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More Channels for The Digital Musician

Posted by Hemos on from the rob-can-make-more-bad-music dept.

syrupdude writes "For those of us out there who love making bad music, Harmony Central has a story about a new digital wiring scheme from Gibson called GMICS, which uses standard cat5 cable to deliver 16 channels of 32 bits at 96kHz, or 8 channels at 192kHz. Definitely cool, but apparently not open. "

2 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Gotta get a lock on those standards... by C+A+S+S+I+E+L · · Score: 3

    According to the press release:

    Our vision is to embrace and extend the capabilities of the guitar - and all musical instruments ...

    Hmm, where have I heard the phrase embrace and extend before?

  2. well, it's about time ... by jetpack · · Score: 3

    First, to address this issue:

    Definitely cool, but apparently not open.

    The specs are there on the GMICS site in pdf format. How open do you want? This is definitely better than the MIDI standard. Sure you can get the MIDI specs, but the the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA), who maintain them, expect you to pay 40 or 50 bux for them.

    Having put that aside, I've only skimmed the specs, I haven't got a complete view of how this all works, but it appears that it will solve a number of problems that many of us musicians currently deal with.

    [0] MIDI works and is useful, but it's getting old and crispy. Connecting MIDI devices can be a royal pain, and MIDI patch bays are equally annoying.

    [1] Mixing analogue and digital signals is another pain in the butt, particularly in live situations.

    [2] Somewhat related to [1], with any decent sized MIDI setup, the number of midi and patch cords becomes almost unmanagable. GMIC will at least cut this mess in half.

    These are just a few of them. Most importantly, GMICS should, if accepted by manufactures, go a long way in unifying studio and live setups, and making them easier to deal with (even with fairly small "studios" like mine).

    On the other hand, I'm not going to get too excited untill a few things happen.

    [0] Manufacturers other than Gibson need to accept this as a standard and start building gear around the standard.

    [1] Decent software needs to exist before I'll consider it usefull.

    [2] It better deal well with my pre-existing gear in some sane and reasonable manner, or it is pointless. I like the gear I have and I don't intend to sell it all off just so I can retrofit. (fortunately most of my gear is MIDI enabled, including FX processors, so this might not be too big a deal).

    Anyhow, it sounds pretty cool, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out in practice. It's about time somebody is trying to update digital interfaces for instruments. I don't think the MMA is going to like this much :)