by randyhyde » Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:10 am
It costs a fabulous amount of money to put something like this on the market. Although SAC+PC is basically COTS equipment, their custom-produced fader board (even if it's just using Berlinger gear underneath) is not something that you can quickly and easily tool up and produce. Note that custom-built SAC systems (including fader hardware) in the past have run $10,000-$20,000 -- this just isn't something you can throw together using parts from the PC junk file and the cheapest equipment around (granted, they still seem to use Behringer preamps) so it's not going to be cheap.
In the $10,000-$20,000 price range there are some very fine digital systems (A&H GLD and Midas Pro 2 immediately come to mind). It's hard to compete against the big names with SAC and a bucket full of parts. Of course, at the low end, the $2,000-$5,000 systems (A&H QU, Presonous StudioLive, Berhinger X32, SoundCraft, Mackie, Midas M32, etc., with more showing up every day) are providing real hardware that largely works out of the box.
It would be a hard business justification to make to produce a product line based on SAC knowing how much money it takes to get into the business. I can easily understand why someone would want to take care putting out a product based on SAC (especially when you can't control the software's destiny).
The niche for SAC (high channel count, separate FOH/Monitor desks, VST support, weight/size, remote operation w/stage box, modularity, matchability, etc.) seems to be getting smaller every day as "real" consoles start including these features. Certainly if I were choosing a console today I wouldn't consider SAC, even knowing all the great things that SAC actually does (the sound *is* better than most of the sub-$20,000 consoles I've listened to).
Cheers,
Randy Hyde