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Old December 2nd, 2006, 04:08 PM
geezer geezer is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Martinsburg, WV
Posts: 181
Well, Dave.....although there were some critical communication errors made by MTU to its customers during that fatal period in the late 90s, you know I understand what you went through and why it happened. I also always understood the anger from other users that surfaced. There were express and implied promises that were not kept. This is old hat now, however, and anyone with their eyes open knew what the deal was by 2001 or so.....As I said in my previous post, I did not feel cheated. Saddened and paniced for awhile, but not cheated. Microeditor carried me through just fine until its replacement(s) appeared.

I always thought that you would have been saved if you had called on me and/or Charles to help you sell your product to NPR....I went back there briefly again in 1996 during the time that Sonic Solutions was exercising its attempt to develop its product to meet the NPR spec. I ran into their rep there and asked him what they had to do in the way of development (mostly things that Microeditor already did!) and how much of it was done (15%!!!). They never finished, and I heard that NPR had to eat something like a million dollars that they had paid them.

I recently had an opportunity to write an article for Radio magazine about the state of the DAW that you have maybe seen. In doing so, I ended up rehashing a lot of the history you alluded to above. It is still amazing how far you were ahead of the pack you were when I bought my system in 1994. Sound Tools was trash, and the early Pro Tools was not really any better. Sonic Solutions was just barely beginning....As far as I can tell, MTU was the only system out there with internal 32bit architecture and high bit rate accumulators.....(But I did not know that was why the system sounded good. This meant that when my colleague from NPR asked me what the internal bit rate of the system was during the time that they were looking around, I couldn't tell him....a crucial communication/selling deficit.)

In that same Radio magazine article, I talked about the state of customer support now, which, as we all know, is basically FAQs, slowly answered e-mails and downloaded manuals. MTU is the only software company that ever provided the incredible kind of customer support I got from 1994-1998 or so, and I am still thankful for that. I think most of your customers who were angry were disturbed by the disappearance of that support, even though noone else had ever provided anything like it. It was a tough pill for many of us to swallow. I'm sure it was even a tougher pill for you to swallow.

....But, you know me. I'm a realist. I came to MTU after running through the capabilities (some of which were vaporware) of another editing system in under 2 years, and having them completely change their business model and abandon their pro market in that same time frame. I have seen digital multitrack machines with incredible functionality and quality come and go in as little as 2 years, even when marketed by huge, international companies. The 8 years or so I got out of my MTU systems is a lifetime compared to most, and, as I said earlier, we are lucky enough to live in an age where computer recording and editing has really matured and become extremely affordable.

I thank you for your intial support and your and Larry's initial commitment to elegant programming. MTU's history from 1977 to 1998 was unmatched, really. It would have been great if the transition was a little more elegant, as well, but you did not simply abandon the product as so many others have done during this past, volatile decade. It would have been great if someone besides me were actually telling everyone on the forum that development was over, but you were definitely not making any new promises and you kept the forum up for everyone to get info. I thank you for that as well.

Like I say, I don't feel cheated. I got my money's worth.
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