Serious question. If this is all digital "no analog' then that would mean the tech involved should be reproducible and (considering moore's law) at a fairly low cost. So if analog gear especially old gears prices is mainly dependent on parts scarcity and the fact that there's low production. Then why are these so damn expensive?
Because it's hardware, and super high-quality hardware at that. In a unit like this, you're paying for a combo of high R&D, distribution, and manufacturing costs, high demand, low supply, low latency DSPs, and most importantly Swiss labor, all of which drive up the price. Those things are still scarce. Your question is like asking Apple why they're computers are so expensive when the software is "reproducible", it's because you're not just paying for the software, but the hardware it runs on too. Although Weiss aren't manufacturing their hardware using slave labor, so that criticism actually makes less sense than for Apple. It makes perfect sense for the market they're trying to hit. On the other hand, nowadays, mere mortals like us can have this processor in their chain for much less than Weiss charge for it. Softube now offers a plugin version of this and it's about 20x cheaper, even though it's a line-by-line code port of the original hardware and actually contains a few more features. The reason it's so much cheaper from Softube is that they probably didn't pay nearly as much for R&D (basically their dev team only had to port Weiss' DSP code, design the GUI, debug the product, and that's job done. Although I suspect Softube probably did some optimisation for use in a PC to bring down CPU load, because they're nice like that), and their distro and manufacturing costs are essentially 0. So it makes sense. If you do want to try it, Softube do a 20-day free trial. I'd give it a go, but only if you won't mind parting with your cash after the trial ends, it's a fucking unbelievably clean dynamics processor. P.S. As an aside, Moore's Law isn't a law of physics, in fact it isn't much more than a historical trend, and those can and do change. Some people actually think that Moore's Law became somewhat self-fulfilling, because manufacturers assumed it was true and actually planned around it, and in doing so made it come true. So just because ICs and transistors have tended to follow the trend up to now doesn't mean they will indefinitely. It does seem to have held so far, but with the size of transistors being where they are nowadays, we're probably reaching the end of its relevance fairly soon.
![Softube Weiss DS1-MK3 [Арам Киракосян]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/D3efdVgRQNM/mqdefault.jpg)
![Softube Weiss DS1-MK3 [Арам Киракосян]](/img/tr.png)
Serious question. If this is all digital "no analog' then that would mean the tech involved should be reproducible and (considering moore's law) at a fairly low cost.
So if analog gear especially old gears prices is mainly dependent on parts scarcity and the fact that there's low production. Then why are these so damn expensive?
Because it's hardware, and super high-quality hardware at that. In a unit like this, you're paying for a combo of high R&D, distribution, and manufacturing costs, high demand, low supply, low latency DSPs, and most importantly Swiss labor, all of which drive up the price. Those things are still scarce. Your question is like asking Apple why they're computers are so expensive when the software is "reproducible", it's because you're not just paying for the software, but the hardware it runs on too. Although Weiss aren't manufacturing their hardware using slave labor, so that criticism actually makes less sense than for Apple. It makes perfect sense for the market they're trying to hit.
On the other hand, nowadays, mere mortals like us can have this processor in their chain for much less than Weiss charge for it. Softube now offers a plugin version of this and it's about 20x cheaper, even though it's a line-by-line code port of the original hardware and actually contains a few more features. The reason it's so much cheaper from Softube is that they probably didn't pay nearly as much for R&D (basically their dev team only had to port Weiss' DSP code, design the GUI, debug the product, and that's job done. Although I suspect Softube probably did some optimisation for use in a PC to bring down CPU load, because they're nice like that), and their distro and manufacturing costs are essentially 0. So it makes sense.
If you do want to try it, Softube do a 20-day free trial. I'd give it a go, but only if you won't mind parting with your cash after the trial ends, it's a fucking unbelievably clean dynamics processor.
P.S. As an aside, Moore's Law isn't a law of physics, in fact it isn't much more than a historical trend, and those can and do change. Some people actually think that Moore's Law became somewhat self-fulfilling, because manufacturers assumed it was true and actually planned around it, and in doing so made it come true. So just because ICs and transistors have tended to follow the trend up to now doesn't mean they will indefinitely. It does seem to have held so far, but with the size of transistors being where they are nowadays, we're probably reaching the end of its relevance fairly soon.
@@jamesramsden5319 high demand, low supply, pretty much summed it up.
Steel costs money.
Versatile? No Analogue, just digital (which is cool), but that makes it a hard pass - no need to build it that way at all.