Re: Aurisis, Gibson, etc. (was Re: EDP or REPEATER?)

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

At 12:03 PM 1/26/2002, Mark Hamburg wrote:
>Depending on Gibson's motivation for doing a version 2 of the Echoplex
>hardware -- and it's definitely on the hardware side as opposed to the
>software side where the Echoplex is looking long-in-the-tooth -- would it 
>be
>possible for Aurisis to find some other company

anything is possible.

however I still find myself with a fundamental aversion to the idea that 
everything more than x years old must necessarily be upgraded and replaced 
with something new just to be new. This is the business model of the 
electronics and computer industry, which allows for a sustaining income by 
perpetually convincing consumers that what they have is out of date and 
must be replaced, even if it is still perfectly useful for them.

For musical instrument products, I think this model is toxic, because it 
means nobody ever spends enough time with a given instrument to really 
learn how to play it and incorporate it into their music.

>with existing appropriate
>hardware that could be used to host an OS built on Aurisis's experience
>doing the Echoplex?

there is no such hardware that I'm aware of.

>  Candidate hardware that I can think of includes the
>Repeater and the SP-808.

neither of these are remotely close to being useful for us, and in fact 
would probably result in far more work and a loss of features that we 
currently have available. The hardware wrapped around the software is such 
a critical part of the user interface that you really must customize it 
for 
that application to be a useable and truly musical interface.

>Would an approach like this help resolve some of
>the cost issues that were previously discussed with respect to bringing a
>new unit to market?

no. porting software into a completely different hardware architecture 
would probably mean total code re-writes and a lot of complicated 
compromises. that would cost considerably more than designing hardware 
from 
the ground up that readily accepts existing code and easily accommodates 
new features we want to do.

kim


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