Official Gearslutz Request For A Daw Controler

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by The Vulture

I am not the OP.
But don`t spread bullshit like there is no marked for this.

Why be offensive?

Originally Posted by The Vulture

I
If behringer managed to make the bcf for the price they did.
Just double it up in channels and adjust some and I`ll buy it back and behind.
Let`s be real..
About the production cost.
That is not the issue here....

A doubled up BCF isn't what the OP specified. He specified quite a nice little set up. You can't make it for $1000 retail and EVEN if you could - only those with deep pockets buy controllers at that price. Tascam lost an absolute fortune with quite a nice little unit - the R&D alone was enough to push them out of this market.

If there was a market for it - I would already have built one. But my professional experience and knowledge of the market stands by what I originally said - there is no profit in making something that the market wants, and there is no market for the profit that is needed to make it viable.

As for the BCF> Not exactly a roaring success.

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by joeq

when a handful of Gearslutz say "there is a huge market for this" what they really mean is "MY desire for this item is Huge". "I want this really badly".

Sadly, even the person with the deepest desire is only going to buy one, and many of them are going to turn their noses up a this or that specific offering because it is missing this or that feature or costs a little too much.

Exactly right.

[The Vulture]

Narcoman.
It was not my intention to be offensive at all.
But the marked for a product is one thing.
Realism and pricing is another story.

[joeq]

Originally Posted by The Vulture

But the marked for a product is one thing.
Realism and pricing is another story.

It's the same story.

I would have to say the Realism and Pricing is EXACTLY tied to the existence or non-existence of a "market". By definition, a market is a place where MONEY changes hands.

"Demand" or "desire" for something is not the same as a "market". It is NOT a "market" unless customers have the money to pay for it, and the willingness to buy enough of them to make it profitable.

If the buyers are "unrealistic" about the price that something should cost, that also can not be considered a "market". A "desire", perhaps even a "demand".

I can say there is a 'market' for a $5000 high-performance electric automobile that can top 120 mph; but if nobody can build a high-performance electric automobile for $5000, then this "market" does not really exist. These unrealistic price demands and feature demands will also get in the way of somebody actually buying the actual product at its actual price point, further discouraging the manufacturers from even trying.

[laser]

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

Well, I remember when the Eucon stuff was announced and 'everybody' was going to buy one. But they didn't.

Great protocol--crappy materials. I was more than willing to plunk down the coin for the Artist series controller and then was extremely disappointed when I saw the build quality. I just wasn't willing to spend the cash on poor workmanship.

Had they used more robust materials and components, I would have gladly paid an extra 30%. But they didn't, so I didn't buy.

Sure enough, they had deformation problems on the control surface. No real surprise.

I know of at least three other engineers who felt the same way as I did.

I've seen threads in just about every DAW's forum (except Pro Tools, which already has a good selection of controllers) as well as the usual audio forums asking for a well-built, moderately priced, functional controller for their DAW.

There is a market for a good controller at a $2k to $3k price tag. But, the manufacturers have to be more precise on the targeted user's needs and aim carefully. SSL came close with the Nucleus, but threw in too many unwanted features; the subsequent cost increase that came along with these features hurt their sales.



Laser

[thenoodle]

Wow... somehow or other, I'd not heard of the Nucleus. That's coooooool ! And a fair price for what it does and how solid it feels. I think I just found what I'm buying myself for Christmas.

[DAW PLUS]

Originally Posted by The Vulture

Narcoman.
It was not my intention to be offensive at all.
But the marked for a product is one thing.
Realism and pricing is another story.

Not really, they go hand in hand.
It really IS a tough market, since a good controller is going to cost too much to reach the mass market to pay for its development.
Otherwise, solid choices would have been available already and this thread was not existent.

[BenLoftis]

I don't see any manufacturers jumping in, so I'll give my $0.02. We've been working on a control surface for Mixbus for a couple of years now. It's a tough nut to crack.

One of the main reasons for the dearth of good controllers is this: Any (non-Avid) company that makes a controller is faced with the problem that a large portion of the paying community uses a DAW (PT) that has its own line of controllers, and will provide very limited support for their new controller.

The same problem applies to Avid in reverse ... even if they make a great controller, they can only sell it to their own users, because other DAWs might not support its features. This fragmentation means that everyone's slice of the pie is smaller than it could be.

If we can agree on that, then I will share the second and third problems, and a possible solution

-Ben Loftis
Harrison Consoles

[eddie.machete]

Originally Posted by BenLoftis

I don't see any manufacturers jumping in, so I'll give my $0.02. We've been working on a control surface for Mixbus for a couple of years now. It's a tough nut to crack.

One of the main reasons for the dearth of good controllers is this: Any (non-Avid) company that makes a controller is faced with the problem that a large portion of the paying community uses a DAW (PT) that has its own line of controllers, and will provide very limited support for their new controller.

The same problem applies to Avid in reverse ... even if they make a great controller, they can only sell it to their own users, because other DAWs might not support its features. This fragmentation means that everyone's slice of the pie is smaller than it could be.

If we can agree on that, then I will share the second and third problems, and a possible solution

-Ben Loftis
Harrison Consoles

I think what your saying is we should all join hands and Herald the age of reaper being the new industry standard:D

sent from the future

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by The Vulture

Narcoman.
It was not my intention to be offensive at all.
But the marked for a product is one thing.
Realism and pricing is another story.

there certainly is a desire for these things. But a desire is not a market. A market is those who have the money and WILL spend it on these products. The margins on something costing $1000 to buy with those facilities are likely to be something like $100 for the maker. To get a healthy worthwhile profit on those sorts of figures means selling a lot of units - there isn't a market to sell lots of them; most music makes won't spend $1000 on a controller.

Now - there IS a small market on high end controllers as the DCommand shows. But the margins on these are in the thousands of $$. Even with a million dollars of dev costs Avid had only to sell 200 or so of them to break even. as it happens they've sold a couple of thousand of them - a worthwhile investment BUT a risky one!

So thats why I say , no market. Not that there isn't a desire - but a market has to actually spend the money and make a choice between various options - not just say they want one.

As it happens - i REALLY like the Nucleus for my new home studio - but I don't thin I'll be buying one just yet!!

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by eddie.machete

I think what your saying is we should all join hands and Herald the age of reaper being the new industry standard:D

sent from the future

I reckon you'd have a killer product if you had a low priced Reaper controller that satisfied the needs of its user base; and that most certainly does not have to be aimed at professional users since pro users are a small section of the community.

[Arthur Stone]

Would the open-source code context of Reaper be an advantage to developing software for a controller? If companies cannot agree on developing a protocol together perhaps they would agree on integrating products with open-source (pure uninformed speculation on my part).

I like the concept of modular (one channel upwards) faders/strips...something like Tonelux or a 500-series maybe with a budget and high-end fader option. Slot together style.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by Arthur Stone

Would the open-source code context of Reaper be an advantage to developing software for a controller? If companies cannot agree on developing a protocol together .....

So let's say that you own a business making a DAW. And you've got a coder working for you, and you pay him something, just for discussion, like $60,000 a year. And he's working on your DAW program and fixing bugs and developing new plugs... and now Bill comes along with a DAW controller. And he wants you to support it so that he can sell it, because if you don't support it, nobody who uses your program can buy Bills DAW controller. Where is your incentive to take a guy who is busy fixing and improving your program, and putting him to work for goodness knows how many days or weeks to write support code for Bills DAW Controller? Would you rather he be fixing the bugs and developing cool new stuff for your program to help you to sell more DAWs, or working on supporting Bills DAW Controller, making Bill wealthy?

When a critical mass of users of your DAW program demand support for Bills DAW Controller, you'll put a guy on it. Until that happens, you'll ignore it. This is what killed the Tascam US2400. At $3,000 2002 or 2004 dollars, few bought it. DAWs didn't support it. It failed. After they dumped it on the market for $800, suddenly everybody loved it.

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

So let's say that you own a business making a DAW. And you've got a coder working for you, and you pay him something, just for discussion, like $60,000 a year. And he's working on your DAW program and fixing bugs and developing new plugs... and now Bill comes along with a DAW controller. And he wants you to support it so that he can sell it, because if you don't support it, nobody who uses your program can buy Bills DAW controller. Where is your incentive to take a guy who is busy fixing and improving your program, and putting him to work for goodness knows how many days or weeks to write support code for Bills DAW Controller? Would you rather he be fixing the bugs and developing cool new stuff for your program to help you to sell more DAWs, or working on supporting Bills DAW Controller, making Bill wealthy?

When a critical mass of users of your DAW program demand support for Bills DAW Controller, you'll put a guy on it. Until that happens, you'll ignore it. This is what killed the Tascam US2400. At $3,000 2002 or 2004 dollars, few bought it. DAWs didn't support it. It failed. After they dumped it on the market for $800, suddenly everybody loved it.

Absolutely true under most business models.

However Reaper is very different.

Anyone can download the SDK (software development kit) for free.

Included is the C++ source code complete with rudimentary support for Faderport, MCU, Tranzport, and a few others.

Other users have extended this support in various ways.

For instance I added support for the C4 and changed the MCU / Extender code a bit to suit my "console centric" workflow.

I then uploaded the source and DLL's to http://stash.reaper.fm/ so that anyone cold use them either out of the box, or as a starting point for their own take on things.

Another user (valley) has a Mac dev environment and compiled the code for Mac users.

So even though Reaper itself is not open source, the overall feel is that way.

I have quite a bit of experience with developing this sort of thing and having read the EuConn whitepaper I would say that it is only OK, certainly not great.

Maybe OSC is the way to go towards standardization, don't know.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

[QUOTE=Geoff Waddington;8346559]
Anyone can download the SDK (software development kit) for free.

/QUOTE]

So what? You still have to pay your coder his daily wage to take the time to write the support. That is not free, it costs you double.... the time he spends on the controller and the time he is NOT spending working on your program.

Samplitude has always provided their users with the tools to write their own controller definitions, too. Big whoop. They are probably not the only ones to do this. And Bob over at SAWStudio writes better support for controllers than pretty much anybody. So far as I can tell, Reaper is a "Me, Too!!!" company, copying what others have already done. I know you guys all love it because it is cheap, but I've not seen it do anything to compel me to change from what I use. It just isn't that big of a deal.

[eddie.machete]

Well I personally think Reaper is the way forward anyway..
Real people, real faces, real beards, real code, real community, real daw. No corporate lock in's etc. If I was building a controller I'd offer a percentage of profits for the assistance of the DAWs coders and promotion. A partnership.

If you create a really cool controller it will boost sales of the daw it's best suited for. So it would be in daw guy's interest to support it. If you are daw guy you understand you need to support hardware because were all here talking about hardware needs/wants.

I don't know what agreement Akai and Ableton had for the apc's but both companies made money on that partnership no doubt. MAybe it was a joint venture where both realised the space they could fill together and they didn't even talk about percentages of sales because they both knew they would be shifting more units from coming together.

If I'm saving for a controller and I get upto around £500 I'm almost at MCU prices. So I might just save a little more and get the MCU. So what can be bought for around £400-600 right now? Honest question.

[eddie.machete]

[QUOTE=Bill@WelcomeHome;8346911]

Originally Posted by Geoff Waddington

Anyone can download the SDK (software development kit) for free.

/QUOTE]

So what? You still have to pay your coder his daily wage to take the time to write the support. That is not free, it costs you double.... the time he spends on the controller and the time he is NOT spending working on your program.

Samplitude has always provided their users with the tools to write their own controller definitions, too. Big whoop. They are probably not the only ones to do this. And Bob over at SAWStudio writes better support for controllers than pretty much anybody. So far as I can tell, Reaper is a "Me, Too!!!" company, copying what others have already done. I know you guys all love it because it is cheap, but I've not seen it do anything to compel me to change from what I use. It just isn't that big of a deal.

Well one of many reasons why Reaper is superior is because when I run it it feels so light and swift that I could run it on an old game boy CPU. But let's not digress too much!

[The Vulture]

Ok.
There is a desire.
So there is a difference in marked and desire.

But IF it was possible to produce this product affordable.
I belive there would be an actually marked for it..

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by The Vulture

Ok.
There is a desire.
So there is a difference in marked and desire.

But IF it was possible to produce this product affordable.
I belive there would be an actually marked for it..

That's the "IF" ..!!

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by eddie.machete

Well I personally think Reaper is the way forward anyway..
Real people, real faces, real beards, real code, real community, real daw. No corporate lock in's etc.

thats how google started!!

[sbackdoor]

What exactly is official about this thread?

[eddie.machete]

Originally Posted by narcoman

thats how google started!!

They all plot in garages don't they?

[eddie.machete]

Originally Posted by sbackdoor

What exactly is official about this thread?

Its official because he stated it was official in the thread header. That's how you make things official around these parts. You just write official, usually in highercase. OFFICIAL. Ah. I feel all official now.

[sbackdoor]

Originally Posted by eddie.machete

Its official because he stated it was official in the thread header. That's how you make things official around these parts. You just write official, usually in highercase. OFFICIAL. Ah. I feel all official now.

haha, made me giggle.

[skira]

Originally Posted by BenLoftis

The same problem applies to Avid in reverse ... even if they make a great controller, they can only sell it to their own users, because other DAWs might not support its features

Those nice Steinberg controllers are designed for plug-and-play Cubase use, but they are not Cubase-only. Anyone try them with Ableton or Logic?

[eddie.machete]

Originally Posted by skira

Those nice Steinberg controllers are designed for plug-and-play Cubase use, but they are not Cubase-only. Anyone try them with Ableton or Logic?

The CMC Modules? I had overlooked them cus I'm Ableton and Reaper. I thought they were locked down. If they could used in Ableton/Reaper I would consider them for sure. Sexy little cheap bastards.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by eddie.machete

Well one of many reasons why Reaper is superior is because when I run it it feels so light and swift that I could run it on an old game boy CPU. But let's not digress too much!

If you like nice tightly written code, try SAWStudio. Written in machine code. But Bob only writes the program to do what he wants done. So the feature set is limited. But boy, it is fast.

[skira]

Originally Posted by eddie.machete

The CMC Modules? I had overlooked them cus I'm Ableton and Reaper. I thought they were locked down. If they could used in Ableton/Reaper I would consider them for sure. Sexy little cheap bastards.

According to Steinberg's Carlos Mendoza Rohde, "Yes, you can use it on other DAW's as well via the Mackie protocol."

[kennyda]

Personally I like using a computer to control my DAW, plus a keyboard which acts as 5 keyboards, a Launchpad, and a Nocturn for extra knob twiddling. I think people understimate the simple computer keyboard. They are some great shortcuts and things you can do, so that you hardly ever have to touch a trackpad or one of those mouse things. You can use the Launchpad as a mixer as well as a clip launcher. You can focus on instruments using buttons in the Nocturn. I can see the midi or audio that is playing for any track by hitting one computer key. Bear in mind I'm on Live so I could have 30 midi clips per track in Session view. But of course my computer also has the internet and lots of other useful stuff.

So, while I can see the attraction of a DAW controller, I think the market would be small and they would have to be DAW specific.

[projektk]

my dream controller is...

a meter bridge for 8 channels at a time, 8 motorized full length faders however long that is (100mm maybe), 2 rotary knobs above each fader with small LCD screens for plug in control, transport controls, copy, paste and a duplicate button. also include buttons to move between. channel banks. $1-2k USD and I'm sold, I just want a really nice portable controller with a meter bridge.

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