[Ardour-Users] subscription support down, your ideas sought

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 11:50 AM, John Emmas <johne53 at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Davis" <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com>
> Sent: 15 May 2008 15:45
> Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] subscription support down, your ideas sought
>>
>> Perhaps even more important for financial considerations is the ability
>> to get some more developers able to work part- or even full-time on the
>> project in order to advance it to a "tipping point" where adoption of
>> the program by many more people becomes inevitable. Right now, there are
>> several critical barriers, and the sooner we can get them torn down, the
>> better.
>>
> Plugins anyone??  The bottom line here is that whilst users can be
> encouraged, cajoled and shamed into subscribing, they can't be forced.  So
> is there perhaps an argument for developing add-ons that WOULD be
> chargeable?  Almost like a 'pro' version of Ardour (which isn't meant to
> imply that Ardour isn't 'pro' at the moment...  ;-)).  Actually, I've
> thought quite seriously about releasing features in a chargeable plug-in.
> And if users would pay I'd have no qualms about donating a percentage to the
> overall upkeep of Ardour.  I doubt if any developer would.
>
> But are there enough features that could be implemented as plugins?  And is
> there a case for offering discount prices to those users who subscribe
> regularly?  And would that in itself encourage more subscribers?  I'm afraid
> I don't know the answers to these questions but I feel they're worth asking.
>
> John
>

John,
   It's funny, but I went the other way. Instead of making a 'pro'
version, and I do agree with you that Ardour is already very
professional, I tend to think the way to the larger subscriber base
that Paul is looking for is actually a more focused, stripped down,
very functional version that requires very little energy to use. (And
probably requires very little work on Paul's part which was part of
his original question.) Instead of looking for 100 new subscribers
paying $10/month I think Paul would better off with 400 paying
$5/month. More word of mouth, more money, less risk of the revenue
base going away.

   In my opinion I think that Ardour, with respect to the masses,
suffers from being overly complex. There are lots of stupid
limitations Digi has put on their home recording tools that gives
Ardour an opening. Some ideas:

1) Hardwired for stereo with a mono switch on each track.

2) None of the routing stuff is generally required for writer/composer
types. We need a few buses for routing to sub-masters and reverb. A
short list of send buses, 4 or 8 sub-masters (over kill) and a master
fader and I'm done.

3) A focused list of plugins, a couple of VST's to show capability.

4) No programmed limit on audio tracks.

In the last 10 years I might have exceed that twice and have never
used more than stereo.

Probably the biggest limitation over the years for me is lack of real
MIDI support. Solving that completely would be a bigger task. I
suspect this is an issue for more folks than just me.

Just my thoughts,
Mark