>> at what point do you expect Digidesign TDM plugins >> to fall by the wayside? > >DigiDesign may be the special case here, assuming that >Avid stays independent -- the ProTools business model >offers them refuge from consolidation forces, being >hardware-restricted and embraced by the high end.
true. though this angle will hit MOTU the hardest. they haven't been embraced by the high end, yet for some reason decided to stick to their own plugin API (MAS). on the other hand, AFAICT, MAS has no presence in their hardware, so its really just a matter of making DP and its baby cousins use The New Standard Cross-Platform Industry Wide Plugin API. >Avid's market cap is 370M -- an order of magnitude >higher than what Apple paid for Emagic, but still >digestable for the likely suitors (Microsoft and >Adobe). the anti-trust implications of MS owning Avid are interesting. the other important angle to a standardized plugin API are the designs being poured in silicon (particularly Universal Audio). people will heavy DSP loads but a committment to "native" platforms find these things quite attractive, and it may require a complete re-engineering of these add-on hardware units at some level (probably not that hard, though). --p
