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Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?
Lashiec:
For example, pretty much nobody sells a PCIe soundcard even though it's been years since the format has been around. and if you find one that does, like you said, get ready to pay big bucks for it.
-superboyac (November 08, 2009, 02:41 PM)
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What? It's not a professional sound card, but those are expensive by default anyway.
Carol Haynes:
I agree with music apps - not that I am doing that much these days.
I went to see the Indigo Girls a couple of weeks ago. Two girls, 11 stringed instruments. The only hiccup was the guy they used to change tuinings between songs (3 times they had to retune themselves). Nothing like simplicity for a happy gig (and it was very happy).
Went to see We Will Rock You (touring in Edinburgh) last week and had to wait nearly half an hour before the doors were opened because of technical problems. I know there isn't much comparison but there was a fair amount of grumbling outside the door before being let in. Having said that it was an absoultely cracking evening once it got started.
myarmor:
I've completely switched to W7 Professional x64 Retail after a 2 day trial.
For some strange reason just about everything worked out of the box (I had to install the proper drivers obviously) except Sacred 2 (securom is apparently to blame for many of the bugs encountered in it with W7).
Things that never worked properly with XP on my system (sleep/standby etc) works perfectly, and just about everything else does too.
Hopefully I won't encounter too much difficulties with it for some time. :)
superboyac:
Dang 40hz! Is there anything you don't do? You are quickly becoming my phone-a-friend lifeline...
To continue the off-topic discussion:
SpoilerI, too, prefer to keep it as low-tech as possible for live gigs. But to be more accurate, my goal is to keep it as simple as possible. Here's the problem, even with the most basic setup that we have (drums, acoustic bass, piano, vocals) you need amplification. For that, we have the absolute simplest setup with a little portable PA/speaker system so we can have all the inputs go to one place and control the sounds somehow. Now, here's the problem with the piano...everyone else can use a real instrument and just amplify it, but the piano player has to use a keyboard (unless the venue happens to have its own grand piano). Initially I would just use the onboard sounds on my Roland RD700. But here's the problem...the onboard piano sound is shit. It's just barely tolerable. I try to be calm about it because you just have to be prepared to play in non-ideal situations as a musician. However, if you want a better sounding piano, you have to get a whole new freaking $2000 keyboard. So, I can't afford to get a new keyboard for every subsequent version that comes out (RD700SX, GX, etc.). All I want is playable piano sound. So, if I were a pro, I'd keep trying keyboards until I found the right one. But I can't do that. You can't tell from just playing in the store. It's like a mattress: you need to use it for a couple of months to see if you like it or not.
This is where my complaint of the slow-moving, old-school musician industry thing comes into play. 90% of the manufacturers out there will do this: when they want to improve the piano sound of a keyboard, do they offer it as some kind of downloadable update to be flashed on the keyboard through USB or something? No. They make a whole new keyboard and add a couple of buttons and interface changes. Not to mention the 3 years you had to wait for them to even attempt to improve the sound. In the end, it's a very easy fix if someone wants to address it in the company.
The problem with this situation is that the owners of hardware (me) are at the mercy of the manufacturer's schedule for changes and improvements. That's why I turned to PC sampler software. What I have relative to most of the musicians out there is an aptitude for technology and how to use it in practical situations to solve a problem. So, there are tons of great piano samples out there that you can try out very easily and cheaply, without having to commit to buying thousands of dollars of equipment. So I started trying them out. Here's the great thing about samplers: multiple gigabytes of samples means nothing to the computer. Hard drives are peanut cheap. But these keyboard companies (to this day) brag about their 64MB or 128MB onboard sound. Why? because they get away with it. To me, anything in the megabytes is shit. What the hell is 64MB? 64MB hasn't been anything to brag about for over a decade. Anyway, with the sampler, you can use huge samples and you can find something very easily that sounds WAY better than anything Roland has on their keyboards. Now, granted, some of these sample companies have gone a bit crazy with their enormous samples (50GB?! 200GB?!!!). In my case, I found a sweet spot with a 2GB sample that I have. It's awesome. In fact, I can find a 500MB sample that will blow away anything the Roland can offer in the way of playability and sound.
But now, I need to add a laptop to my rig. That's a pain, let me tell you. It's one thing to bring a keyboard and two wires to plug into the PA...it's another thing to add a laptop. First, like you mentioned, you worry about stability. I'm over that right now, I've never experienced any issues in many, many hours of playing to date. but the thought always lingers in the back of your head. Second of all, your setup immediately becomes very complicated with additional wires and stuff. I need a midi cable now going to the laptop and the laptop needs to be connected to the PA. Then, there's a very loud humming buzz because of a ground loop (very common). So, I needed to buy this little box to put between the laptop and the pa that gets rid of the buzz (works amazingly well, by the way). Then I needed to setup a dual-boot on the laptop so i can run a bare-bones XP installation for just musician stuff. Then you have to get the settings just right and easy to use. All in all, a pain in the ass! But worth it.
All this so that I don't have to be tied to the manufacturer's old-school ways. I'm not buying a new keyboard unless it physically offers something I want like a better action on the keys or something...and significantly better. And I know what you're thinking: "Why don't you just buy a midi-only keyboard". Well, it's because there aren't many midi-only keyboards out there that have a good feel to them.
Rant...over.
40hz:
Is there anything you don't do?
-superboyac (November 09, 2009, 11:08 AM)
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Yes. I don't write computer programs. :P
(Which is funny considering the number of posts I have up on DonationCoder.) ;D 8)
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