Synapse Orion DAW being discontinued after latest public beta 8.6!?

[Touch The Universe]

Richard more or less has stated this on the forums at synapse audio! For those of you that love Orion I highly suggest dropping by that forum and asking Richard to keep on developing Orion. Here is the quote posted today January 14, 2015.

Guys when is orion coming out??? An update or something ?

We're not developing Orion "as it is" beyond version 8.6, so that's the last update for now. There is far too little interest in Orion (from legit users anyway). We have a magnitude more plugin users than Orion users, and those users demand updates/bugfixes/future developments as well. As professional developers we can't afford to ignore 95% of our userbase in favor of the 5% or less using Orion. Of course that sucks since we love Orion and use it every single day, but we have to accept the reality as it is, not as we'd like it to be.

Note that we do have plans for a new sequencer, but that'll take quite some time for sure.

Please by all means let's try to convince Richard to keep developing the DAW in one form or another in the future! If all else fails, maybe keep it alive as an open source project. Anyone interested and have the skillset to do so?

[Kriminal]

Dont waste your time. Orions makes no money, his plugins do make money. Simple maths.

[Burillo]

someone in another thread said Image Line bought Orion?

[firepile]

someone in another thread said Image Line bought Orion?

Why would they?

[deastman]

This is unfortunate, but not surprising. Development has been at a snail's pace for years now. I gave up on it a long time ago.

[chk071]

Dont waste your time. Orions makes no money, his plugins do make money. Simple maths.

Yeah, i think it's a good decision to focus on plugins, if that's where the money is. A shame of course for Orion users, but that's how it is i guess...

[VitaminD]

This is unfortunate, but not surprising. Development has been at a snail's pace for years now. I gave up on it a long time ago.

Well Richard seemed to have abandoned Orion since the release of 8.5 some 3 or 4 years ago. There were no official releases beyond then.

It seemed, even before then, there was a massive amount of poor thought-out advice provided in the forums to him on what to develop in Orion. And there was, I think, way too much on his plate without expanding the developer count on his products (to match other DAW options).

Then he stopped working on it and, instead, picked up on Dune. So of course Orion is going to shrink in userbase! You don't leave official releases for 4 years and expect the user base to grow.

Developers have a relationship with their product's user base in the updating and support of their products. If you don't keep the fire hot, they will find someone else to keep them warm.

I left for Cubase in late 2013 after waiting for simple things like MIDI plugins to function properly (only recently fixed in the latest beta after 4 years of waiting). There was just a strong apathy shown (from my PoV outside) by Synapse Audio towards Orion that told me I needed to go elsewhere. I am quite happy with Cubase though.

Dune is really nice though. And I wish them all the best with it!

[cuppa]

A shame for those that invested the money, latest updates sucked, they changed some of the basic piano roll actions and they ended up being worse than they initially were, lasso/pen doesn't work, there are problems with zooming, opening patterns in playlist, etc, etc...they basically messed up Orion at one point.
I find it a bit shocking that we were promised lots of updates upon release of 8.5 and eventually NOTHING happened, leaves a sour taste.
Oth, some much stuff is missing in there now that we are used to using in other DAWS nowadays.

I moved on to Reaper, but still use Orion to finish songs that I started in there.
Definitely not a nice ending...my confidence in Synapse was severly damaged by the slow development, this only confirms what we thought...

[cuppa]

This is unfortunate, but not surprising. Development has been at a snail's pace for years now. I gave up on it a long time ago.

Well Richard seemed to have abandoned Orion since the release of 8.5 some 3 or 4 years ago. There were no official releases beyond then.

It seemed, even before then, there was a massive amount of poor thought-out advice provided in the forums to him on what to develop in Orion. And there was, I think, way too much on his plate without expanding the developer count on his products (to match other DAW options).

Then he stopped working on it and, instead, picked up on Dune. So of course Orion is going to shrink in userbase! You don't leave official releases for 4 years and expect the user base to grow.

Developers have a relationship with their product's user base in the updating and support of their products. If you don't keep the fire hot, they will find someone else to keep them warm.

I left for Cubase in late 2013 after waiting for simple things like MIDI plugins to function properly (only recently fixed in the latest beta after 4 years of waiting). There was just a strong apathy shown (from my PoV outside) by Synapse Audio towards Orion that told me I needed to go elsewhere. I am quite happy with Cubase though.

Dune is really nice though. And I wish them all the best with it!

INDEED!!!!

[aMUSEd]

But will nobody think of poor Bones!?

[cryophonik]

I've always thought that Orion looked like a pretty cool DAW, but I've never owned it. Richard's decision seems to make good business sense. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that, unless you're one of the major players in the DAW market, it's a lot of work with little profit to be made. Soft synths and effects are easier to sell to a wide market, so it makes sense to put your resources there. Sucks for existing Orion users, though.

[Kriminal]

But will nobody think of poor Bones!?

He still happily uses Orion Pro V2.1 on a Win98 laptop.

[LawrenceF]

Sorry to hear that.

Otoh, he's not dead and talks about making a new sequencer so... it's all good. Maybe the next one will be even better and more importantly, more profitable for him. It was probably even more frustrating for him to see sales dwindling while at the same time seeing it out there cracked or whatever (which his quote kinda suggested).

There is far too little interest in Orion (from legit users anyway).

I wish him the best.

[Kriminal]

It seemed, even before then, there was a massive amount of poor thought-out advice provided in the forums to him on what to develop in Orion.

You mean user requests? Rich ignores 99% of those, he has always had his own ideas/plans for how orion should go on...

Then he stopped working on it and, instead, picked up on Dune. So of course Orion is going to shrink in userbase! You don't leave official releases for 4 years and expect the user base to grow.

Rich had a couple of drop-outs (in the V7 era...?) and orion fell a long way behind and out of ppls minds...pretty much impossible to stay in the game after such long breaks

these days he sells a lot of Re's and D2 seems to be doing well, so it should come as no shock that orion is going nowhere...got to pay the bills

[ponce]

Still using Orion and I find it great, always liked how the things were laid out. I tried and couldn't move to Reaper which feels less easy in comparison. Maybe familiarity alone.
It was completely expected with today's competition in DAWs and I wish Richard the best of luck with Dune.