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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.
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.
I can't wait until I can digitally UNLEASH THE FOCKIN' FURY!!!
Easy, quit smokin pot and it's pretty simple.
...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"
With what they're talking about, sounds like you'd only have one cable going from guitar to amp. Wouldn't need your effects pedals anymore, it'd either be in the guitar or amp digitally. If that's the case, your fudge factor is minimal.
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
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.
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.
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!?
Smoke more pot and it's even simpler.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
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.
"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
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!
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.
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.
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)
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
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
Since when is a Gibson a poor man's guitar? ;)
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 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
idiot
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.
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.
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".
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!
"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)
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 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.
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.
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...)
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.
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.