[linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer

Marek Peteraj marpet at naex.sk
Thu Dec 2 13:00:59 UTC 2004


On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 03:49, Paul Davis wrote:
> >Oh sure they can, as it was the case with iriver.
> >2 years ago their forums were full of hatefilled msgs just because
> >people demanded ogg vorbis and were ignored.(or at least it seemed so,
> >no response from iriver).
> 
> there's no proof that it was hate-filled messages that convinced
> iriver of anything. there were plenty of behind-the-scenes and on-list
> messages that were not full of invective.

Have you read all msgs? Because i did. 80% of those were. The former CEO
of Xiph, Emmett Plant went pretty rough on them. 

That said, i think it's a waste of time to argue about whether to be
polite or not and teach morals to each other. Let's respect each others
attitude. 
I bought a fireface, feel angry and the only thing that comes to mind is
FY. You and others haven't bought one although you mihgt want in the
future and think it's better to say 'Please could you relaese/reconsider
etc' I don't think that works, but it's my opinion. Whether or not, the
point is...

If 50 persons say "Please would you be so kind ..."
And another 50 say FY, in the end it's the number that counts. 100
(potential) customers. Each one of use is responsioble for his *own*
statements.

In such cases it's important to take *action*. 

> 
> >>  all we can say is that they
> >> have a different perspective on the world than we do. 
> >
> >Paul, honestly. I can't explain why they haven't even *tried* to install
> >linux with jack and ardour. If i were them i'd at *least* track the
> 
> You have inadequate knowledge of the history here Marek. RME were
> actually very keen on demoing Ardour 4 years ago! 

Paul, let's be honest. IIRC 4 years ago, it was almost impossible to
compile ardour, there was no non-desctructive, non-linear editing
present, no jack(perhaps its forerunner called audioengine), no
peakcache and such. Today ardour even handles latency compensation of
plugins(AFAIK available for the first time in PT 6.3!). Not that ardour
is finished *but*...

That said, it would be stupid to demo ardour at a trade show 4 years
ago. It definitely would *not* be stupid to do so now. 

> They wanted to show
> it at trade shows. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure why
> they might be less inclined to spend time on it these days.

Let me guess. They have to deface their units in order to sell a few of
them with steinberg software while they're not the only ones doing
so(i.e. there are more such companies providing "steinberg" hardware
ready to be bundled with steinberg sw products)?

And the result?

Nuendo - ~1200Euro
Fireface ~1300Euro

Digi002+ProTools - ~1200Euro.

What would you buy if you had a mac?

Oh and btw, we talked to Mr. Carstens at the musikmesse this year, me
and Benno. Basically he was *yawning* while listening to our arguments.

> 
> >can't do otherwise ;) And in such case, they'd probably deliver an alsa
> >driver for fireface, fireface2, whatever themselves pretty quickly.
> >And i'd be also interested in how many units were sold due to alsa.If i
> >were them. If i were them i'd want every customer no matter what. 
> 
> You continue to ignore the perfectly understandable (not necessarily
> correct, but understandable) concern that "every customer no matter
> what" doesn't deal with the fact that an open source driver might, for
> the fireface, make copycat technology (from behringer or wherever) so
> much easier to implement that there would be a net loss of customers.

You're unwillingly or even unknowingly accusing ALSA of being a cause
for hardware rip-offs. Note, there are 15(!) products listed in alsa
matrix as supported.  Did this happen *once*?

Let me reiterate.

1. the audio market is about to be flooded with firewire interfaces
(presonus, mackie, apogee, maudio, echo, TC, edirol, digidesign, motu,
terratec, metric halo, egosys, tascam.... ) and they will all deliver
outstanding performance (at least that's what they claim ;) Note that
RME has dominated the linux audio market for pro audio hw along with a
lot cheaper maudio alternatives.
2. *All* of the companies listed above in brackets have hired very
skilled people to do the job and as a result each and every product will
talk to the pc in a different way, each will cripple OHCI or whatever
protocol in a different way in order to achieve better results, and each
will introduce different problems to its users. In an ideal world, with
everything opensourced, they would all just work together on a
audio-over-ieee1394 standard, achieving much better results.

That said, it's not and will *never* be understandable to me. Never.

> 
> Yes, they can't prove that it will, and you can't prove that it
> won't. So there's nothing more to say there.

See above. I think it's time to open our eyes. Not to mention that the
number of sold rme and maudio units could be a few hundreds by now, in
return for 3 donated units.

> 
> >There's them, companies striving for higher revenues. There's us, paying
> >customers.
> 
> Paying customers who will gladly pay less for the same technology.

And paying customers who will gladly pay more for higher quality.

Same technology as in? 24/192? 3ms unguaranteed latency?

> So
> if a company takes steps that lead to other company's being able to
> offer the same for less, they might regret those steps. Its never as
> simple as black+white, yes+no, true+false.

Let's compare that with an automobile ;)

Say you've got 2 cars which offer the same convenience and power.
One of them is say Daewoo for a pretty low price(no doubt it's good
quality) and one of them is Mercedes for 6x as much $ or more.

Who will sell more? 

You'd be surprised.

Talking about jing jang. In the digital world it all comes down to
true/false.  So it's not as simple as 'not as simple as' ;)

> 
> Oh, and for the record, I purchased my own digi9652, was given an
> updated digi9652, along with an hdsp PCI card and digiface, and i
> later purchased my own pcmcia interface. I also get dealer pricing on
> RME equipment. 

So right now, it seems that you can forget about dealer pricing with
respect to the future. And if i were them, i'd surely provide you with
those cards you've purchased. Be sure about that. It's what i call
decorum.

Marek





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