How deeply do we know our tools?

[David Polich]

I think this is a really good discussion, I'm glad you posted the thread, James. I've been thinking about this issue lately.

I've spent the last year and a half watching the Intel Mac and Leopard boat sail out of the harbor while I remain here on the "dock" with my aging G5 Dual 2.3 and Tiger. I have a self-imposed rule of keeping Macs in use for at least four years, so that means I'd be up for a new Mac in August of 2009.
But I'm beginning to wonder if I really need to move up at all, as long as
my current system is working. For one thing, moving to a new Mac means
throwing away a number of plug-ins that I paid good money for, and buying replacements for them.

And then there's the issue of new audio interfaces - maybe a new 828 Mk 3, or even more money for an Apogee Ensemble or Rosetta. Toss in a new
UA 710 mic pre - pretty soon it's another 3 grand on that. And then I think, the only people who would ever notice the difference these would make would be other audio pros. Clients certainly wouldn't.

As far as VI's and plug-ins go, I just reviewed all of mine over the last two days, quickly re-visiting each one, and yeah I agree, I haven't taken enough time to really explore any single one of them. I suppose it's like food - depressed or not feeling the muse? Buy another VI or plug-in to console yourself.

I recall the days when I thought that I could produce all the sounds I ever wanted with just one synthesizer. I got a hell of a lot of mileage out of
my Prophet T8 that way. For three years it was my only keyboard. I'm sure that any guitarist who records these days can look back on the days when it seemed you could conquer the world with "just" a Marshall stack and a Les Paul or a Strat.

No doubt there are products I'm glad I got, and certainly there have been some milestones that did indeed change things for the better - the sampler, the drum machine, the ADAT, digital audio on a computer, VST. I might even be inclined to cite BFD and Melodyne as two milestone products that I'd put on a "must-have" list. At the same time, I can say that I have plenty of VI's and effects that rarely see any use.

I think it's telling that one of OSX's features, the Dashboard, is something many of us disable right away. OSX in its very first incarnation fixed the one thing I wanted fixed from OS9 - when an app crashed, it didn't bring down the whole machine and force you to reboot. Expose and Spaces are still things I have never used - I never spent any nights dreaming of those.
Companies spend money trying to convince us that sparkly new features are things we can't live without. I'd always prefer that a company just fixed what isn't working, rather than adding new features I never requested.

[monkey man]

As far as VI's and plug-ins go, I just reviewed all of mine over the last two days, quickly re-visiting each one, and yeah I agree, I haven't taken enough time to really explore any single one of them.

This comment should have everyone sitting up and taking notice IMHO, David.

'Cornies, if Dave Polich, tweaker extraordinaire, can say this, how guilty might we be?

[angelvonfrankim]

When I have tried to use the beat quantize to fix a problem in a soundbite, like they played out of time on a fill or something ... I have only gotten nasty results. Strange artifacts, warbles, etc. Anyone have any luck with this?

[Saintmatthew]

Or... are people using it to eliminate variation and conform audio to a precise tempo later?

I use it for the reverse....to get precisely metered MIDI tracks to conform to live performances. I often will record a drum line, run it through the beat detection and use that to groove quantize my MIDI tracks that I drew in.

[BobK]

Just noticed this topic - great one, James. I'd been thinking recently that at some point it would be wise for me to 'freeze' my system, stop doing Mac OS upgrades, and stop buying new VIs or plug-ins until I had a really compelling reason to do so, because of the time and expense of updating applications and because I don't know the tools I already have deeply enough. I'm not sure I've used Leopard features enough to really the upgrade, for example.

Over the years, I've read that Lyle Mays - one of my music heroes and a genius pianist, synthesist, composer, arranger (with the Pat Metheny Group, for those of you who don't know of him) - tends to keep equipment long past when it's generally considered out-of-date (if not downright obsolete). As of a few years ago, he was still using an Opcode Studio 5 MIDI interface and an old Powerbook laptop to control his MIDI rig, for example. And he does absolutely brilliant, cutting-edge music. I don't think he takes a 'political' position on equipment upgrades - he just seems to have a wise, practical approach to using technology.

[James Steele]

You know there is evidence mounting that there are issues with the combination of DP6/PPC/Leopard. Much of the NI stuff has problems with this combination. And I asked myself why exactly I rushed out to get Leopard immediately on release and I had no good answer. Seems now all it's done is break some of my VIs... as well as take away my ability to run "Classic" apps as well. I'm thinking more and more of downgrading to Tiger so long as I'm on my G5. I just need to go over in mind mind if there are any Leopard benefits that offset this, but I can't think of any yet. I don't know how much hassle it is to downgrade, either. I don't know if it's as simple as just inserting my Tiger DVD and installing over Leopard.

[BobK]

And I asked myself why exactly I rushed out to get Leopard immediately on release and I had no good answer.

I asked myself that too. Some Leopard features had looked cool, like screen sharing via iChat, for example. How many times have I actually used that? Once. It came in handy for helping a first-time Mac user friend for a few minutes, but was that worth the hassle of upgrading to Leopard? No.

I'm thinking more and more of downgrading to Tiger so long as I'm on my G5. I just need to go over in mind mind if there are any Leopard benefits that offset this, but I can't think of any yet. I don't know how much hassle it is to downgrade, either. I don't know if it's as simple as just inserting my Tiger DVD and installing over Leopard.

If you DO downgrade, good luck, let us know how it goes. That's crossed my mind, but seems like too much of a hassle. (I bet there's downgrade info at MacFixit...)

[Shooshie]

It's questionable what we NEED, but some of this stuff sure is cool. My son was running a Windows virtual machine on his Mac last night, and we connected through iChat video. He asked me if I wanted to try it out. I said sure, and in seconds I had his desktop on MY desktop. I opened the virtual machine and took it full screen. I booted Windows, and then I booted Quake 3 Arena, and sat there shooting players in real time in Quake 3 arena, on Windows, on my son's Mac Pro with Leopard, running through iChat on my Mac Pro with Leopard.

Did I mention that he was in Fort Collins, Colorado, and I was in Dallas? Sure, Quake was updating too slowly to be of any use. All I could do was shoot as fast as I could and hope it hit someone. I saw a couple of guys fall down, but mostly it was me doing the falling. Still... this was real-time running Quake through Windows through a Mac, through the internet through iChat through another Mac, 1200 miles away. It was just awesome.

After that, my daughter joined us in a 3-way iChat video, and we worked on a paper she was writing for the Yale Herald. I proofread it and made corrections on screen while we all talked. And, of course, we could see each other in real time. We watch each others' pets as they get fascinated by the sound of our voices and the appearance of our faces on the screen.

Then there's QuickLook, which obviates the need for opening files in applications to see what they are. I can do entire full-screen slide-shows from the Finder. Just select all the files in a folder and click Command-Option-Y. It'll play audio, too. No need to jump from Text Edit to Preview to iPhoto to iTunes to QuickTime. Just select any file and hit Spacebar.

I'm sold on Leopard. I know it's just not possible for everyone to use it, but it's worth getting an Intel machine just to use Leopard to its fullest. Intels lose the classic layer, anyway. (odd that you can run Windows on one, but not Mac Classic) I think that was an emotional need of Steve Jobs, to be rid of the original Mac for good. We are now running NeXT machines on Intel hardware. It just looks an awful lot like a Mac.

Shooshie