Touch Screens/Surfaces are For More
Than Your IPhone and Political Geeks on NBC
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So I come across a guy's website that's promoting some new audio control surface for Digital Audio Workstations - I tell him the future of control surfaces is:
 
Touch screens.. here's why
 
Commodity market - It amazes me as to how basackwards the audio industry really is. In fact, recently Wired was lauded for an article on the dismal state of the music biz.... same thing that Stanley Clarke published that I wrote back in 2001...
 
Anyway... any industry will tell you (from auto plant designers to guys that design stuff for your local dairy farmer) that HMI's  (Human Machine Interfaces) are going touch screen.
 
OK... why?  'cause for me to make a control surface (I just got contacted recently to do one for Nuendo) I'd only be able to promise to any CM (Contract Manufacturer) or supplier/distro, such as Arrow, Avnet, Future, a small run of product for such a niche market. In fact, call State Electronics and tell them you want less than 20,000 rotary encoders and they'll laugh you off the phone.
 
So small quantities of electro-mechanical parts means  big money upfront. I talked to Rupert Neve a while back about this (he was at AMEK/Hard-on[sic] at the time) and he agreed that's one of the biggest cost drivers for pro audio.
 
 
BUT THE MAIN REASON:
 
Look at what you do... I had this argument with the someone from of Harmon as well as the guys at Digi...  and recall that Harmon/AKG sell more in ONSTAR mic's for auto's than the entire pro audio division does in all other typical sectors... look at their latest Edgar 10K filing and the link to their quarterly - it's all about autos for them...

I use the faders, OK, maybe rotary encoders...
 
But I spend more time using the damn mouse and screen for wave edits, plugins, etc...
 
Wouldn't it be nice to  have a scalable touch screen, with skins that look like your favorite console. Check this out... freelancer comes in , the guy's great, label loves him but he's used to his old API.... double touch, pull down the main console skin BAM - API skin.
 
Now double whap near the virtual keyboard - BAM, wave edit view... wow, cool... I can use a stylus to get exact nodes on the envelopes for pan, mute, plugin automation, etc....
 
Double whap - back in console view, go over to the effect bin, double whap - WOW - now I can access the Powercore MD3 as if it were a physical piece sitting in front of me....
 
Economy of scale - For all the little MILF's buying their kids their first DAW, Guitar Center can sell them a single panel for 1000.00 and make a nice profit.
 
Then if Cool Mo Yo Yo, the latest hip hop Billboard sensation, wants a wrap around display on a 30,000 dollar piece of redwood in his palatial studio... same production module, just more of them so you can see all 200 faders the guy needs for all the samples he steals  - the same one used at Ford Motor Company to run their CNC machines and robotic welders....
 
See where this goes?   This is the same way any other industry handles niche markets.  But the audio industry has always been into snake oil....  and never seems to have it's ear close enough to the ground to see the train commin'
 
Ok maybe I'm not the best producer, barely human, an imbecile to boot,  (tho, in my basement next to my drill press I got Jon Fritz on the radio charting in the top 5 AC/Hot AC for radio twice in 4 months -  SEE REVIEWS HERE ) but I can tell you one thing... most people won't know the difference as to what the hell it was recorded with. In a market that's shrinking as fast as recorded music is (look at one week a while back  - Johnny Cash was at the top of Billboard with the LOWEST sale figures ever recorded for a Number 1) I think the audio industry better realize that most of their market is drying up quickly, most sales are lossy MP3 Lame encoded, all in an industry that is competing for a 10,000.00+ short term debt load consumer's shrinking entertainment dollar and competing with about a zillion things in that market like PC's, games, home theaters to watch porn on 100" HD TV's... etc...etc...etc...
 
 
All I can say is get a grip, get off of the audiophile bandwagon, and wake up lest you end up working at Radio Shack selling cellphones (actually the next thing for music delivery and the death knell for broadcast radio) - but that's another rant .


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