The thing i don't think AVID understands is good business sense, to some extent i do think their DAW is overpriced. If they want to sell more of the standalone version of the DAW they need to bring the price down. Currently at their website, to buy the standalone version is $800. Also, to get a full suite of plugins that will make it equivalent to Sonar or Cubase the customer would need to fork-out extra to get a supplementary plugin suite, made by AVID.
 
I know a Chinese restaurant down the road that charges a few dollars less for the same type of meal, they are going for the mass-market; the meals are $7 as opposed to $10 everywhere else, guess what, you can't get in there from eleven in the morning till 2 in the afternoon, the line is too long and there are no seats available, i think that says it all. Business' can demand their price, say they have the right to charge what they will, but the man down the road giving slightly more for less and of the same quality is gonna get ten times more business, i have seen this time and again everywhere. Maybe AVID should stop being driven by fear and snobbery and drop their price and include the supplementary plugin pack as standard, then i suppose their sales would go through the roof, and apparently money is what they need right now.
 
Anyhow, i surmise that Gibson is gonna kick-ass with X4, and Steinberg doesn't seem to wanna lose their popularity, so Cubase 8 should be very interesting; modern musicians have high-expectations and these DAW makers can't afford to let us down in this competitive market, so i say that's good for us. Really, i think if AVID brought their price down for the standalone version to $499 with a full plugin suite, that would be dangerous, but they seem to think otherwise even though they are apparently cash-strapped. Sonar comes with Melodyne for god's sake, pretty hard to beat that! Phenomenal value for money with Sonar, keep up the good work Gibson, i hope there are many more surprises with X4 including user-interface refinements aiming at simplifying.