Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Re: kim's refreshing insight (was: Ableton LIVE's..



I loved your explanation about non real time OS problems, Kim
and I agree that HW tools sometimes are a much handyer and even 
cheaper solution
and I congratulate to your HD recorder aquisition
but this one is going too far:

>in the end probably cost a lot less than I would have spent on a pc 
>recording system. We're happy, and she'll probably begin a recording 
>project here within days. It probably would have been years if we 
>kept on the PC path.

you can install an audio soft on a mac (Violets iBook may be enough) 
and learn to record on it in a day, be it with the internal audio 
input or a fire wire interface.
and when it comes to editing or using MIDI tracks, sampler,,, you 
will miss the screen and end up syncing the computer to the HD 
recorder and probably get more problems than by doing it all in the 
computer.

>
>To me, that is the real advantage of a dedicated device over a 
>general purpose computer/laptop. How much time and energy are you 
>going to put into customizing an interface for that general purpose 
>device to fit your needs, before you can do anything with it at all? 
>How much time are you going to spend screwing around with it later, 
>fixing problems, installing updates, etc?

you are right that its easy to loose a lot of time with this, but 
mostly because the options are so seducing. Set it up once for the 
basic needs (usually the only option the HW solution offers and the 
start up situation of the SW solution) and then keep it going, no 
need to upgrade for a year or twoQ
By that time you maybe also want to upgrade the HW solution which may 
be a bigger change...
Even HW machines have bugs and upgrades...

Now, you are certainly right that its easier to make a dedicated HW 
work well for a specific task and in the present case of latency, the 
computer will give us a lot of headakes still.

I wonder why enterprises like Apple dont create a real time version 
of their OS, limited and optimized for specific use.
In most studios I see a Mac with nothing but ProTools installed to 
make it safe. They have a second computer for Internet and such. So 
an OS that looks like the MacOS but only serves audio soft would 
certainly be much safer and quicker...

>knowledgeable people spend a whole bunch of time figuring out the 
>details of the interface design, probably with input from other 
>users. These days I find I'd much rather take advantage of the 
>interface design work that somebody else already did, rather than 
>reinventing that wheel myself.

yes, but a professional audio software went through the experience of 
many more professional users and thus its interface developped 
further than a new dedicated HW ever could!

and:
just as you screw up the computer by loading too many tools into it 
that dont work together right, the HW system also starts to fail if 
you add more components: you get ground loops, bad contacts, heat...
-- 


          ---> http://Matthias.Grob.org