Longterm Investing
Tom Oberheim SEM
Although it’s easy to imagine analog synths as big, expensive contraptions, they don’t have to be. I just spent several weeks comparing table-top analog modules priced under $1,000—the Tom Oberheim SEM, the Doepfer Dark Energy, and the Dave Smith Instruments Mopho—for an EM feature. Without giving away the results of my work, let me just say that I had a blast.
At an average price of $641, these instruments are not impulse buys. But they’re not meant to be. They’re well built, boutique items designed to last a lifetime. For example, I have an original Oberheim SEM (35 years old, serial number 100) that I used for an A/B comparison in the article. I certainly don’t regret the $600 I paid for it (used), as it continues to serve me well. I wish I felt that confident when I buy software.
Because in 15 years, I will still be using my hardware synths and effects, but I can guarantee that every bit of software I’m using today—along with its sessions, patches, and stored settings—will be inaccessible, either through lack of developer support, because the host computer has died, or because subsequent upgrades no longer open the files I created with today’s version.
I hope somebody will address this issue soon. A can of beans has a longer shelf life than most of our software music tools.
A student of mine confided in me recently that he’d torrented a number of soft synths over the years that he really liked, but now he has to upgrade his computer and will lose all of his pirated stuff. All I could say was “You get what you pay for.�
Or do you?
Let’s put sound quality aside for the moment, because it’s so subjective. If I have $600 to spend on an instrument, do I buy software that will last me a couple of years (at least until I have to pay for an upgrade) or do I buy hardware that is probably not as programmable or powerful as the software, but will outlive me? As I put yet another legacy computer in the shed, while having a blast making music with these synth modules, I find myself returning to that question.
Muse Research MuseBox
At the NAMM show in Anaheim last month, I took the Muse Research MuseBox for a quick spin. Like the company’s Receptor 2, the MuseBox provides a convenient, low-latency way to play plug-in instruments via MIDI without the hassle and risks of schlepping a computer. Besides being smaller in size than a Receptor 2 (and not as powerful), the MuseBox is much less expensive. Priced below a grand, they’ll sell a ton of them.
But what I find most interesting about the MuseBox is that you can search for instruments by category, rather than by developer/product/bank/instrument. In other words, if you have 10 software products that offer basses in a MuseBox, you don’t have to open and browse through each product separately. All the basses are listed and subdivided by category (acoustic bass, synth bass, etc.), regardless of who created it. The MuseBox was built for musicians!
Just select the instrument you want, wait a few seconds for it to launch, and you’re ready to go. That makes the MuseBox as easy to use as a hardware synth, but you can add whatever plug-ins suit your fancy.
Of course, the Native Instruments Kore 2 system offers a similar user experience with NI’s products: you can browse through the instruments by type, no matter which product it was created in. Unfortunately you’re still tied to next year’s Intel-based doorstop.
My hope is that products such as the MuseBox will stand the test of time, giving them the longevity of a “real instrument.� Many of us have been dreaming of affordable instruments that can be easily updated without having to replace or discard the hardware parts.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that we stop using software instruments and effects. But I am reminded on a daily basis that we are creating music on general-purpose business machines, which we cleverly subvert for our creative purposes. In 50 years our grandchildren will shake their heads in amazement when they see what we put up with.
“You mean you reconfigured your entire musical system every three to five years?�
“Well, yeah. Besides the fact that the computers back then weren’t built to last very long, the software kept overstepping the processing limits of the computers that did survive. We had no choice but to start all over again.�
I participated in the quintennial ritual yet again last summer, when I bought my MacBook Pro. I had to retire my G4 laptop for something with an Intel chip so I could run Avid (nee Digidesign) Pro Tools 8: It’s not only my main DAW, but the platform I teach with at Diablo Valley College. I had no choice but to update.
But after three months, the MacBook Pro decided not to boot one day, so I took it to the Genius Bar for help. It turns out that the drive died, and I wondered aloud if, surely, the thing shouldn’t have lasted through more than the fourth quarter of the year. The “resident genius� (as Apple calls them) behind the counter apologized for the inconvenience, then added “You know, the drives are made in China.�
WTF! In that case it should’ve lasted a decade. I don’t care where the friggin’ drive was made, Mr. Genius. Just make sure the drive will work long enough for me to amortize the computer this time.
And, sadly, that’s about all we can hope for with any personal computer in the 21st century, not to mention our cell phone and other portable technology: If a computer lasts long enough, we might just be able to make our money back with it, and the software we “rent� for it.
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February 11th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
You may have never used ‘Future Proof’ Metric Halo Gear. Every product that they have put on the market is still usable with the latest computer hardware and is still a leader in its field.
A quote from a user “Steve da sleeve” on the MobileIO mailing list 2/10/2010
“PPS my 2882 is almost 9 years old & is still my most used piece of audio equipment – more so now with 2d.”
February 11th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
While over the years your insights from the pinnacle of the biz have always made great reading, this time I think you’re looking into the wrong end of the telescope. I have an attic full of electronic music hardware, including a $3600 Emulator and nearly a dozen various Proteus-type players, all replaced by the EmulatorX software. Same samples, same control conventions, but ever improving sound quality and usability.
While a few rare pieces of hardware remain useful, most by far end up in the attic, replaced by software that does the job better, and without the noisy pots. My two TX816′s have 16 dead batteries soldered into the circuit boards. I can’t part with them, but they will never fly again. No matter, any number of soft synths can do DX7 algorithms, and sound even better.
Yes, software becomes obsolete, as does the computer platforms. But the really good stuff evolves, and you can still access what you found valuable about it while benefiting from the ongoing tech advancements.
My own software has been around for some 25 years, and while you can’t play MPU401/DOS based MusicBox conveniently on your latest PC, you can run its greatly evolved successors, which have the same algorithmic modules, the same algorithmic heart. Many of my software users have in fact continued to use my software over the years starting as far back as the 80′s when my MusicBox would nicely drive your Oberheim SEM.
Finally, while it is true that businesses extensively use PCs, don’t forget the “P” is for
“personal” and some of us were writing music software for PCs long before they replaced typewriters in the office.
John Dunn
Algorithmic Arts
http://algoart.com
August 11th, 2010 at 12:55 am
This is a letter I wrote to editor Mike Levine in response to his August editorial in EM.
I thought it had some points that are germane to this topic…
Mr. Levine,
In your EM August editorial you urged musicians to eschew pirating software. I endorse this position wholeheartedly (I make my living designing software). In a vast screed I wrote to your predecessor, Mr. Robair, responding to an editorial he posted in February of 2009, I expressed my anti-crack trafficking position thusly:
“Don’t crack or steal software, and don’t use software you didn’t pay for or write yourself, and I’m talking about freeware too. You’d be shamed (or you should be) to leave a decent meal in a restaurant without a tip on the table for the person who took care of you. Send those freeware authors a tip, at least. Few realize how potent a seed they plant when they support the work of software development directly… WITHOUT ADVERTISERS! Think about it…. Who will these talented guys end up catering to, at the end of the day.
When someone builds something you use, pay them for their work.”
That has always been my position.
But that was one paragraph among many (very many) and I devoted a lot of verbage to the OTHER side of the issue; the subject of Mr. Robair’s editorial was the complacency with which artists have accepted a status-quo that has become more absurd by the day. To wit, we tolerate corporations that, effectively, RENT us the instruments and media on which our art depends. While I staunchly maintain that this does not make cracking right, I also assert that the corporations bear the majority of the guilt for the sad state of affairs that exists now. i’m not some crackpot idealist either. As I explained in my earlier screed, I have firsthand experience with the exploitive tactics employed by my industry. These tactics are de-rigeur, and unquestioned, now. They are hostile to the customers (especially if the customer base is artistic) and especially hostile to any upstart software company that even tries to implement less reprehensible policies.
Ok…
I claimed I wasn’t a crackpot, and … it’s dog-eat-dog world out there, so what?…this fact is definitely not news in this benighted age.
Mr. Robair posited a brilliant illustration in pointing out that his 1977 Stratocaster is still productive while his 1987 software is less than completely worthless now. Fender did not enforce an ‘upgrade path’ on its customers in order to retain ANY value from their instrument. The very notion of it would not have even occurred to them.
In debates i’ve entered about this point, I’m frequently told that conflating a DAW or softsynth with a piece of hardware is invalid. Baloney! An instrument is an instrument. My ‘cello & basses need strings and an occasional visit to a good luthier. My elderly Oberheim Xpander needs an unobtanium Curtis chip once in a blue moon. But to compare such physical deterioration to the wall-to-wall, planned obsolescence in modern software is an insult to any reasonable person’s intelligence.
But here we jolly-well are – aren’t we?
And the editor of (increasingly software-based) Electronic Musician Magazine is urging artists to respect the property rights of software producers, a theme I find oft-repeated in EM. I’d make no contention if I saw there were equal emphasis on one of Mr. Robair’s points-
“We accept upgrades as a fact of life. Why?”
Gino was dead-on target.
Musicians should not accept ‘upgrades’ as a fact of life. In the common-practice of the software industry ‘upgrades’ are not disbursed fairly in any way shape or form. These schemes are deliberate, well-planned, and a lot of resources are expended to maximize their larceny. The artists smell these rats and have dug tunnels of their own to combat the highway robbery. So we’re up to TWO wrongs, and counting…
The software companies will not change their policies. I know that firsthand. Artists are going to have to hit back MUCH harder….by refusing to rent.
(i know, I know… the whole crackpot thing is back on the table again!)
;’>
But Gino stunned me by pointing out the naked emperor right on the opening pages of what has become “Emperor’s New Clothes Magazine”. And then, within a month, I noticed that his leadership was quietly disposed.
And now things have returned to the wholly absurd ‘normal’, wherein the corporations that have cornered electronic musicians into renting their sustenance from the company store are coddled by exhortations of ‘thou shalt not steal’ while their own larceny is dismissed with a shrug, or worse, defended as unavoidable.
EM has no credibility until it advocates for the ARTISTS with equal vigor.
“Refuse To Rent – How to make it Happen” should be the cover story for 12 months, just to atone for the years EM has spent in cozy, informal collusion with the advertisers.
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