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

[jens]

They're not really very popular these days - neither here, nor over on Gearslutz or anywhere else for that matter.

I purchased Samplitude X3 Suite back in the day while it was heavily discounted. Then X4 came out and the upgrade fee was outrageous so there was no way I'd have upgraded. I kept looking at X5, X6, X7 and X8 and the hundreds of offers to upgrade they must have sent me over the years and it never seemed worthwhile to me - but fast-forward to BF 2023 and again the whole Suite was so heavily discounted that I finally bit and instead of upgrading ended up purchasing the Suite again. (I wanted to upgrade Sepctralayers anyway during BF.) The product itself meanwhile has become really good by the way - but nobody noticed.

Had they asked a reasonable amount of money for it, I would doubtlessly have upgraded to X4-X8 and they'd have made more money from me that way.

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.

[jjpscott01]

I agree. I had X2 years ago and ending up getting the new X8 for a killer upgrade deal. Its such a feature rich fantastic DAW but man they need a new marketing team. Samplitude Pro X is so refined and powerful but no one even notices they exist anymore. They really need someone to focus on marketing just good of a software it is. There is almost zero tutorials out there about the software and what Magix themselves puts out during release schedules feel like they were created with a cheap AI program.

[jens]

Yes, in regards to video tutorials there's basically only Kraznet and this weird Quebecer... and most of their stuff is age-old. For the most part of it Samplitude and Sequoia basically just fell of the face of the earth within the last decade - adn I don't think the applications themselves are to blame.

I think the main cause is just that their prices are absolutely insane.

[paradiddle]

Hi Jens, it is exactly the same for me. I bought x3 also heavily discounted and I have not updated it since cuz I though the updates were not justifying the asking price and very much lackluster. I also have soundforge and vegas but there are some deal breaking bugs for me that they never fixed so I pretty much dump Vegas and the only one I still use a bit is soundforge. My other main issues is the way they offer upgrades which don't seem to account for all the other products you already have.

[kritikon]

TBH I didn't even know they were still going. Thought they'd gone the way of the dodo years ago...and at 1800 Euro it's a miracle they haven't.

[VOODOO U]

Sequoia comes with Steinberg Spectralayers. Sound Forge and Melodyne essentials so that may be the reason for the high cost.
Plus the DAW sounds better than other DAWs.

[Dionysos]

The explanation is fairly simple. Pro Audio is barely relevant to the company's bottom line. Music Maker is their Money Maker.

[jens]

The explanation is fairly simple. Pro Audio is barely relevant to the company's bottom line. Music Maker is their Money Maker.

But why then advertize it a lot here? That was my point.

[lfm]

I have an Pro X2 from long ago and looked at Pro X8 a couple of months ago.
- upgrade price was attractive

Asked about if prepared for hidpi, it wasn't.
- but mentioned that it could be fixed with another theme
- but did not provide one

So if current monitors go south and getting new ones most likely will be 4k, did not want to invest in a dead end street.

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?

And there were a table you had to look at to decide which method of realtime monitoring to use.

As I recall it was a bit cumbersome doing effect busses and had to deal with patch points and stuff.

But abandon X2 was mainly that VST3 Waves stuff crashed it all the time. I could not even use Waves Element synth.
- a while later even Waves removed VST3 compatible, and just VST
- they had long remote sessions on my computer trying to figure it out

The post production tools Sequoia and Nuendo etc seems to in general be real high priced compared to just daw stuff like Samplitude and Cubase.
- the market is probably not price sensitive is my explanation

[KBSoundSmith]

I had jumped on Samplitude Pro X to replace Cubase when I was traveling a lot (afraid to break dongle). At the time, the object editor didn't really have competition and few hosts other than Samplitude had in-line bouncing and object freezing, if I recall. Then I upgraded to Pro X3 suite.

I actually still have a soft spot for Samplitude, however I haven't upgraded since X3. Reason being is that it was clear even then that Steinberg wanted to pull the plug on VST2, but Samplitude wasn't playing well with VST3 (any info on whether or not x8 is okay with VST3? Haven't heard anything has changed in that regard elsewhere). Additionally, while the Soundforge/Spectralayers bundle was enticing, Spectralayers almost immediately got shifted to Steinberg. Soundforge, if I recall, has pretty much only undergone GUI changes (becoming as ugly and depressing as Samplitude's GUI, which makes even Reaper's default attractive by comparison). They also picked up Acid, etc.

Additionally, I found that managing user accounts, licenses, Magix forums, etc a confusing mess because they'd switch around how it all was configured, so you never knew which of your accounts or passwords you needed to access anything. One time I needed my license account to download files, another time my forum account to download the same files... their backend became a minefield of user accounts, misplaced account and license info, etc.

I eventually got the feeling it was safer to abandon ship, because it seemed to me that the company had no direction in their product portfolio, no development plan, and that their IT were using shotguns rather screwdrivers.

I'm sure X8 has plenty of good stuff in it, but I'm a bit hesitant to invest anymore in Magix for the reasons I've mentioned. I used Studio One Artist for a bit (came free with audio interface replacement) which was pretty nice for composition, but I've recently picked up Reaper to become my primary DAW, as it has a number of Samplitude-like features I appreciate (plus lots of customization).

EDIT: To add, Pro X3 had some instability with some of Samplitude's own plugins. I'd get crashes when trying to use the Analog Modelling Suite. Wasn't very reassuring. Still, I liked Samplitude, so if they get themselves straightened out, I'd still be willing to consider upgrading at some point.

[VOODOO U]

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"?

[VOODOO U]

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.

[jens]

The post production tools Sequoia and Nuendo etc seems to in general be real high priced compared to just daw stuff like Samplitude and Cubase.
- the market is probably not price sensitive is my explanation

Since Sequoia is almost 2x the price of Nuendo (and even more that 2x if one crossgrades from another DAW which I for example would qualify 5x for) and updates are even almost 4x the price of Nuendo updates - albeit they add a lot less - I have absolutely no idea what you might mean to say here. I even explicitly mentioned Nuendo in my OP.

[Medenka]

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.

[lotus2035]

I'm waiting for them to sell Acid Pro on humble bundle for 20 bucks. Was first DAW I dabbled with way back in the 1900s.