I would think that 3rd party VSTi's should be the #1 priority for VSL.
- It's probably relatively easy to accomplish - a smaller amount of man hours of programming to complete it than Mir.
- If it works even nearly as well as VE3 does it will be an instant market hit and a 'friend-maker' for many composers who currently have little or no VSL product.
- It would solve a huge problem for all of us who need to have more sample libraries at our finger tips.
- If they go for Kontakt as one of the first VSTi's they certify to work they will capture a huge new client base.
- If they go for Play as one of their first VST's they certify they will gain a giant advantage over their #1 competitor. Even Play's stated network solution doesn't yet mention their plans for MIDI implementation.
- with Mir they don't have a huge potential customer base as they would with this network solution. Mir will cost the customer quite a bit - but a relatively small portion of that expenditure will actually go to VSL - most of the money will go for purchasing of hardware to make it work. VSL is taking a lot of money out of the pockets of their customers but only returning a small amount to themselves.
- another competitor (Audio Impressions, the DVZ people) already have a working, shipping software that allows 32 channels of audio over ethernet back into a master computer from a slave. I've seen it & it works. They had a Mac running Logic hooked up to PC slave running Kontakt and Giga (in a wrapper). I played it. it worked with no latency problems. They still have to use MoLCP to get the MIDI to the slave. The software implementation is not nearly as slick as VE3. But it seeminly works well. Their next plan is to do some sort of MIDI to the slave implementation. VSL is aware of this software. Do they wish to miss this marketing opportunity to someone else?
- VE3 was The Software of the Year for 2008. There's no reason why VE3.1 can't be same for 2009.
- Waiting for Snow Leopard and System 7 to do this is not necessary. Most of us will be using OSX 10.5 and XP/Vista for some time to come because all the third party VSTi developers will not be able to deliver their product on Snow Leopard or System 7 for some time anyway. Besides, even if our Master DAW does become Snow Leopard or System 7 it doesn't necessarily follow that our slave computers will have to follow suit.
- Considering the long term success of VSL - think about Apple. They made wonderful, expensive computers for years and years. When they finally started to acheive a market breakthrough it was because of the iPod - an inexpensive product that tied everything together for a whole new set of consumers.
- This 3rd party VSTi solution would tie everything together - VSL's way.