My private S6 Demo

[musicman691]

What this situation with the S6 reminds me of is in the movie Star Trek Generations. That's the one with both Captain Kirk and Picard. Kirk and a couple of the old crew are invited onboard the new Enterprise and Kirk asks about different systems and is told 'they aren't installed yet' or 'they'll be in the next upgrade'. Unfortunately the ship gets into some problems and what is needed to help isn't fully installed yet. Kirk goes down to Auxiliary Control to do what he has to do and gets swept away when the Nexus wave hits.

I see the S6 as the new Enterprise that doesn't have what's needed to fully function and Auxiliary Control as existing control surfaces like the Artist Series, S5 or even Icons.

[Drew Mazurek]

The only logical reason Avid is doing what they're doing with pricing and configurations of the S6 is if something smaller is in the pipeline and it's late. (S3L based studio control surface). Then again, it could just be illogical.

[Barry Johns]

Can I throw something out there? I read all the comments here, and the underlining theme is there is either lots missing or promised to be in the works. To me this clearly demonstraights that Avid is completely out of touch with their users needs. If the had their act together, not only would they have anticipated everyone's needs, they would have introduced features that made everyone go WOW, that's awesome!

Am I alone in this?

[8dB.co.uk]

Barry, if you had seen and tried to use the early Neve DFCs then you would be saying the same things. Whenever a manufacturer pushes the boat out to try and do something special, there will always be a transitional point where the various features and new tech get accustomed to the real world.

I know what it's like to be an unofficial beta test site. Our £250k DFC was useless for three months, though it was one of the first, and the roller coaster ride of updates was fun. Imagine opening the post (no internet then) to find an update that doubles the amount of available bands on the EQ.

Certain things got fixed without asking, others took a lot more effort. Such is life if you want"groundbreaking", now, rather than next year.

[cpechet1]

I am just an old hobbyist/dilettante who loves recording toys so please disregard these comments as they are of a limited scope. As a recent adapter of the Avid Artist series (Control/Mix/Transport) I have spent considerable time trolling the boards relating to Avid news including the Avid Control Surface forums. The overall impression I get about Avid is that it is in crisis and is probably looking for an exit. If true, this is not the environment in which new product development and deployment can flourish. Existing resources are probably stretched beyond reason and general uncertainty is, in all likelihood, motivating folks to get their resumes out there.

I would imagine the resources inherited from Euphonix are the most taxed as not only do they have to support Eucon for existing platforms which itself is an enormous task (or at least it would seem to be an enormous task given the difficulties users appear to be having, especially with PT 11 and Mavericks) but they are probably tasked with getting Eucon to stand up with S6 as well.

You can imagine the gridlock. Example: Eucon 3.1.1 was published without signed drivers. Under normal circumstances this would never happen in a well-managed and resourced project team yet it happened here. Incompetence? Perhaps but my guess is the confluence of uncertainty and overload plus the pressure to release simply conspired against the team and wham…

While I have no specific insight into who is buying S6 and why, I would speculate that there are many prospective purchasers who are taking a wait and see approach as there are too many negative clues outweighing confidence and enthusiasm at the moment.

I love my Artist controllers and despite the odd glitch here and there they are really terrific. Eucon is relatively stable for me (now that I know what to watch for) and works well with Cubase 7.5.1. As I mentioned, I am just a hobbyist so I can absorb minor irritants and feature anomalies but this is probably not the case for the pros who need everything to work all the time without incident.

I get the impression S6 does not remotely meet this criteria yet.

All I can say is that whatever entity ends up owning this intellectual property I hope it/they can see the value in Eucon and resolve to invest in its support and evolution.

[8dB.co.uk]

I believe that the embedded Eucon on the S6 is different to the current one that is on host machines.

[cpechet1]

As I understand it, S6 is designed to support all Eucon-enabled hosts so although the S6 firmware will of course be different than that of the Artist series and other high-end ex-Euphonix surfaces, the host components of Eucon (Eucon services for example) probably contain a good deal of what exists in the current drop. The existing apis must be the same for S6 as Artist to the extent that, say, Steinberg’s Eucon interface can interact with S6 as easily as Artist without really knowing the difference. In any event, whether S6’s Eucon implementation is a re-write or not, it will borrow heavily from what already exists but, more important, requires the same resources and expertise which is where I believe the bottleneck may be.

[8dB.co.uk]

It should be the same Ethernet protocol but the Eucon the S6 is on embedded Windows, so apparently is a new rewrite for the S6 and its enhanced features. Whether that's a good thing or not, time will tell.

[cpechet1]

Originally Posted by 8dB.co.uk

Whether that's a good thing or not, time will tell.

Agreed... It will be interesting

[Emcha_audio]

I could be wrong but from what I have understood from the trial test I had, the Eucon is quite different from the Artist. Remember that the S6 is made to also integrate in PT HD with options that are not available in the artist series, and also options that are not available in other daw software that are specifically for PT.