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That would make it sort of like this ??

http://www.rolandus.com/blog/2...

That is how the 'less' talented make up speed and flourishes and other bonus sounds are added to the traditional percussionists array.

Not to impugn anyone's' skills as I can't even manage the 2 arms I've got to produce a constant rhythm.

For some reason, a lot of PC manufacturers don't give the consumer an option for a pre-loaded OS.

This is true. In the past (DOS days) people would ask me regarding computer purchase selections. What I said then is just as true today. Find out what programs you need to run and then find the hardware which is capabile of running it.

Many people wanting to do multimedia, photography, video production, etc are needing something with realtime hardware support. Those people are moving to hardware and OS that support the required applications. Vista is not a real time OS and is unsuitable for many capture devices. Alternatives to fill the gap often include Apple and some Linux distributions such as Ubuntu Studio.

Nothing kills a live session more than a request for an Adobe PDF viewer update request in the middle of a session. I got this one during a live presentation while playing a DVD. The DVD on the projector simply stopped. Going to the laptop, we discovered that despite the fact were in the field with no internet connection, Adobe needed our permission to get an update. The fact a PDF viewer has permission to stop the show by having Windows Vista stop it to ask permission for an update without a net connection convinced me that Vista is unsuitable for presentation and digital audio workstation applications.

My Digital Audio Workstation is now Ubuntu Studio based with low latency and no interruptions of a live recording session. Some people prefer an Apple soulution.

Audacity is OSS and cross platform. It works fine on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Many capture devices have serious latency and breakup problems in Vista. Audacity works in Vista, but capturing sound should be done on another platform.

Many popular USB capture devices simply are not supported on Vista because of the non-real time nature of the OS. Here are a few popular interfaces without Vista support;
Roland http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?ObjectId=743&ParentId=114
http://www.roland.com/products/en/UA-101/specs.html
Beringer http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbase/pdf/man/m_702540.pdf

I found some of the Yamaha mixers with built-in USB interfaces list Vista, but the manual was quick to point out problems are caused if it has too little memory, has a slower processor, or several other items that can cause problems with multi-track recordings.

For real-time capture, I prefer to use a hardware priority OS. I have used this instead of Vista for Digital Music Studio work.
http://ubuntustudio.org/

Most tube Marshalls, and all Music Man heads (among others) use diode clipping, so a lot of the time when people think they're hearing tube distortion, part of what they are hearing is solid-state distortion. These amps do use tube power sections (and while the Marshalls also use preamp tubes, the Music Man preamp is all solid-state) so the other part of the sound comes from the smoothness of the power tubes. I personally believe it's more important to have power tubes then preamp tubes (compare a Music Man with SS preamp and tube power amp to a Marshall Valvestate with tube preamp and SS power amp, for example) and I find nothing wrong with solid-state components in a preamp.

For years, Steve Vai has used a Boss DS-1 solid-state distortion pedal in front of his tube amps; I've done this as well with good results. Jimi Hendrix used a solid-state Fuzz Face in front of his Marshalls, as another example. Part of the "tube mystique" is hype. Use your ears, try every piece of gear you can get your hands on, and use what sounds good with your guitar. In some cases, that might even mean a modeling processor.

The main problem with modelers is the crap you'll get from purists about using a "digital-sounding" device, even if in a blind listening test, they couldn't tell a modeled Marshall from a real Marshall (and if you're going through a good power amp and a good speaker cabinet, that is quite possible.) Also, keep in mind that there is a lot of variation among tube amps. A modeled Marshall might not sound just like your Marshall, but then someone else's Marshall might not, either. I leave decisions on what to use to my ears, and I've done a lot of shows with a Boss GT-6 where my guitar sounded great (and my back thanked me for leaving the big, heavy tube head at home.) I am also sure that a GT-6 run through a crappy amp and crappy speakers would be unbearable, so it's important to make sure your entire signal chain is good enough. If used properly, I'm convinced that modern modeling gear can be up to the task.

Roland patented and employed a suspiciously similar tech years ago for their V-Drum electronic percussion system. Perhaps Roland's patents only apply to musical instruments, but the concept of deriving placement and distance from piezo electric sensors is nothing new.

This is better (no proprietary Li-Ion battery, for one):

http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.as px?ObjectId=757&ParentId=114

Well, that wouldn't be a LASER harp, but it's certainly possible to build an infrared harp.

A company called Interactive Light (now defunct) used to sell an infrared MIDI instrument called the Dimension Beam, sometimes referred-to as the "D-Beam".

The D-Beam emitted an egg-shaped infrared field which could consist of up to three distinct regions radiating from the core outward; one could define distinct MIDI parameters for each region. I believe Roland licensed the technology for the HPD-15 HandSonic.

Needless to say that the potential uses of the D-Beam are many and varied, and it's a favorite of many high-tech artists and and experimental musicians.

Indeed, by narrowly focusing the IR beams of several devices, one could indeed construct an incredibly versatile infrared harp. One group of students created a "body harp" by harnessing eight D-Beams.

At the end of it, I became tired of having to play sysadmin at home every night, and so we bought a digital music station. This station is not much bigger than a large laptop, and although it probably has nothing more than a 386 inside, there are no worries about what kind of sound card it has, whether the disks are raided - it was designed to work together, and it does the job admirably. The cost of the station was equivalent at the time to a low-end PC system, which ended up being a lot cheaper than upgrading everything to the high-end components seemingly required to run upper-end music software. My computer is now free for my use again (yay!) and my hubby can simply make music, without the hassle (and best of all, he can RTFM himself, without his computer-geek wife).

Pixie

Why would the RIAA give a damn about this? It is a portable recording device. A simple search turns up these Roland recording devices. It's far from the first hard disk recorder and is far from the best option to do what the RIAA cares about: pirating CDs. (Not to mention that portable DAT recorders have been around for 10 years). The RIAA doesn't care about professional recording devices, only consumer-level.

Line6 isn't the only one who does this. Roland/Boss has had amp/cab modelling features on their effects processors for years. Behringer and Digitech to name a couple more also have products with this feature.

If you follow discussions at other forums for ReplayTV and TiVo owners, you already know that in that situation you don't really care about performance. A 5400rpm drive can easily handle the job. However, noise is critical, and hence, some of these systems don't have fans, making heat also critical--if you upgrade with a drive that runs hotter than the original, you're likely to have random failures.

In some cases, you have to worry about heat, noise, and performance. For example, with standalone or portable digital audio recorders, such as those from Roland and Yamaha. While some of them do have fans built in, they're usually pretty small and form factor for these things means that circulation isn't very good. Noise is an issue because you don't want some drive chattering around while your singer is singing the take of her life. And performance is an issue, simply because of the throughput demands that digital audio makes on a system.

With a computer-based recording system, such as ProTools, performance is the key factor. Noise is still an issue, but it's not uncommon for the machine to be in a separate room from the microphones. Heat is less an issue because of the circulation and fans available in the typical computer case.

In any case, reviews like this are a very welcome addition for electronic musicians!

>> No matter what happens though, IBM keyboards are the best ever made. :) I thought Roland made the best keyboards.