Yes, 10 times or close to, more powerful cards would change the game, the next Luna would no longer be the poor man's entry !
I hope CWA will launch swap deals with a fee of course so that we could all restart on " new power " because I dare to bet an another old shirt that those new chips will support new instructions and lot that won't be backward compatible ( like SSE, SSE2 on CPUs ).Furthermore new hungry devices could be developed at last because so far the devs were restraining themselves not to miss the " lower segment ".
The new developers on those future cards may lack the optimizations strains so some unnecessary DSP hungry devices in perspective ...
I wonder how much time nowadays developers spend on making a device " fit in the box " maybe they could've created an another device in the meantime, more freedom, more output, more hungry devices.
If Rhino or Absynth2 were ported to those future cards, I wouldn't be suprised if only the happy owners of Pulsar 3 could benefit of some low polyphony and native users could go : " ah ! those new CWA cards just suck, they can barely handle one instance " indeed but they sound a little different !
In the same time Rhino, Absynth, Virsyn stuff, ConcreteFX, RGC audio, Vaz Technology ... etc are one guy's job so respect and hat off for them !!!!!!
I really wonder who will be the new devs, I don't expect fat cats, I don't think pure hardcore code people will join because they 'll want their stuff totally theirs without any limitation though the SDK opening may help A LOT !
That's why I bet again an another old shirt ( have plenty, easy ) for the Reaktor / Synthedit kind of people to be allured.
And you know Frank, you're ahead of NI : many people have begged for a SDK for Reaktor to develop new modules and silence so far from NI !!
This year could be the focus year on CWA ( recovery also ) openess for devs ; next year major focus with new boards, IMHO afloat and sailing fast for the next 5 years and more !!
I hope but don't expect too much also a MAJOR & VITAL refreshment on your site that looks like an old Trabant dumped in a pond.
I have very seldomly seen such a discrepancy between the quality of a product and the way it's exposed !
Look at the competitors :
http://www.tcelectronic.com/
http://www.mackie.com/products/uad1/index.html
Especially tc ...
Since it's not obviously your domain and since you're into salutary openess I would launch also a third party redesign of website : kind of a Linux community to bring a pool of good web designers and marketers around.
As a start : just gather the questions asked and problems solved here and on your forums to build an *exhaustive* and up to date Faq and troubleshooting and other questions answered database !!
Many hours spend in this collecting task, but how much many more mails you won't have to answer !!!!!!!!!!!!
That brings to an another point about marketing : just bypass the shops ! *if* you can give **all** the infos and *representative* sound examples, a potential customers should just order by the net.
For sounds examples, I would go for presets mainly : uniques files of only leads, pads, fx ... etc 5 to 10 seconds per preset,don't even bother about fades to optimize the file size ; the goal being to show what the synth or FX is capable of : what you hear is what you get when you use preset x, no tricks !!
Demos tracks, how many of you like them ? a pure presets hearing on the other hand that reflects all the capabilities ??
If I were rather bold, I would encode them in Ogg Vorbis : at 4 quality setting, same file size as 128 kbits mp3 and better quality than VBR 128 to 192 kbits mp3s with smaller file size !
Because saying : " just trust us, in real it will sounds way better than this 128 kbits mp3 file " won't make it if I'am a potential customer and can't try the devices.
Concerning the USB2 / firewire and PCI-X and PCI Express debate ... how much bandwidth the future cards will need to work without hiccups ?
If more DSP cards are to enter the arena, maybe could CWA have an outside box like
http://www.symbolicsound.com/cgi-bin/bi ... s/Capybara
I have upgraded on a AMD 2.6 Ghz last summer and I intend to last some years on that setup.
As to prices, when I bought my Pulsar 2 four years ago, it costs nearly twice more.
I would keep the cards as low priced as posssible to get more customers in but beef up the basic synths ( Prisma, Lightwave and Co ) that don't compete very well with up to date VSTi's.
More to say but not so bad for a Sunday ! ;-
