Audio Science

SSD’s are on the rise, and it’s the best thing to happen to data storage since the hard disk drive. The advantages of SSD’s in all types of computing needs are excellent, and DAW workstations, both mobile and desktop, will benefit immensely. I could fill up a good deal of space naming all the benefits of SSD’s, but here are the key features: With no moving parts, they are far more durable and reliable than hard disk drives, they read and write at more than 5x faster, with 0.11 milliseconds access latency (compared with 17 milliseconds latency with HDDs), and use half the power HDDs do.

I started watching the SSD market closely a couple of months ago, and it has been progressing rapidly. It’s gone from 16 GB being the highest known of, to 64 GB approaching affordability. The best is yet to come, as there are already 512 GB SSD drives coming over the horizon, but only a secret agent budget would afford such, as the high-capacity drives are in the unreachable extremes of expensive.

SanDisk recently announced an increase in their 2.5″ and 1.8″ SSD drives from 32 GB to 64 GB. The 32 GB versions will be priced upwards of $300, but there’s no word on what the 64 GB version will cost. They’ll be offering engineering samples in Q3, but as production is scheduled for the end of this year, we probably won’t see these truly on the market until the beginning of 2008.

It is possible to get your hands on a 32 GB SSD right now for about $300-400, as Matt Mullenberg, Wordpress founder has done. I personally can’t wait to get one in my laptop, as I need the speed, but I’m going to have to wait until they’re easier to get ahold of.

(Via Engadget)

The Monome 40h has been a tremendous success, and the 400 units they produced have completely sold out. Monome is now looking ahead to not only continuing production of the 40h in one way or another, but they will be producing two new sizes: a 128-button version (16×8) and a 256-button version (16×16).

From monome’s news section:
“all will feature wood enclosures with recessed aluminum top plates. all monome hardware will be inter-compatible with monome software. we haven’t set firm release dates for the two new projects, though they’re modularly based on the 256 (previously the 100h), so the development time should be very short.”

As always, you can look to the monome user forum if you are looking for a used 40h, but if you’re expensive enough willing to spend a few hundred more, they are producing a 12-unit special edition run with some special features for $800 apiece.

Microsoft’s revolutionary Surface, which will be forth-coming in selected markets (not consumer) by the end of this year, is the same concept as a counterpart you might not have heard of. Although Microsoft began developing the Surface system as we know it as early as 2003, the concept of projection / detection has been floating around; whether Microsoft may have leaked it is unknown to me.

The Multi Touch Console is an open-source project by a couple of independent developers in Berlin, and is pretty much a port of the Reactable (video), which has been around for a little bit now. The system, like Microsoft’s, features a projector, camera, diffuser, glass surface, etc., but the most outstanding aspect of this system is that it’s open-source and can be built from scratch. Go here for documentation and links of the parts.

If you want to see some more demonstration of what multi-touch can do, check out this video of Jeff Han demonstrating a multi-touch system.

This has very exciting possibilities in the music arena, as some of the videos on the MTC website suggest, although I feel the true possibilities of it aren’t drawn out as well in those. I think we’re going to see some amazing things when someone combines these systems with the open-source 64Step software for the monome 40h, as well as other sequencing software.

(Via Music Thing)

There are a number of different brackets that define audio cable quality. Knowing which one your needs fit into is important, as you can spend a sum on high-end lines that would cripple the largest of budgets. One of the questions I’ll discuss is whether or not the audiophile extreme of the market is even valid, and then where it fits into your needs.

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Most people who use Reason are very excited about it, and often look forward to updates more than software users… usually do. Thus, since Propellerhead made that one thrilling breach in their SuperGlued Lips Policy by showing the new semi-modular synthesizer to be introduced in the *next* version of Reason (Reason 4, it’s supposed), 5 months have elapsed, and that may as well be another 2 years on the Propellerhead User Forums, where anticipation, zeal, and impatience are mounting exponentially.
To quote one staff member’s tight-lipped quote of Stephen Hawking in their blog:

“Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.” - Stephen Hawking

One of the most amusing recent forum posts:

Let’s make this easier for you call my stuff predictions about what has happened and what is going to happen.

1) Few things what Propellerheads has done at NAMM and with promoting next version of Reason has expected from their normal policies.
* The original idea of showing Thor at NAMM was not invented at Propellerheads. It came from outside at late 2006. No leakings involved.

2) Next version of Reason interacts differently with rack stuff. Navigating in rack has been made easier with at least TWO new technicues.

3) The policy “need to be run on slower machines” has loosen noticeably. There are new devices in addition to Thor. And in fact Thor is not the biggest invention. After announcement and release forum speculation will show that the REAL INVENTIONS were not shown at NAMM and are greatly related to UI-side.

4) It has support for multicore processors. Propellerheads have prepared for more than 2 cores and that is the main reason for next version to “get punch out of multicore processors.” This is the final touch of finally being up to date (or tomorrow) with flagship production.

5) After NAMM Propellerheads decides to add one feature that was never intended to be included in next Reason version.

6) Tempo automation.

7) These are correct.

If my “predictions” are proven to be even partially false I will personally eat one kilogram of meatballs in Propellerheads office downstairs (säkert med lingonsylt).

Response from Tage (Propellerhead staff member):

Hehe. I hope you like meatballs.

It would seem that just because they gave a great product glimpse, they don’t feel pushed to put Reason 4 on the market until they’re good and ready.

Propellerhead founders have been quoted as saying that they don’t intend to remain the “3-product company”. That was just before they discontinued Rebirth, taking that number down to 2 products.

Obviously, being a 2-product company isn’t quite what they have in mind, so we can expect that they must be working on at least one new product besides Reason. A couple of people have expressed concern as to whether or not Propellerhead is turning enough profit to stay afloat, as sales must have declined in the 2 years that Reason 3.0 has been out (resulting in more humorous threads and a statement to the contrary by the staff), but the fact is that they are hiring more people all the time, especially product engineers and programmers.

Amidst a lot of waiting, we can be sure of one thing: whatever they release, it’s going to be good.