Comment by tessierashpool | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tessierashpool | Hacker News Reader

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I'm curious if you make that statement having played 808s in real life (and my assumption is the answer's no).

I've got analog synths, digital synths, and soft synths. My $40 Korg Monotron is more expressive than my $700 1997 Access Virus. But the Animoog iPad app trumps them both ($40, and I think I got it for $5 because I bought on the first day or something).

There's a reason nobody has ever cheapened the Stradivarius by creating new technology. The selling point is craftsmanship and good design. The 808's a work of art and it's always better to have the real thing, if you're serious about music. (I mean absolutely no offense, but it sounds like it's just a hobby to you.)

Speaking of iPads, there's a great simulation of a later-model Korg ER-1 drum machine availabe for iPad. It's called iElectribe. I love it, but I used to own an early version of the real thing, and it was just better. Context: I've owned many drum machines, even built a toy one for fun (the Bleep Drum, from Bleep Labs), and I'm learning to play the drums.

Not professionally, but I owned one for about a year in the mid 1990's. It was sold simply because it didn't fit into the workflow easily. No MIDI, refused to sync to anything properly, weighs a flipton, the step keys were iffy and the worst bit is that the analogue side was crap i.e. it used to drift terribly after it got warm. Programming was pretty good though so i'll give it that.

Access Virus is a rip off. I had a KC and it was no better than a Novation KS6 at a fraction of the cost. Fortunately the scene I was in grew out of the Virus eventually. Not sure about a monotron - horrible sounding feepers. Seem to be trendy but not particularly musical.

I very much doubt many Stradivarius' are actually played. They are like art. The value is subjective. Personally I hate the whining things and would rather use them to smoke some cheese with (this is sarcasm) :)

For me, it's a matter of pragmatism. My Triton sounds pretty good (not too digital) and saves lugging a crap ton of kit around. If it doesn't do something, I'll sample something that does do it and I'm sorted.

NB I was a session keyboardist in the goth/industrial scene for a number of years (also known as unemployed student) so I have some professional experience.

A fair number (unsure of the proportion) of Stradivarius instruments actually are played. John Bell famously played his in a DC Metro station[0].

Many more are played by the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, and principle instrumentalists of various symphonies.

Browsing this list[1] it would seem that many more instruments are in the hands of musicians than are in museums.

[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04...

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instrume...

>There's a reason nobody has ever cheapened the Stradivarius by creating new technology. The selling point is craftsmanship and good design.

Nope, their major selling point is their myth, vintage status and patina.

That's why nobody cheapened them with new technology. Those are not attributes you can make better with technology or that relate to music and audio performance directly.

(That's why, say, the guitar Hendrix played in Woodstock would trump any 10 times better in timbre and keeping its tuning guitar in any auction sale).

There were several A/B tests with Stradivarius and most professional violinists couldn't even tell them apart from regular violins. E.g: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradivarius#Comparisons_in_sou...

>The 808's a work of art and it's always better to have the real thing, if you're serious about music.

No, that's only if you are serious about collecting stuff. Nothing to do with music.

>(I mean absolutely no offense, but it sounds like it's just a hobby to you.)

Professional electronic musicians, absolutely passionate about music, have used 808 sounds in ROMpler and/or analogue emulation audio plugin form for ages.

Collecting pieces of history, even musical history, has nothing to do with being "serious about music" as a musician.

To be fair, a lot of effort has been put into duplicating the Stradivarius sound, and (so far) it has more to do with botany and meteorology than craftsmanship and design. To be even fairer, according to Wikipedia, Strads have not fared so well in double-blind tests, but that doesn't account for changing ears throughout history.

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