[coldtea]

>I really disagree about it as a direct ancestor of the contemporary plugin API. These have always run on the host CPU, not dedicated DSP chips (excluding of course Digidesign's original ProTools model, but that was DSP farm rather than just a chip).

That's like saying "computing in the 80s was all about the home computer market, if we exclude the PC". ProTools was the biggest name (and quite close to a monopoly for pros at the time).

[PaulDavisThe1st]

But it didn't put the DSP inside the computer, which is what made the NeXTcube interesting.

ProTools had a separate box that had the DSP farm in it. There was nothing particular unique about that (at the time) (though running a DAW on it was definitely novel when they did it).