The whole idea of gaming/professional audio equipment is all marketing.
Audio is audio, okay, soundcards release sound frequencies to the ports, and speakers emit said frequencies. Creative has a lot of great products that can be used for producing music any day. I use a lot of creative speakers for music all the time (different series have different qualities which is good for testing what the final product will sound like on speakers with more treble, or more bass, etc).
I hate to say this but you're very wrong. Professional audio cards are designed to do more of the signal processing on the card itself. Higher end cards also have better DAC then cheap cards do, just read the reviews for some of the claro ht cards. In addition, as the number of channels, input or output goes up, so does the price.
I haven't seen many 16 channel audio cards on the cheap lately have you? Check out audioscience cards and you'll see what I'm talking about. There is a huge difference between professional vs general consumer audio cards.
The same can be said for video cards.... :smile:
I built a Rivendell box for my old college radio station, and that audioscience card wasn't cheap.
Cubase in my opinion is over-priced, and has a very stiff interface. And a lesser version of it would be worthless. That's another aspect of marketing; adding little useless freebies to attract the consumer to buy it.
I don't get this, you feel it's overpriced for its offerings but feel a lesser version is worthless? Someone has to write all that software, even the useless ad-ones you mention and most people don't work for free these days. I still think audicaty is great, but it's obviously limited in comparison to Cubase.
Marketing is about communicating your product to the client. I haven't seen a Cubase commercial on TV lately, have you?
