garyb wrote:that costs a crapload of money and time. you can have the "killer app" OR the marketing. which do you prefer?
I think you're missing my point. The "killer app(s)" already exist. The marketing already exists. The cost of a better web site would be nominal. Hell, I'd do it in exchange for software.
garyb wrote:the computer industry DO NOT WANT Scope to live. there have been paid trolls in forums and sabotage of the old Creamware servers and forums. i was there to witness these things. Scope is EXACTLY the opposite of what the computer model for business has been made into. Ken is correct. selling stuff that is meant to be replaced to a hypnotized consumer base that just wants new, shiny stuff is the plan, Bic lighters over refillable lighters that get used for years, mass consumption. the industry has done nothing to support this type of technology. of course, there's no reason why it should. as Ken said, in the current model, making something to be bought once is NOT the way to make money. once upon a time, it was the ONLY way to make money. i guess people were less foolish, or something....
Yeah, I completely agree with the above, though I don't think there's any conscious conspiracy against Scope. I've been complaining about the "throw away" nature of our culture for years now. Here's the thing though. Hard core musicians and audio engineers are often the exact kinds of people you want for a product like the Scope. I see it here. The user base is like Daenerys Strongborn's Unsullied army. I see lots of people who are willing to shell out what ever it takes to get the sound they're looking for and happily condemn native software for exactly the reasons you listed.
garyb wrote:also, while there ARE VSTs that compare with the better Scope plugins in quality, they are often much less practical in terms of resources used, or realtime possibilities. for the most part, VSTs cannot use the same quality of algorithms unless you want to use them offline. guess what else? NI and UAD and several other major plugin makers wouldn't be anything without Creamware employees that were fired by the German courts in the first Creamware insolvency. there really aren't that many high level coders in this world.
I have to disagree with you a bit there. If you have a good audio interface (something like PCIe or Firewire) and an i7 running at 4 ghz, you can do a lot with native plug ins, even the resource hungry ones, especially if you're a clever engineer who knows what a bus is and how to "freeze" a track. In my opinion, we're not going after those dollars. I'd go after the more experimental musicians who want to do interesting things in a live context with a laptop. From what I can tell, this would have really been the perfect thing for me when I was doing live shows in the SF Bay area in the early and mid 00s. I just didn't know it existed. Go after the gigging musician who is tired of lugging around his aging Prophet 5 and Minimoog. Of course I think the Solaris is already that. Frankly the Solaris would be prefect for my needs but as a bedroom producer space is an issue. Is the Solaris doing well? I do see it mentioned with a fair amount of frequency on forums. Go after... well me! The established guy who's got some money in the bank to spend on his hobby who has been around the block enough to know the difference between a CS-80 and CS80v who's studio is now relegated to a spare room, but they still want to do the damage they could do when they had a ton of hardware instruments, but with a similar audio quality. I think there may be more of us around than you'd think.
garyb wrote:in order for Apple to do things the way that they do, they have had several HUGE influxes of CASH. the most important one being directly from Microsoft's Bill Gates. why would Mr. Gates prop up his competition? the computer industry is not part of a free and open market. it's part of a very large and well funded organization of big companies who have a plan, and are happy to implement that plan slowly. we do NOT get the latest tech. we get tech that is several generations old, and the path is already decided. marketing, which includes all media including television and movies and books tells us what to buy next and we happily comply. we pay for useless products that ALMOST work in order to fund the next step in the development of the plan. of course, now, there's really no need for anything new because what's here currently is more than sufficient for the average person's needs. it's actually pretty criminal that machines that already do everything that people really need them to do are here now, and yet people are conditioned to want to go into debt to buy more, and then have the systems for monitoring and control of the population put in place with peoople's own money.
SonicCore can't even imagine having something like an Apple Store, although it would be freaking AWESOME if it were possible.
just some happy thoughts for the day. it's nothing that serious. if the product is useful, then great! if it is not, then nobody will buy it. that's how things should be. as i've said before, Scope doesn't have to be mass marketed. everybody doesn't need it. for pros and for serious hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers, Scope represents everything good that computers, pieces of crap that they are, can offer. that is truly high quality audio tools that are capable of rivaling the best hardware at a price that is manageable for most people. people spend $3000 dollars on big screen TVs. the headphones and headphone amps in my studio cost half an XITE. the hardware compressors in my studio cost more than an XITE and i only have about 6.
the problem is the thinking of the "consumers". SonicCore doesn't need "consumers", they need customers.
Exactly. I think we're actually arguing the same point but I'm not making myself clear. When I was talking about Apple's marketing I wasn't talking about opening Sonic Core boutique stores, or going after the kind of mass market that a personal computer is made for. I was specifically talking about the way Apple makes it's stuff look sexy by focusing on the art made with them. I maybe should have used Native Instruments as an example. Marketing like Native Instruments but focused on a higher end customer. I know there's never going to be an XITE in every studio. There shouldn't be. I do think it could be part of a broader ecosphere of products though. I have no idea what happened with the whole Plugiator thing... and I'll probably be ruffling someone's feathers at this point, but it's kind of a good idea. It should probably have been in a form factor that is closer to Roland's new System-1 (but with an actual keyboard that wasn't crap) or like Elektron's Analog Four module. Something that could retail for less than $1000 that was stand alone but also had software integration like Elektron's Overbridge. It could be totally used in a DAW environment yet also get taken to a gig where the laptop was left home. More importantly, it would be a stepping stone for XITE-1 customers. A way to get a taste of that world for not too much money. It would come with a handful of emulations but with the ability to customize it buy purchasing a few more.
Here's the thing about Plugiator: Think about it as you will (I honestly have zero knowledge about the split in Creamware that caused it to come into existance.), but I own my XITE-1 only because of it. When I was researching for replacements for my Prophet 12 (not good enough sounding for the money and too big for my shrinking space) and KingKORG (decent sound for the money but not that great and also big) I didn't find the XITE-1. I first found the Plugiator... and I think it was a demo of maybe Lightwave? I can't remember. More research into the Plugiator showed me that it wasn't quite for me... too limited but maybe the Noah? Almost bought a Noah, but by then I kind of had already become enamored of the Scope platform and then, way later in my search, realized that the XITE-1 was it's successor and though more expensive would end up working out better for me.
Anyway, I think in terms of hardware it would be best to have a three tier product line up. Something like the Plugiator, something like the Noah and then the XITE-1s. This is important because you could hook younger and amateur musicians who'd later become XITE-1 customers. That's totally "far out in the future" kinds of thinking though. The website thing could be done in time for Christmas and would be easily crowd sourced.
I don't want to be coming off as some new kid who's walking around calling someone's baby ugly. What I am doing is calling your beautiful kid's clothes ugly. It's an easy fix. When I type "best virtual analog hardware" into my search engine, Sonic Core should come up on the first page. It currently does not. Get one into Nick Batt's hands. When you do a search for XITE-1 on Sonicstate this is what you get:
http://www.sonicstate.com/amped/2011/09 ... ad-review/
Yeah, it's about UAD, but scroll down. Someone mentions the XITE-1 in the comments and Nick replies back that he's not heard of it.It's obviously not due to some prejudice against DSP based hardware. It seems more like no one sent Sonicstate one. That is criminal.