The once and future DAW

Just for the sake of discussion suppose this guy is right.

http://www.zdnet.com/cloud-haters-you-too-will-be-assimilated-7000012059/?s_cid=e539


Note that he thinks the gaming computer will be dead (too small a market) and only specialized "legacy" applications will be available for such things as video editing (he does not say what kind of machine such apps would run on) and of course he does not even mention audio applications.

If he is right, the era of affordable up to date audio processing may be ending in our lifetime. Will we be returning to the days when studios have $100 K purpose built audio editing hardware?

Can Sonar be ported to the smartphone?

I don't think renting/leasing software/hardware will become the norm. It costs too much. Sure, you get the run the latest stuff, but you're forced to upgrade every month/year, etc. I know for a fact there are still people out there running Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 because it does what they want and they don't need anything more.

So we may see more cloud services offered, but I don't see everyone making the conversion. Unless of course, companies eventually decide to stop providing products for sale and everyone is forced to move to the cloud.

No one really knows what the future holds...

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com - SONAR X2 Power! - http://garrigus.com/?SonarX2Power
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

I think the idea of storing data on the cloud is mainly for small devices of today. I believe that storage technology will continue to evolve and the notion of needing to store anything on a "cloud" will be a need in search of a purpose.  

John


I think the idea of storing data on the cloud is mainly for small devices of today. I believe that storage technology will continue to evolve and the notion of needing to store anything on a "cloud" will be a need in search of a purpose.  

I think the point of the article is not that storage will move to the cloud (as it already has) in order to accommodate the deliberate shrinking of storage in mobile devices, but that computation, i. e. the running of programs themselves, will be done on distant servers. The latency problem this poses for audio processing of the type we now do on our PC's with Sonar etc.are probably insurmountable. Although the rapidity of data transmission measured as bandwidth (total number of MB moved per second) will undoubtedly increase with time, the delay from first byte send to first byte arrival and return time is less amenable to improvement. It is that "travel" time that currently complicates real time audio coordination, like having an orchestra of performers in different cities play together.

This is not new technology it is old technology applied in a new way. Remote computing is a very old concept. And as for running programs remotely nothing new there either. Anyone remember terminals? I for one do not want to return to that way of doing things. 

The battle between the cloud and the desktop has been going on for a long time and will likely continue until the end of time. The winning side at the end of each day will be the one with the latest technology.

Once upon a time there was a mainframe and dumb terminals. That was when everything was in the ancient cloud. Then mini computers came along and processing moved to smaller clouds. After that came the PC’s and the processing power moved to the desktop. The cloud was dead.

But then the internet was born and the cloud was reborn. The masses moved back into the new cloud and everyone jumped on the smart terminal (dumb PC) bandwagon. But bandwidth issues were a problem and the cloud couldn’t keep up with the new power hungry applications. Soon more powerful desktops processors became available and the pendulum to swung back to the desktop.

Then we get broadband, server farms and cheap storage and back to the cloud we go. Next, server class processors showed up in desktops and cheap flat panel screens became wide spread and back to the desktop again. Now we have quad core mobile phones with ever increasing screen resolutions and sizes paired with WiFi and 4G networks so guess where we go now?

There will be no end so just go with the flow and use whatever works for the task at hand. So to answer the OP’s question “Can Sonar be ported to the smartphone?” … Yes and someday your audio gear will all be connected to the cloud.  You will be recording, mixing and mastering a live multi-user recording session with musicians across the planet and doing it all on your phone … or desktop … or the chips implanted in your head.

slartabartfast

 i. e. the running of programs themselves, will be done on distant servers. 

Good thing I saved all my monochrome monitors. Like bell bottoms and polyester shirts, I knew they'd make a come back in a big way.

I don't think that cloud services has to mean that computation will be done elsewhere necessarily nor that we'll opt to store our data in the cloud rather than locally.  I think these are two extremes that, as others have pointed out, been done before and are not new ideas.

Instead I think we might find that cloud services make things seem more seamless.  The reason for the cloud services won't be too provide more power and storage, because we already have plenty of that in our local environments.  It'll make some things more convenient in the way we are already seeing: the automatic sharing of files (DropBox), development (open source), licenses (waves), software patches and downloads, etc.

But there are more interesting ideas such as having people share a creative session, perhaps jamming or mixing from remote locations, where your local resources are combined with those in the cloud to enable a more seamless experience despite the distance.

If any of you have experienced Netflix on multiple devices then you may already be aware that you can start watching a movie on your TV at home, and then if you get interrupted, finish watch it later on your tablet from the precise moment where you left off.  Same goes for reading a book with Kindle.  Apple has done some cool things in this area, and I know we all like to bash them, but if you operated in their environment, without bias, and fully using multiple hardware devices in a earless manner....well, some of it is cool and well thought out.

But as I mentioned above in my first comment.  The ability to create any time, anywhere, on multiple devices and platforms without having to stop and think about importing or exporting or whatever is the most exciting and applicable to what we do.  There are many steps and pitfalls with what we do that could be taken care of, and done better, perhaps in such a way that we won't even realize it...

This quote from the article shows why software companies may be tempted, and It one positive in what for me is mostly a depressing article.

"That's if you honor things like End-User License Agreements and you don't take that copy and install it on, say, 10 more PCs, or you never bought the software in the first place and are using pirated license keys.
If you're one of those people, then all I have to say is that you're just going to have to pay for your software like everyone else."

I do see a threat to "cheap" high powered workstations as more an more people move to tablets, smartphones and other junk to do their facebook, email, micro-blogging and the odd word document, those who need a dedicated powerful computer will have to pay more as components become more and more specalist, and up will go the price.

Moves by the likes of Amazon and iTunes to move music onto the cloud are worrying. I can access my complete music collection on my 80GB iPod classic when work takes me to remote locations in countrys with limited infrastructure.

So I was reading an article about Dell, which pointed out that the company is doing very poorly indeed selling laptops and desktops. But then again so is everyone. And it became clear to me why.

Computers are cheap enough so that:

1. Almost everyone who needs a computer already has one.

Cheap computers are powerful enough so that:

2. Almost everyone who has a computer has enough power to run the software he needs.

And computers are doing so many things that are not actually "computing" that

3. Almost everyone who has a computer does not need one.

What most people need is a web appliance, or a smart phone.

The market for computers has been massively inflated by the fact that until fairly recently, that is what people had to use to update their facebook page, check their email and watch videos and download music.

People using a computer for truly productive work, have been a progressively diminishing slice of the PC market for decades now. 

That does not bode well for the future of high end but still affordable PC's.

If we had 50gbs consumer bandwidth, with multiple competitive providers in each local market nationwide, then I'd be more inclined to think things would develop as the article suggests.

For audio, we've lost a technology-generational change that I would have preferred--graduating to ubiquitous HD audio (I would call that 96/24 or 192/32, not 'Superaudio'), instead of degrading to MP3 and YouTube-platform compression.

As far as the mass markets for music go, I'm in a tiny minority there, as the current state of affairs demonstrates all too clearly.