Members protues9 Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 I remember ten years ago, the first software sampler cost about 800$ and you needed a 1,000$ PC to run it. Whats in the next ten years? I think hardware VAs will be almost a thing of the past. We'll see DSP boxes which look like compact controllers that work something like the nord modular which will integrate with your software at home as a VSTi and DSP board and then you can download your patches for stand alone use. I think software will reach into the 6-1,000$ range on average from the major companies. Will it be any better ? I dont know.. Current computer technology is great already on the consumer side.. are we going to really be able to hear the sampling rate going up to 11? Maybe, maybe not. Two things I want to see happen : Better, more ROMpler software that rivals hardware ROMplers. Right now you can spend as much on just piano samples, as you could to buy a used ROMpler in most any flavor used. Why not combine that with the DSP thingfrom above as well ? I think there'd be a huge market for a VSTi Triton or Motif that would have a hardware counter part that you could custom load with patches for live use. I want to see more R&D from the big three. Im not expecting anything crazy, but at least and R&D divison thats dedicated to breaking the 1,2,3,4,5,6 line on all the same typical crap. What do you guys think ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khazul Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Digital hardware isnt about whats in the box - doesnt matter where the sound engine actually lives so long as its near zero latency and reliable and give you the sound character/features you want - its about having a UI thats was designed for that particular synth to give immediate direct access to a useful set of its parameters without mucho fekking around in menus or with unlabelled knobs or with mice/keyboards and other crap. So maybe digital synths as we understand them might die with the processing moving to a shared resource (ie a computer), but I sincerely hope the future is not {censored}ty general purpose interfaces and knobbage tied to {censored}ty feeling keyboards... Ugh - shoot me when that happens!!! Today the technology does exist in the market place to build the most beautiful general purpose controllers with great feeling keys - sadly noone can be arsed - noone (apart from possibly novation) tries to look at the whole problem. Novation are OK, but still very cheap feel, CME are better, but aint far enough forward, and then the other extreme is organic LCDs with no knobage at all (Ugh!!!!). There does exist psuedo pot endless rotary encoders (the stop are electrically positioned to give the pot feel on an endless encoder), also there are motorised faders of course and motorised pots - this all need to be tied together with a good high reso cheap color display technology in a maybe modular fashion (someone recently posted a link to a rather cool modular midi controller) and with a high quality keyboard - and so maybe the damn thing will cost 1000UKP for a 61 key nice fatar board, or 1500 for a nice 88key hammer weighted fatar - so what? - alot of what you pay for on a high end synth with nice keys is the board and the interface. I would rather spend 2500UKP ona couple of very nice wonderful feeling controllers that were as good as dedicated purpose designed hardware synths from a UI feel and immediacy perpective - and then invest in some monster near zero latency sound engine box with monstrous processing capability- then go stick the virus engine on it, radias engine, v0synth engine, piano engine, wind engine, fm engine, sampler, drum synth etc.. and outboard - ie like VST with without all the nasty hoorible fiddly little crappy user interfaces and crippled routings that is VST today. I cant see it happening - controllers just seems to get cheaper and nastier with each iteration - odd considerating the DAW controllers are going more upmarket fancier, more real, better display technology, better phyical knobbage and slider technology, real scribble strips etc (ie you can digitally write on them) - why the hell dont we see this is the keyboards world - except to a small degree the oasys? And even if soeone did do it - a new industry wide standard is going to be need to provbide the high speed interconnects and protocols, not just for data, but for the way in which userinteraction design is done to make the most of the general contoller classes (knobbage, keysm fades, buttn, ledgend displays, larger overview display blocks etc, UI focus... etc etc etc - ie a rack like modular UI in terms of what real estate they use and what UI devices they use so they all play nice together). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Umbra Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 I agree with Khazul, the problem for the last 5 years in the near future is an interface issue not a hardware vs. software issue or a sound quality issue. At this point real hardware, even analog doesn't provide much sound-wise over software and both sound more than adaquite. But interfaces on current synths both hardware and software simply stink. Quality of most keybeds stinks, quality of knobs and switches stink. Generic controllers and knob boxes stink, they are not intuitive and not that expressive. Use of alternate controllers like ribbon, breath, etc is minimal and requires extra hardware. Right now there are no real quality keyboard instruments being made. Basically where things need to go is the build quality of a voyager (actual wood and metal and decent knobs, etc.) with the features of a modern digital. One note poly these days is dumb and moog should be ashamed that they are still in the 1970's/1980's in that respect. Build quality on the PEK is ok but should have been stepped up a few notches and it isn't much better than moog when it comes to poly. And neither of these instruments provides much support for alternate interfaces beyond the traditional keyboard. And that is really the best the industry has to offer.... And yes, midi needs to be retired. It is fast enough but it's serial, thus two events can't happen at the same time. And modulation ability on most synths is far to limited, far to few envelopes and LFO's to build really dynamic expressive sounds unless you go to the fringes of the synth world such as a G2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Meatball Fulton Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by Umbra And yes, midi needs to be retired. It is fast enough but it's serial, thus two events can't happen at the same time. Forget about a parallel interface, it'll never happen. All high speed interconnects in the computer world are going serial and it will be no different in the MI world. Increasing the speed to reduce the timing errors is the best we can hope for. The question is if/when a next generation interface will be developed and what it will offer beyond MIDI. I assume that it will have to be somewhat backwards compatible (i.e. MIDI data streams will somehow be enapsulated). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Yoozer Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by Umbra It is fast enough but it's serial, thus two events can't happen at the same time. That's not MIDI's problem, and I dare to say that with SATA, Firewire, USB etc. being so popular you will probably not see any parallel interfaces anymore except for the next incarnation of Hyper Schoolgirl Gold Alpha II SCSI or whatever bloody name it gets this time. The problem is that the messages aren't caught in a buffer and synchronized with a clock. Send a clock signal. Send the stuff to play in advance. Synchronize. Fire the events. Next package. Here's my wild guess:Where the industry will be? Most people serious about audio will buy a stack of computers; entire Mac Mini-sized blocks with their own harddisk and memory (but without DVD-player), all dedicated to running a single softsynth, controllable from a single environment. Controllers will still do MIDI over USB. Steinberg will have rebranded Cubase at least once, and Logic will be around version X or so. NAS/SAN will be much more attractive to store heaps and heaps of samples. Local and network play will get bigger - but not much, 10 years may not be enough to fully get the whole node-stuff running. Storage is nice, but spreading it out over a network is even nicer. Small computers with big drives acting as network hubs and nodes, capable of moving or streaming media around where and when you need it. Dualcore or quad-core will be prevalent. One core to let the OS run on, and the other three to bother purely with synthesis; but since it's so cheap to buy extra nodes that are essentially self-contained systems, using a single way of hooking up, that option will be used, too. Linux for audio will not get much bigger, unless the current companies put some energy in it. Porting FL to a 'nix format would be awesome, including full interfacing with VSTs. The thing with Linux is that "ready for the desktop" means "I can play Solitaire on it, browse, and do my office stuff". Youtube and Myspace will have merged, causing an explosion of sales in cheap video recording requirement and a tough blow to record companies, since the music offered there is high-quality, unencumbered, and fresh. Various people will try to make some kind of radio show by mashing up the free content that's available. If you think a musician has it tough now, trying to cram all kinds of synthesis and mastering theory in the head, wait until video gets ubiquitous; you'll have to DIY your video and graphic design, too, or be forced to collaborate (which wouldn't hurt a lot of solo bedroom producers, I guess). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Umbra Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 The problem is that the messages aren't caught in a buffer and synchronized with a clock. Send a clock signal. Send the stuff to play in advance. Synchronize. Fire the events. Next package. There are midi interfaces that already do this and it doesn't solve the fundemental problem, you still can't have more than 1 event occur at once. For real time you must have parallel processing and for sequencing you must have it as well. Realisticly you need to probably have about triple the poly in process threads to handle a reasonable amount of simultaneous notes and controller messages. We could do it right and go parallel or do it wrong faster. I'd rather we did it right. There are already documented well established ways of dealing with parallelism issues and since we are talking synths and synth voices generally don't interact with each other at a process flow level is almost completely a non-issue. It's just manufacturers taking the easy way out. Most people serious about audio will buy a stack of computers; entire Mac Mini-sized blocks with their own harddisk and memory (but without DVD-player), all dedicated to running a single softsynth, controllable from a single environment. You can do that now. Hardware rack synths with midi as your network with VST editors in your DAW. But instead of using general purpose boxes each box is application specific. That's how my setup is modelled. My processing needs are distributed while my control is centralized to one point. My problem is midi isn't parallel and doesn't have high enough resolution and the lack of decent hardware interfaces. I can't see much of a need to ever have to use multiple general purposes pc's to run a single synth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Yoozer Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by Umbra There are midi interfaces that already do this and it doesn't solve the fundemental problem, you still can't have more than 1 event occur at once. Those MIDI interfaces solve it on the output level; not on the channel level. A chord is still 3 notes after eachother. It's just manufacturers taking the easy way out. That, and the fact that the way how they're sent isn't the issue; what happens after that is the issue. But don't blame them too much; every polyphonic synth uses a little counter to cycle the oscillators, so 2 notes will be processed in a queue anyway. You can do that now. Sure, but there's a difference between "pretty bleeding edge" and "commonplace" . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sonnenhuegel Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 10 years after Well - why discuss about that! Did you think of B4, Absynth, Cubase 4, Live 6, Reaktor 5, and all these possibilities 10 years ago? I did not. Did you think of all the things that good computers are able to do right now 10 years ago? I did not. I don't know at all what will be in 10 years. But I'm quite sure that it will go in many directions that we do not think about right now. I just enjoy the possibilities of NOW!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members girevik Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Industry as you know it will have ceased to exist. Open source soft synths and samplers take over the market, destroying all commercial synth companies. Why buy a hardware synth when you can just get a $300 iSynth and load it up with over a 1000 instances of soft synths for free? Yamaha's core market is now fuel cell motorcycles and pleasure watercraft, not synths. Roland tries to survive as a guitar effects pedal maker but eventually is killed by software effects plugins running on iSynth on one side and boutique pedal makers on the other. The rest simply perish. MIDI connectors will have been replaced by USB 3.0 jacks. Ray Kurzweil gets his mind completely transferred into an android body. He writes yet another book filled with outrageous predictions for the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mook Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by sonnenhuegel 10 years after Well - why discuss about that! Did you think of B4, Absynth, Cubase 4, Live 6, Reaktor 5, and all these possibilities 10 years ago? I did not. Did you think of all the things that good computers are able to do right now 10 years ago? I did not. I don't know at all what will be in 10 years. But I'm quite sure that it will go in many directions that we do not think about right now. I just enjoy the possibilities of NOW!! Agreed. 10 years ago I had a Pentium 100, 80gb hard drive & 16mb RAM and a bit of software called RB383 and was getting onto the internet with a 14k baud modem... Quad and Octacore processors, 1Tb hard drives and 16gb RAM are just round the corner... BTW that old PC is still running with NT4 and Exchange 5.5 on it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members asynchro_nous Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Surely in the year 2016 everyone's media holopod will come bundled with Reaktor 37. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khazul Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Dunno about 10 years from now - but 5 years.... Intel pledges 80 cores in five years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members asynchro_nous Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 It's a multimegateraprocessor and midi controller in one! I'll bet it does additive nicely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Umbra Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 It's a multimegateraprocessor and midi controller in one! Midi by colors. Red is the angry notes that go bhlaaaaaaa.... blue is the happy notes that go pwweeeeeeee..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members asynchro_nous Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by Umbra Midi by colors. Red is the angry notes that go bhlaaaaaaa.... blue is the happy notes that go pwweeeeeeee..... It's a Moodi controller! [TM -- I called it. Nyaaaaah-haah.......] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khazul Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by Umbra And yes, midi needs to be retired. It is fast enough but it's serial, thus two events can't happen at the same time. Parellelism is when two events happensone after the other so quickly relative to your means fo measurement/detection that you cant tell they were serial. If you can get anything to happen provably in parallel the scientific community would probably be impressed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members program_insect Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Physical interfaces will be obsolete. Major advances in neurology provide consumer-level mind/machine interfaces by 2012, and this benefits the music gear industry directly. Musicians think songs and mix with their minds. Of course the Asian Consortium will probably invade around 2014, triggering global thermonukes. Shortly thereafter, it's back to animal hide drums and pan flutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members NuSkoolTone Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 The Big 3 will go on their proprietary ways as usual. SOMEONE will Find a way to make all VSTs etc work in the same box under a uniform interface that is elegant, efficient and hands on with controllers. Perhaps a new Open standard to design synths on that can be customized but interpretted with ease by this magic box. Hopefully it won't need a separate Rack to do this. Imagine a CME 88 Note controller with all the bells, whistles and an LCD screen/touch Screen full intergrated. You can load all your AKAI sample sets (RELIABLY! NO FUSSING!), Your Spectrosonics Atmosphere, your B4 etc.......And it will all run great, and the Hardware under the hood wil make it sound great. Kind of a Multi Purpose Open Source OA$Y$ if you will, with a better interface. Whomever makes that open standard and can get easy affordable collaboration from Big 3rd party Designers will make a Fortune and Doom The big Three. Back to the Laboratory.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by protues9 I remember ten years ago, the first software sampler cost about 800$ and you needed a 1,000$ PC to run it.Whats in the next ten years?I think hardware VAs will be almost a thing of the past. We'll see DSP boxes which look like compact controllers that work something like the nord modular which will integrate with your software at home as a VSTi and DSP board and then you can download your patches for stand alone use. I think software will reach into the 6-1,000$ range on average from the major companies. Will it be any better ? I dont know.. Current computer technology is great already on the consumer side.. are we going to really be able to hear the sampling rate going up to 11? Maybe, maybe not. Two things I want to see happen :Better, more ROMpler software that rivals hardware ROMplers. Right now you can spend as much on just piano samples, as you could to buy a used ROMpler in most any flavor used. Why not combine that with the DSP thingfrom above as well ? I think there'd be a huge market for a VSTi Triton or Motif that would have a hardware counter part that you could custom load with patches for live use.I want to see more R&D from the big three. Im not expecting anything crazy, but at least and R&D divison thats dedicated to breaking the 1,2,3,4,5,6 line on all the same typical crap.What do you guys think ? I agree with everything you said. Except I think there should be a greater amount of Romplers made. I think it should be required that every company make at least one new Rompler every six months. Seriously though. I agree with everything you said. Im afraid to even think or guess what will come next. I think this is because Im afraid it will be more of the same. But we can always hope there will be more that is not the same. I have often thought about this. I also thought about starting a thread about this. Ten years from now all romplers will proabaly have 10 gigabytes of sounds and polyphony will be 1024 notes. Maybe every synth will include HD's for recording. How about every synth comes with a wireless internet connection for instant downloads of new sounds, .wavs, samples. Oh, And how about this idea. All new synths will include a browser so that HC users can communictate and start new threads while playing at the same time. I hope to be in the mountains ten years from now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khazul Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Thats exactly the kind of thinking that f******g up the current the current crop of synths - I dont want wireless internet in the goddamn thing, nor a browser nor any other irrelevent crap - I want a highly focussed tool for creating elements of music and giving us the best possible interface on the device to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted October 4, 2006 Share Posted October 4, 2006 Originally posted by Khazul Thats exactly the kind of thinking that f******g up the current the current crop of synths - I dont want wireless internet in the goddamn thing, nor a browser nor any other irrelevent crap - I want a highly focussed tool for creating elements of music and giving us the best possible interface on the device to do so. What do you have against the internet? You like? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khazul Posted October 4, 2006 Members Share Posted October 4, 2006 Nothing - but do you really wantit on a synth when good knows how much R&D budget could have been instead spent on making it a better synth? Use a computer for internet - thats what its good at... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 Originally posted by Khazul Nothing - but do you really wantit on a synth when good knows how much R&D budget could have been instead spent on making it a better synth?Use a computer for internet - thats what its good at... I personally do not like the internet on my synths. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members orangefunk Posted October 5, 2006 Members Share Posted October 5, 2006 It would be nice for there to be a dramatic reduction in cabling.... some kind of wireless system that can push out quality audio would be cool.. oh and "hover" keyboards... so we can place them exactly where we want them without the need for stands! The reality though is that we would still have Yamaha Motif and Roland Fantoms except now they would be called "Super Mega Turbo Motif ES-X" and we would still get people insisting that old Yamaha Motifs had a better crunchier sound due to their DACs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members orangefunk Posted October 5, 2006 Members Share Posted October 5, 2006 Oh... which reminds me...I found this today... http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5579362191486305681&q=douglas+adams From BBC in 1990 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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