Comments on: Life After Giga: SONiVOX Now Doing Their Own Development, Among Others

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:08:41 +0000

@carmen: that sounds like a great idea — and I agree, text description, not binary, please!

I’m equally skeptical of claims of “universal”; that seems to translate these days as “it makes sound.” (Sound is … well … sort of universal, I suppose.) But in this case, I’m just not sure what I mean.

Vive SampleXML (sXML, pronounced “sex em el). No, that doesn’t exist; I just made it up.

By: carmen

carmen — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:38:26 +0000

Universally Compatible is a pretty large claim.

does this mean Hruska and her crew are going to support open standards? maybe the MMA is going to come up with some new sampler format?

i wouldnt mind something like that.. XML based instrument description format based around ‘bundles’ of the associated sample data (basic dirs on disk, nothing crazy with binary)

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:20:11 +0000

They claim in the press release that it is “Initially supporting SONiVOX and 3rd party partner products.” So it sounds as though they do tend to license it. The question is how aggressively — or whether, increasingly, other soundware houses will be building their own tools. Obviously, I understand the business equation here, which is that you wouldn’t want to license your player so cheaply that your competitor winds up making more money than you do. That’s always the issue with these things, because all the player makers (including NI with Kore) are also soundware makers, hence competing with the folks they’re licensing the tool to, at least on some level.

But, yes, Sonivox has effectively “announced” it, whether they deliver on it or not.

By: Peter Alexander

Peter Alexander — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:10:06 +0000

Hi, Peter. Thank you for the credit. Regarding SONiVOX, my understanding is that their virtual instrument is for them only, and that they won’t be licensing it to other developers. That is a possibility, of course, but we have no annoucements to that effect.