But that aside, I understand your point. However, the buying public has repeatedly demonstrated that they’re not actually interested in \u201cthe next big thing\u201d. All of the innovative hardware synthesizers in the last 10 or so years that were radical departures from the current market, such as the Wavestation, the Z1, the JD-800, were commercial failures. The buying public wasn\u2019t interested. They prefer sample-playback-based keyboards that make familiar sounds like piano, TR-808 drum sounds, anemic analog synthesizer imitations, etc.
Music software companies are typically very small. They donR17;t have large budgets for pure research. Thus it is safer from a business standpoint to try to develop and sell something that\u2019s similar to something else which is successful, than to invest a lot of time and effort in developing something radically new which people may not be interested in buying. It\u2019s a sad but true practicality.
Hence the frontier, if there is one, would be found in academia. That\u2019s where FM, granular, waveguide techniques all came from. Since I\u2019m no longer hanging out at a university, I don\u2019t know whether the Computer Music Journal et al is currently giving some indication of future developments.
--Adam
Price is going down by the minute. New G5 introduced, etc, but I have yet to see anything exiting done today with a computer that couldn't be done 10 years ago (regarding synthesis).
Yes yes, cheaper, more convenient, real-time etc. Oh and graphics.... (don't get me started). But were is the frontier??? All the new pluggins we're seeing today is the harvest of 80s and early 90s research. Granular, convolution wave guide. What happens next? What's the next big thing to happen in synthesis? The next big thing that today can only be done with a week of non real-time compiling? As far as I can see, not a whole lot.
Sorry, just venting my frusration seeing all lap tops running Reason, adding to the growing pile of mediocre synth music.
Tobias