I find it interesting that the name “Yamaha” hasn’t come up in this thread. If only Yamaha wasn’t the taskmaster here…
Count me in as having put N6 on the shelf till things change for the better. I’m glad that people have gotten over the novelty of the new mixer and are seeing it for what it has been tailored for.
It’s pretty clear that what IS needed is a bifurcation in the code: Nuendo + NEK + NUEK (NUage Expander Kit). If you don’t need NUEK you don’t pay for it. And the rest of us get a mixer we can handle comfortably with a mouse, keyboard, and the usual cast of remote devices. Not that I liked the NEK idea at all, but if they’re going to start splitting up feature sets, adaption to specific hardware would seem like an important addon that only people with the hardware should pay for. Unless, of course, there are ulterior plans for this strategy (Nuage Micro? Nuage LE? Nuage Cloudbank™?..)
I really am hoping for the best, but somehow I don’t believe a software split in the codebase will come to pass. Historically, Yamaha has been a very stubborn independently-minded company. For now Steinberg still seems in charge of their software development (thank goodness) but it does seem that they are being pushed in a direction they themselves may feel somewhat apprehensive about.
This certainly would explain the silence we are hearing so clearly…