tempora mutantur

pinnacle cubasis, pinnacle cubasis, pinnacle cubasis. hm.
sounds strange.
i mean, after 13 years of steinberg cu-sequencers.
so after "apple emagic logic audio" we can now see
"pinnacle cubasis" boxes in the stores, fine.


   tumporu metuntur

since years musicians and programmers were discussing
ethernet to transport stuff like audio and midi for us.
the usual result was that everyone agreed that due to the
non-existing standarts for ethernet specs it will be impossible
to reach that what we call "sync", at least no sample accuracy,
and that it therefore will never become true.
in fact ethernet has been already the one and only way of
transporting different streams since 1997.
for broadcasting or for pa installations such as in musical-
theaters they use ethernet to send midi, audio, light and fx
signals over one cable since a long time.

that funny thing "plugzilla" made it into a serious product now,
available in februar 2004 from muse research.

they say when you use it to run your instruments on it, you
avoid using a second computer. the truth is, this IS a computer.
to have a few more native plug-ins running with your sequencer
in a production situation it seems pretty useless, or lets say, not
more useful than any good rackmountable audio-PC from dell.

i see its strength elsewhere: you can feed it with your (up to 57)
(windows-) VST plug-ins and then use it with your other hardware.
load your favorite waves plug-ins, which you already own
including your custom settings into the box, and connect its
analog audio inputs and outputs to the mixing console.
two mouseclicks, and your custom-built "waves finalizer" is a
PPG synth or an impulse response reverb.
there is no pricing information for "receptor" yet, but impulse
respose reverbs based off motorola DSPs are starting around
USD 12.000 while there are free IR plug-ins for windows ...

today´s sequencer ala logic 6, nuendo 2, and cubase sx 2 offer
full latency compensation over all channels and subgroups.
there is no reason to go one step back now and use a second
computer with a more or less unknown latency.
but why do i complain ? is there an alternative ?
this thing at least works, and it will be available soon.
i can not say that about VST systemlink.


   utmpror emtunuta

one more little new tech thingie is coming from fxpansion next
year, rewire-over-VST and-AU, or in other words, it rewires any
plug-in host on the fly.


   umoreun mtunutatpr

one day we will run photoshop and aftereffects plug-ins
in "pinnacle nuendo AV 3.5" !

but serious now, what i wonder more is if there are plans to use
distributed processing for realtime processes.
the upcoming g5 19" cluster leaves room for experiments, if the
buffer size per channel is 64 mb or so (LOL) it should work for
an audiostream just like it already works for boring stuff like
"mathematica".
eventually a cluster of 8 G5s could even co-process things
running on an OS 9 host that way ?

you know why i ask that.


roman