ES and ION

Another 2 cents.............

The comment on the Shuttle MOBO was intended to shed light on the fact that it is such a generic hardware solution............which would lead to pretty significant programming/software costs due to the specific development pipeline required to port a musical hardware piece to a standard instruction set.

Typically, as RW states, even small companies will specify one or more ASIC's (Application Specifice Integrated Circuit) to make the soft side of development more trouble free. There are many off the shelf IC's out there that can be customized through Input/Output design, integration with other IC's etc..........

Upon closer examination, you can see that the interface to the outputs is through some sort of PCI card, and the output looks relatively simple. Looks like some DAC's, some OpAmps and some memory. None of these comments are intended to demean the good intentions of the designers, but it is obvious that they were in over their heads as far as manufacturing is concerned.

I have no idea what the red panel is for. It is located where the hard drive sits in the chassis.

The fact that it uses LINUX code makes it a lot more manageable from a cottage industry point of view, but it is still a monumental undertaking to build a piece of hardware like this with the QA that we have become accustomed to.

This has become quite an interesting thread. I glad I went to check out ES and the ION!!

I wish I had a better knowlege of harware (well, and software) issues other than as a user. Maybe I'll read a book someday. I've been meaning to read a good primer on electronics too!!

Phil I'm jealous of your "glamorous" life working in midtown. I always wanted to move to NY, but I "chickened out" somewhat and moved to LA instead. But I've been there a couple of times and picturing you cruising into Ash, Mannyy's, or Virgin is so NYC!

Good observation on the Motif ES. I noticed the same thing when I played the "new triple-strike piano". I heard that artificial percussive quality that immediately raised a "cheap" flag for me. When I think of good acoustic pianos, I think of one that could do Bill Evans as well as Jonathan Cain. Even the super-bright pianos of the David Foster/Jay Graydon days did not have an artificial attack like that. It just blows the whole thing. After experiencing the dissapointment with the ES's piano, I didn't go much farther with the instrument. But it is supposed to have a huge amount of ROM sounds, and the 128 note polyphony and 8 insert effects are hard to ignore.

But if I can get swandiver's FS 61 for a good price, then I'll be an FS man!

No matter what other features.............I've got to have a good piano!

IMO my ten year old piano in my JV-90 is as good as most of the other brands pianos

Which reminds me, I just love the action on the S88. My upright is severely in need of a tuning right now, so I've been practicing a Brahms violin sonata on it.

Hey Phil -

There's a whole world of people out there who thrive on the hardware and software aspects of the stuff you're into using. Sounds like you're one of the true creative users of the technology out there. I wouldn't want to see you ruin it by jumping too far into the dark side. Once you do, you will be consumed by it, leaving little time for creating the art that the technology was designed to support.

Bruiser - isn't there some art in software design too? I'm actually getting involved with a project where I will be "consulting" on MIDI functionality and design. I really, really want to tell you guys all about it, but I think I owe it to my potential partner in this to wait (although, he wants to post a "technical paper" on it on his website, so I'll post the link once we're at that point). It is basically a software MIDI "controller" that will do things that could never have been done before in real time. It's really exciting.

Sure. I would say that all design requires a certain artistic ability. The point that I was trying to make was that there is a lot to learn on the hardware and software side. If you're anything like me, the more you learn, the more you want to learn. You tend to get consumed by it.

And we all seem to need "yet another" thing to be consumed with, right!!! I get your point - there ain't enough hours in the day. Maybe I'll just remain blissfully ignorant--it's gotten me this far!