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Originally Posted by sigmatibet  Since SmartAV is not a big company compared to the big wheights of the market, and Since Tango is not using a standard code like, say, MCU, aside with its own code, who can tell that if one sad day Smart AV will not be with us anymore, Tango will become a cool piece of forniture? |
Just an aside - I think you may have a misguided impression that SmartAV is a new company and that the Tango is their first product. They have the benefit of owning several worldwide patents (since the 90s I believe), and have been making their larger format Smart Consoles for years (you know,
the desks that look like they belong on the Starship Enterprise). They have also branched out to create
a professional level console as well as partnering with companies like Merging in making dedicated controllers. Pyramix is better known (and more widely used) in Europe and I think the SmartAV console might have been an OEM (unbranded) product, so I'd expect that may be the reason why people are failing to make the connection that SmartAV is already a successful company in the high-end post/studio market.
I also think that SmartAV benefits from being a smaller, more agile company compared to the shops that are into making mass-marketed gear. There were some features that I suggested that were implemented in relatively short order - something that I don't think you'd get if you sent an email to Mackie. Part of that is technological - SmartAV made the right decision to put as much 'real estate' behind the touch screen as possible - so that they have the ultimate flexibility to implement changes and new features. But the other part is their approach to actively engaging with their customers to make improvements more-or-less on the fly as they gain more feedback.
And by counterexample, it's easy to point out the frailty of your reasoning by the numerous examples of failed products and companies from "the big weights". Just look at Steinberg's Houston controller (no relation, I assure you). That was a DAW controller from a major company and yet it managed to flail away until they finally just gave up on supporting the unit altogether. Then there was SSL that went bankrupt and then was brought back from the dead by Peter Gabriel and David Engelke. So don't get carried away with hand-wringing - because products can rise an fall on many aspects *other* than the relative size of the company. As far as SmartAV is concerned, they've got some really innovative (and exclusive) technologies and a rock solid product that delivers a ton of functionality for the money in the Tango. Basing your buying decision on some imagined factors relating to the company's size is a red herring.