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Gibson to Embed Guitars with Ethernet
caseyuw writes "Gibson is planning to roll out their Magic this year with the delivery of guitars using Cat 5 instead of analog cables to connect instruments and amplifiers. The debate over the quality of digital vs analog signal processing is not new, but using a 'Magic' Les Paul would force you entirely into the digital domain." We mentioned this last year, but the above article has much more information.
Would it then be possible to send the info wirelessly (sp?) to the amp? Seems kind of cool.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Why not use Firewire, which is more common for A/V devices?
This now concludes our broadcast day.
If we are going digital, wouldn't it make far more sense with built in wireless lan instead? The argument for those pesky cables has been the analog sound, I'd think most people would be hardpressed to find problems with wireless vs Cat5 these days.
Well, there will surely be those who claim that since it IS a cable, it must be better. But with the same information being carried over, I hardly think that they can make much of a case, other than being pesky.
The info can already be sent wirelessly through the amp via VHF and UHF.
Ever heard of a wireless microphone? Same concept, except connected to the pickups on the guitar.
xxx straight edge xxx
They also go into why they chose cat5. It has something to do with packet and jitter control.
Apparently it's compatible with all existing ethernet devices. So in theory you could connect any kind of tranciever you wish. Want Fiber? Just get a tranciever, want wireless? Just buy a tranciever. Want to route it across the internet through a tunnel.. Holy sheep shit batman!
I know a lot of bands, the worst problem they have is finding a studio to practice in. You could set up a "virtual studio" just by tunneling and building VPN's between their houses.
Things like latency could be transformed into delay effects..
Anyways, sounds really cool. I'm gonna post the story on my site and try and get an interview.
I'm sure the geek culture thinks this is cool, but most musicians will probably shrug and think, "So what?"
And there are the audiophile types who will condemn the ditigal format as sounding too processed and impersonal. There are some things you can do with analog that digital will never be able to touch.
Don't expect this to take off like the next revolution. It will likely be a nifty toy to play with and nothing more.
I know that after playing guitar for over 10 years, I could really care less about cat5 in my guitar. It is more complication than I need when I'm on stage troubleshooting minor problems.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
While this might not be the best idea for live shows, think about the implications that this could have for recording studios, esp. electronic music.
If digitizing of the analogue signal can be perfected at the instument end of equipment, the possibilities for signal loss/distortion are greatly diminished. A digital signal from the guitar can be sent directly from the guitar to the recording equipment.
This allows for a more pure signal to be recieved, and recorded. While there are people who object to digitizing music (give me a 'pure' analogue signal!), it is hard to deny the reality that ALL recorded music (on CDs) is digitized. By digitizing earlier on in the process, Gibson is mearly allowing for the listener to hear a sound that was sampled from a more pure origonal than current methods allow.
I don't really see how someone can object to studio use of technology like this, and as another poster pointed out, there are plenty of uses for such tech in things like the addition of live effects during concerts, etc..
And maybe, just maybe this will help to get us away from the current bland techno beats, as this *does* give better access to instuments to the button pushers.
Remember that many of the arguments against this technology are the same as the orginal arguments against electric guitars (pioneered by Les Paul if memory serves), electronic keyboards, and most other tech-based revolutions in the music industry. Yes, guitarists are traditionally very conservative, but they adopted the electric guitar, so why not the electronic guitar?
There is no way that RJ45 connectors would be able to endure any kind of live stage abuse. At least mLAN uses Firewire cables which are possibly a little more durable. Why don't they update the MIDI protocol to include all these extra things. In a MIDI lead two of the five pins don't do anything anyway. Everyone's gear already has MIDI connections, so I reckon it would take a while for the new protocol to take off.
All in all though, new technology such as this will create some totally wild new music and some awesome new stage shows. I am excited! (Big Kev excited!)
Some related technologies:
Yamaha mLAN
CobraNet
Steinberg System Link
Meat is murder, I eat chicken.
'Till now, if you wanted to record on a PC (and some of this also applies to 8-tracks and tape systems), you'd either need a really good stack, a proffesional pre-amp, or one of those new-fangled V-Amps. But none of those come dirt cheap, so lots of people have to download software amp sims from Kazaa, and stick with that. Not great.
In a few years, if this tech makes it into low-end guitars, beautiful, full, well equalised tones for everybody! And I also imagine that when this becomes common place, it will bring the quality of cheap & expensive axes much closer together.
Nowadays, alot of rich kids, or kids with parents or brothers or whatever in the industry make it because they are the only ones that get to prove themselves. Even without being conscious of it, the A&R rep at the studio will prefer a real nice sounding, well produced demo than something cheap, because it makes the songs sound better, and in music, what else is there? In the long run, this technology could be really beneficial. But for now all the struggling artists will have to keep hearing audiophile elitists crapping on about how anything mastered at anything less than perfect 96khz audio hurts their ears.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
to the guitar.
It would be just like adding a sequencer to a drumkit.
The guitarist can play lead and rythm parts on the same guitar.
No more problems when lip synching or playing the music off a tape. Simply save the packets on the guitar and send out. How would the audience or the anyone know?
You could actually buy a guitar that played EVERY Stones or Rush song perfectly.
Cover bands everywhere are celebrating.
also the analog to digital converters would have to be really good. High quality digital studios a good ten thousand dollars per channel for d/a converters. I doubt the average guitarist will spend an extra ten thousand dollars for their guitar just to maintain this quality. So. these guitars will be outfitted with cheap converters, destroying any chance for quality sound. Cheap converters add many artifacts to appear that are not musical. analog does of course add artifacts of their own, but these artifacts tend to be more musical and pleasing to our ear. ie:tube amps create a pleasing distortion when pushed sufficiently by the amp. But the digital artifacts are generally displeasing. physiologicaly. Also cheap converters have greater problems with things like jitter. Jitter is a phenomenom that occurs when the a/d converter is not perfectly in sync with the "system clock". this also causes artifacts to appear. I'd reccommend you let the studio do the d/a converting, as they probably invested some money into this very important component in digital recording. Guitars like this will not improve the quality of recordings for the poor artist, just when it is becoming apparent that we as artists, must throw off the yoke of the recording industry and make our own recordings. own our own music, and distribut it ourselves. etc.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
First, I wish them well, but the current Gibson management has a history of failed and ill-supported attempts to make new technology work in the music industry.
Also, Gibson's shotgun-like litigious actions within the music industry within the past decade have caused the music industry to put little faith in its supporting a technology standard of *any* kind. The past actions of its current management will make music instrument manufacturers think twice (or more)before they adopt or even license Gibson technology.
Some history:
1) Gibson completely blew their opportunity as once-owners of the Oberheim name (which they inherited as part of a purchase). Poorly-defined and ill-marketed products killed the Oberheim brand; meddling by ownership didn't help...(recently the Oberheim name returned to its rightful owner, Tom Oberheim, who is nicely rebuilding the brand).
2) Gibson bought Zeta Violin (a very innovative manufacturer of electronic violins and basses), and with it the services of the gifted engineer who who started Zeta. They had this engineer cobble together a MIDI substitute called ZIPPY. This at a time when MIDI was just getting a head of steam up. Gibson's ownership wanted to replace MIDI and collect license fees. Forget about helping to nurse a just-getting-off-the-ground standard, or MIDI). Talk about bad timing. ZIPPY died, and the engineer had a hand in regaining Zeta (a fine company these days).
3) Next was Gibson's infamous purchase of Opcode Systems, a few years back. Opcode was a primary manufacturer of music software and hardware at the time - one of the best. They created the OMS standard, which the Mac music community was widely dependent on. They promised Opcode's then-owner an opportunity to start a little R&D Group and come up with a few new things. The whole thing died in an acrimonious lawsuit, and in the offing, Gibson destroyed Opcode, and OMS. What a waste.
4) Unrelated to technology (at least computer technology) is Gibson's recent purchase of the once-renowned Baldwin Piano Company. Gibson has chosen to take even this famous music industry name, and make it a laughingstock. At this year's NAMM (National Association of Music Manufacturers) show they presented Baldwin pianos in gaudy, bright colors with graffiti-like drawings on them (for instance, one bright yellow grand had a desert scene painted on it with a Hummer riding across the desert floor in the the background - unbelievable!). I can see doing this to one piano, but the whole damn line? The instruments are laughable, and a blight on the once-reknowned Baldwin name.
5)Gibson is run like a personal playpen and funhouse by current management, who is out of touch with market reality (and a few others); however, Gibson has good, dedicated people. For their sake I hope this technology cathes on.
6)Other companies will be coming forward with technologies like this, and others. Let's wait and see if Gibson maintains its consistency in things having to do with technology, and screws this one up.
Certainly, if this technology did catch on, *any* music instrument manufacturer licensing it would have to be *very* wary of Gibson's current management's penchant to sue fast and hard for any real or even (and especially) perceived violation of licensing or other agreements. This company is vulture-like when it comes to the law. Gibson is a great example of a company who is purchased by a management with a few crazy ideas and a lot of money. They come in, buy a well-established company with good products and dedicated peopl,e and make it a personal plaything. Gibson, and the music industry deserve better.
A lot of people were complaining about latency in wireless network connections. Does anyone make a short-range, low-latency, Ethernet bridge? Something made for point-to-point communications will be a lot better for musical applications than trying to hook the guitar into 802.11b or Bluetooth.
Especially knowing how the music industry drives technology, I suspect we'll be seeing these sorts of links in the near future.
Hmm. Infrared LEDs on the guitar strap?
Although I really hope this does well, I know there will be a large percentage of "diehards" who will never accept any sort of progress in guitar technology. Look through review sites like harmony-central and you will see many people who are very similar to extreme audiophiles in their oddities. They think that anything digital will sound like shit and they'll never change their mind.
As far me, I'm really interested to see how this goes. With all the noise introduced in analog effects pedals the business has been needing something like this just to get a clear signal.
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Doesn't this just sound like one of those famous quotes waiting to be reused over and over again in 20 years time - like the "there is a total world market for 5 computers" and "rock and roll is a fad, Mr.Epstein".
(Please don't reply with the Bill Gates 640K quote - he never said that)
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Guitars with active pickups today get their power from batteries in a cavity in the guitar. Don't know how much power this thing will need but a similar solution is probably not out of the question.
I know there are lotsa benefits with digital music. But still the quality of analog signals is something which should not be made completely obsolete. Recently in /. there was an interesting article (link below) about unintended aural consequences of digital compression. It raises an interesting issue about brain caliberation and such. It is a worthy subject to investigate before all traces of analog are removed. It would be something for poeple in Gibson to check out....
2 /2 0/2029212&mode=threada mburg.de/~windle_c/Logo logie/MP3-Gefahr/MP3-risk.html
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/1
http://www.informatik.fh-h
From the article:
The spec (...) is now available online in a version 2.8 for a 10-year royalty-free license.
So what happens after ten years? Huge fees those manufacturers who can afford, lawsuits for everyone else? The fact that Magic is not a open standard may prevent it's wide acceptance.
Does anyone still actually argue that analog is superior to digital?
Yup. Ever heard digital distortion? It's downright disgusting and would only be considered useful by certain Industrial-Noise outfits. My valve bass amp (Ampeg SVT) compresses as it reaches distortion, creating a fantastic sound.
On the synth front, my Korg Mono/Poly sounds far superior to the MS2000 digital synth that sits above it. Fuller bass sounds, more cutting leads and pad sounds that exude far more character and are so fat they need compression to fit in the mix.
On the drum machine front, it's more a matter of taste, but for me a Korg KPR-77 with everything but the kick run through a Roland RE501 tape echo sounds great.
Chris
Imagine plugging in your Les Paul and playing the first bar of a song. Your computer recognizes it and setup the correct settings on the multi-effects - one for each string. I have heard legends about hexaphonic distorion. And you can have separate delay and reverb settings for each string. Run each of the separate sounds thorugh unique choruses and finally to 12 different amps, placed all around the room.
"Fire Woman" coming at you from 12 different directions! A sea of fire, burning your soul. Then you play a few notes of "Telegraph Road" and the computer automagically switched to that ultraclean Mark Knopfler patch, reverbing around the countryside.
Then switch to Eric Johnson's "Trail of Tears". Eric used three completely different chains of effects and amps and danced on A/B switches while he played to achieve seamless tone changes. With Gibson's Magic, the computer can handle it.
And then imagine a guitar symphony version of the Music of the Ainur!
Damn, I'm creaming in my jeans over this.
Just imagine!
Did you read the article? This will allow a lot of options, such as independant string processing, controlling remote equipment from the guitar, etc. If you're not a guitar player maybe this doesn't mean anything to you.
Not to say that there isn't a place for the good 'ol analog guitar, which will continue to be the mainstay of rock music. I sure won't be getting rid of mine.
assert(birth_date<time-86400)
Studios may *pay* a ridiculous amount for A/D/A conversion, but that doesn't mean if actually *costs* that to implement. I can't remember ever seeing a laboratory-grade A/D converter board being more than a couple thousand dollars per channel (and that's for 24-bit sampling in the megahertz range), and I guaran-damn-tee you the lab-grade stuff is better designed and implemented than anything done for the recording industry. It's just like when I used to hang out at a friend's studio a number of years ago - he had a custom 64-channel Amek console that cost more than a million dollars and he had to pay many, many thousands of dollars for if he wanted to add another channel, when the parts themselves came out to be somewhere on the order of $400 or so. I'm quite sure Gibson will figure something out. :-)
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
i am a guitar player...and this introduces nothing new.
it might be able to process individual strings, but are the pickups able to pick up individual strings? if you mean making the guitar wireless, its already being done by connecting the guitar to a wireless microphone trasmitter. if you mean effects, i think pedals are good enough, since fiddling with buttons or knobs on your guitar to turn effects on or off would not be possible or convenient to do so whilst you're playing.
anyway unless the pickups become digital as well, the digital interface in between the analog pickups and analog speakers isn't going to do much. you might as well save the money you would spend on this gibson and buy some quality cables and pickups.
OK, so at the moment it's claimed that Cat5 is cheaper than 1/4" plug guitar cords.
But hey, how long will it take Monster Cable to come out with an expensive "audiophile" and/or "guitar optimized"/"jazz optimized"/"bass optimized"/etc Cat5 cable to sell in the music stores? And how much longer before the guitar store zombies start adding "oh yeah dude my solos sound *so* much better with this cable yeah" to their spiel?
I actually spotted a Monster modem cable in the store - a 6-foot telephone cable which promised to improve my dial-up connections! Sheesh.
You've heard of the plain, old-fashioned, analog pipe organ, haven't you? The kind they've been playing in Protestant churches for upwards of half a millenium? A pipe organ responds with as much as half a second of silence between the time the key is first pressed at the keyboard and the time the sound first emerges from the pipe. That's why great [or even competent] organists are so rare [by contrast with great, or even competent, pianists] - the organist has to anticipate everything the orchestra and the choir and the conductor will be doing about half a second in the future. It's damn near impossible to play the instrument, and if you listen closely to any work featuring an accompanied organ [Saint-Saens Sym. No. 3, Mahler Sym. No. 2], you'll realize that even the "greatest" organists in the world can't master the thing.
The point? Let me conspiracy theory something up.
The point is the RIAA fears change. They see it coming. The big-name music making companies need to come up with a way to get free-music lovers back under control. I always feared the day I would need a license to play an old Metallica song through my own guitar. It seems, if that day is to come to pass, this is the perfect first step. Convince musicians that there's all kinds of good reasons to go fully digital. Soon, the amps go fully digital. Soon after that, there's a processor in your amp analyzing every note. Play the correct series and you are taxed by the RIAA for playing a cover song without prior written consent.
Sure, it's a crackpot theory, but what are the chances some RIAA good isn't salivating at the prospect of being able to crack down on illegal (i.e. unsponsored) guitar playing? Imagine if music itself becames outlawed. I fear the day my children are told that analog musical devices are no longer legal, because they cannot be properly monitored.
Bite my yammer.