Been said before but...

Meef Chaloin · Post by **Meef Chaloin** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:09 am

what the hell is going on with ableton's pricing?

http://www.absolutemusic.co.uk/shop/vie ... gicstudio8

£275? isnt that close to what the bare bones version of Live costs if you buy it new (assuming you want a hard manual & a box and to use a sampler and a synth...which should come as standard *cough*)?

samplefreak · Post by **samplefreak** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:26 am

what the hell is going on with apple's pricing?

http://www.absolutemusic.co.uk/shop/vie ... gicstudio8

£275? isnt that close to what i payed for space designer alone when it was called emagic (assuming you want also want a sequencer, hard manual & a box and to use a sampler and a synth, a wife, a house, a car...which should come as standard *cough*)?

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:29 am

It's pricing is cheap to draw people into buying Macs, it is a loss leader as they call it in the financial business. ANd when they've put Digital Performer and Cubase on their arses in the Mac world, that price will increase, as sure as my flabby butt causes a temporary eclipse for those standing behind me when I bend my fat ass over.

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:36 am

Ableton is working with a unique product. When something is unique it costs a bit extra...

Logic, Cubase, Pro Tools, Orion, Tracktion, Reaper, whatever... These things are far more similar than they are different....

Reason is not cheap btw... I think to buy the program flat out is like ?? $500?

When you have a unique product, you can charge a higher price.

And, Logic is totally a loss leader.

samplefreak · Post by **samplefreak** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:38 am

word.

(uhm, not exactly sure about astronomical theory in the second part, but i guess you're more experienced with this particular phenomenon)

hangar17 · Post by **hangar17** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:51 am

you guys are lucky it costs near 1500 sgd to get suite box here

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:40 pm

Sadly, with Hackintosh, this model is not the best idea.

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:51 pm

nebulae wrote:Sadly, with Hackintosh, this model is not the best idea.

I'm not sure they'd be quaking in their boots over Hackintosh

my personal experience is that OS is one thing I;'d definitely not want to use a hack of

it's not much different to Linux - things like drivers are often a case of waiting for some stroppy programmer somewhere who scalds you for asking a question about it without reading through 347 pages of badly labelled threads first

then you plug in your headphones in the library and everybody stares at you because the headphones haven't cut off the main speakers and you've been blasting them with your music

then the wireless driver that someone has written 122 revisions of that emulates ethernet and requires a 3rd party app to make it tell you it's MAC address but not actually do anything else because they are reverse engineering the Linux driver

then the VGA port isn't recognised so you can't use an external monitor

of course, many will tell you that you can buy the right config first and make sure everything is compatible, but seriously, I really can't see the majority who this pricing structure is aimed at going to all that trouble to save a few hundred - even mac Minis are quite decent these days

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:56 pm

I don't disagree with anything you said...just that the days of Linux as well as the days of Hackintosh are now here, and the guides are clear. If you are willing to do a little work and put in a few hours, you CAN get a working version which will load Logic for $400. If such an option exists, it will inevitably keep some people from buying into the hardware. Not the majority, as you pointed out, but some for sure.

I know for me, I'd love a Mac, but I won't pay that much for any computer when I can build one myself for peanuts.

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:06 pm

nebulae wrote: If you are willing to do a little work and put in a few hours,

well yeah, exactly - I guess I have spent too much of my life fucking around with computers and occasionally I enjoy tinkering, but these days I'd rather just work. Occasionally I get filled with Mac envy and decide I want a Mac, then I realise there are quite a few of my plug-ins etc that I would lose and have to pay money to upgrade and I'm not sure it's worth it - once everything is up and running, it just works and I don't even know or care what the OS is

nebulae wrote:I know for me, I'd love a Mac, but I won't pay that much for any computer when I can build one myself for peanuts.

the point is more to do with the fact that the OS would alway sbe broken and not official, that would really annoy me - no updates, not being able to accurately trouble shoot your software

for example, I have 10.4.9 uphuck revision installed, it seems to run really well apart from the things I mentioned before but I downloaded the free version of Amadeus and it was doing some really weird shit with graphics - I have absolutely no idea why and I can't rule out something to do with the dodgy hack

if I could buy OSX for a PC I would do it in a flash, but I have no interest in running a hack as my OS

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:22 pm

^ for me, it's the plugins...my fave synths and effects are PC only, so that's the best reason to stay on PC. However, if I did go Mac, I'd at least try hackintosh. I know what you mean about just getting down to work, and I agree. I also know from previous posts about how you've hit brick walls with tinkering with Linux, as have I. But if you look at these articles, you'll see that the Hackintosh community has come a LONG WAY, and it is now entirely possible to have a stable hackintosh that works and is updateable:

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-att ... 321913.php

http://lifehacker.com/software/how-to/u ... 328194.php

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:26 pm

nebulae wrote:^ for me, it's the plugins...my fave synths and effects are PC only, so that's the best reason to stay on PC. However, if I did go Mac, I'd at least try hackintosh. I know what you mean about just getting down to work, and I agree. I also know from previous posts about how you've hit brick walls with tinkering with Linux, as have I. But if you look at these articles, you'll see that the Hackintosh community has come a LONG WAY, and it is now entirely possible to have a stable hackintosh that works and is updateable:

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-att ... 321913.php

http://lifehacker.com/software/how-to/u ... 328194.php

I guess this is on the assumption of desktops as well though - I've been totally laptop for a long time now so I guess that limits me a lot

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:05 pm

I would miss SOundforge. And possibly Voxengo Elephant but Alexsy has started to develop AU plugins for mac osx lately, crunchessor being one example. So maybe he'll get around to doing mac plugins.

Almost any plugin worth it's salt these days has PC and Mac compatibility. Some great plugins, such as Soundtoys Native (Echoboy, FIlterfreak, Phase Mistress etc), is only available as AU and RTAS (ok PC users running PTLE/M-Powered can use it but that's all).

Besides, I've been told that Soundforge runs fine under Bootcamp and Parallels anyway.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:08 pm

^ still waiting on Sylenth1 Mac version, which should be any day now...but irreplaceable are Z3ta, Sytrus, or Zero Vector. Also, then entire Kjaerhus line is outstanding!!

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:09 pm

forge wrote: I guess this is on the assumption of desktops as well though - I've been totally laptop for a long time now so I guess that limits me a lot

I just got a Dell Latitude D630, and it has a Hackintosh build. I'll try it when I have have some spare time and report back, but so far, the community is healthy and the results are good.