From: mayer@hplnpm1.hpl.hp.com (Niels P. Mayer)
Subject: Re: AES Anyone??
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 00:13:32 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Media Technology Lab, Palo Alto, CA.

> Did anyone out there go to AES?

I did (thu, fri, sat)...

> Did you get to listen to the Tascam  
> digital 8 track?

No... i think it was there, but i'm not looking for that kind of stuff.

> How about the new Zoom 2200 reverbwhatever?

Sounded very nice -- for $3000.00, it had better.  Zoom had the best set up
of the entire show for demoing their stuff. For the low end, they had
guitars and basses plugged into their little efx boxes so that people could
check 'em out w/ headphones. For the "2200 reverbwhatever" they had a small
sound-isolated room w/ a pro-otari console and a big pro-otari multitrack
deck (24?)  w/ a tape of dry vocals/drums/guitars... all this was plugged
into a stack of their efx units. you could listen to the full mix, or
listen to one dry instrument, or the effect return, or whatever. very
nicely done.

It was good to be able to listen to this equipment in a studio setup,
without having to tune out the booth next door playing some crappy Kenny-G
jazz-wank noodlings at 120 dB so they can show off their speakers.

> Any news  
> from Lexicon on new effects?

Didn't have time to check them out. They had a new A/D unit...

--------------------

I was there to generally scope things out while also shopping around for
3-D location synthesizers, samplers, DAT recorders, A/D units, and
hard-disk recording software....

--------------------

Some of the coolest stuff was in the relatively low-zoot displays in the
"new technologies" room. Unlike the hype and glitz of the tradeshow, the
new technologies room featured real people, information-rich sales, real
products, real engineering, and real innovation. Examples:

* The Biomuse system interprets neuromusular activity and sends out control
signals over rs-232 -- one application had "dry gel" electrodes attached to
your forearms; the harder you squeeze your hands, the more signal you
produce. This was used to generate two continuous controllers for a
synthesizer -- you could play music by flexing your muscles. Another
application (not demo'd) senses neural impulses caused by eye movements,
allowing for relative-positioning eye-based control of equipment.

Biomuse is located in Palo Alto, CA... (look 'em up for more info).

* Don Buchla was demoing his Thunder and Lightning MIDI controllers. First,
it was great to be able to talk to the man/god himself about his products.
Second, they were kind enough to let me play with them for an extended
period of time. Lightning is a box which interprets position and gestures
created by waving two light-emitting wands about in the air; Thunder is a
programmable MIDI controller with lots of touch sensitive interfaces and
sliders; by programmable, I mean that it can launch complex MIDI sequences
based on interacting with one or more controllers. Very cool!

Buchla is located in Berkeley, CA... (look 'em up for more info).

--------------------

My impressions of the show were generally good, but there are definitely
some "snake oil salesmen" out there....

Like when I was checking out a 3-D location synthesizer unit (name withheld
pending further investigation), I asked the (supposed) developer of the
system what techniques were being used to do the 3-D location synthesis
(HRTF's?  early reflections?, phase & timing delays?, crosstalk
cancellation?, etc) the guy responsed with the following paraphrased
non-answer "well, I generally played around in the studio till it sounded
right." To which I felt like responding "so that's why it doesn't really
sound any better than a combination of panning, volume control, and
crosstalk cancelling."

This supposed developer didn't seem to know anything about Convolvotrons,
HRTFs, and didn't have any familiarity with the past few years of
literature on 3-D location synthesis, the applications of this technologies
for virtual reality, telepresense, aerospace simulations, etc. This didn't
exactly give me any confidence in the product. To top it all off, the
product literature was a bunch of handwaving touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo. What
ever became of engineering?

Then again, maybe since I'm not some entertainment biz d00d with phat gold
necklace, expensive guido suit, and expensive mistress in tow, he figured I
couldn't possibly be worth his while... Well, unless they figure out a way
to talk science, engineering, and fact (or at least lay off the hype &
bullshit), they aren't getting my business, nor my company's...

Well, at least he didn't try to sell me any litz-wire gold plated
interconnects with quantum chromodynamic chakra stimulators.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	    Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com
                     Collaborative Multimedia Project
		       Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
			      Palo Alto, CA.
				   *
Newsgroups: rec.audio.pro,rec.music.synth