Certain types of people welcome the complexity, and in some ways... it's THE signal to them that this is a "serious" or "professional" product. Same for the way you can only buy it through direct sales ... I just don't think it has to be a binary choice between professional quality and approachable usability.
You've actually captured a couple of things that have become increasingly obvious
to me at least in recent times
I.m.h.o ...
Re: the ^first^ point - true - this
was a major somewhat subtle selling "point" [myth] for Fractal up until the last few years ... but as the Digital market has grown and expanded exponentially across multiple quality makers from $400 and up, and as Digital users have gotten so much more educated and discerning and have noticed and heard for themselves the lack of actual sonic and feel differences between the top tier stuff, this kind of thinking just doesn't work or fly with
most people anymore -
its now actually putting more and more people off.
Re: the ^second^ point .... you've hit the nail on the head.
If you asked D.I and the whole Stadium team,
this would probably summarize their number one goal for their Stadium Project to-do list - maximum features, best UI and user-operability and equal-if-not-class-leading modeling which is up-front designed for a very long [~10 year] run life-span - and all to be rolled out over several product levels and price points.
In this Digital Space, L6 / YGG are the only company I cant think of that has the expertise, history, global footprint and associated resources to pull this off.
This is
not in any way a slag at Fractal ... but they simply cannot release a product which will have a ~10 year life-cycle ...... because of their relative minnow size, they need hardware revisions to keep sales rolling ... yes, their direct selling gives them total control and wipes out the middle-man [to some degree] so it does increase relative profit
per box ... but it can never generate the economies of scale and revenue streams to build and design a product
like a Stadium .... deliver it at its price point ... and have it available in virtually every brick and mortar and online store in the world.
Just because you are small and good and focused does guarantee you are the "best". Just because you are big and good and focused does not guarantee you are "less-best". These views/statements are redundant.
In the Digital Space ... I don't think anything is ever going to eclipse the impact and ground breaking nature of the Original Red Bean.
The OG Helix then took it to another level. And the Stomp is just a stone-cold modern day classic. Even today, Fractal, Kemper, QC, Boss etc... must look at the Stomp and say to themselves "how the f*ck did they pull that off"
I do feel however that Stadium is going to be a much more significant product by a good degree, than even the OG Helix was.
Just my 3c worth.
www.musicinstrumentnews.co.uk
about new Engine updates because being so small, they have to pull this lever - and again - there's also %100 less than zero wrong about their strategy.
