Magix - what on earth, what on earth...

[VOODOO U]

Advertising gets you noticed and it seems to be working ok since we're talking about Sequoia.
1800 isn't a lot to ask for when you consider what you're getting. That's of course if you are damn serious about getting top quality product.
For bedroom twiddlers, they have Reason and the like. For those who are serious and can afford a couple thousand on top quality software, they do exist here.
At the expense of trolling a bit, there are Samplitude recordings i made that have a certain "something" to their sound that i can't get with other DAWs.
It's a good quality sound to them and, well, so be it.
What it is exactly i don't know but it seems Magix do have a magic touch.
It doesn't matter if bedroom twiddlers don't get it and it's ridiculous that they even argue it.
DAWs sounding better than other DAWs has been argued enough here so no need to go there but Samplitude does have a sound quality to it and Sequoia is the flagship.
It's possible certain developers might understand that algorithms is akin to alchemy where there could be a sweet spot that affects, in this regard, sound output.

[jens]

I think their target audience is companies, not single users. With companies, they just account the price as expenses. Why advertise here - do you know who is browsing this site, and why? Since Magix are doing it - they must be either clueless, or have lots of money to burn. Or it makes sense to them.

Thing is: they are hardly any relevant these days. And feature-wise Sequoia can't really compete with Nuendo either, I'd say. So I'm going with either clueless or really good with tax-avoidance.

[lfm]

At the expense of trolling a bit, there are Samplitude recordings i made that have a certain "something" to their sound that i can't get with other DAWs.
It's a good quality sound to them and, well, so be it.
What it is exactly i don't know but it seems Magix do have a magic touch.

DAWs sounding better than other DAWs has been argued enough here so no need to go there but Samplitude does have a sound quality to it and Sequoia is the flagship.

There was a guy ranting at Cakewalk/Sonar a couple of years ago. I solved that issue for him that his pickup for vinyl was poorly adapted to RIAA stage. Really strange profile in frequency spectrum.

But in the process I made 24bit/96k recording from vinyl to both Sonar and Cubase.

And they did sound a little different, strange enough.
But I would not pick either before the other because of this difference. It would be possible to swap the original recorded file and see if it was playback that were different or different content.

If you truly believe Magix stuff is Magic, use it!!!.
- probably some stock plugin you like better for processing
- biggest influence on ears is loudness or SPL

Mixing and mastering skills will make the bigger difference than daw itself IMO.

[lfm]

I also find marketing a bit odd, using strange terms that mean nothing to musicians
- object editing for one, what is it compared to just editing clips?

Isn't "object" the term Magix uses for "clips"?

That is what I think too, why use such an odd term for it?
- I never saw a good explanation for difference

[gaggle of hermits]

Now I noticed that they advertise Sequoia a lot these days here at KVR. The price: full license ~1800€ and the upgrade ~900€ (which is almost the price of a full Nuendo license) - seriously: what on earth? With prices like this I would think they just don't care and basically want to kill their pro-line of products, but why then waste money on advertising? Is it some clever taxes loophole they make use of? It just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

they filed for insolvency/bankruptcy in Germany the other week: https://www.cined.com/magix-producer-of ... nsolvency/

these things may be related (and I don't mean imminent bankruptcy caused them to have a rush of blood to the head that caused them to book a load of ads).

[jens]

So it was just sheer incompetence all along after all...

[KBSoundSmith]

Soundforge, if I recall, has pretty much only undergone GUI changes

Last I used SF was around 2007 ish and it was perfect imvho. It didn't need much to improve. I can imagine how good it is now. Im willing to bet that asking for anything more is too nuch icing on the cake.

I agree it didn't much other than keeping up to date on OS changes, plugins, etc. That said, there are things they could have added to make it more appealing. For example, Magix briefly acquired Spectralayers. The functionality of that could have been integrated into Sound Forge and sold as a single program rather separate applications. Instead, Magix had no idea what to do with it and shipped it over to Steinberg, and they now have weird upgrade paths where you can update a different company's IP through them.

So it isn't that SoundForge has something wrong with it, rather it's just been sitting on the shelf while Magix wanders about aimlessly.

[jens]

by the way: the current Soundforge Suite can be purchased for 149€ right now and includes - amongst loads of other stuff - a Spectralayers Pro 10 license - so half of what a license of the latter on its own costs over @SB. Their prices are really all over the place.

[havran]

by the way: the current Soundforge Suite can be purchased for 149€ right now and includes - amongst loads of other stuff - a Spectralayers Pro 10 license - so half of what a license of the latter on its own costs over @SB. Their prices are really all over the place.

Similarly, about 3 weeks ago I paid about $156 USD for a one-year sub to Samplitude Pro X Suite 365, which also included a license for Spectralayers Pro 10.

Kind of sad to learn about Magix filing for insolvency. I hope they find a way to survive and thrive.

As for the Sequoia ads, I imagine those are not targeted toward bedroom producers.

[Winstontaneous]

I think their target audience is companies, not single users. With companies, they just account the price as expenses. Why advertise here - do you know who is browsing this site, and why? Since Magix are doing it - they must be either clueless, or have lots of money to burn. Or it makes sense to them.

I was gonna say the same. Been a while since I've been a semi-pro musician, but cost of tools is a completely different consideration if you make money from music and file taxes on it.

[Jim Roseberry]

I also find marketing a bit odd, using strange terms that mean nothing to musicians
- object editing for one, what is it compared to just editing clips?

Isn't "object" the term Magix uses for "clips"?

That is what I think too, why use such an odd term for it?
- I never saw a good explanation for difference

Yes, "Object" is Magix-speak for "Clip".
Keep in mind that Samplitude 2496 had "Object" based editing decades ago.
At that time, it was revolutionary to have so much realtime/non-destructive control over each audio clip.
You could swap L/R channels, flip phase, static gain adjustment, fade in/out (including advanced tapers), apply 3rd-party plugins, etc.

Object/Clip based editing is extremely useful.
Let's say you have a vocal track with several obnoxious sibilants.
You can slice the vocal track to isolate the sibilant bits into separate Objects.
You can then apply De-Essing (or EQ) to just those sibilant Objects.
This solves the problem... and leaves the rest of the vocal track unaffected.
No need to move the Objects/Clips to a separate track (to apply the De-Essing or EQ).
All non-destructive... processed in realtime

Flash forward to today... and many DAWs offer realtime effects/processing per-Clip/Object.

Reaper's Item based editing is a direct spin-off (their take of the same functionality).
In Reaper, you can also control the playback rate of the Item (Clip/Object).
Handy for learning musical phrases and many other tasks.

Back in the day, I wrote the English User's Manual for Samplitude 2496.
This was when Titus and Tillman were still the developers (the creators of Samplitude).
Almost took a job in Santa Rosa working for the US Distributor (SEK'D America).
Absolutely loved Samplitude 2496.

When software/IP is sold to a different developer/staff, the new developer often doesn't have the same passion/fire. Once Magix took over, things (IMO) weren't the same.
The relationships I had were gone.
As other DAW applications progressed, the feature-gap closed.
I have Pro X5 Suite... but haven't updated (in large part due to the cost vs. new features).

[jens]

I think their target audience is companies, not single users. With companies, they just account the price as expenses. Why advertise here - do you know who is browsing this site, and why? Since Magix are doing it - they must be either clueless, or have lots of money to burn. Or it makes sense to them.

I was gonna say the same. Been a while since I've been a semi-pro musician, but cost of tools is a completely different consideration if you make money from music and file taxes on it.

That a) still wouldn't explain them advertising here, b) a huge part of their income is actually consumer stuff and c) as gaggle of hermits posted, they just filed for insolvency

Besides all that:

- no, actually it's the pros who think twice before purchasing something since each purchase has to be a well-considered business-decision, tax-deduction or not - there's no real place for GAS in business.

- Nuendo - and especially with V13 - has a lot more pro-post related features than Sequoia at - as I mentioned like twice - about half the cost of the latter with - far more substantial - updates costing roughly one fourth as compared to Sequoia. Especially for a smaller, potentially struggling business it's a huge difference if you have to pay 800 bucks or 200 bucks every two year to keep your/one of your main working-tool(s) current. And if you might use more than two machines the difference even becomes more exaggerated.

So no, they're just incompetent with their prices there - which is why Magix are fighting for survival and Steinberg are not.

And again: it's a downward spiral - less people use your stuff because they think it's too expensive and wander off to the competitors means less people spread the word, the significance of the tool gets vastly reduced, less inclination for the press to treat you as
more than just a sidenote and so forth. Which is exactly what happened. If you search for Samplitude and Sequoia over at Gearspace you get very little results. For Sequoia the first result Gearspace suggests is a thread (from Dezember 2023) titled "Magix Sequoia - why so expensive" which motivated only six replies.

By the way: I don't mean to say that their absurd pricing is the only reason for their insolvency or the only big mistake they made - far from it. But I think it's a big contributor to the mess they've become.

[whyterabbyt]

I have Pro X5 Suite... but haven't updated (in large part due to the cost vs. new features).

ditto.

[jens]

I also find marketing a bit odd, using strange terms that mean nothing to musicians
- object editing for one, what is it compared to just editing clips?

Isn't "object" the term Magix uses for "clips"?

That is what I think too, why use such an odd term for it?
- I never saw a good explanation for difference

Yes, "Object" is Magix-speak for "Clip".
Keep in mind that Samplitude 2496 had "Object" based editing decades ago.
At that time, it was revolutionary to have so much realtime/non-destructive control over each audio clip.
You could swap L/R channels, flip phase, static gain adjustment, fade in/out (including advanced tapers), apply 3rd-party plugins, etc.

Yes, but then a good two decades ago along came Tracktion which implemented the whole thing much more elegantly in a vastly more modern interface and overall elevated oo to a whole new level. And how long took it Magix then to make the object-editor dockeable?

[jens]

When software/IP is sold to a different developer/staff, the new developer often doesn't have the same passion/fire. Once Magix took over, things (IMO) weren't the same.
The relationships I had were gone.

Samplitude was never sold. Magix is still owned and run by the guys who first developed Samplitude and those who first marketed it.