I think it's just competition stoking the flames of competition because if they didn't, sales would stagnate and profits diminish. Music software companies are quite happy that the market for music software continues to grow, and that new users, if not lifetime users, are being born every day. And the hardware companies that managed to survive the success of the software companies have created hardware solutions to complement the software. Indeed, many hardware companies have created their own software products.eduardo_b wrote:I actually think this is what determines the product cycles -- coming up with ideas "big" enough to use in marketing for another round of upgrades. Packing DAWs with instruments, samples and other paraphernalia, plus adding "features" that not even 5 percent of customers will use or care about, is what happens when products mature and the revenue streams begins to cool.Beazlebug wrote:at some point surely someone one at Steinberg, Cakewalk or whereever will have to admit that there nothing left to add. Audio production software can't indefinitely be improved can it? In the end it's just chucking unnecessary stuff in there (a new synth, effect etc)
What I think I am seeing is a proliferation of less expensive versions with the stuff people really do use at least 80 percent of the time. I'm guessing the profit margin is lower, but the price points are much more attractive to buyers who aren't going to spend $400 for a host. Of course, there are always some who disparage these versions. "Who can create music with only 24 or 32 tracks?" They'd be surprised.
Folks are always moaning about how contemporary music sucks, but part of that is due to the mentality that many DAW owners see themselves as producers. How many of them are musicians, and how many know how to work with other musicians? Very few, relatively speaking. They have their bass plugins, but do they know how to play bass or anything beyond the requirements of a house tune? Few do, and even though the argument might be that knowing how to play house music basslines is all that one needs to know how to do, it says very little, and quite a lot, about a person's musicianship. Yet folks are cranking out tracks where they play everything, where playing the oud seems possible because there's a sample library for that. (Just don't ask a professional oud player for his or her opinion.) In other words, musicianship is less of a requirement than it used to be because many people are learning that musicianship is not important. Hey, and if you can't play anything well, just make droning, burbly, granulated noises with some semblance of a beat, or no beat at all. There is an audience for that, even if it is made up of just yourself.
How does this relate to Reaper and DAWs in general? An important reason why 4-tracks were popular was because one didn't need an engineering degree in order to make multitrack recordings. Instead of bouncing tracks from one cassette player to another, like I did before getting a 4-track, one had four free tracks - enough to record a four-piece ensemble with much less tape noise. Making music at that time still depended very much on working with other musicians, but MIDI machines were already established and linking them with desktop computers was catching on very fast. Now it's all about distractions. Live distracts from Digital Performer which distracts from Logic which distracts from Cubase which distracts from Reaper which, like ProTools, distracts from all of the above and everything else.
Distraction is what sells. You need this function, that feature, this doohickey, you need all of these things which at one time didn't even exist! Yet the basic functions to record music - music of any kind - can, with little effort, be found for free for any computer platform. Basic and advanced timesaving features that improved over professional analog recording systems, and manual editing systems, are available in free DAWs and their low cost counterparts. No DAW has everything, and analog systems had much, much less. Back in the day, a person involved in audio productions didn't try to do everything alone, like many, many people attempt to do today. Though, today's seasoned professionals seem to know better -- mostly.
But that leaves everybody else, claiming a need for this, that, and your grandpa's 1965 Chevy Chevelle SS Malibu Covertible. So, what do you expect the major DAW companies to do? Of course, they are going to sell you your dreams, and they are going to tell you that it's the best, most innovative feature that the universe has ever witnessed, even if it's just a hot air balloon full of donkey poo. And - what do you do? You fall for it. You eat it all up, spending all the money that have and don't have. And if you don't have any money or anybody else's money or money that doesn't exist until you spend it, you descend into a private, perhaps public at times, little Hell of your own making. That's what you do. And those companies keep on torturing you by cranking out the shit that you say you need when you have everything that you really need to make audio recordings right at your fingertips; with plenty to choose from without having to spend your grandpa's last Winged Liberty Head dime.
Some folks complain endlessly about about features that they love and hate, but which hardly anybody else really cares about, and folks complain about everything else, too! Demand after demand are met by DAW companies, large and small, yet the needs of the many are never met. Never! "IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT TO ADD?" Bet your ass that there is. As long as companies keep cranking it out, as long as you are never satisfied with what you have or with what anybody else has, and you continue to dream of the "perfect" system and let the whole wide world know about it...... and as long as you can create money simply by spending it before it even exists -- you would do well to bet your ass that companies will continue to add things called "features" to their existing, and future, DAW products. You will live a long, long time if you bet your ass on that certainty.
The more important question is: Will you make better music knowing that you have all of that stuff at your disposal? If you are not making good recordings by now, recordings that you are satisfied with, regardless of features that your DAW has or doesn't have, what the hell are you doing with your time on this Earth anyway? Shouldn't you be doing something else that doesn't demand so much of you before you even make the slightest, self-satisfied, bit-crushed bleep?
. I would not want to persuade anyone to be happy about exactly that, too. It's just superb that it exists.
