Re: Looperlative Too Expensive?

[Tom Ritchford <tom@swirly.com>]

> Unless Behringer's software--beyond the basics--is written by users
> in the open-source community. You just wouldn't believe how much
> hacking of consumer products goes on now.  That's why the new Lego
> Mindstorms license has a "right to hack".

Right, but that's very, very, very different -- and much easier.  If
you buy Mindstorms out of the box, it does amazing things.  The
hackers just add to that.

In order for Behringer to ship, they'd have to ship a box that did
something useful.  They can't ship a box that does nothing and wait
for people to write software!  Just writing the "basics" of a decent
looper that people would pay several hundred dollars for is, as we
know, a difficult activity.

> It's only a matter of time
> before the same thing starts happening in the musical community,
> given the number of engineers who also play music.  The standard
> sound-editing package for radio folks is Audacity, which is
> completely open-source.

And this has taken them years to achieve and is not based around a
proprietary bit of hardware.

> Max/MSP is a visual programming environment
> previously used by installation artists that is now being used more
> and more by digital musicians and has been used to create a cheap
> open-source Final Scratch.

Again, this took years and years to do and isn't based around a
proprietary system.

> The new product paradigm folks are aiming
> at is Web 2.0.

Wait, how did we jump to web applications?  None of these programs
have anything to do with the web?!

--
     /t

http://ax.to ... extreme NY arts and music calendar