A fitting ending to this topic; let me share with you what happened today.

My main desktop these days is a triple boot unit (Win7 - OSX - Linux). Someone at the VMware forum suggested me to try 64-bit XP. as it may provide even better virtual machine host OS performance than Win7.

So I got the XP x64 CD on eBay (it’s a rare critter!), installed x64, yadda, yadda… as it turns out, x64 can’t run my virtual machine files, it crashes in a nanosecond launching one. Fine, bye. (Splonkk!) What x64 totally succeeded, however, is to totally brick ALL other OSes from loading; all I get with either is a rescue command prompt. So basically I have a high-tech i7 brick now… so much for any sort of computer longevity. One wrong move and the whole shebang falls apart? There is no winning this game.

It was a done deal already that I’m going to compose on the XS8 alone from now, but I must admit that this impromptu finale actually impresses me. A computer that tells me to use something else? Now this is true artificial intelligence… :-)

In my opinion the Motif was and is complete enough to compose
arrange and produce music without a computer around
for the level of skill that most of us have reached.
Mo’Songs contains lots of productions that were created
without the ‘help’ of a computer except for the conversion
from .wav to .mp3 perhaps.

;JOOP!

mrdelurk - 15 July 2011 05:03 AM

A fitting ending to this topic; let me share with you what happened today.

My main desktop these days is a triple boot unit (Win7 - OSX - Linux). Someone at the VMware forum suggested me to try 64-bit XP. as it may provide even better virtual machine host OS performance than Win7.

So I got the XP x64 CD on eBay (it’s a rare critter!), installed x64, yadda, yadda… as it turns out, x64 can’t run my virtual machine files, it crashes in a nanosecond launching one. Fine, bye. (Splonkk!) What x64 totally succeeded, however, is to totally brick ALL other OSes from loading; all I get with either is a rescue command prompt. So basically I have a high-tech i7 brick now… so much for any sort of computer longevity. One wrong move and the whole shebang falls apart? There is no winning this game.

It was a done deal already that I’m going to compose on the XS8 alone from now, but I must admit that this impromptu finale actually impresses me. A computer that tells me to use something else? Now this is true artificial intelligence… :-)

Solution - get a Mac.

I haven’t seen a Windows machine used in audio production (or video)
in years. Mac owns the audio-video world and for good reason. Windows
has always been a platform for business apps.

You gain nothing with 64-bit with regards to audio quality. Only an
increase in amount of RAM that can be addressed, and some math processing.

Never met a PC user who switched to Mac and then went back to PC.

Dave, I’m also planning to replace my PC’s for Mac(s).
May be it would be of interest to know what software must be
replaced by something else to make the move.

For me, I can stay with Cubase, Java, OpenOffice and FireFox.

But which (music related) programs do NOT run on a Mac?

;JOOP!

This is getting hilarious; every time I think the topic of computer non-survival is finally exhausted, life throws yet another related tidbit at me.

Today I just got Consumer Reports’ August issue in the mail. The cover story? Appliance breakage. What breaks less: dryers and ranges (12% gone in four years). What’s medium unreliable: washing machines (20% gone), Guess what’s dead worst of all? Refrigerators and… computers. One third of these breaks in just 4 years. To quote from the chapter about computers,

“with many electronics, parts are covered for 1 year, but labor is good only for 90 days,” says the editor of Warranty Week. “I think that’s designed to encourage people to dispose of the products when they find out the cost of the repair is more than their product is worth. You say to yourself, ‘I’ll just toss it and get a new one.’ And manufacturers say, ‘Aha it worked.’”

Think about it. 1 in 3 computers will go south in just four years. The odds are 33% your main work CPU might not last longer than an administration. So if you lost a beloved computer relatively recently it was no freak “one in a million” personal unluck at all. Now, (Yamaha people, feel free to chime in...) how many Yamaha XS synths go south in four years? 1 in 300,000? :-)

Our S90 is 8 years old without a single failure (daily used).
Our ES8 is only 7 years old.

Then again, our Toshiba laptop is ... 7 years old.

May be it’s just Japanese quality.

;JOOP!

Or maybe 1 in 3 computers are laptops which by dint of their mobile nature are more prone to failure than a desktop which sits in the same place week in week out, never being physically stressed.

Going back to the AI features and the 57 steps (sounds like a new smash Box Office movie...) Some of those steps will be trivial and assumed by most users, some are key steps but the notable thought here is that you only do them once.

When you got your potential 64 bit PC out of the box, it did not set itself up - you had to phyiscally get it out, plug everything in and then probably install a bunch of software, make backups etc in order to startusing it as you wanted - probably many, many steps but once setup that’s it. It’s done.

Sorry to hear that x64 has messed your PC experience up, though I woudl think that any multi-boot system is going to be fussy and require more managing than your average home PC - probably the step to 64bit was a step too far. Welcome back to the world of 32bit computing.

As Dave P points out, 64 bit computing offers minimal advantages at this present time - the software and hardware required for music making is not yet fully matured - I reckon it will be another couple of years or more before it is. Lets face it, if you are still chiefly using the Motif as your sound source, then the need for 16Gb of addressable RAM (or however much it is in a 64Bit PC) is just not relevant. You WOULD need that amount if you were running multiple instances of RAM hungry softsynths. But running Cubase with up to 30 tracks of audio without softsynths is perfectly possible on a 32bit XP machine with one core. Sounds great too - 32 bit floating point throughout - final audio rendered as up to 24bit WAV files.

The step from 16 bit computing to 32 bit took some time. We are in that same period of shift over. Most current PCs (and Macs of course) can handle 64 bit computing but not all should. I daresay in the next year we’ll start to see all PCs being sold with 64Bit software as standard and all software will be running or be able to run under the 64bit OS. Though 32bit will be there as a choice. In 2 years that choice will have disappeared. We’ll all be using Windows 8 and Mac OS XI and waiting for Win9 and OS XII to arrive and forums like this will be rueing the imminent arrival of 128bit OSs with amazing upsides of being able to instantly address googol bits of RAM and 1000 Tera bit HDs will be standard. The Motif will have morphed into the Yamaha Symphony XT - a blend of hard and softsynth but which will run in tandem with your iPad V.

I think you are missing out on something by not embracing this technology without expecting it to fail at every hurdle. I repeat - I have installed Cubase and run it, glitch free for years - the one glitch I had (moving from SX3.7 to C4) was due to the driver on my MBox not being up to date - easily fixed! Update the driver! Glitches during updating of Cubase and learned response - when updating Cubase, ALWAYS update the Syncrosoft elicenser at the same time to the latest edition. Problem solved. Glitch free.

Cheers

sciuriware - 16 July 2011 06:25 AM

Then again, our Toshiba laptop is ... 7 years old.

May be it’s just Japanese quality.

I think Toshiba’s laptops are manufactured in China and Taiwan by Quanta Computers. Just like Apple’s.

Name brands like Alienware/Dell, HP, Toshiba, Compaq, Sony and Apple do not actually manufacture their own laptops anymore, they just import and relabel completed systems manufactured in China.

I won’t say we have cheap, failure-prone computers because they are all built in China. No, there are some fine products made in China that survive and work for a long time. They just aren’t computers. So it’s not the geographic origin - it’s the product. No one got computers right yet.

Wellie - 16 July 2011 06:58 AM

forums like this will be rueing the imminent arrival of 128bit OSs with amazing upsides of being able to instantly address googol bits of RAM and 1000 Tera bit HDs will be standard. The Motif will have morphed into the Yamaha Symphony XT - a blend of hard and softsynth but which will run in tandem with your iPad V.

I should be studying how to export my last Ableton project tracks from the revived i7 to the XS8 for further work, but this siren’s song totally charmed me away. :-)

OK, reality check: do I need Googol RAM and 1000 TB HDs and a yikesPad just to add 8 more audio tracks to the XS8’s 16? No. I could slave an 8-track Tascam DP to it for $150. So how did Googol RAM, 1000TB drives and an iPad became a goal in itself… what need do these really fulfill? To impress the babes? Andy Inhatko published a lovely summary of technology’s sex appeal in MacUser when the first $4000 Apple laptops came out. He went to a bar with the hot new PowerBook to check how many women it will attract. Total score: zilch. (OK, one compassionate lady came over to help him when the laptop promptly locked up.) Next day he went into the same bar with a bag of plant soil. Result: lots more success!

Maybe that’s the idea? Get the latest Googol computer, see it fail on you, that will attract women? Well, I don’t know… if “excuse me, is this smile taken?” is too direct for someone, I heard plant soil is on sale for $3.95 :-)

LOL.

Of course, you can’t make much music with plant soil.

My point was that computer power and all those strange numbers will march inexorably bigger. Musicians are not driving this but are reaping the rewards, but the downside is that every so often you have to buy new stuff.

Now, ever since the inception of synthesisers this has been true - you want the new sounds - get the new piece of kit. I make this point to remind you that whilst your TX81z may still function, its sounds have trended away (though of course the occasional cycles of music will give it another breath of life in say 10 years time as it gains ‘classic’ status :) ) So despite your earlier point about hardware not being prone to sodtware’s failings, nevertheless, it may work but just not be that useful.

If you are touring, which would you prefer to carry around from gig to gig - a classic Steinway 7ft grand, with hammond B3 and assorted other moog based synths, or a Motif XF8 with a nord and a moog voyager. The latter can be carried by you in the back of your car. The former will require major transportation plus roadies. Note that it is also far easier to connect the latter to a PA system and crank up the volume without feedback.

Even good old fashioned guitars are prone to updates. Nylon strings to steel strings - different size bodies = different tone. Electro acoustics anyone? No let’s stick with some resonator guitars. When I purchased my Yamaha acoustic, I chose it over a Guild and a Taylor because its neck felt so nice to me - the neck was ebony rather than rosewood. Of course that’s just acoutsics. The electric guitar adds a whole different ball game of gear lust and need. To get ‘that’ tone you need ‘that’ guitar plus ‘that’ amp with the ‘right’ selection of pedals etc. Changes in amp design and in the inventiveness of pedals has meant guitarists have long been on the road of constant upgrades and updates, all of which cost money. I know this - I am a guitarist. I purchased a line 6 pod X3 live and within 12 months the new POD HD series was released. Dang. Well, one day I shall look to upgrade, but for now, the tone I get suffices for what I do, but I feel I NEEEEED 28 second loop playing capability. LOL

Anyways, all the best with your PC and your new found gardening hobby :)

Wellie - 18 July 2011 05:42 AM

If you are touring, which would you prefer to carry around from gig to gig - a classic Steinway 7ft grand, with hammond B3 and assorted other moog based synths, or a Motif XF8 with a nord and a moog voyager.

For my frequent air trips, neither. After trying many things, I’m about to pick up a MOX8 and a portable 24-track. That duo actually fits the standard 50 lbs airline luggage weight limit, unlike the XF8.

I discovered this portable multitrack need by trying to move my last, consolidated Ableton tracks to the XS8. No cigar, “Sample too long” error. (They were 8 minutes long, and that’s not even the whole length of the piece.) I haven’t found an “insert audio at measure X” feature in the XS8, so its 6 and half minute max audio recording limit apparently means, if you record audio, you are stuck writing 6 minute songs, max. (Unless one daisy-chains song tracks maybe, but that would eat up the track count and might not even play seamlessly.) So I guess this makes a small 24-track outboard recorder of some sort pretty much mandatory? I’m just trying to find one with .sf2 playback to compensate for the MOX8’s missing sample playback, then I’ll be set.

It would be SO tempting to just get a laptop with Ableton and VSampler (all my initial troubles with Ableton stemmed from its softsampler only) but I keep recalling: if it’s a computer, in a few years it will be kaputt… nah, gotta get hardware.

Wellie - 18 July 2011 05:42 AM

Of course, you can’t make much music with plant soil.

It depends whether the soil has small rocks in it. “Ili ili”, small, water-worn lava stones are ancient Hawaiian rhytm instruments, played to this very day. 1200 year uninterrupted life span as a musical instrument, hmmm… so one could say, musically my computer is less advanced than a rock? Whoa :-)

Well,

my son trundled his Macbook pro to church with him yesterday to provide pad sounds he’d created in Reason triggered from an XP80. Sound was awesome.

I think that many pro musicians have made the plunge in the last couple of years. Laptops and their OS’s are now robust enough to withstand serious gigging. A relatively cheap Master keyboard plus laptop could in fact do the job of a full-on workstation. Of course, most go with a belt and braces approach with a keyboard with sounds linked to a laptop with many more. Linkages go down - you’ve still got the main keyboard.

I think a MOX would give you many good options sonically. Cubase could easily run an audio clip of 8mins or more . . .

The advantage of an XF8 is of course the flash RAM which would mean all of that stuff is pre-loaded and gig ready - minimal boot time.

It also links very nicely with Cubase :)

Anyways, have fun with sampling your lava rocks matey :)

mrdelurk - 16 July 2011 05:29 PM

[...]I won’t say we have cheap, failure-prone computers because they are all built in China. [...]

Google “bad caps” (without the quotes)—caps, short for capacitors. Found not only in computers, but in LCD monitors, power supplies, DVD and CD players, etc., etc., and yes, synthesizers. There was a particularly bad period of failures a few years ago, and while the problem has lessened, it hasn’t totally disappeared.

Google “RoHS”, short for Restriction of Hazardous Substances. Until recent years, soldering was pretty reliable, even if done by not very well trained small manufacturers. Now that they “got the lead out” of solder, it’s trickier to get a good connection. Don’t get me wrong, from an environmental standpoint, I applaud the move. But there have been some problems as manufacturers have been coming up to speed in using lead-free solder.

Inadequate solder flux removal has been another problem. Fluxes for lead-free solder are more aggressive than older types, and are typically of the water-wash kind. They don’t require nasty chemicals to remove them, but they must be totally removed, or humidity in the air will reactivate what’s left behind, causing corrosion and other problems.

As far as reliability and obsolescence are concerned, to some degree whether we use hardware or software might not matter—due to the above problems and others, your software/firmware still might be running on hardware of questionable reliability.

Good quality manufacturing tends to mean that inexpensive caps aren’t used, soldering is done well, and defluxing is carried out properly. All that costs money for parts, a trained staff, etc. We’ve gotten too used to a lot of bang for the buck, and “cheap” (in every sense of the word) products to meet that demand are the result. Getting people to be willing to spend what’s necessary is part of the solution. Either that, or just be prepared to replace some things on a regular basis.

My general attitude is that a product should ideally last as long as what it does is still useful. I want hammers to last a long time, because even though there are nail guns, we’re still driving some nails by hand. In the case of certain electronic items, technology obsoletes them in a few years, so there might be less of an issue—but I would prefer if it was my decision when to retire my audio gear.

If you’re going hardware 24 track, avoid the Tascam 2488. The MIDI synch is flawed which is why I sold mine and switched to a MacBook and Ableton Live. My older Roland 8-track has always worked fine with MIDI, I was extremely disappointed that the Tascam did not.

Also watch out for the new 24 track machines from Zoom...no MIDI at all. I think the mfrs have decided that the market for standalone multitrackers is people who do not use MIDI...the MIDI folks have all gone to computers…

Hardware multitrackers - go for a Yamaha AW2400 . . .
Or for THE BEAST of hardware DAWs - AW4416 . . .