becker@uiucdcs.UUCP (06/16/83)
#R:pyuxjj:-49800:uiucdcs:10800010:000:810 uiucdcs!becker Jun 15 19:33:00 1983 just some trivia: i read in one of our local notesfiles that the E Mu emulator took about 5 minutes to load a diskette, and only stored one sound per disk. if this is true (and what can you say about people who write stuff) in notesfiles, anyway), it means that the E mu thing is studio only at worst, or just limiting in a concert situation. Geoff Downes of Yes used a Fairlight on one of their tours. it looked like (though i dont really know) he was doing some real time speech processing stuff with it. anyone who knows better, please let me know. new england digital, makers of the synclavier, had a demo record out for a buck, really pretty blue transparent vinyl, which had a bunch of little bittsy sound effect things on it, and one of them ended up at the beginning of Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'.
mike@sdcrdcf.UUCP (06/20/83)
For my money, the best computer music system is still MIT's Music 11 running on the biggest machine with the most disk you can get. This is not at all real time (on a 34, it took me 11 hours to compute 60 seconds of string orchestra like sounds) but it's tremendously powerful and flexible (single, double, triple etc FM, fixed waveform tables, comb, LP, resonating filters, reverberation, etc). I also liked UCSD's C music, but haven't had much of a chance to work with it. I have a friend who writes the software for the new Roland line of uP linked synthesizers and signal processors. He's promised to give me some info to post soon. The interface is call "MIDI", and allows all devices with such an interface to be plugged in together, so for example they could all be controlled from one keyboard or synced to the same clock. Apparently, there was a `summit' of synthesizer makers, at which this was agreed to be the standard interface for all manufacturers. I have also heard that the Synclavier 3 is a really hot box, but the last I heard, only about three people had one (Paul McCartney (sp?), Stevie Wonder, and a big producer for NBC commercials who does his the music himself). Mike Williams UUCP: randvax!sdcrdcf!mike burdvax!sdcrdcf!mike ucla-vax!sdcrdcf!mike cbosgd!sdcrdcf!mike ihnss!sdcrdcf!mike