This was a surprise piece of news from the NAB show and throws up some interesting questions and possibilities. This is from the Avid press release…
Avid® (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Mountain View, CA-based Euphonix, a leader in large-format digital audio consoles, media controllers and peripherals. With the acquisition, Avid will deliver a broad range of audio and video control surfaces and consoles designed to meet the needs of customers ranging from the independent professional to the high-end broadcaster. Avid plans to continue to support and sell both Euphonix control surfaces and Avid’s existing ICON solution, enabling customers to leverage existing investments in industry-leading hardware.
“This acquisition greatly expands our portfolio to offer customers a complementary set of workflow solutions–from independent producers creating music in their home studios to broadcasters preparing segments for national broadcast,” said Gary Greenfield, chairman and CEO, Avid. “We remain committed to driving interoperability and modularity across a vast ecosystem of Avid and third-party creative hardware and software solutions. And, as audio and video workflows continue to converge, we are now well positioned to deliver control surfaces that work across both audio and video applications, making the content creation process more cost-effective and efficient for our customers.”
Avid plans to further develop an open standard protocol that greatly expands the ecosystem of compatibility between the Euphonix control surfaces and a wide range of Avid and third-party audio and video applications, including Media Composer and Pro Tools. For existing Euphonix customers, Avid will continue to support EuCon– the Euphonix high-speed Ethernet protocol that enables its control surfaces to interface with third-party software.
The transaction is expected to close at the end of April.
Now I am not the first person to report this but Brent Heber who recently left Digidesign ‘down under’ to set up his own studio has posted an excellent piece on where this acquisition might go. Here is a taste…
There’s pretty much two camps on this one – those who use Pro Tools love the idea, those who use other systems are wetting themselves they will lose the only viable market alternative to ICON, their Eucon protocol.
Basically, Euphonix make great consoles and when ICON came along, realised that integrated with a DAW would be a good thing, so they made a communications protocol for a DAW to send and receive mix information to their mixing hardware, a bit like HUI but on steriods. Its a bit like HUI becuase it’s seen as an “open platform” that many developers can use, such as Logic, Pyramix and Nuendo and the like. Nuendo and Euphonix have very tight integration today using Eucon and have sometimes been mentioned as a viable alternative to ICON and ProTools, but most clients still go ICON due to price, support, and most importantly industry adoption of PT over Nuendo.
So what does this mean going forwards? Well, I dont work for them anymore so this is just conjecture, but here’s a few ideas Ive seen posted by folks in LA and discussed around the world in the last 24 hours:
Eucon protocol on Digi hardware – ICON and C24 working as a control surface for Logic, Nuendo and Pyramix? Sounds like a good idea to an ex Digi sales guy. It expands the possible candidates who would buy Avid Audios mid prices offerings (c24 vs Tango, what would you buy?)
Eucon protocol in ProTools – I dont know how long this will take with the current economic climate, lack of resources etc but I’m guessing this HAS to happen to make this acquisition make sense. I just dont think it will happen overnight…
Eucon in Media Composer – this would be a good thing when you look at the Artist series. Its a modular control surface with jog/shuttle wheel and programmable touch screen. Why should it just be an audio device? The Command8’s buttons can be used to control anything in Media Composer, the Artist series would simply be a new and improved version of the same thing. Sexeh…
If you want to read the rest of this post then go over to Brent’ excellent blog here.
