Sequential Joins the Focusrite Group

The Lounge Other Gear
#103

Precisely. Either it was making enough to make replacement worth it or it was not, and thus was not. The price of the replacement is clearly a factor here, but either way it would seem the PX was not selling enough to make the cost of replacement worth while.

Yup. If you prefer “analogs outsell hybrids” rather than “hybrids undersell analogs” either makes sense to me. Regardless, it’s steadily lead to a lineup of more and more analog gear and less and less hybrids such that we’ve seen the introduction of five new analog architectures (rev2, P6, OB6, Tr6, T5) and only one hybrid (Pro3).

In case it’s not clear, I agree this has everything to do with the market’s analog obsession and nothing to do with the worthiness of the gear. I wouldn’t trade my P12 for anything in the existing lineup. But it seems pretty clear the majority of the market preferred one of the analog units, yeah?

Well, I suggested some future hybrid would sell better under the Novation brand than the Sequential one. And others have (rightly) been asking I justify this. Seems on-topic for a discussion about Sequential joining the Focusrite Group. But yeah, in the scheme of things it’s not curing cancer or anything. Welcome to gear forums :upside_down_face:

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#104

:+1:

#105

I agree with everything you said.
But I think this “analog obsession” trend is on the decline and people are looking for more interesting synths again (hybrid, multitimbral, experimental). But I don’t know if those same people are willing to put several thousands quids into a synth. The demographic who can afford those is probably more interested in the analog stuff.
Just my uniformed take on the matter.

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#106

While you’re mentioning the Tr6 and T5, where are the rev 4 and the PX in your list? That would be 6 analogs for 2 hybrids, rather than 5 to 1. In any case, Sequential seemed pretty focused on analog gear even before the Focusrite acquisition.

#107

I don’t count the P5 (or P10, for that matter) because it’s an old architecture not the introduction of a new one.

On that count, one could include the PX, but I don’t because, as has been discussed, it’s already been discontinued.

And yes, as I’ve said, I don’t think Focusrite has anything to do with it. But I do wonder if now having a sister brand like Novation with a reputation for high-quality digital synths could, in theory, offer a home to some of these wayward Sequential hybrids.

#108

I suppose much depends on whether or not big synths will still be released under the Novation brand after the Summit has run its course. The bulk of their business seems to be controllers and things like the Circuits right now (and small devices that seem made to sell forever, like the Mininova and Bass Station II).

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#109

agreed. and while they have discontinued a lot of synths during the DSI/Sequential period, they also introduce a new synth almost every year. which is quite something for any company, but especially one of that size.

while everyone was arguing about this PX discontinuation, did anyone notice that the Prophet 5/10 dropped in price this past weekend? 10’s are $900 off (both key and module) and 5’s are $600 off. Sweetwater says “while supplies last” but they always do that with price drops. and I have a really hard time believing they’re discontinuing these synths any time soon…

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#110

That’s not bounded by the cost of redesigning your product, though.

#111

Any good brand managing business will seek to max out each brand separately, otherwise there is no point of keeping them separate. So I don’t think that Focusrite will fiddle too much with product development. Where Focusrite is likely to have a much bigger say is the shared business functions (eg procurement, component manufacturing, marketing, distribution, etc), the goal being to control and optimize the costs for the whole group.

#112

This whole conversation reawakens my curiosity about what the design process currently looks like at Sequential. Dave Smith seemed genuinely excited about the acquisition. My read of it was that he felt that he could be even more deeply engaged with design and worry less about the more prosaic parts of the business…but then of course soon after he passed away (just way too soon, he obviously was still so in love with the work and passionate about it). Dave was just such a great synth designer, genuine legend…is there anyone at Sequential up to task of taking on his mantle?

That haven’t even launched a synth yet that he didn’t design, have they?

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#113

I guess I don’t understand why you keep bringing Focusrite’s meddling into this? I certainly don’t think they’d have much say over product. So why keep bringing them up?

I simply think that, if Sequential were considering abandoning/resurrecting one of their beloved hybrids (and I do think they’re much-loved in the company) they might reach out to their new sibling to see if they wanted to take it over. And I don’t think Novation would necessarily say no because their user base is kind of the inverse of Sequential’s and rather into hybrids.

That’s all. No corporate overlord conspiracies. But this part is deeply speculative, and there are plenty of good reasons it would never happen.

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#114

I had an interview with the current ceo not that long ago, for a position over there. It really does seem to be running as its own entity, a lot of the old policies still stand. They still do all in house repair work and they still repair all of the synths they have made under the dsi name forward (evolver being the oldest).

As far as who is leading new projects it’s hard to say, it does seem that there are some people who have been there for nearly the entire run of DSI so I would imagine they might be. Dave put his stamp on everything but I’m pretty certain that P12 and Pro2 were actually pet projects of his underlings.

I would be curious to see if they start pushing a name forward as the lead designer… seems more likely they will have the designers in the background.

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#115

for P12, seems it came from someone who wanted to leave/start his own company using the idea for his first synth. until he ended up sharing it with Dave and the two of 'em ran with it.

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#116

I, too, was thinking based off that interview that a fair bit of the design work on the P12 was not Smith - which bodes well for future Sequential synths, if you ask me.

He was training up engineers and designers which just seems like the decent thing to do anyway.

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#117

It’s great to hear that these instruments were designed in a team setting…totally agree it bodes well for the future.

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#118

It’s not likely that Focusrite has bought Sequential just to rehash forever. Ultimately their compass will have to be releaseing products that a if Dave Smith was 30 or 40 years old today, he would have thought was inspiring and worth trying now. And in the current day that would mean pushing forward the concept of using samples in creating great music. And there’s still much that can be done there.

So that bodes well for a new revision of the Prophet X.

#119

The premature discontinuation of the Pro 2 and the lackluster support / OS fixes they offered after that were what ultimately soured me on DSI/Sequential. I still have my Pro 2, and I totally dig it, but there are still some frustrating bugs and features missing.

By contrast, Novation support is usually long and generous in my experience. Hopefully the Focusrite/Novation purchase will mean better long term support for Sequential gear, even discontinued models.

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#120

Another reason to look for ways to continue products – long term support gets paid for directly that way.

That’s another issue with hardware changes along the way too, you want to not force big software versions changes between those separate hardware changes along the way. Small changes can be dealt with if you have to, by detection with the two versions in the code. All the sorts of things you need to consider in continuation engineering.

Costs are part of it too, as thermionic correctly points out, fortunately the costs of continuation are normally so much less than when initially starting from scratch, that it can very often be worth doing, if you can extend the life of a product substantially.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Take-overs by larger conglomerates, means new rules for decision making, like agreements when you need to pass decisions up the chain for review, and when you just make your own choice locally. I’d think dropping something major would normally get reviewed. If the decision came from on high to drop something, that also would get local review and feedback, but ultimately, you could guess who normally makes the final call, in that case.

Same goes to decisions within a group. Often there is some very open discussion, and open differences of opinion.

I’ve only had to break up a fist fight, a few times. You try to keep ego out of decisions, but your work becomes your life sometimes. People also may go elsewhere after a project or product gets canceled.

Talented people leaving often has the affect of changing a companiy’s direction as well. Bob Coover, mostly a software developer left Sequential and started Groove Synthesis. Could the 3rd Wave ( thread ) have been a Sequential product ? Who knows.

Funny aside :

Spell check turns thermionic into thermonuclear !

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#121

I dont think he really worked there as an employee and instead was doing freelance/consulting for them? I think he still might do some fx code for them but maybe he cut it off.

#122

I can’t vouch for this but from a Sequental Forum this was said :

I think Bob worked for Sequential as a consultant rather than actual employee but yeah according to his linkedin page he worked on everything from the Prophet 6 to current (Trigon?), designing all FX or oscillator waveforms where digital osc applies…quite a contribution I’d say. It seems like a complementary skillset to what Dave and Tony were doing on the analog side of things. I remember him saying in one interview that he actually offered the idea of the 3rd Wave to Dave at one point to design and distribute under Sequential and Dave wasn’t really interested but encouraged him to go for it,

I’d be interested to hear this interview.

From personal experience, i don’t draw bright lines in differentiation between contractors and employees at the high levels.