31 Oct
2002
31 Oct
'02
7:15 p.m.
at what point
do you expect Digidesign TDM plugins
to fall by the wayside?
DigiDesign may be the special case here, assuming that
Avid stays independent -- the ProTools business model
offers them refuge from consolidation forces, being
hardware-restricted and embraced by the high end. Avid's market cap is 370M -- an order of magnitude
higher than what Apple paid for Emagic, but still
digestable for the likely suitors (Microsoft and
Adobe).
the anti-trust implications of MS owning Avid are interesting.
the other important angle to a standardized plugin API are the designs
being poured in silicon (particularly Universal Audio). people will
heavy DSP loads but a committment to "native" platforms find these
things quite attractive, and it may require a complete re-engineering
of these add-on hardware units at some level (probably not that hard,
though).
--p