Word processor file formats are entirely relevant to this discussion. If you've been a working engineer for the past thirty years then you should know better than most that each company supports its own product and nobody else's.
Steinberg was bought out by Yamaha.
Cakewalk was bought out by Roland.
They each choose to "officially support" their own products and very little else.
You and I both know that GM doesn't make parts for Ford vehicles and Ford doesn't make parts for Toyotas. That's the way the game is played in the free market system. A deranged software patent system exists today solely for the purpose of keeping large corporations at each others' throats in court and each corporation will litigate til the end of time to protect their intellectual property rights in this system.
Point of fact is that Cakewalk generously published the filespec of the INS file on the internet with an open invitation to the user community to write their own INS files and distribute them freely in any way they see fit.
Since it's an open ended specification it has amazingly withstood the test of time and many many people have contributed these files over the years and some have even ended up bundled in the latest cakewalk products.
However I will now cite two examples in which I have been actively involved in the past year that demonstrates exactly how willing some companies are to part with their "trade secrets."
First off, in April, 2012 I purchased a Casio XW-P1 synth and received one of the very first units to ship in Canada.
I actively petitioned on every relevant casio keyboard listserv and review forum first, looking for, and then convincing mike Martin of Casio of the value of writing such a file for the community. It took at least three months from start to finish, but by August of last year the task was completed successfully and the file is now available for download on Casio's official XW Blog Site as well as numerous other sites where I saw fit to spread it as far as I possibly could. If you google XW-P1 Cakewalk INS file, you will find dozens of solid hits and leads on where to download it.
Now let's fast forward to December 2012, when I purchased an M-Audio Venom at a heavily discounted price, mainly because it was discontinued last September and Avid sold off M-Audio to Akai I believe.
M-Audio still maintains a community support board on it's website and still ostensibly supports its products both by phone as well as on the web and via email.
Now this time I didn't even petition them to create the file. I was, and still am in the process of writing a working INS file for the Venom. I have already done most of the heavy lifting and copied all the patch names and numbers from the MIDI documentation.
What was missing from the patch list was the Bank Select Method and the actual numerical values for each bank. I managed to figure out that Bank Select Method is Controller Zero from the MIDI specs however, Bn is simply not documented anywhere.
Now you'd think this would be a simple thing to find out from M-Audio would you not? No such luck buddy. I posted no fewer than three queries on the community board. The only one which was answered was my initial query as to whether or not such a file already existed and the response was a resounding "Not at this time."
Then when I followed up with a second and third enquiry specifically asking for the Bank Numbers my questions were utterly ignored. My third and final enquiry I bumped 9 times replying to my own message, each time growing more and more frustrated and angry with each passing day until two weeks passed, they deleted my thread, and never bothered answering the actual question.
Now I've found the official support channels and have made both telephone and email enquiries again asking for this simple listing of 8 lousy 1 byte numbers. I shall hold my tongue for another week and see IF and when they ever get back to me on this but I swear as God is my witness I shall never purchase nor recommend another M-Audio product to anyone again so long as I live.
So, indirectly my answer to you is a question of sorts. Why do some people swear by Fords and others by GM cars and others by Toyotas? It's not only the quality of the product, but also the quality of the customer service when the excrement impacts the turbine blades.
Personally I've never been a big fan of Roland keyboards, but they've somehow managed to do all the right things when it came to buying up and operating Cakewalk Software. The mere fact that their INS file remains the closest thing to a standard out there and that their software which I purchased over a decade ago is still functional under Wine Emulation in Linux as well as the updated Music Creator 5 which I purchased last year is also running under Wine and still uses the same INS file is why I have no reservations about recommending it as my DAW of choice.
I've tried other DAWs both running under Linux as well as Windows but somehow when they have inevitably failed me for one reason or another I continue to stick with the Cakewalk. It may not have as many bells and whistles as some of the newer ones out there, but it simply never lets me down.
