amcjen wrote: ↑23 Jan 2020
The DAW controller market is saturated, and becoming more tightly-bound to software every year. I don't see it getting more open--just more closed. If Reason were at the level of userbase of Ableton Live or Logic, it'd be a different story. But this product area just too saturated to move forward in any commercial way.
So after much thinking and talking with others, I think I'm going to move to another area of audio and try a product in a different space. It's back to the drawing board and trying to determine where exactly there are holes in this wild, wonderful world of music creation, and see if there's a product that could solve it.
Happy to still talk about what a cool Reason controller could do! I just won't be continuing on building it right now.
You know, as I got to the end of this post, I started to feel so sad. This thread is literally the reason I joined ReasonTalk.
But, I'm just too damn impressed by you to feel sad! To have the courage to honestly assess what you saw at a major industry show, to admit that the ebb and flow of the industry doesn't seem to match up with this goal that you've had for so long, and then on top of that to have the resilience and optimism to be willing to try something else--you're a model for how to react and adapt to difficulty.
I'll miss the dedicated SSL-style controller idea, but there's a world of opportunity here.
One thing I thought about reading the rest of your post: you mentioned how crazy UA must be for trying to introduce a new DAW in the year 2020. Maybe, but maybe not. LUNA seems like what a lot of Reason users want the SSL mixer to be. I've seen so many discussions here on RT about whether the SSL should be a modeling or color-inducing part of the DAW, rather than just a particular way of working. Lots of folks have suggested having different versions of the mixer available within the DAW (for example, having Clean, American, and British modes, or something like that). Others have responded that we have innumerable coloring plugins, so a modeled mixer doesn't make sense--the mixer should be colorless and purely functional.
But without knowing how much of the "analog" part of LUNA users will be able to switch off, it seems like UA are fearlessly marketing that aspect of it. That makes sense to me--why else release just another DAW in 2020? And it sits well within UA's portfolio. Analog modeling is what they're about.
I'm also thinking about your comment about how popular the integrated hardware/software products seem to be at the moment. I thought immediately about McDSP's APB-16, and the combination of the sound and soul of hardware with the convenience of plugins.
To distill all this musing into a single idea: I think there might be a different angle available for your controller idea. What if your mixer were both a physical controller but also its own plugin? What if you modeled different preamps, EQ, compression, and summing, and allowed users to mix and match them as well as simply control their software? If it were priced not unlike other controllers, it would be an attractive option to those $100k consoles you mentioned (especially if it were also an interface).
Somebody correct me if this already exists.
Whatever you come up with, I'm sure it will be great!