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New Developments in Music Technology
jonerik writes "The Christian Science Monitor has this article on acoustic and electronic music technology, including a visit to MIT's Hyperinstruments lab, which has developed a series of Music Shapers; ball-shaped musical toys which are covered with 'a patented thread containing sensors that react to the way the child handles them. The child manipulates a preprogrammed "little seed" of music and helps it "grow" by the way he or she shapes it.' Also worth a read is this article (free reg required) on the Line 6 series of bass and guitar amp emulators, which do a pretty decent job of mimicking various amp or amp/stack combos; from a '53 Fender Deluxe to a mid-'60s Vox AC-30 to the sludgy murk of a '70s Orange stack. 'Line 6 uses a technology called modeling to measure the characteristics of a particular vintage amp, from the distortion of its original tubes to the resonance of its speaker cabinet. The company has developed a way to reproduce those measurements in a powerful D.S.P., or digital signal processing, chip that contains models of dozens of classic amps.'"
I bought a line6 over a marshall about 3.2 seconds
after pluging into one. It's also nice not having
to redo your tube bias if you accidentally knock
the thing. It's great for touring. If you play
guitar, you have to try one of the line6 amps
out. Also, it's got really cool blinking lights.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Look here for a review of a Line 6 amp simulator way back in October 2000.
No fee required there, btw.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You can use it in combination with a service (pay per month) that lets you download "tones" - amp and effect combinations that model the sounds on specific songs. So you just search for "Comfortably Numb" and you've got a pretty damned good version of the tone. It also comes with tab and backing tracks for a lot of tracks, plus other backing tracks for different chord progressions. Even without subscribing to the service you can rip your own CDs or use your own MP3s and play along to them, and even play them at half speed. Great stuff, and it sells for about $170.
For more details see this review
Take a look at this quote...
"Then in 1983, three crucial innovations hit the music world, sparking a digital revolution. PC and Macintosh computers became widely available; Yamaha brought out a keyboard-based music synthesizer called the DX7 that could make an unprecedented number of new sounds; and computer and music companies established MIDI..."
Well, The DX7 was launched in 1983, but every other 'fact' in that bit is just plain wrong.
When there are lots of magazines and websites that concentrate on nothing but music technology, how on earth did The Christian Science Monitor get picked as an authority on the subject?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
My guitarist for my favorite band (Thrice) uses Line 6 modelers. They are definitely awesome, and I've demoed a line 6 amp in the shop and it is well worth your money. They are still kind of expensive for someone like me though. But then again, you get what you pay for. For musicians on a budget, I think the drastically cheaper multitrack digital recorders on the market now are much bigger news. I just put in an order for a Fostex MR8 last night. Its a digital multitrack recorder that meets my needs for around $300. I've been doing a lot of feature comparing and review reading and stuff and it is cheaper than some of the others but it is better. Plus it uses compact flash memory instead of some buddy proprietery storage. It has a USB for doing .wav outs. etc.
Amplitube is quite awesome at emulating some of the best amps out there. I've started using this as an alternative to mic'ing my triple rectifier at my studio, simply because the amount of control you get is so much greater (IE changing the amp after the guitar was recorded)
Also, Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Mirror does a great job of mimicking any environment, even the charicteristics of a piece of equipment (vintage mic or amp).
I believe both of these products have demo versions you can try out, and they are both directx plugins (so use with Sound Forge or some other audio editing app).
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
Weezer used line6 equipment on their last tour. Both guitars and bass used Pod Pros. (One of their rack mounted units). They didn't use any amps. They said they a/b'ed the pods against amps and couldn't really tell the difference. In fact, they liked the pods better in some cases.
One of the main reasons for using the pods is that they got a much "cleaner" stage sound -loud amps are hard to control in the mix. This was essential for them because it was during their wacky tour where they played weird locations like bowling alleys and 7-11's -all small, uncoventional venues.
Personally, nothing has yet been able to replace a real amp for me...
24 bits @ 96 KHz is beyond the ability of the human ear to discern any differences.
In fact, with a good antialiasing filter, 16 bits @ 44.1 KHz will put you below the noise floor of all but the best amplifiers and cover the whole range of human hearing. Problem is, an antialiasing filter suitable for 16/44.1 is VERY tough to design without causing distortions in the range of human hearing. 24/96 is easy to develop a suitable antialiasing filter for.
Problems ensue when you are processing the data, though. If you process 16-bit data in the DSP with 16 bits of precision, then at every step in the processing chain you'll likely have rounding errors. Such errors accumulate.
For 16-bit data, I believe most people use DSPs with 24-bit internal precision at a minimum. For 24-bit DSPs, 32 is probably the minimum. I don't know what the likes of Line6's products use. A floating-point DSP would do VERY well for eliminating rounding errors, but those cost $$$.
Interestingly enough - These amps try to use a model of another amplifier's nonlinearities to emulate the nonlinearities of said amp. In my line of work, we do the exact opposite. (Correcting for nonlinearities in RF amplifiers to minimize distortion of any form.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"Korg basically hired *one guy* to come up with all of the sounds used in their Triton and Karma synth workstations - and these are their flagship units!"
Bullshit -- I know several of the voicers for this unit and work with one of them. My company does 3rd party sound design...I know my partner was one of many 3rd party designers, and there are quite a few within the company.
Besides, there are several great sounding Wahs these days. My BadHorsie doesn't sound like the old Morleys but it sounds good on its own (it was designed by a specific artist for his specific needs). I have a few pure digital Wahs that don't emulate anything, but work well on their own...and I have a few ancient ones that are good but noisy as well and I couldn't use them on any of todays recordings unless I needed to go for a very specific sound and the realism was more important than the noise floor. By the time you run a do-noiser on these, you are back to the same 'plastic' sounds of the digital ones.
Clif Marsiglio
Sonikmatter.com