working in the music industry

[Curtin, Steven D (Steven)]

> >This was me.  It was actually more like every three years.   All the MI 
> > >places I've ever worked (including Opcode) are either defunkt or in
> much 
> >smaller spaces.  Working for Lucent seems to have paid off, when my
> project 
> >gets cancelled I can just find work in another part of Lucent.
> 
> So you say that you was employed and fired, emploed and
> fired and employed and finaley fired again??
> Now that is strange behaviour by the management!!
> 
No, I hope that wasn't how it came out.  Here's a brief history:

Opcode 1987-89  Patch editors part time during grad school
Passport 1990-1992   Mac sound editor programmer - AudioTrax, Alchemy
Studer EdiTech 1992-1993   Mac and embedded systems for Dyaxis II
Ensoniq 1993-1996  Advanced Product R&D, tuning support for MR series
Lucent Technologies 1997-  PC Audio, satellite radio
My current goal is to have the same job for five years in a row.

> Quite strange behavior (again) from the management i must say,
> first they fired you, then they employed this dude who
> made the ASR and then some months later they fired him too!!!
> Maybe there is a natural explenation! ;-)!
> 
The people working on the ASR had been working on it for many years.  It was
developed from 1991 until 1997.  Its history goes back to the EPS which was
started in 1986 or so.  The ASR-X is a repackaging of the ASR into a desktop
box with drum pads.

> Yepp thats right!
> So who lost the issue, Ensoniq or Dattoro?
> 
I haven't followed it.   Jon is a brilliant guy, he also wrote a very famous
article in JAES about overflow accumulation in filters, and taught a great
course in DSP while at Ensoniq.  He was responsible for a lot of the DSP
technology developed at Ensoniq.  I wish him well.

> Interesting,If the top management had to do some tought decisions
> just to keep the company going then there is usually a bad management
> that is my experience from both startuppers and usuall long timers.
> In 95% of the cases a company going bad is by bad decisions
> made by the managenet. Besides it "was" a great company!!
> 
The music industry is a strange creature, since most of the people who work
in it are not motivated by money, but by the love of building instruments,
and many (such as myself) do not have formal Engineering degrees.  There is
a lot of "if we build it they will come" mentality which is what passes for
a business plan.  Ensoniq happens to be the most currently visible
casuality, there are many others.

> Still its interesting to see that Ensoniq made a keyboard
> called Fizmo quite late since they seamed to have fired
> the enginers allready?
> 
Yes, that was a potentially cool product but was too little too late.   It
used the transwave synthesis technology I was working with in R&D.

> Its little strange then to know that Emu is looking for
> people when Ensoniq fierd the entire enginering department!
> Would be wery easy for Emu/Creative to just call the
> fired Ensoniq people up!
> 
As The Proteus mentioned, it's a very complicated situation, with lots of
hurt feelings all around.

> Yes thats a part of the truth, and using the PC whit BillGates crapware 
> dosent improwe the musicans situation alot!
> 
That depends on who you talk to.

> Doesent you folks just love gossips, particulare
> when there is some real stuff into them!!  >;->
> 
I'd much rather see this thread fade away and get back to talking about the
new synthesizers that we're all building, thank you very much.

Steve C