Is it all over for SAW?

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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby RBIngraham » Thu Feb 06, 2014 2:13 am

Looks like someone is out of their corner again.... sigh
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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby dominicperry » Thu Feb 06, 2014 6:34 am

I was hoping for a reasonably sensible discussion about the chances of SAW being updated, rather than a rant about Bob being evil, or how had-over you feel about spending $500 on SAC.
I spent $2500 on SAW, but many years ago. Since then I've bought ProTools, Reaper, StudioOne and Reason. I keep coming back to SAW, probably just because I know how to use it best. But it's unusable in Win8 because of the cursor disappearing on the mutli-track. I just want some idea about whether it will ever get fixed.

But, if you guys have nothing better to do than rant, well, here's another thread, go for it.........................

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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby jlepore » Thu Feb 06, 2014 9:47 am

The cursor disappears in 7 for me too - as does all of the windows if I dare touch the mouse while it's doing a mixdown. Those haven't been fixed in the years since I reported them, and he subsequently "banned" me as a customer. What makes you think he will fix anything for you? Because you "respectfully" sit and wait for him to do it? The only way ANYTHING got done was people beating on him to do it. Good luck with the "wait and see" approach - especially now.
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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby randyhyde » Thu Feb 06, 2014 11:26 am

soundguy wrote:
randyhyde wrote: Whether Bob ever updates it again doesn't really matter. SAC has earned enough to cover itself (and the hardware). Can't really ask for more than that.

mycorn wrote:ROI in well under a year...


Wow, are you guys friggin' kidding me? Is your bar so low that you consider making $500 in a "under a year" to cover adequate ROI? Or is it $1500 when you add in the cost of the XP computer and a handful of Behringer AD/DA? You "can't ask for more than that"?

Really? That's the deal for you? Good news. Just increase your rental income by about 2000% per year and you may get close to the poverty line for a family of four in the U.S.

Soundguy


In my case, it was about $15,000 for the complete setup.
But even if it were $1,500 it would have made the money back. For all its warts, SAC *is* a good sounding system (assuming you have decent preamps and A/D-D/A). Yeah, you can spend a *lot* more money and get something that sounds a little better but my gripe has always been with SAC's difficult-to-learn UI not with the way it sounds. About the only SAC product I've used that is obviously inferior to its competition is the reverb module (yeah, it really sucks; probably slightly better than the Behringer boxes but definitely something I avoid using on my A rig). If the network protocol were fixed (especially wireless) so that I wouldn't have to restart SAC Remote all the time, I don't think I'd personally have any complaints about SAC's operation (at least the way I use it).

Yes, SAC has been worth the investment. If I were buying it today I doubt SAC is the way I'd spend my money (too many new options that have appeared since I first invested in SAC) but I don't count SAC as a loss at all. Three years ago when I first got into SAC it was clearly better than the options I was looking at in my price range (which was largely an A&H GL2800/48 console; so glad I didn't go analog even with all of SAC's warts). Today, I'd probably spend my $15,000-$25,000 on some GLD consoles and stage boxes, but I didn't have that option back then. Also, one advantage of SAC is that I was able to build the system a few components at a time (that is, I didn't have to come up with the $15,000 all at once). That's an important consideration when you're a small company like me that doesn't have deep pockets. It's nice to be rich (or have someone else paying for all the gear) but when you're not being able to buy your board $1,000 at a time over several months (or even years) can be a big help. SAC's modular design still wins, hands-down, in this department.

Yeah, SAC has a lot of problems. Most of them can be worked around. Only a few (such as name-brand recognition) are fatal. Again, once people get past the point of "if it does the job you need on the day you bought it and you don't expect any more from it" SAC really isn't that bad. For some outfits (like mine), the cost of training makes SAC a bad fit (I still have to personally attend most gigs where we use SAC because of the technical knowledge gap that exists; one of the reasons I am really interested in the A&H QU-24 board -- I can send a crew to a gig and not have to worry [as much] about something going wrong). However, for the "owner/operator sound company" I still think that SAC is a bargain -- if you can live within its current constraints.
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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby dominicperry » Thu Feb 06, 2014 12:53 pm

jlepore wrote:The cursor disappears in 7 for me too - as does all of the windows if I dare touch the mouse while it's doing a mixdown. Those haven't been fixed in the years since I reported them, and he subsequently "banned" me as a customer. What makes you think he will fix anything for you? Because you "respectfully" sit and wait for him to do it? The only way ANYTHING got done was people beating on him to do it. Good luck with the "wait and see" approach - especially now.


Well, I'm just a respectful kind of guy. But then, my business doesn't rely on SAW or SAC, so I might feel differently if I earned my living from this stuff. So I understand why you're pissed off.

The sad thing is, a few years ago, if anyone came up with a bug in SAW, they'd put it up on the forum, Bob would answer the same day, he'd usually try to replicate it, there would be some back and forward, and then he'd fix it there and then. Sometimes he'd say 'Don't do that' but generally, if it caused a crash or something else bad, he would fix it, quickly. And it was good. Feature requests were similarly dealt with quickly, some were adopted, some weren't. That's the dev's prerogative.
Trying to get the same level of service from anywhere these days is impossible, except for Reaper, which I've tried to like, but just can't. Reason is pretty solid, but the UI and routing are terrible. Presonus don't give a crap about StudioOne users. I got banned from their forum. ProTools, well, you know the score. So my patient 'wait and see' is based on wanting something that's gone, for sure, but isn't replicated by anyone else.

Maybe I need a tape machine and a big desk.

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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby RBIngraham » Thu Feb 06, 2014 1:34 pm

Dom, I think it has been all over for SAW for quite a while now. No updates or much of anything done with it for a very long time. SAC seemed to help it a long for a while, but only a tiny bit. MWS has been abandoned for years now it seems, SAW was next and SAC is all but at that stage from my reading of the tea leaves anyway.

I agree with most here. I got more than my money's worth from SAC and even SAW for what I do. I would have to spend a ton more to get most of the feature set I have, and so most of my clients would never have had something like that.

I don't love the reverb but it works OK for me, you just have to download the extra chamber files and tweak things. Same thing I have to do all the time on Yamajunk. Sure it is not as nice as a good outboard but then most included with desks these days are not. And of course it doesn't sound as nice as a good convolution verb, but there again neither do most other desks and they use a lot more CPU power, even if they could work with SAC's no latency requirement.
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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby soundguy » Thu Feb 06, 2014 3:08 pm

randyhyde wrote:But even if it were $1,500 it would have made the money back. For all its warts, SAC *is* a good sounding system (assuming you have decent preamps and A/D-D/A). Yeah, you can spend a *lot* more money and get something that sounds a little better but my gripe has always been with SAC's difficult-to-learn UI not with the way it sounds.
====edit=====
Yes, SAC has been worth the investment. If I were buying it today I doubt SAC is the way I'd spend my money (too many new options that have appeared since I first invested in SAC) but I don't count SAC as a loss at all. Three years ago when I first got into SAC it was clearly better than the options I was looking at in my price range (which was largely an A&H GL2800/48 console; so glad I didn't go analog even with all of SAC's warts). Today, I'd probably spend my $15,000-$25,000 on some GLD consoles and stage boxes, but I didn't have that option back then.
====edit====
Yeah, SAC has a lot of problems. Most of them can be worked around. Only a few (such as name-brand recognition) are fatal. Again, once people get past the point of "if it does the job you need on the day you bought it and you don't expect any more from it" SAC really isn't that bad.


Either I'm missing your point, or you're missing mine. Saying that something dirt cheap like SAC is a good because of it's return on a $500 investment (plus computer and pre amp/coverters) is just plain silly. That's like justifying a purchase of a $45 mic instead of the crowd pleasing SM57 at $90ish, because you got your money back in the first hour instead of the second hour. Or how about that $10 mic cable you picked up at Guitar Center instead of the $25 more robust version? Probably paid for that in the first twenty minutes ... and you can just toss it when it goes bad and buy another.

Now, taking the time to consider whether or not spending $15,000-$25,000 .... or even $5k ... is a serious business consideration if you are being beat up on your daily rental rate. But buying the cheapest shit known to mankind that you can squeeze audio out of is not a serious ROI consideration. It's disposable junk that can get the job done with a resale value of next to nothing. That can turn out to be a good thing like it has for you, or a bad thing if you have crashes due to poor design.

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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby Paul Henry » Thu Feb 06, 2014 3:34 pm

RBIngraham wrote:..you just have to download the extra chamber files and tweak things. .......


There's extra chamber files for RML Reverb??
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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby dominicperry » Thu Feb 06, 2014 4:37 pm

RBIngraham wrote:Dom, I think it has been all over for SAW for quite a while now.


Yeah, I know you're right. I just keep hoping. Lane automation drives me nuts. Bob's way of doing it is odd, but it suits me. Same as moving around the MT and dicing things up, I can do it really fast in SAW.

MidiWorkshop was always hateful.

Time to move on. I need to start enjoying the crashes in StudioOne. And it sounds like mud to me, but as we know, all DAWs are the same. It's in my head.........

I'm out of here. And there. Time for a new chapter.

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Re: Is it all over for SAW?

Postby shmick » Thu Feb 06, 2014 4:51 pm

Paul Henry wrote:
RBIngraham wrote:..you just have to download the extra chamber files and tweak things. .......


There's extra chamber files for RML Reverb??


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