Re: The 100-Megabit Guitar in WIRED

["Steve Goodman" <spgoodman@earthlight.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "RemyC" <remyc@prodigy.net>
To: "Loopers Delight" <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 14:38 PM
Subject: The 100-Megabit Guitar in WIRED


> Wired magazine
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/guitar.html
>
> The mercurial CEO of Gibson Guitar Corporation wants to shove Ethernet up
> your ax and rock the music world.
>
> Issue 12.01 - January 2004
>
> The 100-Megabit Guitar
> Gibson's maverick CEO wants to shove Ethernet up your ax and rock the
music
> world.
> By Greg Milner

<snip>

> Dubbed the "Les Paul," the
> instrument would become the primary source of rock's power-chord crunch, 
>a
> legacy that stretches from Jimmy Page and Neil Young through Aerosmith's
Joe
> Perry and Guns N' Roses' Slash. The guitar's noise-canceling humbucker
> pickups provided a clarity that helped Jerry Garcia sculpt his solos when
he
> wasn't playing custom guitars.

I believe Jerry was mostly playing custom guitars, especially the Warlock.
But you more dead-headed amongst us could say with more authority than I.
I'm just fairly sure it wasn't the Les Paul he played most the time...

<snip>

> Since Guns N' Roses imploded
> in the mid-'90s, no Les Paul player has commanded the cross-genre
visibility
> of Slash in his heyday.

Since when did Slash have "cross-genre visibility", or for that matter much
of a catalog?  Is this PR or what?

> Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Weezer's Rivers Cuomo,
> both Les Paul players, don't have Slash's following or showmanship.

I guess the writer was one of those unfortunate Drunks n' Posers fans.
[shaking head]  Or he's working for Gibson and is desperate to fill an
article.

> It won't be easy. For starters, the Magic guitar's Ethernet output is
> incompatible with traditional guitar gear. No amplifier or effects pedal
on
> the market today works with the instrument. For now, musicians will need
to
> plug the guitar into a "breakout box" that converts the digital signal
back
> to analog; a standard guitar cable plugs into the box's output. Second,
> guitars that work with the digital world via MIDI, the universal language
of
> musical instruments, do exist. Guitarists like Radiohead's Jonny 
>Greenwood
> already make all kinds of digitally enhanced noise onstage. The CEO of 
>one
> rival company told me, "If you can figure out what Henry is trying to do,
> let me know." And Peter Swiadon, a product manager for the Roland
> Corporation, says, "No disrespect to Henry, but Magic looks like a
solution
> in search of a problem."

Or just another whiz-bang invention for the guitar.  I mean, Les Paul's
innovations are legendary and to be respected -- but he made a lot of 
little
experiments that weren't exactly successful too.  Hell, EDISON experimented
with trying to communicate with the dead, for Pete's sake...

> The magic about Magic is portability. Greenwood may have a digital world
at
> his fingertips, but his guitar still delivers an analog signal, requiring
> mediating devices to make it digital. The goal of the Magic guitar is to
be
> fully plug-and-play, so a musician can simply jack it into a PC - no USB
> cables or external devices necessary."

Can you say, "$2000 sound card"?  Sure you can.  Here's the wind up...

<snip>

...and the pitch!

> The Magic guitar, Juszkiewicz says, takes the next
> step - it doesn't just preserve sound, it improves it.

<snip>

> Gibson appears to have solved a problem that has dogged digital 
>instrument
> design for years. It's not enough to engineer a digital-audio converter
and
> a delivery system that can reproduce sound with sufficient nuance. The
> technology also has to make sure the bits become audible with little
delay.

None would be nice.  Oh wait.  We've already GOT that.  But in the
non-original, er, analog world, it's the delays that are the main problem
with guit synths, every time I hear someone complaining about 'em.

> Magic can deliver sound a few thousand
> meters in microseconds, and because all devices connected by the
technology
> run on the same clock, the data remains synchronous.

Hm, 100Mb/sec... that's up to 1200 feet or so with nothing but a wire,
otherwise one needs signal boost, if not also routing... and a 'few 
thousand
meters' is certainly much longer than that.  If conventional non-fibre
repeaters are to be used, what would be the delays involved then?  I smell 
a
theoretical topology somewhere...


<snip>

> Magic, an acronym for media-accelerated global information carrier, can
> direct the flow of up to 64 channels of information, all on one Ethernet
> network.

Once again, a 'few thousand meters' on an Ethernet network ain't just NICs
in computers, a server, cable and connectors, and software to make it all
work.  And what is the max capacity of a standard Cat-5 cable anyway?
Cumulative degeneration could occur as well, if the network is overloaded.
I've a feeling the PR guys writing this don't know what that even means.
There's going to have to be fibre and ultra-fast repeaters/routers for
something this big to even approach realtime.

> In a concert hall, this means a bulky analog snake of cables could
> be replaced by a single Cat-5. It also means real-time collaboration.
> Stanford staged a concert last fall that linked several musicians at
> different locations who improvised with each other over a system 
>developed
> by NetworkSound, the first company to build a business plan around Magic.

Anyone have a link to this, before I start searching?

<snip>

> Juszkiewicz had
> lawsuits filed against companies he thought were infringing on Gibson's
> trademark. Among his targets: Heritage Guitar, which was founded by
> ex-employees of a Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Gibson didn't 
>win
> any of the suits that made it to trial (after settling the Heritage suit,
> Juszkiewicz sued his own lawyers), but the litigation proved to be part 
>of
a
> hard-line strategy that put the company back on the map.

A strategy that proved irresistable for a drove of doomed software 
companies
like the late Ashton-Tate: Buy companies producing possibly-competing
product, nab their technology, and drive them into the ground via court and
lawyer costs; no matter what the cases are actually about, what they do is
assimilate technology not otherwise developed, eliminate the competition,
and eventually overload the management capacity of the now-bloated company,
which ultimately can't even produce the original cash-cow that made it big.
End run, the company sells off its subsidiaries, or sells out entirely, 
with
big, fat cash rewards for the CEO and whatever members of the board that
didn't piss him/her off.

> Certainly, Gibson owes its turnaround in part to good timing. The first
half
> of the '80s was not a fertile period for the type of rock associated with
> the Les Paul. The '70s hard-rock heroes, like Joe Perry and Jimmy Page,
were
> either in rehab or on hiatus. Synth-driven music owned the charts. But
soon
> after Juszkiewicz took over, Guns N' Roses emerged, first as the second
> coming of Aerosmith and then as the biggest band on the planet. Slash was
a
> devoted Les Paul player. Once again, the world sounded like the Les Paul.

No, just Guns N' Roses.  (How many hits, what, uh, three?  Then oblivion
within years.)

> Juszkiewicz has been less successful in his mission to expand Gibson
beyond
> guitars. Trace Elliott amps, Opcode Systems (a music software company),
and
> Steinberger Sound are a few of his acquisitions. None have made Gibson 
>any
> money; some have gone out of business and others have borne the brunt of
> Juszkiewicz's litigious streak.

See above.

> A Yamaha exec jokes, "Sometimes the best we
> can hope for our competitors is that they get bought by Gibson." Other
> rivals dismiss Juszkiewicz as a threat, referring to him as a "psycho" 
>and
a
> "wack-job." In person, he is laid-back and laconic, exactly the
disposition
> you'd expect from someone who sells guitars for a living. So when he told
> me, "Oh yeah, I'm very frightening," I assumed he was kidding. My 
>mistake.
> "No, seriously, I'm like a prophet. I always get put down, and then 
>later,
> people realize I'm right."

Is it just an MBA that makes one think like this?  Well, crack or
amphetamine abuse too, but hey!


<snip>

I don't generally diss developments in ANYTHING that have a real need to
fill.  But this isn't exactly like the VHS format, though, is it?  I'd like
to strip away the PR crapola and see what it really is, before completely
dumping on it.  But man, this article belongs more in the Yahoo PR Newswire
than "Wired".  Unless they've slipped that much!

Steve Goodman
* EarthLight Productions
* http://www.earthlight.net