Quote:
Originally Posted by TweakHead
Yes, but why stop there? If we take a look at Universal Audio's offers, some of them are quite demanding as well. Simply because they can afford the luxury of using more complex code in their products that would otherwise be a nightmare to use for mixing purposes. Actually, I wonder why Universal Audio hasn't put out some synthesizers yet. But maybe they will if they pay attention to the market. I mean, most people these days are demanding more and more quality in their instruments. That's the sole reason analogue has returned - quality and interaction with the instrument of course. And all of that without making the cpu ask for mercy.
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I wondered about this as well. When something like the quad-core Apollo interface costs something like $3000 with the thunderbolt card, why not go ahead and turn it into a full-fledged instrument with synth plug-ins that run on it? Maybe they are headed in that direction. I guess they figured all the really good synth developers are already self-employed and creating their own VSTs, and that hiring someone mediocre to develop a synth just to say they have one in their product line up isn't going to result in top-notch brand recognition. Its only a theory but one possibility.
I've been thinking more about why nobody has made a more firm commitment/organization investment to audio on CUDA, and again I've come up with a possibility that would give me pause as a developer. It doesn't mean it's THE reason, it's just one that could be a showstopper: Basically if I, as a developer decide to invest heavily in CUDA (let's say I invest enough man hours learning their SDK, then developing a synth), I might end up spending something like 1000 man-hours, either my own labor or contracted out, to do so. That's a major investment of time, money or both. Nvidia drivers of course are always evolving, and getting updated. They do backward compatibility testing for games every time they do a driver update, but what's to say they are going to add my synth to the list of apps to test for backward compatibility when they do a new driver release? Probably not much at the current stage, because they are in the graphics business rather than the music business. For the type of investment it would take to develop the synth, I would need some level of assurance that they are not going to blow my synth out of the water with a single driver update, and honestly right now they are probably not going to be able to provide that to a synth company. Maybe a larger company could form some sort of partnership with them and get it done, but it would be a very risky move for a small developer to invest so much only to have their eggs in one basket.
The good thing about dedicated audio hardware is that if you've got a stable setup, there's usually nothing pressing that says you must install every update for every piece of software as it comes out, and there's really nothing about the standard automatic Windows or OSX updates that is going to make core changes to the way audio is handled at the kernel level, or something else that could affect code at a higher layer up like the VST API. That's the beauty of the VST API, it is designed for audio technology, thus very conducive to creating synths. From what I hear about CUDA, not so much in its current form. Also, most people will update their graphics drivers regularly just as a matter of maintenance, and would not think about the possible impact to their music setup of updating a newer driver, then having all their synths go tits up or whatever.