Ever since AES much of the talk on the web about Digidesign have been regarding pricing. First on the C|24, then on the new Mbox 2 Micro. The opinion that Digidesign makes too high priced products is not new. To me though, it is sometimes accurate, and other times not.
First of all, let me say this: while a lot of people have expressed their opinion that the Mbox 2 Micro should have been cheaper, it is my opinion that it should have been either native or iLok based and that it should be free to registered Pro Tools users. I won’t however go and say that it’s a missed opportunity by Digidesign as I believe it will sell fairly well, and that it costs next to nothing to produce. I also certainly understand its purpose, it have been requested many times by Pro Tools users.
The opinion of many non-Digidesign customers is that most Pro Tools systems are overpriced. For instance, the 002R was often criticized for having inferior preamps compared to products costing about the same. The Mbox series have been criticized for pretty much the same thing. As far as the LE systems go I don’t think it’s a fair conclusion to make, mostly because you get a pretty good piece of software with it, and because the comparisons are often made with newer hardware. The HD line on the other hand, are getting to look rather expensive considering the fact that the technology is getting damn old.
While some people (I don’t want to point fingers, but let’s put it this way: likes to boost products that they make a profit by selling) said that Logic 8 forever have changed the face of the audio industry with the price drop, I don’t agree. It could have been a sign of the times though. I’m fairly certain that it steals Digidesign consumers, mainly potential LE users, and with Apple doing pretty well with their sales – especially in the US – it can prove to steal even more than it would have one or two years ago.
I have proposed this in the past, and I still think it would be a good idea for Digidesign – make a completely modular HD system and cut the starting price at half. Considering it utilizes old technology today it shouldn’t be a problem price wise. It would fill up the prosumer market that everyone’s screaming for right now and still fit the need of the high-enders. While high prices (even on old hardware) can turn out to be quite profitable even with a few units sold, there’s a lot of value in having many users.
With this it would be interesting to see some new gear to go with it. Like a cheap expansion chassis (can anyone explain how Magma get away with their billionaire attitude on a so technically simple product?) for our new cheaper modular system as we now can afford a lot more DSP cards.
For the people on a more modest budget – or the prosumers – let’s make an edit station with great Pro Tools integration. Something that fits together with the fader units out there that people can upgrade with in time.
See where I’m going? Let’s stop the fucking crippling and start selling a solid base at a reasonable price that is totally modular and can be built up to the most powerful HD systems.
great thoughts…good luck having digi do anything about them, however. they seem particularly resistant to things owners of their gear and software want like ADC!!! how long, seriously have we been screaming for just that??
also, because of their instance on tying their software to hardware, i have had to make bizarre, to me at least, choices in my studio to accommodate their bizarre polices.
yet, i love the work-ability of the platform. i wish i didn’t…
-k.coral
endlesssummersound.blogspot.com
I agree the micro should be free to current customers. If you think about it, customers simply have to pay for software they already have, just the ability to use it anywhere. Thats ridiculous. And for non digi customers, its kind of a waste, because what good is pro tools if you can’t record into it. But since people are so deep in pro tools it will sell.
I am an LE user, and I needed a good reverb, I thought of going altiverb, or getting the music production toolkit with TL Space. Then I realized I could get Logic Pro for the exact same price, which I did (space designer is great btw). I was an avid pro tools user, but I have only used it in the past months to bounce down projects and mix in logic, or get settings to help or things like that. I did and still enjoy pro tools, but I have all I need in Logic, and I simply can’t obtain that with the LE product line, and simply can’t afford and would never be able to justify an HD rig. High price is an issue, and it eventually forced me out of the pro tools system.
it seems their sister company Avid is still making these kinds of mistakes, you have to pay serious bucks to even think about editing high-end HD video on an Avid suite. As far as I can tell, Final Cut Pro can edit in any format right out of the box. with almost any hardware. (proprietary codecs excluded)
If I hadn’t already owned an M-Audio interface and purchaed pt m-powered 4 months ago, I seriously doubt I would have now, with the track total crippled, etc, for no good reason, and the price drop in Logic 8, i might have gone with Logic.
Well, Logic has been more than a little disappointment to a lot of people with it’s insane bugginess so far, so for me, it’s still PT for the foreseeable future…
-k.coral
endlesssummersound.blogspot.com
Dowlonad jack from http://www.jackaudio.com purchase tha micro, and the FXPansion vst-rtas converter, and you got one of most portable and possibly the cheapest LE system on the planet (considered you already have some audio card in your computer since before).
Route your existing audio card input to jack, wrap the “jack vst plugin” to RTAS, open a new session, open the RTAS wrapped jack VST, and route the signal via jacks router to the plugin.
Now you have audio in…
/John
http://jackaudio.org/
Sorry
/John
hmmmm… interesting. thanks, john!