Why are so many DAW devs based in Massachusetts?

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Karma_tba wrote:
MarlaPodolski wrote:MIT. MIT. MIT. MIT ... but it's also a very cool place if you can afford it. I lived there for a year or so right after university. Very expensive unless you are happy to live in Jamaica area or newton or somewhere 20 miles out. I wasn't. Was a block or three from Berklee, Cars studio and even more important a good dozen of the finest restaurants of any style you could want. Met a guitarist every day somewhere out and about (most were not very good players -- money gets you enrolled in Berklee really, unlike Julliard and Eastman -- but a few guitarists I met were just incredible).

It's also an extreme liberal enclave, massive welfare state, low unemployment (need to be dead not to be employed), etc., etc. Weather not too bad. But going back to MIT, it's a powerhouse for releasing trained geniuses into the world including great programmers. That Scholz guitarist, leader of band Boston went there. We rented rehearsal space from him in the basement underneath his company. It's like, if you are sick of NYC, afraid of NYC or just can't deal with the even higher cost, on the East Coast it's Boston (unless to want to go to Philly and probably be shot, robbed and/or raped). Just the way it is East U.S.
Jamaica??....I think you mean Jamaica Plain! J.P. is gangs and guns. As far as Newton not sure where you got the idea it's inexpensive...it's upper middle class and not cheap. Also it is quite accessible to Boston and the surrounding areas by public transit(10 minutes to downtown Boston). One thing I've always hated about Boston is tourists and students. They make everything overpriced and the students(from out of state) treat Mass like their private playground. Maybe the BeeGee's could tell you about Mass, ( they wrote a song about it).
Newton is big bux,,,ftr I grew up in Bedford...the main road in Bedford (Great Rd) is really Mass Ave in Lexington, Arlington, Cambridge and then of course Boston.

One thing I miss as I haven't been in town in a while, across the street from the pru (Boylston St) is a great place for burgers...The Pour House... :love:
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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Karma_tba wrote:
LawrenceF wrote:This is an interesting discussion, imo anyway.

It might come more into focus if we widen the scope a bit though, and not limit it to only daws. That is to say while I take the word of the person who says no daws are made in London (I have no personal clue, but it sounds right), I wonder what that might look like globally if the scope was expanded to all kinds of professional software.

It may be that certain nations or wider geographic ranges lean a bit more towards music software than other things, no clue.

The MIT thing makes sense though, given how (arguably) some of the smartest software engineers on the planet probably come from there and go to Nasa and everywhere else I would guess.

My personal feeling about that, short of a person creating his or her own music company, is that the top 10% of MIT software engineers would likely mostly be seeing their talents going to waste working on daws. :)
You're right about MIT....Berklee is the so-called place for music...but more for performing artists then devs. I also think Berklee is over rated. It has no real campus ,and the place is a dump. As far as Tom Scholz(sp) coming out of MIT that is ancient history and his band(Boston) were a one hit wonder.
Boston pulled the biggest fraud on fans in R&R history imo because they were as you say...a one hit wonder...the first album was a huge success but Dont Look Back was a huge disappointment...they sat on 3rd Stage thinking if fans waited long enough it would be a smash hit again...it wasn't...years later sadly Brad Delp ended up killing himself...sad case all around
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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Timfonie wrote:Why are so many DAW devs based or originated in Germany?

Bitwig, Berlin
Live, Berlin
Cubase, Hamburg
Logic, Rellingen (Germany) before Apple bought them

That leaves only two conceived and developed in Massachusetts. Still impressive since Massachusetts has only 1/10 of the population of Germany.
Native Instruments, Berlin (Maschine can be considered a DAW)
Renoise, Berlin

I guess it's Massachusetts vs Berlin. Berlin wins :hihi:

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Izak Synthiemental wrote: Berlin wins :hihi:
I can't explain why, and it certainly isn't relevant now in the modern world, but if you're a history buff like me it's pretty clear that the Germans are responsible (at it's root) for most of our tech, from rockets and multiple other things. The list of things they invented is... striking.

That's why we gave them jobs after the war instead of locking them all up. :lol:

Maybe it was the Bratwurst, no idea. :hihi:

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Numanoid wrote:To make a comparison, Massachusetts population is half of that of London, UK.

And how many major DAW companies have their HQ in London?: zilch.

UK in general: zilch

So that is one of the reasons it makes it noteworthy.
But in terms of "music listened to" the UK is still king. By far. And doesn't that matter more?
ah böwakawa poussé poussé

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LawrenceF wrote:
Izak Synthiemental wrote: Berlin wins :hihi:
I can't explain why, and it certainly isn't relevant now in the modern world, but if you're a history buff like me it's pretty clear that the Germans are responsible (at it's root) for most of our tech, from rockets and multiple other things. The list of things they invented is... striking.

That's why we gave them jobs after the war instead of locking them all up. :lol:

Maybe it was the Bratwurst, no idea. :hihi:
First things first: I'm a Berliner myself. I hope you are aware that Berlin has become a global hub and when you look at the staff in companies like Ableton, Bitwig or Native Instruments, you will see that they come from many different countries and backgrounds. So, it has nothing to do with German Nationalism, but with the attractive conditions a place like Berlin offered to creative people and startups since the 1990s.

The "not locking up the Nazi scientist aspect" is something that I wouldn't be particularly proud of, if I was American!

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LawrenceF wrote:Some of it is maybe HQ location. Like (IIRC) PSL is located in Hamburg but incorporated in Ireland.

No idea why that is.
Ireland is a tax haven/tax dodge.

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Izak Synthiemental wrote:First things first: I'm a Berliner myself. I hope you are aware that Berlin has become a global hub and when you look at the staff in companies like Ableton, Bitwig or Native Instruments, you will see that they come from many different countries and backgrounds. So, it has nothing to do with German Nationalism, but with the attractive conditions a place like Berlin offered to creative people and startups since the 1990s.

The "not locking up the Nazi scientist aspect" is something that I wouldn't be particularly proud of, if I was American!
Is their a specific school or university in Berlin that is notable for bleeding edge electronic/computer music academia? As a lot of us have said, MIT. Paris has IRCAM (which might be the oldest and most venerable). San Francisco/the Bay Area has Stanford and the CCRMA.

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Numanoid wrote: Reaper, New York
That figures. It's the hipster daw, the vegan daw, the ecologically sustainable fair-trade daw.
No signature here!

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Oh, yes, the Germans. Well, if you (whomever) had any clue, the "real" scientists from that (or any other era) defected.

Facts be damned, of course, but it's the truth.

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Or, how about trolling over supposedly LOUISIANA companies? Hmmmmmmmmmm. Really racist, totally loyal to the KKK, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Oh, did I say that>

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zvenx wrote:
MarlaPodolski wrote:MIT. MIT. MIT. MIT ... but it's also a very cool place if you can afford it. I lived there for a year or so right after university. Very expensive unless you are happy to live in Jamaica area or newton or somewhere 20 miles out. I wasn't. Was a block or three from Berklee,......
interesting I lived a few blocks from berklee when I was doing my phd in that town.
Did you perchance live on Boylston or near Kenmore Square? ( I was there 88-92)

rsp
Wow, yes, I was in the brownstones on Boylston, right across from the Fens. This thread has some cool stuff in it, in between the snarks and snipes and corny jokes. Making me totally nostalgic, 'cause I've lived in both places. Can't respond to everything I might, but let's see ...

Yeah, to karma, when I was talking about Jamaica Plain and Newton areas I was really about way out on the outskirts of them. That was what was happening -- they were turning (still are, they say) every apt. and square inch of residential downtown, even Summerville, Fenway, everywhere, into $million dollar-plus condos, so all the artists and players were moving way out and trying to be close enough to the last T stop if at all possible.

And, yeah, the rehersal space was in Alewife under SR&D, never did meet that guitarist and no big fan of band Boston anyway, way before my time. One or two things, though, always super impressed by Delps singing ability. Hard for even most females to hit those pitches with any punch, you know! And, fan or no, both albums went platinum and they had, what, 3 Top-10s off the first one. I give them cred for Commercial Rock Pop songwriting skills. Those certain tunes by-the-book hit and hook techniques.

I'm sure plugin makers like the iZotope gang are the extreme lowest income earners of anybody out of MIT. Sad but true!

Does Louisiana make anything, not counting oversalted leftover soup marketed as gumbo? And fried chicken necks and other meat byproducts?

I think you can't deny that the Germans are at the top and have been since the '70s in music tech and design. Honestly, though, German men all have extremely fat butts. Don't know why that is but is a turnoff despite their obvious brilliance. Just my observations from living among. Berlin is totally where it is at in so many ways and hope to return there or close before long.

So many good observations in this thread if you can carefully not step in the scattered poo here and there. Good question: as brought up, the importance and musical focus of UK. Why aren't there more devs there and why not closer to Mass and Berlin as far as software? Seems it should be. What DAWs or software coming out of the UK?

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Izak Synthiemental wrote: First things first: I'm a Berliner myself. I hope you are aware that Berlin has become a global hub and when you look at the staff in companies like Ableton, Bitwig or Native Instruments, you will see that they come from many different countries and backgrounds. So, it has nothing to do with German Nationalism, but with the attractive conditions a place like Berlin offered to creative people and startups since the 1990s.
This one. and similar for the US - the main reason the USA does so well in science / tech etc is money - they offer more money and that attracts talent from all over the world (almost half MIT graduate students are from outside the USA). And talent attracts talent (along with the money of course). Note that money is not just wages - money for funding for research is even more important at the University appointment level.

And then you end up with a skilled workforce so that talent and business from other countries will shift to access the skilled labour. (in my country, in a city of 2.5 million people where I live, there is not a single company skilled in android app development for example - all my best students left - and I encouraged them to as thye were wasting their time here)

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Interesting to see how all the innovative products come from Europe, whereas the US offerings are just re-hashes of the same old concept pioneered by Steinberg.

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Or...

We can put it this way:

Image-Line FL Studio
- Gent, population 248 739 (2011)
- One DAW per 0,248 million people

Propellerhead Reason
- Stockholm, population 789 024 (2007)
- One DAW per 0,789 million people

Bitwig Bitwig Studio
Ableton Live
- Berlin, population 3,502 millions (2012)
- One DAW per 1,751 million people

Avid Pro Tools
Cakewalk Sonar
MOTU Digital Performer
- Massachusetts, population 6,745 millions (2014)
- One DAW per 2,248 million people

I only chose 4 cites for demonstration purposes. Populations is taken from a simple search on Google.
i9-10900K | 128GB DDR4 | RTX 3090 | Arturia AudioFuse/KeyLab mkII/SparkLE | PreSonus ATOM/ATOM SQ | Studio One | Reason | Bitwig Studio | Reaper | Renoise | FL Studio | ~900 VSTs | 300+ REs

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