# Cake or death?

- Site: Analog Industries
- Author: Chris Randall
- Date: 2008-05-24
- URL: https://analogindustries.com/2008/05/cake-or-death/

I read with amusement (bemusement?) the recent go-round over [on CDM](http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/05/21/digidesign-talks-latest-windows-mac-releases-compatibility-drivers/) wherein Mr. Kirn aired some grievances from users regarding the state of Digidesign and M-Audio drivers viz. Leopard and Vista. The VP of Lollipop Land... errr... I mean "Head Of Customer Support And Services" of Digidesign and the General Manager of M-Audio both responded at length to missives that Mr. Kirn put up.

\*snort\*

The responses remind me of the old joke:

Child to sister: "You're stupid."

Parent: "That's not polite. Apologize to your sister right now!"

Child to sister: "I'm sorry that you're stupid."

Obviously I have an extremely biased opinion, and am eminently unqualified to make comments regarding that company's business practices, but naturally I won't let that stop me from shooting my mouth off. When you aggressively seek market share and it gets away from you, and people eventually complain about it getting away from you, blaming the results on the OS vendor (which, long story short, is exactly what occurred in both the responses) is a fairly silly thing to do.

I'm sure many long-time readers will say "yeah, but Chris, I seem to recall you bashing on Apple fairly frequently." 'Tis true, I've been known to maybe drop a hint that the Emperor was in his skivvies now and again, and that's doubly amusing in the music industry, where apparently the OS you choose to use defines your entire existence, and must be defended with your life. But that's just venting. When Apple throws us a loop, we cowboy up and fix whatever it is they broke, or we broke, or whatever. We certainly don't let 19 months go by. There isn't a piece of hardware made, by anybody ever, that has software so complicated that a multi-million-dollar corporation can't manage to make new firmware in 19 months, unless that corporation is lazy or just doesn't give a shit, or both. I'm sorry, but I call bullshit.

**Bullshit!**

That aside, they're in a fairly uncomfortable situation right now, and while that is bad for the consumers that are directly invested in the two companies, I think it is a good thing for the computer music industry as a whole, as it allows other smaller companies an opportunity to take advantage of the situation, should they see fit. This, in turn, benefits all of us by resulting in (theoretically) higher quality and (theoretically) lower prices. Capitalism in action.

I've been pondering how business in this day and age works, and it seems to me that small agile companies (I'll use Apogee as an example) are far better at serving the needs of their customers than big bloated piles of shitsauce (let's go ahead and use Digidesign for the shitsauce.) I'm sure that the guys at Apogee would love to have the resources of Digidesign, but the fact that they have a specialty market and don't really work outside that market much kind of keeps them small and agile. While the Apogee products carry a premium price, they are far longer-lived and higher quality than the products their competitors at Digi and M-Audio make, and are thus technically cheaper when you get down to it. To use one single product as an example, the Trak 2 was released in late 2000, just shy of eight years ago. It is still sold today, and if you bought one of the first Trak 2s (I have a close friend that did exactly that) you have a product that works almost exactly the same as it did in 2000, except better. If you bought an M-Audio inter... oh, wait... they were called MIDIman then, weren't they? Did they make audio inter... oh...

Okay, if you bought a Digide... oh, wait. You bought the Apogee convertor because the Digidesign one wasn't very good, didn't you? And you use ProTools why, again? Because it is stable? Well, that is demonstrably untrue. Because the DSP farm in an HD system takes the load off your CPU? Yeah, that eight-core Mac Pro really needs a lot of help. It can barely do anything. Because it sounds so god-damn good? Spare me. Bits are fucking bits whether they're shit out of Logic, ProTools, Cubase, or Sonar. Next thing you'll be telling me that it has a "wider soundstage and greater depth." Yeah, and I've got a nice wooden volume knob I want to sell you.

Long story short, while it fucking sucks for the people that are having a hard time with M-Audio and Digi shit (and I'll take this brief opportunity to get a tiny "I told you so" in, just because I can) in the long run you'll be better off. Either that company will have learned its lesson after getting slapped around by the clue fairy, or it won't, and will go out of business. Either way, the consumer is well served. What annoys me is that everyone is patting them on the back for actually coming out and "apologizing." We're in a sad, sad state of affairs when people are generally shocked that someone should own up to their mistakes.

## Comments (10)

**darklordjames** (2008-05-24):

Fuck any company that can't keep up with simple support issues like *current fucking drivers*!

**noisegeek** (2008-05-24):

Someone was watching Eddie Izzard tonight.

**space_monkey** (2008-05-24):

I think some people just don't fucking learn. Personally, I got some M-audio shit shortly after they became m-audio, and, after rather a lot of stress trying to deal with it and assy-o and getting people who knew a lot more about both to help with it and etc. and etc., realized it was a waste of money. The thing is, when I finally realize that I've wasted my money, I let it go at that and don't keep throwing good money after bad.
If some company is willing to put their name on even one product that's a total piece of shit, and I buy it and have to deal with it, I will never, ever, buy anything from them again. It's not like their aren't plenty of companies making stuff in this market.
As the saying goes: "Fool me once, shame on you..."

**quantize** (2008-05-24):

The current m-audio (beta) drivers work just fine in Leopard on mac (we have a couple of their boxes on our business and web macs - not in the studios)...but more importantly its worth noting what an unmitigated disaster both Vista and Leopard have actually been..you get the definite sense both companies have continued to dishonestly pretend they are inclusive and consultive with 3rd party developers and yet so many (even bigger) companies have struggled to support or flat out ignored these major system upgrades.

Digidesign are of course victims of their own 'genius'...DAE is the ball and chain around their ankle and their great 'reliability' claim. Of course it's complete BS..the only *real* protools system they make is HD and thats mostly hardware...which day by day native computer performance makes look silly and pointless. But they do have PRO in the name...very important the bass player feels the band is recording in a PRO app.

If Steinberg, who I still whilst are still able to hang their hat on a tried and tested design, but are in a complete mess...can make a leopard and vista compatible application (and is as stable as anything else IMHO) then Digi are really looking like fools.

**Flash Freddy** (2008-05-24):

I keep saying this to friends of mine. For years I have found PT to be very unstable. Anytime I use it I get error after error. My friends defend it saying this never happens to them but anytime I'm in their studios I am sure to encounter an error.

Digidesign just don't care. They are too busy releasing more and more overpriced crap. 32 channels on LE is just unbelievable. I always had problems with their drivers. They are very bad drivers that need higher buffer than any other driver I've used. It has to be at least 512 and usually has to be set to 1024 you might think this is my laptop but I run other drivers on the same laptop and can easily get down to 64.

I've had the 001, the 002r, the Mbox 1 and 2 and soon I'll be getting the Mini. I have no choice in the matter to be honest. I have to share sessions with other PT users. The only one I was happy with was the 001 which was very stable.

I have personally (outside of work) switched to MOTU with the 828MK3 and the Motu Ultralite both of which are rock solid drivers, constant driver support and on both I can get buffers down to 64 samples.

Anyways I hate Pro-Tools and I'm only too happy to see them getting the negative press they deserve. Pro my arse.

**Mike** (2008-05-24):

Like many people who probably frequent this site, I use a variety o DAWs because if you go into a studio and they have one that you don't and you can't use it you're going to look like a dick for the first few hours of your session.
I have Cubase, Live, and PT on my Mac at home. For a long time I did as much as I could in Cubase, because while the PT rigs in studios might sound fine, my Mbox didn't, and I couldn't use my MOTU hardware with PT. However, since most of the sessions that make their way to me were in PT format I opted for the 003 and I have to say I haven't looked back since. It works fine on Tiger, and I don't need Leopard for any reason. I don't disagree that the closed off PT environment is annoying, I wish I hadn't had to drop another £800 on the 003, and that my 896HD wasn't now confined to its box but so long as sessions get sent to me in PT format I'm going to keep running PT on my Mac.

**bryantewell** (2008-05-24):

hahaha i LOVE reading this blog.

I bought a motu 828 (technically a mkI i guess) last year for $300 just so i could have something with my computer. It didn't work when i got it (screw you ebay,) but the seller fortunately paid for it to be sent to motu and fixed (only $80) Motu simply fixed it and sent it back and it's worked perfectly ever since. I figured maybe I was just really lucky when I heard about all of this OSX 10.5.2 screwed my audio crap. Motu is a pretty small company too and, thus, must have taken care of it, or maybe the 828 isn't even advanced enough to be affected. Who cares, I'm still living life normal.

by the way, i laughed many times reading this article. I'm glad you speak your mind continuously. People need to hear stuff like this i think.

**BirdFLU** (2008-05-24):

Those companies apologizing is like the Chris Rock joke about guys looking for praise by saying "Well, I take care of my kids." Chris Rock says, "That's what you're supposed to do motherfucker!"

**soup** (2008-05-24):

While I do use protools almost exclusively these days I'm not going to go anywhere near trying to defend all the shit digidesign makes you swallow ... but I never understood why musicians who have somehow managed to put together a stable, functioning system that they can reliably compose and/or record with would want to go and do something silly like upgrade their OS.

**bongo_x** (2008-05-24):

Pro Tools is incredibly stable for me, and I think it's the best audio editor DAW out. It's Digidesign that sucks. I wish they would quit making hardware. The two are very separate in my mind.
I don't understand the constant raving about Mac fans from the internets peoples. Almost everyone I know uses Macs and they simply say "I prefer Macs". They are not foaming at the mouth as they are constantly portrayed. I've never met anyone like that. There seems to be this weird dynamic where non-Mac people go crazy and then say "I'm only doing it because the Mac people do', only I can't find those people. It reminds me of how I always hear people saying "I can't believe all those stupid pro wrestling fans who think it's real", yet there aren't really any wrestling fans who don't know exactly what's going on. I'm sure you could dig some of those people up, but you can find nuts in any area.

bb