M@ and The Dweez'

[Tony Hardie-Bick]

On 10/10/11 14:17, Romain / rXg wrote:
> Indeed !  I tried to not be jealous ...
> But I think he really rewards his position :)
> Did someone have tried this fractal audio system ( except M@) ?
> I met a Sound engineer here  in Enschede who has one ... but I never tried it
> yet ...
> I wonder what can do this fractal machine sound on  a Chapman stick ... ?

I have wondered what's going on in that box :)

To summarize: Pro quality AD/DA converters (unlike any quitar fx under 700 
bucks), High sample rate (my ears tell me 96kHz, but it maybe more), and also my 
ears tell me something better than 32bit floating point, although it could just 
be a very careful, intelligent implementation.

But no new maths, nothing original. What's original, market-wise, is that it's 
actually a very good implementation of the state of the art. But the state of 
the art can only progress if the effort is shared. You can't expect two or three 
brilliant people locked away in a company to come up with a new DSP paradigm on 
their own, for every new product, so, no, there is nothing new, in the maths.

But one other thing to say: If you are a guitarist, playing ina rock style, and 
wishing to do this business of switching between sounds all the time (why?... 
cos you must always play music from the past, and constantly tweak the 
listener's interest by hinting at yet another historic style???? come on...)... BUT

M@ is giving this company something very special: He is connecting the musicians 
to the engineers, and over time this is a truly excellent way of evolving a 
company's design expertise.

However, from my warped perspective, if you ask musicians what they want, they 
will always tell you exactly, and what musicians think they want really doesn't 
interest me. It's actually *what* they want to *do*, and *why* did they become 
musicians....

Which has nothing to do with recreating brilliant sounds of the past.

Also.... this business of impulse responses. Great. But I suffer from this 
assumption that everything is known, and that it solves all problems.

Music, to me, is about the unknown, and the search for it without underlying 
assumptions, so, no, this very high quality product is not for me.

The whole business of changing sounds was why I got pissed off with keyboards, 
and guitarists are basically the same... stomp on this old-sounding thing, stomp 
on that.... etc etc.

Watching Dweezil's finger was interesting though. I always love watching the 
details of excellent musicianship.

And well done to fractal audio for working hard to get a difficult job done, in 
harmony with their eclectic, brilliant clients.

For me, I respect open source code, because if you're willing to show how it's 
done, then you open yourself up to respect.

Tony (HB)