OT: The yearly gasp over technology improvements... (changed from low traffic)

[Fairlight]

In the relative spacial/temporal region of
Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 02:14:26PM -0400, Bill Vermillion achieved the spontaneous
generation of the following:
> 
> If you print heavily you really should look into the modified
> Cannons ?? - with the external ink supply fed by tubes from 
> 6oz ink bottles.  Printing is gorgeous.

Is that like a carbon drip?  :)  "Run an IV, 2 units of black, stat!"

> I'm sticking with my old HP for now - but I suspect I'll move from
> them - after years of use - because of the ink cartridges with the
> smart chips that cease working after a set period of time - even if
> you refill them.  There are methods of resetting the chips.

Not only if you refill them, but I've read horror stories of people who get
dual black/colour printers and they only use black, but because the colour
times out, it makes them replace -both- and refuses to print in black even
if the colour is not being used.  Worse, someone "stocked up" on black
cartridges and they all timed out at the same time,  :-/  That's -gotta-
suck.

> The manufactuers seem to take the old Gilette razor philosphy, you
> give the razor away and then sell them blades for as long as they
> shave.

I'll stick to the beard, thanks.  :)

> And the imported musical instruments are bargains from what I've
> seen.  At the studio we were able to be a gorgeous Kwai for about
> 1/2 or more than the cost of a Steinway, Baldwin, and even cheaper
> and better sounding than the Yamaha.

Not hard to sound better than a Yamaha.  :)  Their synths have admittedly
come a long way from their FM models like the DX-7, but the current ones
use like four different synthesis models, and have to be MASSIVELY
polyphonit (128!!!) to achieve what I can with one synthesis model using
V.A.S.T.  (Variable Architecture Synthesis Technology) and only 48 poly on
my Kurzweil.  They need the 128 poly on the Yamaha because they don't do
the intelligent decay, for example.  However, they've made some really good
progress in some areas.  They have a killer Hammond B-3 module that has
fooled even the best--Emmerson actually asked Andrew Giddings which Hammond
he was using, and was shocked to find out it was a pair of Roland D-70's
fed through a Yamaha emulator module for the Hammond sound, in a
custom-made case that was about a foot longer but made it look like a
Hammond rig.

The Young Chang pianos are pretty darned nice for the price.  It's not a
Bossendorfer, but uh...what is?   :)

> I saw an old line name on an accoustic guitar this past week.
> Remember the Silvertone brand that was from Sears.
> 
> I saw a Slivertone accoustice guitar at $130 in Costco - made
> in one of the SE Asia countries - whose name I forget at the
> moment.

All I really want is a nice 5-string electric bass and an amp/speaker rig
that lets it sound good.  Pricy though.  Ah well, eventually.  I've looked
at so many, I can't decide who I'd go with if I got one.  As with my synth,
probably some thing far better than I truly need with my actual talent.  :)

But hey, it was a lifelong dream, and it'll likely last damned near the
rest of my life.  We keep that thing mint.  So many times you get musicians
that bang the hell out of their gear.  You could barely -find- a DX-7 after
a while, and when you did you'd have to majorly refurb it to make it
usable.  I actually saw a Kurzweil K-2000 at the shoppe about two years
ago--some dingbat had actually -dropped- it and the side panel had buckled
and popped off and it was massively dented.  Looked like it took a header
off the loading tail of a semi.  I could have cried.  Those were -base- $6k
units new, nevermind any additions to them that could run them up to the
$12k+ range.  People that don't respect their gear drive me nuts.

Actually, I finally found out why Nick doesn't use Kurzweil--he does but
it's never up-front to be seen. :) He used K-2000's back in '94.  I believe
he's used K-2500R's as well...but rack only.  He hates weighted keys, so
he wouldn't want the semi-weighted or fully weighted keys on these.  That
explains it.  With the fully weighted, you can barely tell you're not
playing a real piano, except for the lack of keys getting stuck. :) So
he'll use them in racks and use non-weighted units as MIDI controllers.
That works.  It also proves that in this area, you can't really tell how
good something is until you can see the -whole- rig, because you can have a
really cruddy MIDI controller or four out front driving a really GOOD set
of rack units doing the real work.

As with computers, anything -really- good is too damned expensive.  It's
worse in music though, because it'll never be a commodity market.  There
are areas like 3D video cards though that are still mighty pricy if
you want the -real- performance.  I think a significant percentage of
advancement in computers in the last ten years has been due to demands from
the gaming community.  Business needs have grown, to be sure--but nowhere
near as quickly as the gaming world has wanted to progress.  I know people
that quibble over a spurious 1-fps difference in video cards.  It's silly.
But it sure keeps companies on their toes.

mark->
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