RE: Eventide4 KIM

[Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com>]

At 7:53 AM -0700 9/16/00, italo de angelis wrote:

>>Ok KIM let me try to show you and all LD people  how an Eventide
>>4000/7000/Orville works:

thank you for all of the great details Italo. by the way, do you mind if I
use some of your postings on the Eventide section of Looper's Delight?
I've been waiting forever for somebody to show up here who actually used
eventides for looping and had something to say about it. you more than fit
that description. :-)


>The looping features DO NOT have undo, copy, multiply and other features 
>of
>the Echoplex, even though Scott Gilfix has done nice programs in which you
>can undo and double loop length by using buffer delays.

well, he has a way to do one layer of undo, not multiple undos like the
echoplex...:-)


>YES Kim, you cannot do looping and sampling on the same audio chunk, 
>meaning
>that a sampler module does sampling,editing and looping of the sample and 
>a
>delay module does delay style loopingÖBUT you can put both in the same
>program and get both flavors of powerÖdoes it hurt anybody? Like it?

it hurt us....we were looking at orville as a place to protoype new ideas.
but it became clear some of its limitations prevented us from doing many of
our basic concepts that we implemented in the echoplex long ago. no hope
for the new ideas....

don't get me wrong, orville is clearly a very powerful signal processor.
(with a very powerful price. :-)  but for all the types of standard looping
functions that are not DSP based, it seems rather limited. If what you need
is very powerful DSP features to use with rather simple loop creation,
orville may be for you.




>2) trust a reliable software and hardware should be easy  in year 2000, 
>when
>youíre on stage, improvising and looping in front of people that pay 
>tickets
>to be there Ö.Iím a musician that does live and studio work, being the 
>first
>very inner resources demanding, especially when you use these toys.
>3) see a product come to life and growing with updates that implement new
>and exciting functions, killing old bugs and keeping the box up to the
>usersí demands , dropping prices even if this means totally changing the
>unit from almost scratchÖ
>All this and more I donít see from Gibson!!! And believe me, I have 
>nothing
>personal with you! I think you did a wonderful job with Eds and still 
>doing
>it, including keeping this awesome place open on the Net. You are an
>invaluable human and tech resource to any interested human looper cat,

sorry, but I don't think your accusations are at all fair to Matthias, or
me, or even Gibson. The reason you don't see bugs in the software for the
Echoplex is because we fixed them all already. We produced the updates and
got them to users who needed it, and we did that long ago. And now, we are
about to release a major new software version for the Echoplex that will do
many exciting new things that nobody has ever seen before. Much of it is
based on extensive interactions we've had with users on this list and
otherwise.  And you know what? this upgrade doesn't mean changing the whole
thing from scratch. Everybody who has already paid their hard-earned
dollars for the hardware can get it updated for a much smaller price. They
don't have to throw away everything they already bought and get something
new. I consider that a feature, not a problem!

And we've steadily worked with Gibson all through the years to improve the
hardware. We've fixed problems as they've come up, helped them improve
their production, deal with vendors changing components, etc. Gibson has
even invested in putting together a whole new production operation for the
echoplex. The work on this has never stopped, and I find it quite
frustrating that you keep accusing us of doing nothing. I don't think you
know what you are talking about. There are not many companies who stick to
a product for so long as this.


>but
>you have to agrre that in 10 years companies have been doing incredible
>boxes and cheaper than beforeÖisnít it time to update old boxes a bit?
>What about a super ED with some more features? I know itís hard to have
>companies listening to you and us but still the question remains.

sorry, I think that attitude is bullshit. why do perfectly useful things
need to be upgraded so often? Especially with music, where so many songs
are composed around particular instruments and so much time goes into
learning how to perform with a particular setup so you can make it musical.
Why would you want to keep changing and starting over all the time?

however, I must admit I'm very happy that you and others like you think
this way. Since I work in the PC industry these days making 3d graphics
chips, my nice salary is paid by people who think just like this. Every six
months we put out new stuff, and market the hell out of it to convince you
of how pathetic and inadequate the thing you just bought already is. The
new one is faster! more memory! more features! you need it now! And people
believe us and keep tossing out their old stuff and buying the new stuff
even though the old thing worked just fine for them! do many people really
need 1.2GHz CPUs, 60GB discs, and 180 frames per second in Quake? well, I
sure don't, but my wallet is not complaining as long as the rest of you
think you do. :-)

now, do you really want that same scene for musical instruments?

kim

______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com