Audio engineering Abeltron live can get down and dirty and I rember a high end reverb in sound on sound where you efectivly implimented custom reverbs in asembly language.
The difference to me is that you have to be a skilled operator of these devices, not a programmer. Absolutely, they can be very complex to operate but the main difference is that you are using these tools to do your task, rather than creating the tools.
It is true that they sometimes have plugin APIs, but so do most applications. A writer would not typically write plugins for MS Word. But he might buy one for his needs. The API is not necessarily intended for the end user to become a developer.
Well that was the point SOS is a very high end mag they run articles by industry experts that start out "when I where a lad working for Georg Martin on Sargent Pepper"
I was boggled that they reviewd audio equipment which you had to write your own algorithms in Assembly though - now thats hard core
