There was a time when it looked like “The One” DAW would be the only choice for professionals but as time went on other DAWs started “catching up” as the expression goes. For a time it looked like “The One” could become simply one of a handful instead of “the defacto standard in ‘the industry’”. It was still an open a market. It was small but there were still some small pieces of the small pie worthy of profitable pursuit by companies looking to give “The One” a run for it’s money. Who knows? In a few years maybe that small slice of that small pie could grow and become a DAW ala mode deluxe whole pie proposition for the professional community. Professionals set the standards and to be adopted by them was, at the time, the Holy Grail of DAW cred.
Times changed and soon the there was… another pie (with a path). A superficially similar kind of pie, quite different upon close inspection actually, but a pie nonetheless; and oh what a big pie it was. This was an overflowing, sloppy, mess of ginormouse stuffed pastry on a platter filled with lowered consumer expectations and higher profit potential. More money could be made from the dreams of millions of bedroom “producers” with no required professional standards to meet and cheap seemingly powerful computers next to their abandoned PS3s than could be made from tens of thousands of audio professionals whose standards must be met though their numbers are few. This would be a different time… a time when the Holy Grail of cred is a homemade YouTube “unboxing”.
I believe we could be witnessing a transition in the DAW manufacturing business and, perhaps, discovering why loyalty to the professional community above the non-professional community is what creates a “defacto standard”.
Defining a product’s competition defines the product.
IMHO even referring to PT as “The One” is misleading (I presume you mean protools - not too sure with all the pie references). PT adopted a self-proclaimed mantle of ‘Industry standard’ at a time when the native systems weren’t quite ready to operate in the big league - not enough tracks and cpu horsepower. (talking about the 90’s here)
That time ended around ten years ago and native systems are powerful enough for all but the very largest systems. Since then Steinberg and others have become considerably more advanced technically than PT, but PT still carries the (increasingly threadbare) mantle. In fact it is PT which has been playing catchup, all along.
I doubt if DAWs like Cubase will become de-professionalised in the way the OP suggests. Steinberg need professional credibility, even if most of their sales are to bedroom producers. There will always be simple, preset offerings available to service the beginner market. It makes no sense to dumb down the flagship (or was that Nuendo? I forget…)
Professionals pick a tool or tools to do the job they need it to do. And they aren’t always the shiny ones (shiny tools not producers…or maybe I do mean…).
The Swiss Army knife is never going to replace a carpenters tools and knowhow.
But if you have to use a Swiss Army knife when the tools have been stolen then a good carpenter will know what to do with it and not complain about how unprofessional it is.
The good thing for us lesser mortals was, however, that when the only reference points were standards set by professionals, competing companies had to try their best to emulate those standards while attempting to meet a price point for people who didn’t want to or couldn’t spend the money. That was also a time when professionals were respected, not derided for, their high standards. Since the rise of digital capture in my field I have met more than a few people breaking into the industry who have little respect or knowledge of established protocol and technique. I imagine it’s a similar situation for audio professionals in the music industry.
Speaking of PT. Didn’t they recently makeover all their versions in the image of “native” processing DAWs? No brand is immune from the so called democratization of the means of production.
I’m sure if every company started out using proprietary hardware things would have developed differently for awhile but eventually the demands of making a profit require reaching more people and those people are, by definition, consumers.
I mean, how many people would buy a 10 track recorder still costing over $12, 000 in 2011?
People really need to get over their inferiority complexes as relates to PT. It is an industry standard and will be for a long time. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t so often be annoyed by it being called that.
It’s not about being “the best”, because there is no such thing. Standards are more about the pro community generally agreeing on something with a pretty good consensus … and they have done that … with PT.
We general DAW users, while professional, aren’t - by ourselves - “the industry”. We’re only a small part of a sub-section of it. When you get into the many other areas where many thousands (if not millons)of dollars are changing hands in the industry, you’ll find PT there somewhere - and being used - 9 out of ten times.
Doesn’t mean it’s the best workstation on the planet. It only means it’s been chosen.
I say… “So what? Get over it already.” We don’t need validation do we?
I’ve been trying to formulate some grand philosophical thought with the changes at Avid and the rumored demise of the Mac Pro. It is as if the decade-long battle between hardware-assisted model versus the native model has come to a head. Apple seems to want to push it along in favor of the native model. Avid is standing firm in the hardware-assisted model. I’m glad I’m not tied to either of these companies at present. That’s not philosophical, but that’s how I feel. I prefer my options being left open to me. If Dell stopped producing their high-end lines, there is always another option. Anyway, it sours me to being tied to any specific piece of hardware, whether it be through Mac-only software, or Avid hardware. This is the advantage of Cubase/Nuendo, Studio One, Sonar, Live, etc. With regard to Logic, the touted synergies are now looking like golden handcuffs. Maybe Apple is ceding the professional marketplace to Avid, or maybe they will push the demise of the hardware-assisted model. Whichever it is, I’m kind of glad to be watching it from the sidelines as a Cubase user.
I guess I was just thinking of HD and the end of life for that hardware after PT 10. That, coupled with their overt focus on “professionals”, including high upgrade prices, made me think that they are already intending to leave many of those PT9ers in the lurch due to a change of focus. I think those were the assumptions I was making. Add to that a cut in their customer service/support personnel, it seems like they are focusing on making more money from fewer customers. I just read the DUC, and I have to admit that I was taken aback at the chaos there. Reading through comments there, I got the impression that Avid management were making their own assumptions. I’ve been of a mindset that these were more correct than the direction of Apple, i.e. cater to the professionals versus mass market. Kind of foolish when seeing the direction of both companies’ stock. Good luck to Avid. I have no bone to pick with Pro Tools. I actually really like the way it is laid out and I have a lot of respect for it’s place in the industry. But it could be replaced by one of its competitors without much of a slowdown in production.
First,
props to Mr.Steinberg. That is really kool info to know.
Bredo posted:
I’ve certainly made more money from Cubase/Nuendo
than from “The One”.
Same here. And so far (nearly) all my clients have left happy and
‘paid up’.
IMHO
‘The One’ started out as an audio recording programme with some
MIDI capabilities.
Cubase started out as mainly a MIDI programme
and then later added audio.
In a sense Cubase (Notator Finale Cakewalk etc) carved out a
market niche that was not previously there and then slowly
nudged itself into part of ‘The Ones’ space.
At that time Cubase was much less stable for sure but it also was
much much much cheaper for sure.
So today we find C6 very stable (depending on 3rd party stuff)
and very cheap.
While this is all fine and well for ‘in the bedroom’ work,
if you want to interact with the other major players on the planet,
(not in the bedroom) it might be helpful to learn to speak the
language of ‘The One’.
Besides there is nothing wrong with learning a 2nd language.
