New Avid S3L

[jamesdunlopmusic]

What do we think?

http://www.avid.com/US/products/S3L-System/overview



Once they have the EUCON up and running could potentially be a great DP controller...! Double the channels of the Artist Mix.
Starts at $17,995 GRP and will be available at Avid resellers worldwide in Q3.

[Killahurts]

18 thousand dollars?

Is this a joke?

Oh Avid.. that screen looks like 1998..


This is $18k as well:

http://www.slateproaudio.com/products/raven/

[jamesdunlopmusic]

I'm presuming *fingers crossed* that's the control surface and the E3 engine and the Stage 16 remote I/O box + plugin bundles...
Hopefully they'll do the board standalone

[Shooshie]

And gradually, the cost of an in-the-box studio equals the cost of a full wood-&-concrete studio.

[rant warning]

That's the funny thing; the manufacturers were shocked, and many went out of business, by the sudden onslaught of a studio in a computer. It was ridiculously simple. It was preternaturally powerful. Any kid could afford one. So how were they going to get their cut? I mean, studios cost millions of dollars. I helped install mixing boards that cost over a million. Big old things that took a good 8 or 10 guys (musicians, mind you; probably 4 to 6 football players) to haul into a building. Suddenly that gravy train was gone. Zip! Avid tried to perpetuate it by mythologizing their outboard processor cards, and selling them for 5 figures instead of the few hundred they cost, and a LOT of people bought into that, because frankly they were not comfortable paying less than 6 figures for the heart of their studio, which recently they'd paid 7 figures for. But the bare truth was that you could do the same thing — MORE, even — for about $10,000 to $15,000, and that includes everything but the coffee cup. So, how to get that price up a little more?

Well, this is a good start. This'll give you another $14,000 (street price) on top of that $15,000. Now we're up to $30,000. Then there's still microphones, which have now reached legendary prices over and over again, even while the exact same functionality has reached awesome "Chinese" prices in the other direction. They have adopted the language of the cable makers to keep justifying the stuff AND the prices.

Call me a curmudgeon. Call me a nay sayer. Call me Shooshie. (just call me!) But I really don't think I need this stuff. Maybe if I were sitting on the production line at Channel 4, cranking out the audio for spot after spot, or out on the coast at Fox, doing music for episode after episode of the latest hit series, then I'd think differently. But chances are, those guys are still using those million-dollar studios and boards with plenty of guys to help do the heavy lifting.

There is a whole market that lies in between the bedroom and the boardroom, and it doesn't need to cost 6 figures, or even upper 5 figures. We have the stuff that makes it work, and it works great. Of course, if you just want this thing, and you have the money to spend on it, then why not? Everyone is entitled to an expensive toy or vacation. Make mine a Tesla Roadster! (please) I could write a check for that Avid thing today, and be using it tomorrow (if the EUCON was ready), but what the heck for? I'm really happy with the workflows I've developed over the past quarter century, and I'm quite proud of ending up on top of this long battle of the bucks between users and suppliers. The "music industry" was only a tiny bit more than a gear manufacturing and sales industry and a lot of rich kids who wanted to be Micky Most. That "tiny bit more" was where we found the real engineers and musicians who gave us albums and soundtracks all those years. Steve Jobs, Mark of the Unicorn, Waves, and companies leveled the playing field so that talented people have a chance to compete on any level they choose.

I, for one, would like to keep it that way. Keep it simple. Use your skills. Keep it productive.

Shooshie

PS: Sorry if this negatively impacts the thread of this product announcement. It's probably inappropriate, and I apologize. But that's all I could think about when I started looking at that device and reading about it.
PPS: On second thought, I really don't apologize. Someone has to speak up now and then. This is Avid we're talking about.

[Shooshie]

18 thousand dollars?

Is this a joke?

Oh Avid.. that screen looks like 1998..

• AVID

For people who just can't master a MOUSE.

[James Steele]

I'm not sure this belongs in the Digital Performer forum. Moved to "General Recording."

[Shooshie]

I couldn't agree more! Thanks,

Shooshie

[Prime Mover]

Great post there Shooshie. Refreshing to hear people in the industry who aren't being taken in by this crap. I can't deny that it looks nice, I might pay $1200 for it. You can't tell me it's worth 18 grand though.

I'm so glad I ditched AVID when I did, I would be completely in debt now.

[Killahurts]

I'm so glad I ditched AVID when I did, I would be completely in debt now.

Yep.

[billf]

That GUI looks like it was made for my old Atari 1040st, circa 1987.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Actually, the Atari GUI was way better than that, IMO. At least a bit crisper.

[billf]

Oh yes, that was it. Mine was color with a Steinberg sequencer, all MIDI of course, in my pre-Mac-pre-DP days. But that was a productive machine.

[Prime Mover]

Jesus, you got me all nostalgic for the old black & white Mac days! It's been so long since I saw a black and white display, I just about flipped when you posted that. I spent thousands and thousands of hours on those things... made me the man I am today. Pluses, SEs, Classics, Classic II (with multitasking), and then the freak out when I saw my first LC.

Sorry, I know you were talking Atari... it just got me goin'

[Shooshie]

I studied their site for a while, reading about the device and how they were selling it, and I've concluded that the guys at AVID are seriously addicted to crack or something. On the one hand, they talk up the benefits of using a ton of AVID hardware, then they make it sound like you can just grab this thing and go hop on the subway, a train, or a plane — anywhere you'd be comfortable (and look cool) carrying a small surfboard, snowboard, table-saw, or synth keyboard. Oh, but get this… you'll be relieved to know that you can store all your files on a little USB flash drive smaller than your thumbnail. Then just plug that into this wall of hardware, which presumably you either carry with you or make sure you've got duplicates at your destination, and away you go! Rocking away with 64 channels! Whoop!

And you know those old audio snakes from the 70s and 80s that used to connect your AVID system? Well, those have leapfrogged right over the 1980s, 'cause now they're using 1990s ETHERNET technology! Yeahboy, we know how carefree those CAT-5 systems are, so now you just take along a peer to peer cable… er… or is it a peer to client? Or does it sniff out the connector and adapt automatically? OH well, we remember how much fun it is to use Ethernet, so this is a real step forward of about twelve years beyond the 70s!

And everyone tells them at AVID that the reason they LOVE using AVID stuff is the plugins. Yeahboy! Those plugins for AVID always cost exactly double what they cost for Native, and they do so much more! Oh wait… I forgot… I was talking to a Waves engineer about 12 years ago, and I asked him if the Pro Tools plugins were all that much better. He said that they were exactly the same, except that the ones for Digital Performer used 32 bit floating point, which gave them a resolution far greater than the 24 bit Pro Tools plugins. Other than that small advantage in the DP plugs, they were exactly the same. Oh… except that the ProTools plugs cost double. Why? Something about a contract they'd made with Digidesign. He didn't elaborate.

But everyone LOVES those AVID plugins. They cost so much more, and that offers so much greater bragging rights!

I could go on, but you all are getting tired. So am I.

I don't care if I never use another AVID system as long as I live.

Shooshie

[Gravity Jim]

Actually, the Atari GUI was way better than that, IMO. At least a bit crisper.

The TOS Desktop! My first MIDI rig was a 1040STe with a massive 4 megs of RAM, EMagic Notator, and little Yamaha multitimbral synth. I did my first paying work on that rig, mastering to hi-fi VHS! (Hey, Craig Anderton said everybody was doing it.)