OT: Yamaha buys Line 6

yep looks like the quality of plugin’s will take a tumble and more rubbish interfaces on the way .

I don’t know a single person that’s had a line 6 interface and has managed to hook it up with Cubase first time with no hassle . just saying !

^^ Does this guy ever take a day off??

Agreed on the topic relevance. Would be nice to see Cubase inherit the Line6 POD Farm plug-in as an additional instrument.

Good news indeed. Thanks for the heads up.

Oh this is so true!!! I had discovered last year or so that the proprietary ASIO drivers for devices do not co-exist well making it near impossible. I gave up, mine sits idle collecting dust

Well Yamaha also owns Steinberg…

SO

This could be good in terms of software offerings included within future versions of Cubase.

Hopefully something better than the current raft of hardware/firmware rubbish.

What do you mean it could be good ?
Incompatible cheap audio interfaces ,they can’t even write drivers for their crappy cheap interfaces .

If Steinberg end’s up getting dumped with this rubbish because of yamaha’s say so …IM OUT !

I have used a Pod XT with no problems whatsoever. I don’t see what the fuzz is all about.

I use it as a backup on the go. By the way, I use Line 6 plugins in most of my mixes (professional). I would love to see some kind of integration and included plugs. It will be interesting to see what happens with Reason. Doesn’t Line 6 own Propellerhead? The beat features of Reason included in Cubase would be amazing!

No, they only partnered up in the past.

When I first saw this I figured Yamaha wanted access to Line6’s modeling technologies, and not their audio interface capibilities - I love my Variax and PodHD500. This is the bulk of Line6’s product mix. A very common reason for companies to buy other companies is for the patents. Yamaha already possesses the capability to build audio interfaces, they wouldn’t need to buy Line6 to get that (unless there was a potential patent violation Yamaha is trying to avoid which seems unlikely).

This posting on KVR reinforces my opinion.

I also see this this is a good thing. Seems to me Steinberg’s customer responsiveness improved after Yamaha got involved.

As a humorous side note on patents, I just finished taking the Coursera ChucK programming class - which is a language to do music with and I highly recommend for those so inclined. In the language documentation the following boilerplate appears many times

The basic Chowning/Stanford FM patent expired
in 1995, but there exist follow-on patents,
mostly assigned to Yamaha. If you are of the
type who should worry about this (making
money) worry away.

Naturally, when there is more money on the table.

One great benefit however is that SB have managed to maintain full independence and control of the development (and procurement) process.

Excellent point about the independence. And that shows Yamaha is smart about their acquisitions and not trying to double-guess the expertise of the companies they buy.

Given that Yamaha has some excellent modelling technologies of its own I am not so sure, heck I even prefer the Behringer pods over the L6 pods sound wise, I think it is more of a financial/production move, L6 has been in the doldrums financially and the build quality of their products has been complained about a lot recently. Yamaha is getting a brand well known in the English speaking guitar playing world, which is a sector that Yamaha has been under performing in since the 70’s, with the exception of steel string acoustic and classical guitars. Given the financial performance of L6 recently, Yamaha has probably not paid too much for the company either.

More recently one of the reasons for the bad performance of L6 has been the surprise sales hit of the Yamaha H series of modelling amps that competed directly with both processors and amps from L6. The companies tie up with a low budget provider of Chinese “pro” audio products was also not a good idea in the first place.

Much like when Yamaha took over Steinberg after Pinnacle had diluted the brand by releasing hopeless consumer products that were not even sold via the Steinberg channels, I hope this will lead to a refocused Line6 and fans of the brand should take heart in fact that the company has stated they will keep it as a separate entity with the current staff, when Yamaha took over Korg and Steinberg they left the companies operation independent and focused on rebuilding them rather than gut them for brands and technologies.

So did Steinberg BTW, all of the early Propellerheads products including rebirth were released under the Steinberg label.

They should buy Ensoniq and Emu from Creative Labs for $19.99 :smiley:

Steinberg and Propellerhead partnered up on ReWire and the first version of ReCycle, not ReBirth.

V1 versions of Rebirth were distributed by Steinberg, I sold them at the time with a Steinberg logo on the packaging.


“Rule, Greg. “Keyboard Reports: Steinberg ReBirth RB-338,” Keyboard 23:9:256 September 1997.”

I too have a Variax and a POD X3 Live! that have never given me a problem in 6 years. Guitar players that visit my studio are always impressed with the capabilities. I don’t see the “purist” guitar players giving up their Strats or LPs or their tube amps or pedals anymore than I see true Hammond and Rhodes purists using substitutes instead, but they do have their place. As a keyboard player who dabbles in guitar (and technology), I got them because I wanted to cover as many bases as possible. Kinda like my Kronos does.

I see Yamaha buying Line 6 as a good thing as Yamaha will be able to pour more resources into Line 6 R&D. It should be amazing watching what they come up with AND seeing that technology trickle down into Cubase. If you don’t know, they partnered with Bogner and developed a real tube amp a few years back and have developed a simple (idiot-proof) PA system that you can run from your iPad on stage or from the audience. Worth watching the videos on YouTube if you haven’t seen it yet.

You are right, I dug up the old box and there’s the big old Steinberg logo. My bad!

My biggest hope is that there now could be a VST-version of Line 6’ “Echo Farm”. This is most certainly the one plug-in I miss most when I come from working on TDM-based systems.

… not that the Echo Farm’s delay models would be so extraordinary - but the all JUST WORK. Maybe the most efficient FX-plug-in (sound-wise, that is) I used during the last 15 years or so …


My favorite: