MOTM

Tobias writes:
>>You are still talking about technologies that were available almost fifteen 
years ago. Perhaps not on your lap top, but these products are simply 
commercialized versions of early discoveries.<<

When some decade old non-realtime computer code running on a university 
mainframe is now commercialized and brought to the public in a useable form on 
their PC, then that is progress and opens up new ideas and uses.

>>The buffer of "innovations to come" and current software is pretty much on 
the same page these days.<<

If you're just looking behind the scenes and trying to see what will be here 15 
years from now, then that's the wrong viewpoint.  And like any maturing field, 
the innovation is the first invention. It's usually incremental steps from that 
point on.

>>There are no more "natural" resources to tap in terms of innovations that 
couldn't be done because of slow computers. This leads to a stagnation in 
peoples interest to explore. <<

Not sure what that means, but it's because of the fast speed of computers that 
we are doing many things on them we won't have wanted to way back when 
computers were slow. I can patch up a modular softsynth like Reaktor, play it 
and manipulate the sound in realtime. If I go back 15+ years to "Turbo Synth" 
or "Soft Synth" on my ancient Mac II, I had to hit a compute button and wait a 
while for it to compute a wave file of the sound and then download it into a 
sampler to play. In this case similar technology as you say, but the newer is 
easy and fun to use and explore with versus the old that was such a pain the 
software was never used for anything and would be considered useless today.

>>Like you say, everything is available and it would take a lifetime to 
explore. Sure, but that comes with the luggage of knowing that what you're 
working on right now probably already exists on a sample lib!<<

Sample lib? That's like saying because no new colors have been invented, every 
painting or picture has already been created.  Not even close.

>>It's almost like saying, -I can cover most areas with my commercial sample 
lib and if there's something missing then I'm not going to take the time to 
cook up my own sounds because It will probably be covered by a new sample lib 
by tomorrow. This knowledge sets the bar very high and leaves little or no hope 
for new exploration.<<

You seem to have a very limited view of what synthesis is capable of.  It's an 
infinite open ended instrument.  There will never come a day when all sounds 
will have been created, anymore than there will be a day when all possible 
books will have been written.

>>The Synclavier is a good example of a product that lend itself towards great 
discoveries. Only a few people could afford it, and it was way ahead of it's 
time. These circumstances led to an oasis of exploration. People did things 
with samples and FM that had sounded amazing! They dared to spend long hours of 
tedious mapping etc., because they knew they were pushing new ground. The 
Synclav window of opportunity lasted almost ten years! Ten years of quiet time 
for the driven experimentalist to explore!<<

The Synclavier commercialized availabe technology, but didn't break much new 
ground.  Additive synthesis was here decades before and sampling was already 
well explored on the Fairlight.  People are still free to buy a Synclav cheap 
these days and enter an oasis of exploration.  Or they could buy any other 
powerful synth and also spend decades exploring.  A movie producer doesn't stop 
making movies just because other people are also making movies.  Synthesizers 
have been around for a while now and as a result most people don't feel the 
need to push them to their limits to prove what they can do.  They just want to 
get the job done fast.  So there is plenty of room for the few people left that 
will spend days on a unique patch.

If any complaint should be waged, it should be about synth companies stopping 
development or discontinuing unique products.  Physical modeling was 
mentioned.  It's pretty good at brass, OK at woodwinds, lousy at some other 
stuff.  In other words, maybe some synthesis methods need to be finished rather 
than looking for something completely different.

I finally gave in and ordered Spectral Delay today. Just an example of 
something totally new and unique even if the programmers didn't invent all the 
technology from scratch themselves.

-Elhardt