Xara acquired by MAGIX

[remi]

Well, I'm a semi-professional music producer [we have released two albums this century using only software] and I work in the broadcast industry but until I read this I had never so much as heard of Sequoia. I spend too much time at places like KVRaudio and I don't recall anyone ever mentioning it. It just looks like an uglier version of Cool Edit Pro [Adobe Audition these days] with an enormous asking price. It may be popular in Germany but I don't even know if they try to sell it anywhere else. I've certainly never seen it in a music shop here in Australia, where you see Samplitude and Magix Music Maker everywhere.

I don't know a lot about professional music software, but by all accounts it seems, that big Radio and TV stations like the german WDR, MDR, BR, Radio Bremen and - listen my proud british friends - also the british BBC are using the professional solutions (not the consumer line) from Magix.

btw: We shouldn't think in british/french/german/european attitudes - in a global view we are only human beings - nationality doesn't matter.

Regards,
Remi

[timo.heil]

Well, I'm a semi-professional music producer [we have released two albums this century using only software] and I work in the broadcast industry but until I read this I had never so much as heard of Sequoia. I spend too much time at places like KVRaudio and I don't recall anyone ever mentioning it. It just looks like an uglier version of Cool Edit Pro [Adobe Audition these days] with an enormous asking price. It may be popular in Germany but I don't even know if they try to sell it anywhere else. I've certainly never seen it in a music shop here in Australia, where you see Samplitude and Magix Music Maker everywhere.

You are right. It is not that popular, but hopefully that will change. It used to be an audio-only application and has just recently gained more and more MIDI-features. And they improve it rapidly. AFAIK they know have a contract with Synthax for wordwide distribution. Hope that will help to make it more popular. Neverteheless you should just check out the Demo version and don't get too scared by the top menu bar, which still hast some ugly windows-like icons. The performance is superb. And it offers supreme object-editing, i.e. every audio object (and not only a complete audio track) can have it'S own effects chain e.g.). I think the only other application that offers such a feature is SONAR with the latest versions. Samplitude has this for many year. I am very likely to switch from Cubase to Samplitude, because Cubase 4 is really not what I expected. On example: Samplitude v9 performs better than v8 with it's hybrid audio engine, whereas Cubase 4 needs much more ressources than Cubase SX3....

[rpc9943]

mackie tracktion can do that too, per clip effects, and its cheaper than all mentioned.

RonC

[jyoung]

Hope things work out for the Xara people. I was in the corporate world for a long time and experienced these types of buyouts a few times. You never really know what is going to happen until it happens. I just hope it doesn't affect this forum. I have found talkgraphics to be a very good resource for learning and sharing. It is also very entertaining. Hope it continues.

Joe

[timo.heil]

mackie tracktion can do that too, per clip effects, and its cheaper than all mentioned.

RonC

Yes, Tracktion is a great app. Completely different way of doing things than all other sequencers. OK, Samplitude is more expensive, but you get a bit more in the bundle (great plug-ins, impulse reverb, elastic audio, cd & DVD burning, score editor....)

[joroho]

Congratulations, Charles! I have to trust that you know what's best for Xara. I'll be curious to see if Magix continues to push development of Xtreme Pro towards desktop publishing.

.joroho.

[fjgaude]

Wonderful to see Xara get more backing from a firm who has money. And thank the Lord the Linux version of Xtreme is getting updated again.

frank

[Ross Macintosh]

I'd like to add my congratulations to Charles and Kate as well. No doubt the years have given Charles lots of opportunity to think about the future of Xara and where he'd like to see it go. I imagine he also realized, as most of us middle-aged folks do, that at some point he'll need to relinquish control of his baby and hand over the reigns to someone else. My take on this acquisition is Charles has probably found himself a way to see Xara do some of the things he wants it to before his retirement. I imagine he has a very clear picture of where he wants Xara in ten years and his agreement with MAGIX appears to give him the opportunity as Managing Director to continue to lead it in the directions he's wanted. Since MAGIX is a public company and they give Charles the title of 'Director' I'm guessing he will be joining the Board of the company.

Again, congratulations Charles and Kate. Please make sure your employees are well taken care of.

Regards, Ross

[Daniel]

Xara certainly has more experience than anyone else in changing its product names so let's hope that one more doesn't hurt, but the silence on the future of the open source development and locked topic in the Linux subforum asking about it doesn't sound good.

[BONES]

You are right. It is not that popular, but hopefully that will change. It used to be an audio-only application and has just recently gained more and more MIDI-features. And they improve it rapidly. AFAIK they know have a contract with Synthax for wordwide distribution. Hope that will help to make it more popular. Neverteheless you should just check out the Demo version and don't get too scared by the top menu bar, which still hast some ugly windows-like icons. The performance is superb. And it offers supreme object-editing, i.e. every audio object (and not only a complete audio track) can have it'S own effects chain e.g.). I think the only other application that offers such a feature is SONAR with the latest versions. Samplitude has this for many year. I am very likely to switch from Cubase to Samplitude, because Cubase 4 is really not what I expected. On example: Samplitude v9 performs better than v8 with it's hybrid audio engine, whereas Cubase 4 needs much more ressources than Cubase SX3....

I've been using ORION since version 1.7 and Cool Edit since I first started using computers for anything and together they are the perfect solution for me. With a combined cost of around US$300, they make everything else seemed way overpriced. I'll probably update to Adobe Audition soon, but only because I have lost my Cool Edit installers.

Sorry for the OT.