laptops are physically confined, but also functionally, anything that happens in there is digitally produced or simulated. music gear is often mechanical or electromechanical , has physical properties laptop can never have.
(obviously)
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What is a midi controller?
well, not a laptop for sure. it exactly exists because of lack of properties laptop doesn’t have.
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And if you think sound flows through those encoders and pots on hardware and not just controlling a VCO chip or whatever……
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sometimes , yes, but not my point.
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What properties do you you speak of then?
read again please
ironically I like using a macbook as a groovebox without a midi controller connected more than with one connected (not as a daw/recorder of course) but as a groove box… actually adamjay put me on to this notion not long ago and it was like a breath of fresh air… the days of hooking this controller and that controller up to a laptop are long gone when I’m on the go, it’s liberating to just open the lid and bash some keys (qwerty)…
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Makes me think of that lovely Douglas Adams quote:
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
- Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
- Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
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I am a computer scientist, and this is roughly true.
Since phones/laptops/desktops are so powerful, there’s no point in wasting expensive development time on optimisation, since in most case it won’t make you any more money.
There’s still a lot of low level optimisation happening, but a lot of that is in finance (e.g. high frequency trading), or AI.
Problem is that it’s complex and expensive work, so you need to be really sure it’s going to be worth the effort. For a mobile phone maker, sure. For a small synth company, you may as well just chuck a powerful embedded general purpose computer in your device and call it a day.
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How I write all my bangers…
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Yes. 100%. Laptops could never have the physicality an tactile freedom of a tablet.
That’s why the ultimate (American made) groovebox is the iPad. Second to none.
Everything else is fetishization of cables, clicky buttons, knobs and other childish steampunk imaginations.
Just get an iPad and be happy.
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…or…as i like to put it…yesterday is always fighting against tomorrow…
meanwhile and never the less, tomorrow always comes…with every next generational cycle, the last one feels overwhelmed at that point, where the next generation grows into it and starts to feel the entitlement to be the most progeressive freshest mindset there ever was one, again…and again…and again…
design by nature, i guess…
and where it’s at, right now, all generational tracktion was never that loud and grinding before…
humans are about to crack their very own dna code, invent their very own artificial god, communicate all their mindset in realtime across the globe, all at once, opinion overload in another next level of confusion and paradigm switches, new framings, new wordings, from big bang to big bang…
and the future of all hw music devices is like the future of all handcrafted things…
all sorts of limitation are the next new fancy…
if a single prompt now can kill all radio stars and video stars at once, well, all reduce to the max purest handcracted only concepts, gain new meaning, esteem new regards, once again and one more time…
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If I were a new to market hardware manufacturer, perhaps I should co-opt the iPad (or iPhone) as the brains of my new hardware. Release an app to go with it but design the hardware as peripherals that are truly integrated with the iOS device. Imagine an MPC X SE type of hardware with iOS software symbiosis? Not sure how big the Logic Pro market is but, I can see a hardware mixer, knobs and whatever that makes Logic Pro the software, with hardware integration could be a killer device.
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An age old struggle with no real winners.
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I just wish someone would make a 303 clone.
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with 64 voice polyphony over 16 tracks
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There’s never been a better time to be into synths.
Wasn’t that a Nick Batt quote?
So much amazing boutique stuff to choose from, but I can see why people see a lacking in a company like Yamaha- they can’t justify R&D as much as they use to (because software).
Hydrasynth explorer for less than 500 quid!! Wow.
Everything old isn’t better, and neither is everything new, more than most other industries the electronic music instrument industry is living proof of this, and has been for at least a few decades now.
I think that many hardware users have a mix of modern and older gear, which is probably for a number of reasons, not just nostalgia. Personally I think to just use old gear is missing out as much as just using new gear, so I weigh up what an old piece of gear would benefit me VS what the tradeoffs and downsides are.
I’m often improving old gear by modifying it to suit my needs, and it is really great that there are plenty of companies and individuals and published knowledge out there to assist with this.
Some modern tech is built on revisiting the past, and often, but not always, improving on it, but a lot of modern tech is innovating even if not in a rapid obviously noticeable way, sometimes in a evolutionary way or a more abstract way, and both are more easily noticed when using a mix of old and new gear.
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