any comments?

[Steve]

>I saw this at http://sound.media.mit.edu/mpeg4/press_release.html
>
>anyone had any experience with this?
>
>Rowena
>
>
>
>Structured Audio will also have an impact on the music composition process
>itself. Composers are free to create new "virtual synthesizers" at will, so
>their
>creativity is no longer limited by the capabilities of the fixed hardware
> synthesizers they own.

This is kind of a stretch - Structured Audio alone (at least as these pages
read) doesn't give a composer high-level, "modular" control over synthesis
models, nor does it even adhere to a single synthesis method.  Synthesis
will supposedly be handled via a single programming language that will
hopefully be capable of describing (and rendering) any synthesis method.
Creating instruments out of thin DSP air is not something most composers
are willing to do; that's why they pay engineers at Yamaha, Korg, &
Kurzweil to do it for them.  Csound, the most widely successful "synthesis
language" to date, has still (unfortunately) remained confined to
universities.  So - the upshot of Structured Audio succeeding as a standard
is that composers will buy several software packages (modules and effects)
to run on central hardware, and then upgrade their central hardware when
new software releases demand it.  This is not entirely a bad thing.  The
idea of studio-as-one-big-modular is very appealing, but if the condition
for being able to use MPEG-4 compression is that *every* aspect of that
studio be expressible as a DSP algorithm, I think sound quality will suffer
as a result.

 A composer's PC system incorporating MPEG-4 Structured
> Audio
>technology can replace an entire studio of synthesizers, effects processors,
> and mixing consoles. The standard unifies a growing marketplace in "software
>synthesizers" which overcome some of these limitations, but until now have
>been
> hampered by restricted features, data incompatibility, and a small user base.

Software synths (at least  most of the more powerful ones I've seen) are
wonderful things, but I would disagree that they are anywhere close to
replacing entire studios.  DSP is wonderful for delay-based effects, EQ
with no phase distortion, and additive synthesis (not to mention several
other things) but falls on its face when asked to duplicate things like
tape saturation or high filter resonance.

To oversummarize:  as a compression standard, I don't think
MPEG4/Structured Audio will succeed, except in applications where the music
is not the primary focus.  As a unified DSP language, I think it will be
wildly successful at replacing equipment that is already DSP-based.



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If you can't be the pearl, be the grain of sand.
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