wow, a one man effort. very nice. I saw something on this maybe a month ago or so actually here on slashdot. it is indeed a niche product, but I think with the way the economy is, some people would prefer a smaller price tag. I can justify spending money if I see that the product will be used fairly often, and while your software looks pretty bad-ass, I can't see myself using it more than a few times. honesty is what I'm giving you.
I've pondered why certain software devs don't think about a "limited use" or rental license for their products. this could make sense with certain VST's for example. I know I saw this one VST pack for about $100 and I thought, "I'll never really use this more than a few times, so I'm better off looking for a free or cheap alternative." however, if I had the opportunity to maybe say, play around with it unrestricted [as in, full usage, no weird sound effects or nag screens] for 3 days at a significantly smaller price tag, I could do that, and the dev would still get money from it. obviously it's better if it's free, but the dev should make SOME money from it. however, piracy figures into all of that and it becomes a big issue. but, if that limited use cost could be factored into the final price [say I paid $20 for 3 days, and that would count towards the $100 pricetag], that would encourage me to buy the product if I really saw myself using it more. of course, it could also work if you have a larger scale project that has multiple apps or pieces and are able to purchase them separately instead of in one pack [as above].
that being said, I think most of the people I know running studios out here will pay for software and not pirate it. plus, they can write it off as a business expense, right? so software "piracy" is really an iffy issue for this kind of market, although I will not say that it doesn't happen quite a bit.
the other thing I see a lot in the audio software market [especially DAW's] is a program that doesn't receive too many updates, but when it does, they charge the user some "upgrade" fee for it. again, reasonable if your program is nicely priced and used a lot, but if I just spent $400 on your software and you release a new update the next year that adds like one synth but breaks compatibility with other programs I'm using, why should I shell out another $150? reasonable upgrade prices for people who paid out the nose already [again, looking at the down economy, salary freezes, etc.] for your product is a good reason that I will not buy your product.
I know not all of this is relevant to your cause, but I think it's good to hear about these things for future endeavors as well.