Dave Modisette
 
Yup, that's part of my dilemma.  The full time studio guys will take what I would view as an insignificant feature update like track freeze and justify paying $600.00 for it.  Their logic (and I have to admit that for them it is sound) is that if that little feature saves them a couple of bucks worth of time per day, it pays for itself in a year.  Eeek, I'm pretty much disarmed at that point.

When I was actually in the commercial studio biz in the 70s and 80s, I noticed the "what-the-market-will-bear" syndrome. In those days you could buy, for example, a 31-band stereo graphic equalizer with -10 RCA connectors for $200. The same unit with +4 XLRs was $600. Because it was "professional." Flash forward to 2015 and you can see Avid doing something similar with their software. They would argue that their product is "professional" and thus should cost more. I think the difference today is that that the Avid advantage is quite tenuous. All they have going, really, is that they are in widespread use. They hope that people will use their product because people are using their product. If they push their users too far, a lot of people will start to notice that a PCM audio file is pretty much the same whether you make it in Pro Tools or Reaper or Sonar, and someone will mention that the Emperor has no clothes, and then Avid will sell Pro Tools and go back to marketing video editors, where the budgets are in the tens of millions and who cares if the editing suite costs $200k?
 
So I'm sticking with Sonar.

When the internet threatened newspapers, some of them cut their prices hoping to grow their customer bases. Others raised prices hoping to offset revenue losses due to attrition with increased revenue from loyal customers.
 
Either situation might have been the most profitable approach.
 
Ultimately, it played out that those that raised prices kept larger total revenues even though they had fewer customers.
 
To me, it looks like all the DAWs are taking this view. That some customers will be loyal and will pay the higher prices, but the customers that will leave for open source will not stay or adopt a DAW they must pay for even at 1/2 price or less.
 
So, as the cost of staying with a high-end private DAW goes up, you can expect that the number of people switching to Ubuntu Studio with their class compliant interfaces to climb.
 
The high-end studios could also switch to Linux at a large annual savings. One of the big hold-backs is the limited number of companies that license their VSTs for Linux. I have no idea why they don't. Like, why doesn't Cakewalk license the CA-2A for Linux?
 
As the number of users using Ubuntu Studio grows, the quality will grow too. So will the variety and options of add-ins.
 
Anyway, I think that the companies are positioning themselves. It might take 10 years, it might take 100, but eventually there will be serious open source alternatives.

gswitz
 Like, why doesn't Cakewalk license the CA-2A for Linux?
 

If I were to guess, the people I know that say they "prefer" or use Linux are more out of the mainstream, and almost kind of in their own computer world, for a lack of better words.  I won't use "cult", but something more like ....well...I can't think of another word/term at this time.
 
Any rate, I'd say we're talking 5% or less, of total users doing audio on computers.  That alone would make an easy decision not to bother.

AT
... SOS didn't send the bully boys to your house to clean out your bathroom reading stash.  You just didn't get any upgrades.

Emergency Corporate Meeting immediately! It's come to my attention that there's a whole 'nother level to this subscription thingie we seemed to have neglected. Put your heads together - I need a new model by noon today!