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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.
Let's DOS the basist.
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.
As a guitar player, this sounds like a bad idea. whenever you create more connections/contacters which rely on a fixed signal, your fudge factor increases. I have broken so many guitar cords in my life by just stepping on them and/or falling off the stage.
plus- how are roadies going to figure out the wiring sequence? Pin 1 >> Pin 3 Pin 2 >> Pin 6 Pin 3 >> Pin 1 Pin 6 >> Pin 2
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.
its a cool badge to put on a guitar anyways, oh well, maybe not for gibson guitars.
I can't wait until I can digitally UNLEASH THE FOCKIN' FURY!!!
Does this mean if you try to play a copyrighted work, the RIAA will DOS your guitar?
Jason
ProfQuotes
I'll just pull out my handy-dandy 802.11 jammer :)
...I'll be hit with a classmates.com ad every time I strum G#?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
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
My fist thought was:
I didn't know Steve Gibson played guitar!
char sig[120] = "\0"
You can have it going over ethernet if you want to, but the probelm is the noise introduced by the pickup of choice, not the 1/4 inch cable.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Jack in with the ethernet, man, and score a gibson! ...
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
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.
It's bad enough that you will be listening to a sampled version of your guitar, but 250 microseconds delay on your sound is the best case scenario? 1/4 second delay? As a mucisian, even one millisecond of delay is not accepable.
Hmm, this seems 'interesting' at best.
;-)
I know I've spent the last year finding I really love the sound of analog gear to a lot of digital gear. I've moved from Digitech 2101's and asundry sorts of pedals to Marshall JCM800s and EL34 Dual Monoblocs. I absolutely love the sound I get out of this type of analog gear and cranked valves. I'm not sure I'd want to start playing in a situation where my sound passed through an ADC right in the guitar. That seems to limit some sounds and tone related options quite a bit.
Tho, I'm sure in time as ADCs and DACs get better and sample rates get higher I won't be able to tell the difference. And in fairness newer gear like the Prophecy guitar system are quite impressive.
but for the time being, get your stinking digital off my guitar, you damn dirty engineer!
I noticed that the Specification is offered for a Royalty-free 10 year license. The MaGIC developers seem to have a very strong sense that the only way for music to go digital is to have an Open Architecture. Sounds familiar... At any rate, I've downloaded the PDF Spec; very logically split up (chapter X for hardware guys, chapter Y for net hackers, and chapter Z for app developers) - can't wait to start! I wonder if they'ld mind if I hooked my Strat up with it ;)
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
I caught my mistake too late. Still, just the sampled output thing is enough to make me not interested.
If I'm going to start replacing the cable during a hot solo (screaming chicks, crowd going wild) and the stupid plastic clip on the RJ-45 breaks off.
OTOH, the only time I've ever seen screaming chicks is when they run away.
Does anyone still actually argue that analog is superior to digital?
I mean, the only thing analog has going for it is "warmth". Of course this "warmth" is a result of the limited frequency and dynamic range of analog and can be easily duplicated.
Tell you what. Have an expert put on headphones and listen to an analog recording, then have them listen to a 32 bit 96khz digital copy of the analog recording. Do you think they are going to be able to tell which is the original? No, of course they won't because the digital copy is IDENTICAL in frequency and dynamic range to the analog signal.
The only difference is that the analog recording is using the full dynamic and frequency range of the medium to reproduce the recording and the digital recording of the analog recording is using a mere fraction of it's potential dynamic and frequency range.
So if one is a superset of the other why even use the other!?
ummm...they're called synthesizers. Reading this story gives me cringing thoughts of those horrid keyboard-guitar hybrids from the 80's. If it's going to be digital then keep it on the good ol' horizontal keyboard synth. I like my guitars just the way they are.
-my other sig is your mom
Smoke more pot and it's even simpler.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
the first web server appears on one of these things?
And the first copy of Doom that is controlled by the guitar?
to the song "Communication Breakdown"
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?
From the article:
"New team member Alexei Beliaev will help rev the spec to version 3.0 by March, adding support for video and 1-Gbit/second speeds, up from 10/100-Mbit Ethernet today. Magic uses the Ethernet physical layer and Category 5 cables to provide thirty-two 32-bit bidirectional audio channels with sample rates up to 192 kHz, jitter less than 80 picoseconds and latency as low as 250 microseconds across 100-meter point-to-point links. The protocol uses a UDP-like packet held to a fixed packet length and transmission rate. Magic conforms to the 802.3af spec for providing power over Ethernet."
In terms of connection vs. usage, this particular concept is a bit ahead of the curve. As much as I endorse 802.11g, I don't think it will cut it for these guys. Wonder if they've tried FireWire 800?
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.
Than to strum a sharp G$.
~S
"They are more focused in finding ways to recreate the sounds Led Zeppelin or B.B. King laid down in the '60s or '70s," said Thompson
And there's my big problem with digital amps. Jimmy Paige didn't need them, nor did B.B. or Eric Clapton. Why do you need a computer's help getting killer tone? Hint: It's because you don't know how to do it the 'real' way. It's expensive to get real good, real loud tone no matter what instrument you play, and this digital crap is just a shortcut -- a pretty lousy sounding facsimile of a shortcut for the most part.
In other words, this is for the script kiddies of the music world.
Besides, my cat5's connector inevitably snaps off after a decent amount of use. Could you imagine the number of connectors a gigging band would go through, plugging and unplugging those a hundred times a day? As said before, it's a solution looking for a problem. Unless Gibson has something else up their sleeves we don't know about... Hmm...
Sony ha
'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)
Give me a Cisco Stack!!!!
Also, the max length of a FireWire cable is 4.5 meters, while Ethernet can do 100 meters before needing a repeater.
Not sure how much bandwidth a gee-tar takes up, but I'd bet that cable length was the deciding factor in this design.
From Apple's Firewire 800 page:
"FireWire 400 delivers data over cables of up to 4.5 meters in length. Using professional-grade glass optical fiber, FireWire 800 can burst data across 100 meter cables."
-T
...Now I can blame the guitar for having a lousy ping, when I screw up at a gig!
During some guitar contest, the losing geek can launch a DoS attack against the leader
Line6 offer a better choice for most guitarist with their GuitarPort : it allows one to use its existing guitar with computer which'll model the required amp/cabs sounds...
Now, the laziest could also check out Steinberg's Virtual Guitarist...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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.
Does this mean Microsoft will require a EULA for all music played in the key of C# ?
*rimshot*
Thanks I'll be here all week!
You speak as if being signed to a major label is a good thing...
Sony ha
1) Able to use CAT5 cable instead of normal cable. That's cool but no big deal.
2) Effects can be controlled from an on-guitar dash-board, instead of foot pedals. Foot pedals are convenient and can be manipulated while playing the guitar, which is important. Also, so far, all-in-one digital effects aren't so great. So it might be useful for beginners, but it doesn't sound like the technology is being aimed at beginners. (Worth noting that Gibson experimented with controlling effects from the guitar in the 70's, but the guitars didn't sell well.)
Regardless, any guitarist would have to be prepared to play in a situation that uses normal equipment. So why bother having the second technology?
It's not a blanket opposition to digitalizing guitars... the Variax seems like a pretty cool guitar, if overpriced, and the basic technology has obvious cool applications that haven't been exploited yet. But Gibson's new technology doesn't seem to have a good reason to exist.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I mean, Ethernet isn't really designed for real-time connections. I realize that it can work when you get to the really high speeds, but wouldn't that be expensive.
I guess what I'm wondering is, why did they chose Ethernet rather then Fire wire, or even S/PDIF? Do you need to use special switching hardware that insures real-time communication? What about packet loss?
Personally, I'd like it if everything used Ethernet, it really does seem to be the most convenient form of networking out there. Hopefully all the work put in by Gibson will be adopted and we'll be able to plug our stereo, TV, VCR and everything directly into our home gigabit LAN. It would make things a lot easier, that's for sure.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Yes, except that when the guitar plays a Rush song, it will still suck.
Try running that 1/4 inch cable through powerstrips filled to the rim with wall warts for your effects. Hear that hum??
That hum will still be present on the ethernet signal, but not in the packets. Even better than balanced.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
I know that you make fun of him, and all, but this is just an awesome display of technological diversity!!!
...oh...not that Gibson? So I shouldn't have used all the !!!'s?
I mean, you can go to his website and get your probes ported, and get your testes shielded, and get your zip drive fixed, and get a screensaver, and get some really 31337 advice on stuff, and even get a tool that tells you your IP address. And it's all in "hand-crafted assembly code!!!"
And now he does stuff with guitars!!! And it's Ace Frehley's brand of guitar. Wow!!!
This is a solution in search of a problem.
I've been a musician all my life and I'll tell you right now what seperates the really good players from everyone else is PRACTICE, not gadgets.
I think probably the marketing division staged a successful coup over at Gibson.
The gadget freaks are gonna love this though, so I can't blame Gibson for trying a new way to bring in some cash.
Someone posting something about the "purists... blah blah blah blah"
Excuse me? Purists my *ss.
There's a real reason that the best guitarists lust and drool over 90 year old technology: It is because it is impossible for solid state electronics, no matter how tweaked, sampled and modified, to duplicate the odd harmonics the come by nature out of the plasma in a hot vacuum tube.
Musicians care about *sound* and nothing else. If the best sound came out of a old transistor radio running FreeBSD modified with DDR ram and put in a hollowed out cardboard box, they would use that.
I'm a violinist. Once upon a time I thought that all the hoopla surrounding Strat instruments was just complete BS and that with the right combo of tech, lutherian technique and materials, that the sound could be reproduced. And then I heard one in person.
Perhaps another problem is that lots of *engineers* work for the instrument manufacturers, and they stare at an oscilloscope hooked up to a tube and think "it can't be so hard to reproduce that" as well as "I need to do something new around here to keep my job!"
Now I have heard some solid state amps that sound pretty good. But they still don't come close to tubes, even after all these years (40+?) of trying.
And if you personally cannot hear the difference, might I suggest you work on training your ear a bit better? The difference is glaring to folks with well trained musical ears.
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.
"Generally speaking the music industry is very digital-averse," acknowledged Gibson Labs general manager Shri Arora, who helped design the core Magic technology. "But as the technology gets better, the cost-effectiveness is becoming a compelling force. In five to 10 years this [electric instruments and related equipment] will all be digital anyway."
.
Umm . . . yeah. So where do I get digital vacuum tubes?
You can argue, if you want, about whether analog actually does sound better than digital -- all of us purists will still be dragging around our out-dated, cost-ineffective, heavier-than-sh!t gear anyways until we're convinced it's been improved upon.
And as long as I can still fret a note, I'll be gutting cats myself for fiddle strings . . .
Now, I admit that this doesn't mention if the 'Magic' system is providing power, or receiving power, but well, something's getting power over the cable. I don't know how you're going to pull that off with wireless.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
should read as:I'd reccommend you let the studio do the a/d converting.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Music didn't start, nor shall it stop, with the electric guitar.
Don't tell people that. Especially vintage gear freaks. I think they will have a harder time dealing with that reality(rock n' roll is dead) than creationists have dealing with the reality that the Earth is several billion years old(not several thousand).
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
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.
Q: How do you get a bassist off your porch?
A: Pay him for the pizza!
(...sorry)
I don't think it would stand up to on-stage use. The bending of the cable (and stepping on it, etc..) would likely break some wires. And if they are meaning to use regular plastic RJ-45 connectors, I just don't see it. A big metal 1/4" plug is much more sturdy. I can just imagine RJ-45's getting yanked out and broken right and left. And according to the article, this does seem to be their plan, as it mentions using cable bought from computer stores. I'm not sure that this aspect of it has been completely thought through...
PK: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
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.
Click here to read too much about my personal life
but using a 'Magic' Les Paul would force you entirely into the digital domain
If you read the fucking artical, you'd see that the Guitar will also have anlog pickups and outputs. It won't force you to do shit.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Just thinking of that great genius of our time - Willy Wonka - and thinking of musical locks. Could you use something like this to take a fingerprint of the player so that you could encrypt or sign files? It sounds like it'll have a high-quality stream so you could possibly get a better sample than you could get from a cd or recording? It'd be interesting to see a digital music file with a musical signature that only the original artist can duplicate.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
"I do not want to run fucking windows CE on my amp, thanks. BSOD = horrible screeching feedback noise, maybe?"
It's offical: we've finally scraped the bottom of the barrel for BSOD jokes.
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)
Read reviews of shopping cart software
are you kidding? that happened AGES ago
blazing sound of deafness
Free as in mason.
As a previous founding member of the GMICS/MAGIC group (which was comprised of 3 Opcode Systems Employees after gibson closed down Opcode) and an ex-employee of gibson, I can honestly say that gibson is one of the cheapest dishonest companies I have ever worked.
The only thing I learned was that having a very young very inmature 'Manager' is less than ideal in a small isolated group. He was also quite dishonest, dissing henry the ceo whenever he was not listening, but kissing butt otherwise.
I took a look at the website and it looks strangly similar to the demo board made 4-5 years ago, a BabySharc, 100 MBit, pic chip, and a few codecs. I guess it took that long to debug the hardware. That group was very incompetent.
If they were smart they would use gigibit ethernet which has enough bandwidth to support the channels required for henry's dream. But I guess that would take that group another 25 years.
I wonder if it still uses my pic program and the sharc os (called GROS for Gibson Realtime OS)
I do have a fond memory of buying a carvin from www.carvin.com while employed at gibson, that guitar rocks, employee discounts sucked.
That and the GIFF that was passed around email, it was that gibson logo, the one with the pic and the ribbon on the bottom saying 'Musical Instuments", some employee spent the time to seamlessly replace the text with "Hates You" this is how I remember my time at gibson.
There's one very good reason to choose cat5 over wireless- no matter what protocol you use, your wireless guitar would be working at a radio frequency that can be duplicated, and therefor messed with. One of the easiest to mess up would be 802.11b- it runs at the same frequency as many microwaves, cordless phones and other appliances. Can you imagine being a guitarist on stage at a show at a small venue, and all of a sudden the owner of the place gets a phone call that effectively stops the show? Other protocols share frequencies with less other things, but can still be interrupted easily by anyone who really wants to sabotage a show.
The drummer won't keep pace, the bassist has nothing to pong to and the singer has a virus. Groupies :/
Course, got to try it.
I don't feel most people really appreciate what analogue is about in terms of it's life and in terms of sound.
For me I prefer analogue sometimes because when an error is introduced it can be beneficial.
For me, analogue is Art and Digital is Reason. Analogue = life and digital = man made.
Science and Slashdotters have to understand that in Art inaccuracy and error, -can- be a good thing.
When interferance is introduced from Guitar -> LP -> analogue cable -> listener, that error is coming from the real world + it isn't fatal to the sound. In fact, I like it.
The unfortunate thing about analogue is that it takes so long to get to know it.
* Analogue error is more useful than digital error * ?
I intend to go digital though because it's condusive to the rest of my setup, specifically my computer. Can't wait to try this stuff out!
A blog I run for the wealth
The original UDP version, from a performance timing perspective, was tight and the network was transparent to musicians. The Ethernet version seems to be even tighter!
http://www.dmidi.org
Using professional-grade glass optical fiber
I've played guitar on and off since early high school, started in our jazz band my sophomore year, and one of the biggest problems I had before I got my nady wireless was that people were tripping over cables or not watching where they were putting their music stands down. Not sure how much stress a firewire cable using fiber optics can take, but I know for a fact that my copper cables got stretched and bent and kinked all the time.
One problem (or maybe not -- I defer to those who know wireless far better than I) would be the magnetic interference from the pickups on the guitar itself. Wouldn't that do a number on broadcast quality?
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
but this is kinda crappy. As someone who is in a legit band who actually plays (lots of) shows, this sure sounds like a bad idea. I don't think my Marshall has an "interface" for this. I especially like this...
"It will also simplify stage and studio setup, substituting low-cost Category 5 cables that can be bought at a local computer store for the thick, expensive analog cables used today."
Yeah, those Cat5 cables are WAY less expensive. LOL! Yeah, if you want to play your guitar six feet or less away from your amp.
This is for suckers. It's almost laughable. Why in the world would you want your guitar to interface with your computer? Recording? Yeah, there's better ways to do that already, believe me.
And I just have to mention again... you need to plug that $2,400 Gibson into something when you are on stage. Otherwise, no one is going to be able to hear you.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
I can see latency remaining an issue. A musician can detect something like 10ms delays.
Will equipment be rated by delay to process the sound signal?
A blog I run for the wealth
This has to be one of the worst over-contrived acronymns I've seen in a while. I can see a conference room of Gibson execs thumbing through stacks of computer magazines looking for snazzy words to match the neato acronymn someone came up with.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
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
> ...is frantically setting up his equipment before a gig in a fit
> of nervousness and adrenaline, the last thing he needs to
>worry about is a lot of fancy technology.
hmmm...so pedals, fm transmitters, effects units, etc aren't a lot of fancy technology?
I really don't think technology bothers most modern guitarists that much....and I really don't think it'll make any difference to them on a practical level whether or not the signal is digital or analogue.
The thing that will really matter, is what do these guitars sound like?
Advanced users are users too!
With these new "MAGIC" components included, I am curious on how long it will take for the following things to happen:
...... Firewood
1. MS announcing an embedded version of NT for the Gibson.
2. The developers of products such as Soundforge,Cakewalk *& Protools get preloaded in package deals.
3. Slashdot features an article showing how easy it is to Mod the gibson with the latest Gforce card & monitor, mouse & keyboard connectors.
4. Not satisfied with only supplying the OS for the guitar, MS purchases Gibson.
5. All songs after this will begin with that happening and eternal windows startup wav file.
6. Slashdot post an article featuring the first Linux build for it.
7. A custom neck mod made with a slot for scanning your guitar tab in. (Embedded LED's light up green on frets and turn red on wrong notes)
8. The first Worm makes its rounds looking for predefined sequences and modifies the output based on it. (Ygnwie capped at 12 notes a minute or possibly the always unheard Church guitarist will have their volume adjusted to an audible level)
9. A small number of freshly networked guitar players attempting to break from the norms of society will stop speaking and develop a riff-only based form of communication. (Coincidentally following a profound LSD experience)
10. Actually the previous item may have already happened.
11. Terrorist are accused by homeland security as using embedded messages within a guitar which is reveiled when the correct 80's hair band solo is played.
12. Humans realize their diminishing fun while playing these devices and get back to their musical roots (Fart, Burping & beating on things with sticks)
13. Slashdot post its final article on the subject on the greatest MS Gibson guitar mod of all
Almost Sober,
SuperGlueBooger
It is because it is impossible for solid state electronics, no matter how tweaked, sampled and modified, to duplicate the odd harmonics the come by nature out of the plasma in a hot vacuum tube.
The 'natural' sound of the electric guitar was a quirk of the technology that was around at the time. And a lot of people hated it, compared to the 'natural' sound of acoustic instruments, most of which had only been around in their current compromised scale form for a few hundred years. When the compromised scale was introduced, in order to make transposition and keyboard instruments possible, I'm sure the purists said that the compromise was just that, and that nothing that would ever replace a flute that only plays in E flat.
If Gibson had gone digital from day one, people would be posting about how now analogue system, however tweaked, can never reproduce the clean precision of digital. Or something. And in 30 years' time, when someone comes up with another way of doing music, all the digital 'purists' will bang on about how nothing can approach the 'natural' beauty of a DX-7...
You ear get used to whatever sounds you feed it within reason. If you don't believe me, try listening to some Indian music, for example. To a Western ear, it is all out of tune, before we get on to the melodic component, but half a billion Indians would disagree...
Virtually serving coffee
first of all, IANA (I am not ancient) so my knowledge on this might be rusty. correct me if anybody knows better.
Now, here are some reasons why tubes might sound better:
first of all let's start with some tube basics: you heat a plate (cathod) and electrons jump off it. the electrons pass through a grid, and gets obsorbed at another plate (anode). You can vary the voltage on the grid and control how much eletrons pass - hence the amplifying.
The difference between a tube amp and a FET amp is that tube amps have some insane amount of dynamic range that is very nice and linear. somethinge like 40V (or more, depending on the tube). It goes by the name "high voltage, low current."
Now, for the same power, FETS can't touch this range because most fets don't operate at that high voltage level - and if you push it then it will saturate / turn off and you won't be linear anymore.
So for the same power, FETS would go toward "low voltage, high current." This is cool and all, and theoretically if you stay within the linear region you are all good, right? wrong. All the EE books teaches you one thing that you never do in the real life - that is to assome a nice ground.
ground is never nice - especially when there is a lot of current, ground tend to float here and there - which would give you crap and distortions that we all know and love. Of course, throughout the years engineers (hey we don't have a life, after all) figured some ways around it - but AFAIK all of these are either 1) very expensive, and 2) not completely effective (usually it's both). (btw, one of these is to make as much of the system digital as possible.)
So... In the end, tube amps still reign. I heard that RCA made the best tubes, no confirmation on this, though.
Just for the few who thought "well when we get lots of superconductors then finally FET amps will be better!" That's not correct either. Unfortunately superconductors we know of are only good for no resistance at DC, and the ground does not play nice because of AC concerns.
So, there you have it. For the record I don't know any engineers who thought "oh yeah I can duplicate a tube response through other means," but they might have told their bosses shit like "I can make it damn close and you can't tell the difference" (which is usually a lie) so to keep their jobs.
And Tubes are considered solid-state. A tad fragile (there are stainless steel ones for the military, if anyone is interested), but still solid state last I checked...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"But as the technology gets better, the cost-effectiveness is becoming a compelling force. In five to 10 years this [electric instruments and related equipment] will all be digital anyway."
:)
You've got millions of guitar players who scoff
at the idea of a digital amp, which has been around for decades, and they think 5-10 years will be the conversion time? Eventually digital engineers will figure out their heads from their asses, and yeah it'll be a good idea, but I'll be in my late 40s by then..
My grandfather said to my father, about 40 years ago, "Son, digital electronics are for people who aren't intelligent enough to understand analog electronics". Sad, but true..
I paid $50 for my last guitar cable, and that
was a rather mid-quality cable imho.. Just think.. cable manufacturers will be ripping off guitarists charging $50 for a 10' ethernet cable that cost them $0.01 to make
If only I'd have gone into the scsi cable industry, I'd be a rich thief right now!
"And how can this be? For he is the
There have been a lot of attempts over the years to get guitarists to go hi-tech. Guitar synths never really gained the momentum that they their keyboard-driven cousins, and innovations like the SynthAxe, Step, etc. have pretty much fallen by the wayside. The guitar is a very 'organic' instrument, and that tends to reflect in the attitudes of people playing it. Personally, I'd be suprised if this technology becomes totally mainstream within the next 5 years.
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.
PROBLEM? THIS IS SOLUTION. ARE YOU THERE? The expense of guitar cable? For chrissakes, how many do you buy? How much do you spend on them? How long before people start selling OFC, silver core, directional monster CAT5 cable to idiots with too much money who think it'll sound different? You can control your effects from your guitar? That's what your bloody feet are for, aren't you using your hands to play the thing? Fer chrissakes, people don't know how to *rock* anymore...
I'm sure the 'Magic' will become a household name like the Roland guitar. When will these 'boneheads' learn. Digital = lifeless, dull, and clinical in the audio world.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
1. Tell everyone you've made an improved digital interface
2. Change the plug design from a big jack to RJ45
3. ???
4. Profit!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
what on earth makes you think you'll have to worry about any of that?
just because they use ethernet as the link level protocol doesn't mean that suddenly there's a hard drive and a windows PC in every device...
Advanced users are users too!
In fact, electrons move slowly - there's no reason for them to travel at the speed of light, although for some reason people are led to believe that this is the case. Indeed, if Einstein is worth his salt, it would not be possible for an electron to move at the speed of light (they do have a mass).
In wires, electrons actually move at speeds measured in CMs per second (once again, I forget the actual figures, but it's either CMs or MMs). The reason that it appears so much faster is that, at the risk of oversimplifying things, the whole chain of electrons is shunted along when the first electrons move. As an analogy, imagine holding a long stick and moving it backwards and forwards. The actual movement at the other end of the stick would appear almost instantaneously, despite the fact that the stick would never actually be traveling more than say 20MPH.
It's the same with free electrons moving through a conductor - they may not move fast, but as electrons are passed to atoms, other free electrons in the vicinity are passed along - the net result is very fast data transmission.
That answers the question of why it goes so fast, and hopefully you see why that is the question, rather than why it goes so slow...
Lets get rid of the troublesome strings then, replace the operator with some software! Said operator can then concentrate fully on the strutting, and generally looking cool.
I can only imagine your traditional rock band roady will think of this - can you imagine:-
"Oi! Dave, make us a cuppa tea - I'm jus con-figging dur main switch"
"yeah alf a mo John, gotta unpack da amps and those er.. 'rooter' things you was talking about"
"Noice one, don't forget the bootp server"
"er... John.. what's this 'effernet' anyway?"
"not now John" (taps microphone) " Testing, testing..er I mean 'Ping 12.12.123.12'"
"No response from bass guitar"
"is it da cable?"
"Nah thas normal - he's bladdered, innit".
Actually, I've recently heard Weezer has quit using the PODs live. Can anyone confirm or disconfirm this suspicion?
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!
i think this is more of a gimmick than anything else. there's no actual need for a digital electric guitar. its just digital for the sake of being so....its kinda reminiscent of all those "can i install linux on my toaster" jokes. you might be able to, but what's the point??
When I saw "Gibson" in a Slashdot article title, my first thought was, "Oh dear God, they're posting stories about the movie Hackers! Please, God, no... please! Oh... whew..."
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
"The Magic technology will let users apply unique digital effects to each string of the guitar " That's the important part; when you can pick up each string individually, a guitar turns into one hell of a MIDI device. This means you can make your guitar sound like some other instrument like a piano, or make it automatically harmonize a third above whatever is playing, or it can play a drum machine and automatically adjust the tempo based on what you're playing. The Cat-5 is just a way to connect it. Although, Roland has had this same idea for some time now (Albeit it costs $1000, but then again, a '54 Les Paul isn't cheap either).
1p}{ 1 sp34k |33+ +|-|e|\| p30p13 \/\/il| 8e i/\/\pr3553|)
...will put DRM in it so you can't play anyone else's songs.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
The guitar is a fairly 'organic' instrument, and that seems to reflect in guitarists' approach to technology. Guitar synths, never caught on the was that their keyboard-driven cousins did. And there are a number of technical innovations which have pretty much been left by the wayside or (at best) only have a very small minority following. I'm thinking of things like SynthAxe, Stepp, etc.
Similarly with amps, ask the majority of players if they'd prefer a traditional valve-driven Marshall stack or one of the new-breed 'virtual amp' modellers, and I think they;d opt for the former.
I'd be suprised if this becomes mainstream within the next 5 years.
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)
"I'm not hearing anything."
"You would, though, if I had an RJ45 cable."
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
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
If you're using a single coil pickup guitar like a Fender Strat, the only thing you can do is place the 5-way selector in the neck+middle or middle+bridge positions to simulate a humbucking effect, that reduces the noise to acceptable levels. :)
:)
For a humbucking guitar, try shaving off the top treble with the tone control if it's still a problem.
Also, turn off everything you don't need while recording.. You hardly need to sit infront of the TV when laying down a track?
As for sound cards, if you're serious about recording at home spend the $300 on a good sound card. It's worth it.
These come with better AD/DA and have the monitoring options you need. Also, you get much lower latencies in Cubase etc. with these cards, down to a few ms, and you won't need the hacked ASIO drivers.
I take it you're a musician?
I take it you're not...
Clapton playing a $99 guitar would sound like... Clapton.
If you played one of his Strats, you'd sound like...you.
It's something of a truism in guitar circles, but It's All In The Fingers.
Information wants to be beer.
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.
this sounds pretty radical on the face of things, and ideas like an effect for each string are way out there too. myself, i'll stick to my 'normal' les paul, but just remember that it was crazy innovation that brought about some of the biggest changes in music, and it wasn't always accepted at first.
So are they going to bring out a William Gibson custom model so I can play some raucous cyberpunk?
"Lets DDOS the Landlord"
-- joe.
So, when do they make a tube amp with Ethernet?
Yeah, but the spec also says (in 4.2.2 #2) that a/d and d/a should be chosen with particular care. And right below that it says that each device should limit jitter to within 80 picosec. Besides, a good customer plays stuff before buying, and if it sounds worse than a $100 stratocaster replica, there will be no consideration given to any MaGiC products.
It's just CAT5. There was an article here on /. a year, or-so, ago, about it.
S
"They" say that anything under 10 ms is "not noticeable"
but, as a musician, I must say it becomes unnerving and
makes playing impossibly difficult when it becomes noticeable.
Just playing solo is a challenge, playing ensemble is extremely
difficult if there is a time delay between your action and
the sound. You can fix this somewhat with a monitor, but
it's also a challenge to sync your recording. It's really
not fun to play live with a synth that is a 10th second
away from your key press, especially if you have gear with
all different latency.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
As an avid guitarist and technology nerd at the same time, I have to say this is BAD. The pure sound of an analog pickup on a guitar going through an all tube pre-amp and all tube amplifier is amazing. The realness and clearness of each and every microtone that you decide to play is flawless. No serious guitarist would use CAT5. I could see some applications for transcribing and controlling other pieces of hardware (but that is what MIDI is for) I do see how some features could be cool, but not for everyday playing. You'd have to bring your whole rig EVERYWHERE you go. Because most likely, your bassist isn't going to have a CAT5 enabled practice amp for you to use in his basement. Now what I want to see is 2.4GHz Guitar Wireless!
Well.. not really a dupe.. but it was last mentioned here http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/04/175325 9 -- 12:33 PM December 4th, 2001
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
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.
A quick question: I remember back in the day seeing adverts in GFTPM* magazine about MOSFET this and that...
;)
But when I learned a thing or two about semiconductors, its seems that BJTs would be a much better choice for amplification (where as FETs are better at the binary thing, given their VERY limited linear range)- they give BIG amplification values and have a larger linear range.
So why don't they use BJTs?
P.S.- If you have a crappy guitar, I'm not sure how much a tube amp is gonna help.
P.P.S- if you loose enough of your hearing from lots of loud, loud music, the difference between real tubes and "sumilated" tubes doesn't matter!
*(Guitar for the practicing musician)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I believe you forgot:
14. Beowolfed guitars
I hear the volume goes up to 0x0B on that one.
Hack the what?
What a load of bull.
D/A converters are quite cheap, compared to musical instruments and recording equipment.
Couple of hundred $$ for the kind that plugs into your PC, is good for audio frequency signals, lets you record a bunch of channels. Couple of thousand $$ if you are stupid about setting volume on your instruments/amps/effects and you need ridiculous dynamic range to compensate for that.
SUV's support terrorism !
"Multicaster" would seem to be more appropriate.
I have no idea whether anyone is already working on the technology for "realtime" digital wireless, but I'm sure any breakthrough would be prime /. material. Yeah, why not an Open * project .... It would be cool technology.
I can just see it: a worm that turns the output of a Nine Inch Nails show into the treacly slop of Kenny G. The horror, the horror! (Although vice-versa might be interesting...)
IANAMusician, but I could have sworn that Gibson had been put into the same category as Harley-Davidson by the American business media -- "an icon of American business & manufacturing that almost died but was resurrected and on a newfound path to glory, thanks to its innovative, dedicated and insightful management team."
The way you describe them, it sounds like they're headed back to the same gutter!
Not true. Sometimes it's all about the inputs and outputs, how much easier now to record directly onto digital media. No analog to digital mess, there's a big difference. Especially if you're ear is used to listening to audio equpment someone can tell the difference between a line6 digital amp and the real thing easily. But the technology is getting much better, and this warrents a new interface. Digital vs. Analog is a big contention between some musicians.
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.
I presume that the natural choice of language to develop this software would be C#
People said the same thing about ProTools. Now every studio and their grandma is using it. Why? Because it makes things easier. And if it's easier to set things up, then the musician can spend more time on the music at hand. You may not be able to imagine a use for having different effects on each string, but I think you'll be pleasantly suprised at what other people come up with. It isn't hard to see how it could be useful for live performances. I understand if you're not a progressive player, but lots of people will find ways to put this to good use.
its a/d converters.. and yes they are expensive if you want quality. Do some research man
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I was just looking at sound of the FX, etc boxes for guitar, and choking on some of the rather high pricing. If a niche-market for PC-enabled (or at least PC-hardware enabled) guitars comes out, perhaps we can see something more custom along this line.
I've been considering starting an open-source project (once I have time) to create a custom guitar FX synth - does anyone know what the CPU requirements might be around to process Digital Effects in realtime (probably in one soundcard and out another).
Somebody may have already done this already. If I can get a DSP/ethernet enabled guitar, this could theoretically save a lot of headache in trying to sort out the input/FX/output latency issues.
The article indicates that the first generation will have analog pickups, so you can play it either way. I would imagine later versions will dispense with the pickup and process only sound off the string. Also, most professionals have a processor loaded with custom presets connected to a foot switch. Not all distortion effects sound the same for each song. So when they need to switch from Distortion 1 to Distortion 2 to Clean, they kick the switch ever how many times and that flips the signal processor. No need for fiddling with knobs either on the guitar or on some foot switch. (read as: this tech isn't quite ready for a garage band where all distortion _does_ sound the same.) When i first read that, I was reminded of some of the things that the Dead used to do during Dark Star. I never cared too much for the Dead, but some of the things they pulled off during that 20-30 minute between set jam were simply amazing. Innovation in music is always a good thing. The Beatles (like em or loathe em as you will) did neat things in the studio, and got the recognition they deserved for it (cf: cutting up loops of tape for the closing sequence in "The Benefit of Mr. Kite", the entire song "Revolution 9"). Pink Floyd circa 1972 was heavily innovative with thier quirky use of stereo and quad -- I'm told to go to a show back then was to subject oneself to virtual streams running down the isle and birds chirruping overhead in an imaginary sky. Lastly, I didn't see anything about wireless transmission in the article at all. Don't knock new tech till you've tried it (and try rtfa next time too).
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
... pardon me? What does he think people use to control their synths, software, automated mixing boards, video mixers...? MIDI may have its limitations but it is far from an unfulfilled promise.
I have to wonder, though, why they didn't go with firewire, or partner with Yamaha and make them M-Lan devices... Too many new "standards", that's what leads to unfulfilled promises.
Music wants to be free.
Nice Yngwie Malmsteen reference!! Must be the first ever on /. !
SUMMARY: GIBSON GUITAR CORPORATION vs. D.N. CROWE
http://stephengoldin.com/gibson/summary.html
REPORTS OF THESE DEATHS ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED
http://stephengoldin.com/gibson/reports.html
A SETTLEMENT HAS BEEN REACHED http://stephengoldin.com/gibson/
It is also useful to see how Gibson handled the acquisition of Opcode.
Gibson vs. Opcode5 4/
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/64
Somewhere on the Harmony Central website are some sobering remarks on Gibson's rebranding of third-party products as Opcode. I can't find the links at the moment, but the bottom line is that the goodwill associated with Opcode trademark has been squandered; one hopes that the same fate will not befall Gibson's efforts with the Magic platform.
If only they had open-sourced Opcode's software!
srichman and evilpiper were discussing sound artifacts and errors that show up in pickups, cables, and amplifiers. I'm reproducing part of that exchange here to give the context for my comments below.
srichman said:
>>>>Noise will always be introduced by pickups,
>>>>and many consider it to be part of the
>>>>"character" of the guitar/pickups.
Evilpiper responded:
>>>That's very short-sighted. You could just
>>>as well say that distortion will always be
>>>introduced by amplification (ie. tub-amps),
>>>and many consider it to be part of the
>>>character.
srichman countered:
>>Come on! Are you really trying to argue
>>that people don't think the distortion
>>introduced by tube amps is part of
>>the "character" of their music!? The
>>overdriven tube distortion sound has
>>virtually defined rock music for decades!
evilpiper offered the opinion:
>>I would never base anything on what people
>>*think*. People think a lot of things, wether
>>they are true or not...If you someone wants
>>that tube sound, make it an effect that can be
>>added if someone wants it.
There are plenty of companies selling effects pedals like this that are designed to simulate the sound of overdriven tubes. Guess what? The sound is close, but it is not the same. I've got a pedal to play through my newer amps, and it never comes out the same as my fender bassman with the 6L6s glowing in the back. The same is true of organs; I don't think you can buy an organ or keyboard that doesn't have a setting to simulate the sound of a hammond B-3 organ. The genuine B-3 will sound different in a recording, though.
I'm not sure why. Maybe the electronics to simulate the sound of the old equipment just aren't quite there yet. Maybe the electronics are, but musicians respond differently to simulations than they do to the genuine stuff, and that comes across in the recording. Regardless of the reason, though, there is a difference.
In the long run this becomes increasingly less important over time. As music changes, a sound will be nearly abandoned for a decade or more. When that sound becomes trendy again, a simulation may be good enough to satisfy most listeners. Older music fans will be able to hear the difference, but they will be in the minority of the people buying music.
I started out wanting to say that evilpiper is wrong, and that overdriven tubes sound better than mere effects. Now I have to admit that they simply sound different, and I prefer the sounds I'm accustomed to over simulations of those sounds. [sigh!] I'm feeling old.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
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.
Sorry that was a typo. I meant to type Strad, as in Stradivarius, and not strat as in stratocaster. I dare say that if I were to play a violin made by Stradivarius I would sound very different.
latency would totally screw up feedback.
You might get a whole new class of sounds,
but it's not an improvement on the original,
just something different.
Can I write scripts for my guitar now, and get rid of all those messy pedals? Or is Microsoft going to make Bluetooth enabled musical equipment now?
Then Paul Allen bought the company, and it disappeared into "the hell that is a Paul Allen company".
Running cable to instruments seems backwards. It would make more sense to have them be wireless, digital, protected from interference, and have a long battery life, all of which are achieveable with current technology in a lightweight package. Just reprogramming some 3G cell phone units for point to point work should do it.
Besides, if you run Cat 5 cable to instruments, you'll have to have special cables and connectors engineered with all the flex and crush resistance of pro audio cables.
I am a guitarist, and I see this as an instrument more for recording than performing. As ProTools, Sonar, Acid and others have helped make studio recording easier [and less expensive], so will this.
But [as the article points out] unless you are a guitarist who performs using a lot of programmed material, it will not replace good old analog equipment. Typically, vacuum tube amplifiers actually preferred - and more expensive - than solid state / digital equipment because of their inherent 'warmth' and capability to saturate the sound when pushed. Same with analog recording vs. digital. Depending on the style of music you play, one may be preferable.
Also, MIDI music controllers are typically keyboards. Which means, as a guitarist, if you want to add other instruments to a recording, you use the keys...Which can be tough if you never had piano lessons.
It will also help [especially if the Magic network thingy becomes successful] for musicians to collaborate virtually, change pitch without changing tempo, etc. This will again reduce the time and effort required to produce a well-engineered composition. It will probably also do for music what other electronic instruments did [synthesizer, drum machine, loops, sequencers, etc.] - it won't replace analog, but give more options for sounds and composing [and therefore ideas].
BTW, there are already other companies [such as Line 6, Roland-partnered with Fender, etc.], who have already started the trend of using guitars as controller for electronic sounds.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Wish I could recall the project name and the company Gibson paired with....
The Gibson MaGIC technology is implemented using a Xilinx Sparten-IIE FPGA, as noted in this press release. From this release it sounds like they choose an FPGA to enable reprogramming capabilities to implement different effects, as well as allowing them to license the technology to other music manufacturers. This article also mentions that there will be a 30 to 30,000 increase in data and control transfer rates compared to MIDI. Not too shabby.
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
I think you may be a little _too_ conspiratorial here. You don't think Metallica smiles at every kiddie guitarist who goes to Guitar Center on Saturday to play 'Enter Sandman' on a big amplifier? Those are the same fans that go to concerts, pay for the t-shirt, etc.
The issue the RIAA has with is recorded music [the "R" in the acronym]. Performing someone else's music live is completely legal [if unsponsored].
The only way you'd be 'taxed' is if you released your recording of someone else's song...which is a royalty payment. And btw, you're already taxed playing cover songs if you perform - the clubs [big ones anyway] send you a 1099 for taxes, and [IIRC] either the company hiring you or the venue itself has a license [ascap/bmi?], lest the local music union folks visit.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Ever trodden on cat5? Twisted it? Yanked it out of the socket? (All common with guitar leads)
Did it survive? 10:1 it didn't
This is nuts, cat5 is inherently fragile, it's not made for the treatment guitar leads get.
And if we have to use a "specially hardened" version, it won't be cheaper than 1/4 cable for very long.
Actually, Fender does make violins. Still, I think you're right that the parent poster meant Stradivarius.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Clapton playing a $99 guitar would sound like... Clapton.
Except that he'd be saying things like, "Damn, this neck sucks!" and "What retard adjusted this bridge?" the whole time.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Next time I'll add a disclaimer "this is a joke, laugh with it" ... because people take this too serious seems to be :)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The story is a compelling account of what it's like to record an album in the studio, from the recording engineer's perspective. vgrep for "Alsihad"[1] for a strong indictment of ProTools' guarantee to suck the life out of good music through the magic of digital editing. Apparently it makes editing easier, but not better.
Plus, it looks like musicians generally don't spend any time editing their music in the studio anyway (that's the recording engineer's job). So it's not like a lack of ProTools is cutting into their valuable "focusing on their music" time, or anything. Presumably, those musicians who cared enough, and had clout enough, to edit their own albums, would prefer to produce higher-quality music, not necessarily faster, cheaper music.
Perhaps this is all different in the electronic music genres, where the life of the track comes from places other than the musicians heartfelt manual playing of their analog instrument.
Finally, consider this congruent argument: "People said the same thing about VHS. Now everybody and their grandma is using it. Why?" (Hint: not because it turned out to be the superior format.)
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
[1] For some obscure reason, the author refers to ProTools as "Alsihad".
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
behringer makes an absolutely awesome virtual cab/direct box called the Ultra-G. retails for about $30. check it out sometime, i highly recommend it and use it myself.
1. That's why the digi guitar comes with an analog breakout box to use with ANY amp/effects/gear. 2. It won't cost $3K
In the lab with our HW we're seeing about 21 microseconds latency board to board--10X faster than the spec allows.
I can see it now. You have a jam session and some lawyer shows up on your porch: "Sir, that note you played last week is the copyrighted property of the RIAA. You can either pay us $50,000 for infringing or we'll see you in court." Or, better yet, your amp will now pre-empt when you try to play any RIAA-owned notes. Those would be the notes in the range ABCDEFG, including sharps, flats, majors, and minors. Yes, all your tonal range are belong to us! After all, we've just got to plug that analog hole somehow!
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Has anyone ever heard of an instance where a show's wireless sound system was deliberately sabotaged (other than Spinal Tap)?
A whole Steppenwolf^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HBeowulf clutster of these things!
got hit by SQL slammer, I think. And now something is wrong with the server.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually, as the story talks about, it's very similar to the concept of MIDI, only it's a little more advanced and a little more digitally pure. Brian Moore guitars is already marketing a guitar with a direct MIDI port rather than a standard 1/4" jack, and it seems to do quite well for a niche market. The cool thing here is now you could have the top 3 strings with heavy fuzz/distortion and a completely clean sound for the bottom 3, etc. Still, it's gotta suck when your guitar starts suffering from packet loss in the middle of a show.
One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duck tape to make them stop. ~G.M. Weilacher
take any one of these out of the loop and replace it with something else(solid state amps, modelling amps, guitar synthesizers, anything that digitizes the sound) and it becomes something else. An approximation at best.
Why do the latest and greatest digital modelling amps all brag about the 50's and 60's era tube amps they emulate? Is it because they found a better way to reproduce the sound of the guitar transmitted through those magnetic pickups? No. Its because the old tube amps sound better. Find me a single tube amp that claims to sound like a Line 6 and I will eat my post.
Its not just one element, its the entire system. Magnetism interacts with electricity. The pickups, tubes and speakers work together to make a pleasing tone, and nothing can change or "improve" that equation. You might as well talk about a system that runs an acoustic guitar through a series of A/D and D/A converters to produce a "better" sound. Not going to happen. An acoustic guitar is an acoustic guitar. What we know and love as the electric guitar, again, is magnets, tubes and electricity. Change that and you have something else entirely.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I've never had anything digital that didn't add a ton of noise to the sound. Remember Fenders Midi Guitar? +30DB. Absolutely worthless for anyone playing at any volume outside of their basement by themselves. Roland GP-8? Noise. GP-16? Noise.
...I'm supposed to be able to do this in the middle of a song while playing? I've never been able to. About all I can muster is one or two foot stomps on very simple switches.
...Can I change the pickups out with what I want and still have it work? I generally stick a P94 in whatever guitar I buy because I like that sound and know what it will do. With digital pickups am I going to have to gut the entire thing if that is all that is available to get what I want? Is my guitar tech going to be able to work on it? Or is every trip for a slight problem going to be "replace the main board"?
First generation of "digital" delays? Excessive noise. In fact, even the expensive ($1000+ racks) that are dedicated to a single effect (Lexicon) add a ton of noise and choppiness to the sound.
I'm sure there are a ton of guitar players who thought they might save a little money and buy one of those 6 in 1 digital effects boards and quickly discovered that you had to use a noise gate on it to even make it tolerable, and it was worthless live because of the noise.
This isn't to say that some digital appliances don't have a place(if you don't mind the noise), and that analog appliances are always noise free (they aren't). But I can go buy a good set of analog effects from $20-110 a piece and not have those issues, have a simple interface that I can control easily. More knobs, or worse "buttons" just make the situation more aggrivating for the musician. If I have to do a ten step tap dance on a 10 button floor controller to change a bank of effects
The one area digital effects are truly superior is compression. But it's very hard to find ones that allow soft compression for more varied styles of music.
Then comes the problems of
One other note on the wonders of digital appliances... I had a couple friends that bought digital modeling amplifiers and took them on the road. None of them can currently survive a trip through the airport even with heavy road cases. Not line-6, not yamaha. Am I going to have to worry about my guitar getting rattled to pieces if I take it through the airport to play a gig in Australia as well as the new amp and effects I am "forced" to use?
Even if it allows you to mount the buttons to control the effects on the guitar, that isn't an ideal solution for most players either.
That being said, I do see some uses for those who are disabled and play. I had a fit and a half converting a series of stomp boxes from their new style (FET) swtiches to traditional switches so I could wire up a hand controller for my friend who is paralyzed from the waist down. He plays with a pick, so the solution was to make a hand band that puts the other three switches on his 3rd 4th and 5th finger directly on his palm and a sweat band to take the cables to a point where they wouldn't be obstructive for him. He's got three effects now, distortion, delay, and reverb.
I also understand why the industry really wants this. Good wood is becoming harder to find. China has proved dismal with their lack of technical ability to manufacture quality instruments. but you can take a crappy $90 guitar and make it sound half way decent with enough digital processing. Electronics are cheap. So they will start making the guitar out of plastic and compressed cardboard and use electronics to mold the sound...Still sell it to you for $1000 but cut their manufacturing cost by 2/3.
Rant mode off.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
You forgot the HowTO on recompiling the Kernel with the distortion module, because so many teenagers keep complaining that their guitars sound too Country.
6b: Slashdot poster imagines a Beowolf cluster of those, and the first Ethernet band is born!
6c: Band spend several years thinking, not playing, and eventually decide on the name "Band-width"
Oh, you're talking about a granularity greater than h-bar?
>...This will allow a lot of options, such as ... controlling remote equipment from the guitar...
No Bob!
You _double_-pluck G to turn on the distortion!
Idiot!
- OrbNobz
Who said that??? Dammit! Who said that?!?
actually, buswolley is right.
Logic, macros, and more