Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth
From: cassiel@cassiel.demon.co.uk (Nick Rothwell)
X-Sender:  (Unverified)
Subject: Re: Re:Wavestation limitation
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 22:04:58 +0000

>Its for this reason that I never buy the first synth of a new type.
>If its an enhancement of a previous synth type (eg Korg T series
>enhancing M series) then fine but otherwise you know that a few months
>down the road they are going to fix the bugs and come out with a 
>better version.

A couple of points. Firstly, bug fixes should be offerred to people who
have the original machines. A company which doesn't do this does not
respect its customers, and I wouldn't trust them. (The E-word comes to mind
here.)

Secondly, for a variety of more interesting products, there *isn't* going
to be a better version. It was clear from the outset that the Waldorf
MicroWave was a one-off (although going off Palm's record it was
predictable that he would venture into five-figure territory after a while:
witness the Wave). I was surprised that the Wavestation A/D had the
enhanced features (although the rackmount was no surprise) and was also
surprised that the SR came out at all; but I see these as (welcome)
exceptions to the rule.

>The best example of this is the Roland U110. It is
>extremely noisy, and this is due strictly to a hardware oversight.
>Roland corected it in the U220

This is a prime example of bad customer treatment in my opinion; to my
knowledge, Roland made no effort to offer corrections to the original
machines, but just junked them overnight. As a result, I do not trust
Roland to offer any kind of upgrade or support apart from the fixes of
obvious bugs (and then I don't rely on it). What you buy is what you get.
Filling in the warranty card is a bit of a wasted effort.

>One thing that really annoys me (now you've got me going :-) ) is why
>each manufacturer first brings out a keyboard version. With MIDI
>you only need one or two keyboards - everything else should be a module.
>Manufacturers should offer a choice of master controllers and then just
>release rack mount modules.

That's been tried, and has failed; master controllers are too expensive. I
suspect that a lot of the market is one-synth users who want a "keyboard",
and don't want to bother with setting up and MIDI'ing things. I'm moving
towards the everything-in-racks philosophy myself, but still have the
Wavestation keyboard (because I like the programming interface right in
front of me) and the D-70 (which is a pretty good 76-note keyboard, despite
being brain-dead MIDI-wise). I suspect the WS keyboard will go sooner or
later, to be replaced with an A/D or two, leaving me with just the D-70 as
a controller which also happens to act as a MIDI sound generator, and
probably some second "mute" controller keyboard for complicated live
performances (and which I can also leave behind without losing its sound
generation capabilities; this is the real problem with keyboard synths).

                      Nick Rothwell  |  "Say, how many contemporary dancers
   CASSIEL Contemporary Music/Dance  |     are there in this bar?"
        cassiel@cassiel.demon.co.uk  |  "Dunno; count the Dr. Martens
        cassiel@cix.compulink.co.uk  |     and divide by two..."

Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth