End of the tower?

[Anderton]

No, I don't mean Tower Records...that's long gone. I mean tower computers. I only recall seeing one at Summer NAMM; the rest of the computer-based world was iPads and Smarphones.

 

Now, you could say that was just Nashville. But Apple's latest introductions, coupled with the Thunderbolt interface, are basically saying you don't need a tower because you don't need cards. The built-in graphics works for all but the most hardcore, performance-hungry gamers (who use PCs anyway). You don't need a sound card because the one you have probably works on USB or FireWire. You don't need a card with ports, because they're already built into the computer and if not, you can expect them to show up as Thunderbolt peripherals. You can hook up a bunch of SATA hard drives and not need to install drives inside your computer. At to look outside of Apple for a bit, you don't even need to open up your computer to install more RAM with Vista/Windoes 7's ability to treat a fast USB stick as system RAM.

 

The other thing I didn't see at Summer NAMM was netbooks. Not one. I still see people using them in airports from time to time, but I suspect that's because they feel they haven't amortized them yet

 

So the face of computers is changing. Apple made the right call on floppy disks going away and USB becoming a big deal. Are PC motherboards just going to have a few ports, Thunderbolt, a CPU, a power supply, and fan? Or will the power supply start to sit outside the computer, too?

 

The whole tower/server concept has served us well since S-100 bus computers ruled the world back in the 70s. But it's forty years later...are personal computers about to undergo their biggest metamorphosis yet?

[144dB]

I don't see desktop PC's in the audio realm disappearing any time soon. I see cloud computing and software-on-demand becoming a future trend and something that will shape the industry and how we do work, but I don't think iPads or Thunderbolt are significant enough to shift the industry.

 

I still plan to buy a tower next year, with a traditional PCI/PCIe audio interface and my 2 UAD cards. Thunderbolt (or any cabled protocol) is going to have to demonstrate widespread adoption and extreme performance specs before I would consider anything else.

 

Todd

[Coaster]

all i have are towers. pc's and macs. last count i have around 4 in active daily service with several more powered down for days at a time.

 

i have no interest in cloud computing or ipads, or even smartphones. none.

[temnov]

I use rack-mount PC. Next one also will be rack-mount. For some reasons I feel better this way. And I still use my PCIe UAD-2 Quads on every mix.

 

I use iPad-2 but it's not powerful enough for professional audio apps. I'm sure all that will change soon enough.

[nice keetee]

CPU hungry users still want towers for pro apps, fixed locations etc.

Difficult to edit video or mix 20 tracks on a screen which fits in your palm.

Maybe 16 core computers will be handheld soon?

Still need visual real estate.

[Anderton]

When I said "Apple's latest offerings," I should have been more specific - I meant the iMacs that were just released. They have the big screen, the power (better than previous Mac towers in some respects), and the Thunderbolt interface. You could definitely edit or mix 20 tracks of audio or video on one of these.

 

As to the UAD-2, it's interesting to note that now they've packaged it in their Satellite FireWire 800 package so you don't even need the card anymore.

[Ernest Buckley]

Interesting topic Craig, at least for me because as my G5 tower (2005) starts to cough and stumble, I am considering my options. The iMac comes to mind first. I don`t think the change will come quickly because so many of us are used to things a certain way so it may take another generation or so before we see a global shift to downsize.

 

 

i have no interest in cloud computing or ipads, or even smartphones. none. -Coaster

 

 

I`m with Coaster as far as having no interest in the iPad or Smartphones. Cloud computing... I`m still interested in what that has to offer.

[nice keetee]

An analogy-many drivers are buying fuel miserly cars. Some still need a gas guzzling truck.

If I've got the space for an IMac, I've got the space for a MacPro. Or whatever Towering dinosaur.

Cloud computing brings out Big Brother paranoia in me. Why do I want or need to put my files anywhere except right here and backed up right here or in my friend's fireproof safe.

[elsongs]

I use rack-mount PC. Next one also will be rack-mount. For some reasons I feel better this way. And I still use my PCIe UAD-2 Quads on every mix. I use iPad-2 but it's not powerful enough for professional audio apps. I'm sure all that will change soon enough.

 

For all intents and purposes, a rack-mounted PC is basically a tower wearing different clothes

[nice keetee]

For all intents and purposes, a rack-mounted PC is basically a tower wearing different clothes

 

try an RIAA EQ curve

[elsongs]

No, I don't mean Tower Records...that's long gone. I mean tower computers. I only recall seeing one at Summer NAMM; the rest of the computer-based world was iPads and Smarphones.

 

There's some truth to what you're saying, but for the next decade, I don't think towers are going the way of the dinosaur (or even the Commodore ). They will still be staples in the studio, whether pro studio or home studio. Part of the reason why you're not seeing them at NAMM is logistics. Why lug a big-ass computer when you can use a laptop? But at their HQs, I'd bet they'll be using a tower 'puter. And rack-mounted computers still do count as towers, since only the casing is different. The motherboard/cards/internal drives are exactly the same as a tower.

 

Also, from a live performance standpoint, towers were never popular to begin with, and that's primarily what NAMM reflects (Want a more studio-oriented trade show? The AES fills that need). The iPad platform is still relatively new, and as you know a lot of companies are working hard to exploit that.

[nice keetee]

There are some who still keep their VIC20s going just the crowd will go a certain way. Kind of like fashion for clothing. A store for mountain hikers I visited yesterday called their clothing...apparel. probably made in a sweatshop disposable crap. A tower can be upgraded instead of thrown into a landfill or shipped overseas to be disposed of with pollution etc..

[John Sayers]

I'm running a PC tower with dual screens I'd like to update to 3. I have a very small notebook with built in wireless so I can log into hotel wireless when I travel which is light and fast. I don't want to carry around a hefty laptop as it's not necessary.

 

Yet it's a good question Craig - what if I ditched the notebook and tower and went laptop with multiple screens. Not sure I could get the video requirements needed for my 3D Cad on laptop drivers but if someone was to design an external screen driver box I might be interested.

[MikeRivers]

No, I don't mean Tower Records...that's long gone. I mean tower computers. I only recall seeing one at Summer NAMM; the rest of the computer-based world was iPads and Smarphones.

 

Yeah, but that was Summer NAMM. (OK, you said we could say that) But I see a lot of trade show setups that use a laptop. I figured that either it was to save shipping and setup time, or that it was a local rental. And it's true that laptops outsell desktop and tower configurations nowadays, but I'll bet that's because there are more people who normally wouldn't have a computer buying one, and they feel more comfortable buying a unit package rather than something with cables that they have to connect, and then there are all those cartons to carry.

 

Now, you could say that was just Nashville. But Apple's latest introductions, coupled with the Thunderbolt interface, are basically saying you don't need a tower because you don't need cards.

 

So did anyone show a full featured audio interface with Thunderbolt I/O? This sounds like the chicken is here but hasn't started laying eggs yet. The audio hardware market is never ready when the new computers come out. And for those of us who like the audio hardware that we have and we'd like to continue to use it with our next computers, are there any plans for a Firewire-Thunderbolt adapter? We never saw a Firewire-USB adapter that did anything but charge the battery on the Firewire device.

 

The built-in graphics works for all but the most hardcore, performance-hungry gamers (who use PCs anyway). You don't need a sound card because the one you have probably works on USB or FireWire.

 

I've always used the built-in graphics. Audio doesn't take a lot. Video editing, I'm sure, is also covered because people who buy appliance computers typically watch video. And what good is a sound card that works with USB or Firewire if the computer's only connection to the outside world is a Thunderbolt bus?

 

You don't need a card with ports, because they're already built into the computer and if not, you can expect them to show up as Thunderbolt peripherals.

 

My point exactly - more stuff we have to buy in order to use the new computer (that we eventually will have to buy) for the applications that we use.

 

You can hook up a bunch of SATA hard drives and not need to install drives inside your computer.

 

And this is probably the first application we'll see for Thunderbolt, probably followed closely by printers, because that's all the proverbial "most people" connect to their computers, though most only connect one of each and leave it there until it's time to buy a new computer (or printer or external disk drive). Cameras probably come next (gonna replace your $2,500 Nikon because there's no Thunderbolt memory card reader?). After that, you're into the little trickles as far as computer manufacturers

 

At to look outside of Apple for a bit, you don't even need to open up your computer to install more RAM with Vista/Windoes 7's ability to treat a fast USB stick as system RAM.

 

That shouldn't be too hard. DOS used to have RAMdisks, and I've run Reaper off a USB memory stick (just because I can). It only takes a BIOS update with enough of a driver to talk to a memory stick if you want to be able to boot from it.

 

The other thing I didn't see at Summer NAMM was netbooks. Not one.

 

Not surprising. The screen is too small and usually only a fixed resolution, the keyboard is often too small for the kind of whiz-bang demos that people often get at trade shows, and they're often marginally powered. I suppose there are quad-core computers in a Netbook format, but that's not really what they're for. I have one that I take with me when I travel because it saves a little weight and lets me keep up with my eager public and do a little writing and editing in the hotel room. But the only audio that ever comes through it is Morning Edition on line when I'm in a hotel where I can't get an NPR station on the cheap radio in the room. No Firewire port, no external card slot for a Firewire adapter, and the only external USB audio device that I have is a Behringer UCA-200 (which works just fine if all I need to do is record stereo). I've been wanting to try to find this computer's limit but I haven't scored a multi-channel USB audio interface for a trial or review yet. TASCAM keeps talking friendly to me but ignoring my requests. I can probably score a Focusrite Scarlet series as soon as I give them back their Liquid Saffire 56 (Firewire).

 

I still see people using them in airports from time to time, but I suspect that's because they feel they haven't amortized them yet

 

I took my netbook to a festival where I was running sound and recording (stereo mix to the Korg MR-1000) to write a log during the shows. I might have used an iPad if I had one, or maybe not. When I'm in a hurry, I'd prefer to type on a keyboard than on a touch screen. I keep dropping my card in the "Win and iPad" bowl at trade shows, but no luck yet. It's something I can't justify buying. The netbook only cost $200.

 

So the face of computers is changing.

 

Did it ever stop? Or even slow down?

 

Apple made the right call on floppy disks going away and USB becoming a big deal.

 

Hmmmm . . . . is there money to be made copying floppy disks on to USB memory sticks like there is copying analog tapes to CD or an MP3 file?

 

Are PC motherboards just going to have a few ports, Thunderbolt, a CPU, a power supply, and fan? Or will the power supply start to sit outside the computer, too?

 

You mean like my Netbook? (less the Thunderbolt port, of course)

 

The whole tower/server concept has served us well since S-100 bus computers ruled the world back in the 70s. But it's forty years later...are personal computers about to undergo their biggest metamorphosis yet?

 

I don't think so. The largest customer base won't even notice. Nothing to see here folks, move along and shell out more money for a new computer. It's only those of us who use non-mainstream hardware accessories and software who will be concerned over this. And all too few of us are cautious or conservative.

[MikeRivers]

I don't see desktop PC's in the audio realm disappearing any time soon. I see cloud computing and software-on-demand becoming a future trend and something that will shape the industry and how we do work, but I don't think iPads or Thunderbolt are significant enough to shift the industry.

 

Craig is into "game changers." He's always looking ahead, and often he sees the future correctly. But I'm still living in the pasture.

[techristian]

I don't think towers are going the way of the dinosaur (or even the Commodore ).

 

HEY ! I take that personally! LOL.

 

[video=youtube;A2GWi5-f_vY]

 

Another reason I like working with a laptop or smaller, even at home, is because of the lower power consumption. Some of those towers can use as much power as a small oven.....up to 600 watts and my laptop.....only 70 watts. This trend could mean fewer brownouts in silicon valley.

 

Dan

[WRGKMC]

Naam is basically for the new things companies are releasing and much of it a guess on what people will buy.

I think 90% of it fails with the public in the long rund due tp practicality. Its surely not a reflection of what is

currently being sold and used by major companies. Those items dont need a showcase, they are already in production.

Naam kind of dates back to the old "worlds fair" in many ways. Some things become popular and some dont.

Its mostly one manufacturer trying to wow another out of existance. I've worked for major manufacturers going

on 32 years now. They make a big deal out of keepong their new products confidential till the show. Many times

the products are prototypes that dont go into production till they get feedback and know what options the competitors have.

A major company with have their scouts out buying products from everyone else,

then its a mad rush to modify their own products to incorporate.

 

I also wouldnt pay any attention to whats being sold this year. R&D is the lowest I've ever seen it due to the recession and whats going on in Japan.

Companies are going to put off all major purchases till after the election and are extending all their machine leases till then. They are only buying

when they have no other options.

 

So as far as towers dissapearing in the next 10 years? Wishful thinking. Maybe for cheap consumer grade stuff, but not in business where the big money is.

There is no trend there happening at all yet. (My wife works for HP and I work for Canon so its something I deal with daily)

[UstadKhanAli]

I think Craig's guessing at what may be a trend, not that towers are suddenly going to disappear. Things have a tendency to eventually get smaller because that's what people want, so who knows, this may occur eventually.

[temnov]

 

As to the UAD-2, it's interesting to note that now they've packaged it in their Satellite FireWire 800 package so you don't even need the card anymore.

 

 

UAD-2 was a pretty good investment a couple of years ago. With a new computer I'd like keep using these cards as I think some of their plugins are just great. So, I'm not going to switch to smaller form computer for mixing today and I have an i7 laptop which I use mostly for arrangements and composing.

 

But what I'm looking forward to is new audio interfaces with better dynamic range and Thunderbolt connectivity and then I

[blue2blue]

No, I don't mean Tower Records...that's long gone. I mean tower computers. I only recall seeing one at Summer NAMM; the rest of the computer-based world was iPads and Smarphones. Now, you could say that was just Nashville. But Apple's latest introductions, coupled with the Thunderbolt interface, are basically saying you don't need a tower because you don't need cards. The built-in graphics works for all but the most hardcore, performance-hungry gamers (who use PCs anyway). You don't need a sound card because the one you have probably works on USB or FireWire. You don't need a card with ports, because they're already built into the computer and if not, you can expect them to show up as Thunderbolt peripherals. You can hook up a bunch of SATA hard drives and not need to install drives inside your computer. At to look outside of Apple for a bit, you don't even need to open up your computer to install more RAM with Vista/Windoes 7's ability to treat a fast USB stick as system RAM. The other thing I didn't see at Summer NAMM was netbooks. Not one. I still see people using them in airports from time to time, but I suspect that's because they feel they haven't amortized them yet So the face of computers is changing. Apple made the right call on floppy disks going away and USB becoming a big deal. Are PC motherboards just going to have a few ports, Thunderbolt, a CPU, a power supply, and fan? Or will the power supply start to sit outside the computer, too? The whole tower/server concept has served us well since S-100 bus computers ruled the world back in the 70s. But it's forty years later...are personal computers about to undergo their biggest metamorphosis yet?

For obvious reasons, smaller, more portable computers have been welcomed to the world of tradeshows and other uses where a small, relatively powerful computer may provide many advantages for demoing certain technologies -- but demoing something is not necessarily the same as doing serious work on it.

 

And I think, watching Apple's product releases in the past several years, it seems increasingly clear they are deemphasizing (many long time professional field Apple users use the loaded phrase turning their back on) the professional arena.

 

I had a long listen to the often heated observations of a friend of mine who uses Final Cut Pro on an 8 core MacPro tower. (You don't find many professional editors trying to do serious work on laptops.)

 

He was pretty well livid about the release of Final Cut Pro X (the recent and subsequent release after FCP 7) and made no bones about the fact that he felt Apple was abandoning the professional video editor market with FCP X, which, like so many embittered professional editors, he dubbed iMovie Pro.

 

He, of course, is far from the only editor who is beside himself. I listened to a nearly 2 hour podcast interview/dialog between two longtime FCP users who both had multi-seat editing houses and despite what both described as enormous investments in FCP and add-ons, for their operations, one was already moving to switch platforms and the other said he was seriously considering it. Both had devoted one or two seat to FCP X for testing and evaluation (since there is no forward or backward compatibility between FCP 7 and FCP X) and both were openly contemptuous of the changes -- although one said he thought that eventually FCP would prove to be an easy-to-use platform for individual editors -- but that Apple had essentially abandoned professional shops).

 

[sorry to go on, but I got about 45 minutes of this last night. ]

 

 

Anyhow, I tried to make the transition to what was a quite powerful and expensive Windows laptop for my audio work -- and once I had bought an outboard Firewire interface (MOTU 828mkII) it was doable. But when I replaced the ~$2K Pentium M machine with an older design, refurbished single core Intel P4 HT based tower, it was a real relief.

 

It had expansion ports and I could finally have noise-free Firewire connections [i was one of the lucky ones, since I could end-run the various video and mouse-related chirps, whirs and other noises resulting from laptop-mobo-Firewire related digital contamination of the audio signal by physically disconnecting my lappie's internal audio from the amp that drives my NS10s when the MOTU was also connected (to a different switched input).

 

Another very nice surprise: that tower (not a fire-breathing rocket ship, of course) was actually about as quiet as my mostly very quiet laptop (except when doing video rendering or watching higher def movies in Flash interfaces) -- and once it was in place under the desk was effectively much quieter. Better yet, the desktop very seldom fans up noticeably unless I'm doing the kind of heavy video rendering with multiple plug ins applied across multiple video clips and tracks that typically would bring my laptop to its knees, sending the fans to max and heating the slim case so much that I have actually aborted such processes rather than risk what is, after all, a generally very nice and usable machine. Mind you, both are obviously older designs.

 

And of course, using outboard hard drives typically (always?) results in a very significant loss of performance. In fact, I just moved a 1TB SATA drive from a USB2 housing to an internal connection in the tower and was once again stunned to see a more than double increase in sustained throughput. And when I moved a smaller SATA drive from the tower to the an external housing, I saw a more than 50% decrease in performance. I have three outboard drive housings (2 USB2 and 1 FW/USB2) and this is typical of all three.

 

Laptops are great -- for portable use or light duty. But they still represent serious compromises. And, while I don't have any direct experience with slate/tablet/pads -- none of my mostly quite tech-savvy 3DW friends (or people I know well on the 'net) have actually popped for an iPad or other tablet/slate -- I remain skeptical that such devices will be more than niche players in the professional world for some time. I guess they can make pretty cool remote controls, though.

[Anderton]

 

UAD-2 was a pretty good investment a couple of years ago. With a new computer I'd like keep using these cards as I think some of their plugins are just great. So, I'm not going to switch to smaller form computer for mixing today and I have an i7 laptop which I use mostly for arrangements and composing.

 

 

I believe there is already a Thunderbolt peripheral that handles four PCIe cards...if not, then it's a Real Soon Now product.

[Anderton]

 

Laptops are great -- for portable use or light duty. But they still represent serious compromises.

 

 

Well, I definitely prefer editing videos on my 8-core PCAL tower. Yet my 64-bit laptop did yeoman duty at Summer NAMM. Not only did I upload something like 28 videos while I was there, but I was both surprised and pleased to find that I could open two instances of Vegas and have one render while I edited on the other one (while uploading another video to YouTube). Sure, the rendering took a little longer, and the editing was a little more jerky, but it was clear evidence to me that 64 bits, a 64-bit OS, and sufficient RAM removes some of a laptop's bottlenecks.

 

As to FCP...I never was that impressed with it. Vegas is still my main squeeze for video editing, as it just gets better and better with each release.

[blue2blue]

Yeah... I keep meaning to sit down with one of my 3DW FCP pals and do some serious over the shoulder time, just to see... but I guess all that's moot now, at least for the foreseeable future.

 

I did take the opportunity of the FCP X release to bone up on what features FCP 7 had had (made it a lot easier to understand the widespread gnashing of teach over FCP X -- last night I already knew a lot of what my pal was going to say -- but it was clear he needed to vent, so I let him roll -- I remember when I read that Adobe was buying Macromedia to get Flash and Dreamweaver. It was like someone yanked the rug out from under me. I literally felt queasy and depressed (and I haven't upgraded since the buy-out and it's looking like I probably won't).

 

Now, of course, I use Vegas's consumer edtion (the 'deluxe' consumer edition, but, you know... ) and I've never actually been around Vegas Pro, so I don't know -- but I got the impression from reading between the lines -- as well as reading a Vegas forum -- that the real place where FCP did have an advantage was in collaborative tools. Since a lot of the video editing for the entertainment industry, at least above the level of micro-indie films, seems to be collaborative in nature, that's a big deal to the guys who run big, multi-seat editing houses. And that's clearly where FCP X has really disappointed people who run such outfits.

 

That said, maybe Vegas Pro has more of those collaborative features -- I know it's got multi-camera editing, which is something I'd love to have in Vegas Plebe... Still, I love Vegas. Before I had it, doing anything with video in the motley collection of free and giveaway programs I'd collected was a blinkin' ordeal.

 

But the first time I tried Vegas (and those with a memory for minutiae may remember I haven't always been a fan of Sony products -- though I've had along and mostly good relationship with the Sonic Foundry crew who apparently still run as a somewhat independent shop) it was pretty much love at first rolling, realtime preview. When you can do that on a 5 year old ~$500 machine -- you've got a solid product, seems to me.

 

Of course, I'm far from an editing pro. I did a little film work while I was in college, interned at my local cable company for a year or two in the 80s where I did camera, editing and a tiny, tiny bit of directing but then just dreamed about a day when I could afford a decent cam and editing tools. (I still have my Nikon Super 8 and my micro-moviola from the 70s.)

[blue2blue]

I believe there is already a Thunderbolt peripheral that handles four PCIe cards...if not, then it's a Real Soon Now product.

Now that kind of thing is pretty interesting... I'm hoping if I just wait long enough -- and, vid rendering perhaps notwithstanding, I'm not in much hurry to leave my trusty XP econo-box behind, it's been such a quiet, steady trooper (touch wood) -- but I'm hoping if I wait long enough, everything will be all settled in and I'll be able to jump to a 64 bit platform with as little ordeal factor as possible. I don't mind work, and DIY stuff is ennobling -- but I hate that sinking feeling when you get in the middle of something and you realize that this doesn't support that or is reputed to conflict with something else or... you know. (And as I read about headaches on other major OS platforms associated with single sources [ahem], as much as I've occasionally been discomfited by odd decisions or perversely consistent inconsistencies on my own home turf, I really don't even see the neighbor's grass as greener, even from the side-view.)

[Anderton]

 

Is that a custom shop build or a big name?

 

 

Actually there's a story behind that. I really like my PC Audio Labs 8-core desktop, and I asked if they'd integrate a 64-bit video-oriented laptop for me. They said "we don't do video" and I said "Yes you do, just add more RAM, better graphics, and a bigger hard drive." So they did, and I took it to Winter NAMM 2009 to test out. It ran on Vista-64 (and still does...guess I should upgrade to W7 one of these days, but it's working, so...).

 

They were really nervous about it, they had visions of the thing causing me all kinds of problems because it was unexplored territory for them. The head of the company even gave me his cell phone number so I could call in case of disaster. But it worked perfectly, and I've been using it for trade show coverage ever since, as well as seminars and DJ sets.