Matt, I think I recall the thread where Larry said that, and his point was simply that there was a parallel market where SSHD and 'Blade dominate. He didn't suggest that there is no focus on the music market, or even a diminished one. As I recall, he was talking about HIS customer base in LA, not sB's target. Regardless, Larry isn't SonicStudio, he's a (quite reputable) dealer. To the underlying point, all indications (including my own conversations with Jon, Omas and others at SS LLC) are precisely the opposite of the conclusions you drew from Larry's comments.
soundBlade itself is a great program for restoration, but if you follow the marketing dollars, they're lopsided in their targeting of CD mastering. Everytime you come to this forum you see an ad for their products. Also, their "featured endorsers" are ME's, not restoration techs. Finally, the feature-set and development focus is quite clearly on us as well. Omas and Jon aren't popping into restoration forums and such, but I know for a fact both read this forum and other major mastering sites, and even post in from time to time. Between 1.0 and 1.1 many features were added at the specific request of ME's including those here. For instance splitting the timelines so you can independently view the source/destination tracks is supposedly in the works, because of comments like those in these threads. I'm not suggesting sB has no role or market in restoration, because Larry says it's a big seller, and he would know. I'm saying 'Blade is first and foremost a mastering product. I don't see anyone from Apple or Berkeley here asking what we want, nor do either interact with us DURING development of their product for feedback. In fact, I see NO other software makers here at all, so I'd say their unique in their attention to our needs.
I'm well aware the current product is a work in progress, and if I were at my old gig I'd be on the sidelines like others here, waiting for a shipping product that did everything out of the box. It's not an unreasonable expectation, just wise business practice. I jumped early because I didn't need soundBlade to cut discs or master end to end in production, but rather I wanted it's engine and transport for other work. Since then I've been quite impressed with the attention the company has given to problems I've had. I spoke with another ME last week, and discovered he too had been in direct contact with coders, getting updates for specific problems. When I've given them a repeatable set of steps to reproduce problems I'm having, they've sent me fixed builds in a day or so. Again, I've not seen other manufacturers make that sort of effort for little guys (maybe Bob Ludwig or DC!).
At any rate, I have indeed cut replication masters and DDPs in 'Blade. It's not as fast for me as SSHD was yet, and I've had my share of issues like everyone else. I use it daily not for the s/d editing model, but for the sound. We have PTHD, we have Spark and Peak and a bunch of other DAWs and hardware. With the exception of my MH hardware (which is very limited in terms of it's functionality), nothing else can do simple gain changes as well as 'Blade. When it comes to running plugs in a chain, sB again blows away the competition, simply because it doesn't truncate or dither back to 24 bits at every intersection. As long as the fixes keep coming and the company remains responsive, their direction is clearly where I want to be. For those on the fence, I'd assume you have something else that's working for you today, so keep using it until you find something better. If sB works for you down the road, jump on board - waiting is free and relatively painless.
-d-
PS: a huge percentage of the releases I did at QCA last year were reissues, across every genre. Increasingly restoration is the "gravy" work in mastering... objective technical improvement can be achieved in unattended sessions, and it's easy to run up huge bills with lucrative jobs. I would argue that today restoration tasks are as much a part of mastering as EQ. Sure there are specialists, but within regional markets and current budgets, they may be out of reach.
