Which indies should CW bring on board?

ORIGINAL: wrench45us
Now if Cakewalk would just take my humble advice and bring on Big Tick and Urs and make a cooperative warm and welcoming flexible partnership agreements with the cream of the independent synth makers to join Rene in some loose Federation, well that would further define what a softsynth workstation might be.
As to mastering tools, Cakewalk does sell the Voxengo tools through their online service. I think it could do the same thing (as a humble 1st step) for other independent synth and fx makers.

So, what independent developers do you think CW should bring on board?

Big Tick is probably redundant with René, at this point. LinPlug is also probably redundant with René, now, too.

Now that Adobe snagged iZotope (at least as a partner), that leaves Voxengo for mastering stuff. Or Kjærhus would be another good mix (a-hem). Or perhaps Wave Arts. reFX actually wouldn't be a bad choice, though maybe too low-brow? I think it would work - Cake doesn't need to sell only premium instruments, and reFX quality is professional grade. Urs is another good choice. CamelSpace, too, perhaps.

The Cakewalk site now sells the Camel line of products, space, phat, The Camelon 5000 is up and Voxengo bundels as well. Now when you think about it, A partnership with Cakewalk like this is not a bad idea, I still drool over the Voxengo line.

As well I have interest in the Kjaerhus Spectra synth. And they have just released a new super limiter. Killer quality? I've had the impression they do have that level.

what independent developers

Well, they're not exactly Indie anymore, but I'm thinking Laurent de Soras (from OhmForce) or Juan Antonio Arguelles Rius (AKA Arguru) would make for interesting sparring partners with René's genius. Of course, this is just fantasy: they may all hate each other's guts in real life!

Well, that would depend on weather they could be team players. Some guys cannot function as a part of a team. The lone wolf type. Others can and do colaborate well to achieve goals and to pull together for a common good. But the key word here is fantasy. I don't think anyone's going to enter into contractual agreements unless they feel confident of the outcome. Then again the real world does tend to shread any vestage of a preconcieved notion we can or would hold.

ORIGINAL: oroboros
reFX actually wouldn't be a bad choice, though maybe too low-brow? I think it would work - Cake doesn't need to sell only premium instruments, and reFX quality is professional grade.

I can't imagine that at all. Lowbrow is not the word, it's more that I don't think they want to go after someone best known for SID and CZ emulations.

I was thinking more in terms of Vanguard, which is still considered one of the better electronica synths out there. Or Slayer, which isn't half bad for what it tries to be.

You seem to be ignoring nPulse, DS864, and the Roland Groove Synth within P5, DX-10, Wasp and Simsynth from ImageLine, and last and certainly not least, Dreamstation, all featured on Cakewalk's site as business partners of one form or another. Considering this pedigree, I don't thing the reFX line is all that out of place.

First off, if you consider Big Tick and LinPlug redundant with Cakewalk's offerings, I don't see how Vanguard is not. OTOH Slayer is kind of cool.

You seem to be ignoring nPulse, DS864, and the Roland Groove Synth within P5, DX-10, Wasp and Simsynth from ImageLine, and last and certainly not least, Dreamstation, all featured on Cakewalk's site as business partners of one form or another. Considering this pedigree, I don't thing the reFX line is all that out of place.

When I go to the instruments page, http://store.cakewalk.com/pf.asp?id=20, I only see one synth that isn't CW/rgc is Cameleon 5000. There are links to Image Line and Dream Station, but they are harder to find and a bit old - they list Sonar 2.0 as a current DXi host.

This tells me that they are trying to go more upscale in the products that they want to partner themselves with.

I was thinking more of Vanguard as a mid-range synth, as opposed to the high-end synths Cakewalk has already released. Plus Vanguard already has an established name, whereas LinPlug's is no longer selling the famous Albino. Rhino and LinPlug's high-end stuff seems to overlap too much with René's current generation stuff, both in terms of price and functionality, especially Rhino and Octopus. Even though I like it a lot, Rhino's got a lot of overlap with Rapture now. And no one has anything as well polished as Slayer out there at the moment. The mid-range LinPlug stuff, perhaps, especially the drum samplers, unless Cake is working on their own. The problem with LinPlug and Big Tick is that their high-end stuff is too similar to Cake's current synths, whereas reFX doesn't really have high-end stuff, and thus would fit more cleanly into a "mid-range line" with little overlap to Cake's current line.

I couldn't care less about SID or CZ, nor do I consider reFX to be best known for these two synths at all - Vanguard has an almost mythic static amongst some trance artists, and definitely doesn't qualify as "Lowbrow is not the word". Not best-of-the-best, perhaps, but not terrible quality, as you seem to suggest, either. As stated, my assumption with reFX was in Cakewalk not selling only premium synths ("Cake doesn't need to sell only premium instruments") - thus Vanguard and Slayer perhaps in the mid-range market, along with the currenlty listed Pentagon.

As for the "premium" trend of Cakewalk lately, perhaps true, but that wasn't your original question, and it still doesn't explain the newly added Roland Groove Synth to P5. Cake needs some mid-range stuff too - such as perhaps reFX's stuff - as free additions for their current line. Like the PSYN, for example. I think a tag-line such as "P5v3 now includes the Vanguard synth" would definitley help boost sales, especially as P5 is supposedly marketed at the electronica crowd.

Business-wise, reFX's current lineup makes more sense to integrate with than Big Tick's (basically already covered) and LinPlug's (too much overlap). My opinion.

Well, they're not exactly Indie anymore, but I'm thinking Laurent de Soras (from OhmForce) or Juan Antonio Arguelles Rius (AKA Arguru) would make for interesting sparring partners with René's genius. Of course, this is just fantasy: they may all hate each other's guts in real life!

I'd like to point that this is -definitely- not the case in this example. Laurent, Juan and I have been old-timers of #musicdsp (an IRC channel created by Bram de Jong quite a while ago) for years, we have probably enjoyed hundreds of hours chatting about dsp, music, life, kids, woman, beer qualities and whatever you could imagine. I met Laurent in the MusikMesse show last week for first time, and we've had many many lovely dinners with other 'indie' developers.

The atmosphere between indie developers is much, much, much, much more lovely than the one which exists between big companies. Cooperation is much more extensive, understanding of each other thoughts and respect is extremely high.


-René

ORIGINAL: oroboros
Plus Vanguard already has an established name, whereas LinPlug's is no longer selling the famous Albino.

That's just plain wrong.

Here's their page showing it for sale:

http://www.linplug.com/Shop/International_Shop/international_shop.htm

And here is a link from LinPlug's forum where Peter tells a potential customer that if he buys Albino 2 today, he will get a free upgrade to version 3 which comes out in May.

Alright, I stand corrected, they're still selling the Albino, but they don't OWN Albino (Rob Papen now does). So LinPlug isn't the outfit to talk to in order to do a deal with Cakewalk about independant developer collaborations concerning it, which was the original intent of this thread. Marketing deals aside, my point still stands.

They NEED a good drum machine. I don't care were they get it........ I've never found one that fits my needs. Who makes microtronic? I think they're indie.

René hinted at something on another thread... I guess time will tell....

I haven't actually put in who I think they should go after, and I started the thread.

Howsabout discoDSP?

They have Discovery (VA), Phantom (FM), and Vertigo (Additive). While they all sound pretty nice, Vertigo is notable because its resynthesis engine may be the best available at this time. I can't tell you how many wav files I have been able to import into Vertigo that result in nothing but noise when imported into Cameleon.

I also think they should go after Big Tick. Some people might make the argument that Rhino is redundant with Cakewalk's other synths (I disagree), but that's not so much the point. He's a talented programmer who does this in his spare time. Imagine what he could do if he had more time to devote to synth programming.

ORIGINAL: oroboros
Vanguard has an almost mythic static amongst some trance artists, and definitely doesn't qualify as "Lowbrow is not the word". Not best-of-the-best, perhaps, but not terrible quality, as you seem to suggest, either. As stated, my assumption with reFX was in Cakewalk not selling only premium synths ("Cake doesn't need to sell only premium instruments") - thus Vanguard and Slayer perhaps in the mid-range market, along with the currenlty listed Pentagon.

That wasn't what I was saying at all. I was wowed by the Slayer clips, find Vanguard to be respectable, and even like PlastiCZ. My point was that reFX's product line has a certain focus which was not in the direction Cakewalk seemed to be going.

As for the "premium" trend of Cakewalk lately, perhaps true, but that wasn't your original question, and it still doesn't explain the newly added Roland Groove Synth to P5.

The Groove Synth, which isn't that new, arose as a result of the Cake/Roland partnership in 2004. (Blame Roland?)

Cake needs some mid-range stuff too - such as perhaps reFX's stuff - as free additions for their current line. Like the PSYN, for example. I think a tag-line such as "P5v3 now includes the Vanguard synth" would definitley help boost sales, especially as P5 is supposedly marketed at the electronica crowd.

That would boost sales. So would "P5v3 now includes z3ta+".

I'm actually all for adding mid-range stuff, too.

Here's another nod toward Big Tick.

I know Big Tick has acknowledged that Rene has been very generous in sharing tips and information (and amazingly enough maybe even code examples, if my memory serves)

I don't see overlap as much of an issue. And there are many ways to establish a cooperative joint venture from Rene 'merging' with Cakewalk to what we already see as Cakewalk offering Voxengo and Camel Audio through their site.

I just think Cakewalk has an opportunity to establish itself as a friendly partner to developers independent or in a closer relationship. I'm sure these kind of suggestions give the legal department fits (given how little it takes to give our legal dep't fits) but there are a lot of creative ways to establish business working relations.

So on my list Big Tick, Urs of u-he software (esp given his extensive bcakground in interface design and an innovative coder) and a new one Harry Gohs of Virsyn. I think Harry needs some aid on the marketing side. And Aleksy of Voxengo by offering some sort of mastering bundle with Cakewalk products.

And Aleksy of Voxengo by offering some sort of mastering bundle with Cakewalk products.

I do believe thay sell a Voxengo mastering bundel at the cake store. But if you mean include this with a product? Hey I'd vote for that ;)+)

Voxengo just lowered prices on there site. I got a 10% off email and it sounded as if this was not a limited time sale.

Now that I bought some of their stuff, how about Sonalksis?

Isn't that how it works? I bought Pentagon, now it's in Sonar. Pristine Space Light, that's in there too as Perfect Space. I guess that means they'll buy out Camel Audio any day now.

old-timers of #musicdsp

That was a rosy little story René, thanks for sharing! It must feel good that all three of you have gone on to do great things.

Coming at this from a business mindset, I just don't see some of these other partnerships taking place. I'm not saying they'd be bad artistic relationships, I just don't think they'd necessarily be good business relationships.

I think sometime back Cake realized that they wanted to become a complete end-to-end solution, offering more than just their branded hosting programs. Thus René and the new line of synths. And I definitely think they want to expand upon this line. Now the question is what more?

I don't see bringing on another player that produces similar synths, making much sense. So my question would be for whom Cake should partner with: What does Cake now lack? From my perspective, mastering plugins, effects plugins, and perhaps a new stable of unique/different medium-range synths, since the current crop is/will be getting old soon.

CamelSpace makes perfect sense, because two of their products don't step on any present Cake product's toes at all, are good quality, and the Cameleon synth, while maybe not completely unique from Cake's other synths, does seem to approach it from at least a different angle. Big Tick's Rhino, OTOH, seems to me to be too similar to Rapture now. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, I just don't see it from a business perspective, unless Cake wants to start offering a lot of new synths under the Cake brand. Otherwise, it's just too close. As are many other synths.

Voxengo or Kjaerhus (or whomever makes good quality mastering plugins) also makes sense, because Cake now needs a mastering suite in their line-up. My money would be - strictly from the synths themselves - with Kjaerhus, due to their "combined" nature, which seems to be the preferred style these days.

I suppose LinPlug could work in the medium-range space, except I think too much of their stuff already overlaps present Cake gear. Other than the drum stuff, which I readily admit Cake should be making. But that's a lot of other stuff to acquire to get a drum synth. I don't know, I just don't see it.

P5v3 with Pentagon free I can see. For z3ta I think we'll be waiting until at least p5v4. I'm guessing it's still too much of a money-maker for Cake to be giving it away for free just yet. That's a hefty $200 freebie, and P5's already getting pricy, without any more markups.

Of course, I could be wrong on all of this.

Now that's what I call a cool thread !
Oh and hiya, René

y0h00 Tick, so long. Hope things are ubercool up there!



-René

very nice that Tick stopped by
if this never goes any further, at least it got someone's attention

as far as oroboros' concerns about Rapture overlapping Rhino
1 - I don't quite see it, since so much of Rapture is about step sequencer/gating mods
2 - anyone familiar with rhino must be aware that much of the quality of rhino comes from its fx section
(and much as i've begun this online subversive aimed at Cakewalk, I have requested that Big Tick break out the Rhino fx section as a vst fx)
sure this is all selfish on my part, but it might work to everyone's benefit.

I think the way Rhino works with waves, and think the way its routing, filters, envelopes and effects work would make for a really exciting drum module. Think of the pad layout of an Alesis SR-16, you could hit a pad and apply snare-like processing (perhaps a physical modeling library for each drum part) to an arbitrary waveform, or reprocess parts of a drumloop (say, a Rhino-fied RXP) to create very complex and layered drum parts with movement in them. Perhaps I've had too much coffee today, but the idea is intriguing.