A bit more on pricing for the Synclavier and it's options (these prices are from mid-1989):
- Core 3200 System: Includes CPU, two channels of ADC, Mac II with 16" colour monitor and internal 20Mb hard disk, 80Mb system hard disk, high density floppy disk, 2 in/8 out MIDI interface, SMPTE reader card, sound library, software, documentation: $57,105
(this was the 'cut down' Synclavier that was also part of the single rack Post Pro SD system)
- Core 9600 System: Includes CPU, two channels of ADC, 76-note keyboard with button panel, Mac II with 19" colour monitor and 30Mb hard disk, 320Mb system hard disk, high density floppy disk, 2 in/8 out MIDI interface, SMPTE reader, sound library, software, documentation: $148,108
(note that by 1988 the Additive/FM Synthesis engine of the original Synclavier had become an optional extra, and it was being sold primarily as a sampler)
- Four voice sampling card (for 3200): $1822
- Four voice sampling card (for 9600): $6075
(For Direct-To-Disk you need as many sampling voices as tracks you want to use, in addition to sampling voices actually used as instruments in your track - the 3200 could have a maximum of 32 voices, the 9600 could have 96)
- Eight voice synthesis card (9600 only): $6075
(The 3200 was a sampler only, and did not support the synth engine)
- 4Mb RAM card: $6075
- 16Mb RAM card: $24,300
(the 3200 had a maximum sample memory capacity of 32Mb, the 9600 had 96Mb)
- Eight-channel output card: $6075
- Sixteen-channel output card: $12,150
(up to 32 seperate audio output channels could be installed)
- Optical disk: $35,842 (Megneto-Optical WORM drive for sample data and composition backup - the sequencer allowed up to 200 tracks and a length that was limited by the amount of storage space available)
- 320Mb hard disk: $15,187
(the standard configuration for Direct-To-Disk was 4 320Mb drives, which gave 8 tracks with 50 minutes recording time at 50kHz. Adding the MaxTrax hardware/software option plus an additional 4 disks would allow 16 tracks with 25 minutes recording time. As many disks could be added as there were SCSI IDs)
- Kennedy tape backup: $6,986 (cheaper and slower alternative to the WORM drive - Direct-To-Disk used multiple tape drives in parallel to allow multiple tracks at once to be backed up)
- DSP module: $9112 (Digital effects processor)
- VITC (software and firmware): $1397
- VITC (with reader): $3766
(VITC - Vertical Interval Timecode, the sync system used in video editing and production instead of SMPTE)
- Music Engraving Option: $2126 (used for outputting notation and scores as PostScript files)
- Sound Ideas Sound effects library (optical): $2126
- Denny Jaeger master Violin Library (optical): $15,187
The early 90s economic downturn and the advent of relatively cheap software-based DAWs that ran on Macs or PCs and offered digital multitrack capability (like DigiDesign's Sound Tools, which evolved into the first version of Pro Tools in 1991) that did for New England Digital, and they went bust in 1992. The following year also saw the release of the iZ/Otari RADAR hard disk-based 24-track ADAT recording system for professional studio use. Fostex bought out the rights to NED's Direct-To-Disk system and took on their engineers to develop their Foundation 2000 hard disk multitrack recorder, which was also released in 1993.
