SoundStudioPro 1.0

[SPG]

****This is not based on anything tangible, just assimilation of various rumors****

I hate to put up disclaimers, especially on a "rumors" site, but thought that I should, lest someone take me seriously here.
Rumor: Apple wants to buy Avid.
Fact: Apple already has a great footing in the video editing market (some would argue better than Avid's) so why would they want Avid?
Protools!
Apple machines are already being used by a lot of audio pros so why not corner the market like video?
Plausible?
Ridiculous?
Discuss...

Steve would have a nice "Oh and one more thing..."

[evildead]

I have some friends that are running a little basment recording studio. If something like that happened I know that would push them over the edge and buy some Mac's. They currently are using WindowsBoxes to talk/mix/re-mix/(and a buch of other crap that I know nothing about). They would like to move to the Mac platform as one of them used nothing but Macs when he went to music school but its not cost effective for them yet. If Apple teamed up with Avid... that would be interesting. My PC buddys might just go Mac!

[networkman]

being a former musician of 23 years, i would like to turn on my musician friends to macs but the cost is too much for them, since music does not pay too well and window's boxes are in their price range

at one time, a good recording studio costs 10s of thousands until the world of digital came in and took over the recording industry

time will tell if the macs come down to the price level of most "starving" artists

we are not starving per se, but a $1299 dollar imac is still out of our price range

[SPG]

Apple's software for both video and DVD cost $999
That may seem expensive, but as far as I know that's the most expensive of any of their programs, the low end of course is iDVD and iMovie which are free. Before FCP and DVDSP, the only options that did what they did cost 10 to 25 times that much.
If Apple jumps into audio editing, er..mixing, the price range would most likely give you something way better or comparable to what's out there at a fraction of the cost. The video tools are leaving pros wondering how to justify the other systems cost, not their abilities. I think that Apple has the chance to do this with pro level audio too.
FCP is the "Avid Killer" and now that Avid has been softened up, time to go in for the kill and buy em up.

[748s]

i heard that apple and avid were at each others throats since 2000. some real bad feelings. avid are taking a hit from fcp. apple might find it amusing to buy avid and kill it after taking a few things for fcp. protools would be a good gain, becoming sound studio pro and iMix (cut down version of ssp aka protools free). whether they can manage a buyout is another matter. i heard that intel now has around 75% of avid (can anyone confirm this?). would intel let it go? they need a pro video product for pc. soft image.....is this part of avid? kill it or keep it? it could be difficult to buy out avid, but apple taking spruce was a big surprise, no one saw that coming. protools don't seem to be trying to get an OS X version out, they are very quiet. this could be the incentive for apple to buy avid, to keep their share of the audio market. avids slackness on OS X could be the thing that kills them.

[748s]

this part of the world DVD studio pro and FCP cost around $1700 each. i went to a demo of a spruce system, about 6 months before DVDsp was released. the cost was $150,000, but you got a pc thrown in! the only difference was spruce had a real time mpeg 2 card. protools, if apple buy it would no doubt be a lot cheaper than the current cost. i was impressed with the spruce system........it only crashed 4 times in 2 hours......not bad for a high profile demo.

[SPG]

I hear you about the high end system crash rate.
It would be nice to see Apple step in with high end audio, I think there's a market, and if they prevent Avid's video editing from going wintel then all the better.
I've asked before but has anyone heard what's become of Spruce? Any integration into DVDSP2? Apple encoder cards? The DVDSP interface is basicly Astarte's, and it falls short in a few areas, maybe Spruce parts will be mixed in to fix it?

[748s]

doesn't seem to be anything about spruce/dvdsp getting out. anything could happen.
i think an encoder will be an option with dvdsp. a fast transcoder would be good, something like 5 times quicker than real time for starters. when fcp3 was released it was mentioned that dvdsp for osx would be out early 2002. tokyo macworld could be the date a dvdsp/spruce/osx version is released.

[Hemingray]

They're not going anywhere until they give us audio in/out. I miss the Gossamer G3 days when they still had RCA in back!

[sparkleytone]

people keep talking about other companies getting pissed about apple taking their niche markets.

as far as avid goes, its too much for most people. some people still need the avid stuff, but most low-midrange pros just need something like FCP. Avid is just way too much money, time, complication. Thats why Mr. Reznor did his DVD on powerbooks with FCP and some digicamcorders.

when you know that consumer technology has progressed to the point of being able to handle the functions of your specialized product and you don't take advantage of this, you are going to get burned. period.

of all the things m$ that i hate, the integration of technologies is not one of them, as this is the natural progression of a good OS, its just too bad its not a good OS to begin with.

[3rdpath]

as an audio professional i can promise you that apple has no need for protools and in fact the increases in processor speeds has loosened protools grip on the professional market. programs like digital performer and logic are in my opinion far better and a heck of a lot less expensive. btw, none of my fellow composers and sound designers in l.a. use a pc as their main unit-its just macs all the way. (there is one program only made for pc called gigastudio that we're all getting but we're all holding our noses as we enter the windows world...):) :)