Wouldn’t FPGA designs necessarily be cheaper?
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Not necessarily. The contribution of the bill of materials to the retail price is pretty small on boutique devices (anything selling less that 100k+ units), and beyond that, that’s part of your effects layer, LFOs, and maybe your oscillators, but probably not your filters, other parts of the effects layer, and modulation. It doesn’t replace the voice card entirely, or at least it wouldn’t on synths architected the way most Sequential ones in recent years have been.
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I suppose a necassary move but I’m going to take a few days to be unhappy with it even though I have no right to.
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I dont know why, but in the last couple years I always felt that DSI or Sequential was a ship that would have gone as far as Dave Smith would have with the company.
So when a piece of hardware I liked from their arsenal went out of production, like the Tetr4, the Tempest or lately the P12… I made sure I bought or re-bought one as I felt it would fall into oblivion or re-retail on the re-sale market for Monomachine/Machinedrum prices…
I am happy I did that.
But in the light of the last events, I cant help but feel happy for Dave Smith, that will be freed from all business stuff and focus on creating/developping synths…
Also if you combine Novation and Sequential strong points, you can definitely have suddenly a combo of sequencing and synths that no one would touch in the industry, no offence to the Dreadbox / Polyend collab for the Medusa.
So I am very excited for this news.
Bring it on Sequential.
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BOM costs are rather irrelevant to the complexity of design, though!
Exactly my point. The FPGA stuff is going to reduce BOM costs for the digital section but not much else. Unless the new Matrix 12 Rev 2 (a girl can dream) sells in Peak numbers, it’s not gonna sell at Peak prices, because they won’t be spreading the design effort across enough units for a lower BOM to matter. Even then, unless they go cheap on the analog side or offshore the manufacturing, it’s not gonna matter much.
I’m assuming they sadly will send up offshoring, but I hope we get a couple of modern classics out where we get to benefit from the increased R&D budget before that happens.
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Ok, I think we’re saying the same thing here. I was suggesting that the more traditional re-releases would be roughly as expensive (with some economies of scale and less organizational overhead helping out) but I’m sure these will be balanced with more hybrid designs using all the additional tooling and supply chain for Novation.
I’m excited to see what’s to come in the future with the merge.
Honestly, I’m hoping they don’t go for the lower end of the market — I’d love to see what they could do in the €3-5k range for a desktop module with all that extra engineering lift. Give us a three VCO sixteen voice poly, fully multi-timbral! Give us a whatever monster the Tempest might grow up to be! There’s a lot of amazing, well-balanced hardware at the low end. I’d love to seem some artworks, some proper monsters.
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You had me at Tempest.
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More low end product would help give more likelihood of “prestige” releases and the risk of non-rereleases.
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I would like to announce that I will also be joining Focusrite Group. I heard that they might have Bosc Pears in the break rooms, or at least water, which was a big thing for me. I’m not getting paid, but I did get a free shirt. Also, I am not supposed to talk about our partnership publicly. And there may be a restraining order. This feels like a dream.
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the downside is if the sharemarket crash’s focusrite would need to resell these brands to someone else at at a likely loss
Focusrite might also provide protection for Sequential.
Bsharks patrol these waters.
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I would also like Dave to revisit something like the tetra but I would prefer that they move on to using the voice circuits from the Prophet 6 or OB-6 and have expanded controls like one of their desktops. I wished I liked the Tetra sound but I just don’t. They can call it the Four-Track. I’d be okay with sequencing it from external sequencers.
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Interview with Dave Smith (Sequential) and Tim Caroll (Focusrite), done by Sweetwater.
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I was eyeing on the REV2 just to found out that the price went up about 100 EUR for the desktop today. The keyboard version was even 20 EUR cheaper then the desktop last week. Its 1699 EUR now (about 350 EUR more). Also all other Sequential synths went up in price. Is this the influence of the corona situation?
Yes. Especially with the chip shortage issue. If manufacturers want to jump the queue they will need to pay extra that cost is then brought to the consumer.
I’ve just checked at my local store and if I’m not mistaken, it went down by 50$. I live in Montreal, Canada. Maybe it has to do with the Dollar value of my Country?
Exactly the same price it always was in the UK. Shop around. Maybe a specific retailer increased the price because they know it’s popular.
Those retailers must read the Elektronauts threads.
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