcompetition••Â

I think you said some interesting things..."I think" you did. You might want to re-read and adjust your grammar as everytime I thought you had a point, your sentences and grammar became confusing...guess you can consider me illiterate or re-check your writing....

Dave

[quote]Originally posted by midiot:
My two ducats worth••¦

I have had many opportunities to look a P%$ T@@!$ rep in the face and ask why doesn••™t this do this or that. I have even asked why doesn••™t their ware do what DP could do. And asked it in a Digi class in their Digi house, the one next to Roche (Not recommended) My point is I have frequently had the opportunity to ask, then had been provided the responses needed to resolve issues quickly. Yes, from the ••œcompetition••Â

I was very tired when I wrote it, sorry if it was confusing.

The story was to show the pony is loved.

"My point is I have frequently had the opportunity to ask..."

I wish there was a similar face-to-face communication method for MOTU; people seem more responsive when they see/touch it for themselves.

I think it is rediculous to expect MOTU to have one guy dedicated only to testing all these different systems with different sound cards and such. The audio industry is just too small. Now, I could see them having a guy test a couple configs and call them 'MOTU approved' configs... but the combinations are just too endless even for one person to try to work out.

The idea of some kind of clearing house or protocol for logging problems/solutions and incompatibilities is a good one. However, as I'm a musician and not a software developer, I'd like to ask a very, very dumb question:

How many problems/bugs are there with DP4.52? I don't use that many plug-ins and only a few vi's at a time (mostly mach 5, quantum leap and altiverb). And in my experience, there aren't many at all.

In fact, exactly one serious problem, which was the infamous error -103 crash, which was fixed when I threw out my serial interfaces. Aside from that, DP has been quite solid, the minor issues I've had being certainly nothing to get too worked up over.

If people are not really experiencing overwhelming problems with compatibility, then a simple flatform database of those issues and their solution would suffice, unless I'm really missing something here.

OTOH, if there really are major level serious stability problems with DP and various configs of gear, that would argue more for changing one's DAW than hiring/configuring a compatibility daemon. In my experience, neither is called for.

The problem is that MOTU thinks it has done just what you all suggest: They call it Tech Support. It's all they can do, It's all they are willing to do and pay for, and they are not going to spend another dime because they believe that it WILL NOT effect their sales in any substitive way. Until MOTU s convinced that they would garner a greater market share it's all just wishfull thinking.

What M2 said with the added caveat, not that this hasn't been said before,

Hardware is where they make the money.

The software is likely third order pate.

Once you step back and look at the entire output of products by date you will realize the r&d is on getting IO's into the mass market for Logic, Nuendo, Mackie and other software DAW's.

As long as they have the best little fandangled FW or audiowire IO out there, bang for the buck, they thrive.

We DP guys think the world revolves around us but I really doubt that.

Originally posted by Timeline:
What M2 said with the added caveat, not that this hasn't been said before,

Hardware is where they make the money.

The software is likely third order pate.

Once you step back and look at the entire output of products by date you will realize the r&d is on getting IO's into the mass market for Logic, Nuendo, Mackie and other software DAW's.

As long as they have the best little fandangled FW or audiowire IO out there, bang for the buck, they thrive.

We DP guys think the world revolves around us but I really doubt that.

Exactly my view of it. 828mkII and Traveller, prime examples.

The only minor thing I'd add is it also seems like they're putting a bit of new R&D toward VIs, again with cross-platform, cross-DAW usage (more pockets to pick). Mach Five seems to be a good success in that endeavor. MX4, less so. But, new efforts hit market soon.

Not that they'll forget about their DP base. It's still a popular DAW app, after all. It's just doesn't seem to be priority one.

<small>[ April 28, 2005, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: chrispick ]</small>

I wrote a program in the late 80's to track exactly this type of information for computers and software. We managed to get almost all hardware and software manufacturers and major distributors to contribute their data for free. If any of you were around computers back then, you can remember the nightmare of configuration possibilities with network cards and software, modems, graphics, applications and everything else. People said it couldn't be done, but...

We won a product of the year from LAN Magazine and were written up by almost all the the major mags of the era. The product was TECHS (Technical Encyclopedia of Computer Hardware and Software). Eventually, Ziff-Davis bought us out and the program became known as Support-On-Site.

My point? A similar project could be done in the DAW and Video computer world. Hmmmm.... Maybe opportunity has raised it's head again..

Thank you Mitchell for proving my concept is a sound one..sounds like you were a trail blazer in this field LONG before i thought of it....

Dave

The idea of some kind of clearing house or protocol for logging problems/solutions and incompatibilities is a good one

There IS just such a thing.....check it out at this address: www.unicornation.com

Not a bad idea and there are people who live to test gear no matter how odd that may sound to the rest of us!

However, MOTU is not as big as we would like to think so I`m not sure they would be willing to pay for something their users can do for free.