Re: reaktor, MSP, etc

[dcoffin@taunton.com]

<<The idea that somebody
could just spend a few days stringing together some modules in Reaktor to
produce a viable modern looper seems really funny and naive to me.>>

It sounds like the only definition of a viable modern looper that you'll
accept is an EDP clone.
Well, I've got a real EDP (and I dig it, at least the parts of it that I've
bothered to learn, and I very much appreciate the effort and intelligence
that went into it--Thanks!), and I have Reaktor, and for MY purposes, I
have to tell you that Reaktor is simply the more interesting, more
flexible, and more accessible looping device, without even trying to be. In
the less than 6 months that I've had both my EDP and Reaktor4, I've had far
more success configuring Reaktor into the kinds of looping tools that I
wanted, then I've had sussing out the features I'll use from that huge EDP
manual (it's bigger than Reaktor's manual!). In the less than 2 WEEKS that
I've even been considering using Reaktor as a serious looper (I didn't buy
it to do that...thought I had that covered), I've assembled half a dozen
endlessly modulatable, instantly reconfigurable processing matrices with
multiple loopers that I couldn't even dream about building in hardware,
even if I chose to invest in a Switchblade and a few more EDPs to add to my
rack effects. Somehow, I can't escape the fact that my expensive hardware
is kinda gathering dust these days. For me, Reaktor does the job because it
lets me get an idea for a looping device (or any audio device) and just go
build the damn thing....have it that day, that hour, without leaving my
seat. And my device will have ONLY the features that I want it to have,
where I want 'em. And when and if those features get boring or my  ideas
change, I can just as easily add to 'em, or build a new device...and it may
not even be the looping features that need changing. Maybe my new looping
tool doesn't even have to have any new looping features, if the routing and
modulation options are rich enough. What's not modern or viable about a
simple, malleable personalized looper that I can duplicate and multiply in
an infinitely configuable effects, modulation and routing environment?
Frankly, a commercial looping-only product, tangled up with complex
features behind a cryptic and fixed interface, burned in a chip, designed
by somebody else to suit a broad audience using preconceptions about
looping and concepts for looping features that didn't come from my impulses
and fantasies and have to be deciphered to be made my own (and "a few days"
won't cut it when it comes to doing the deciphering...), is seeming less
and less modern to me! The virtual looper isn't just  viable---it's here,
and it's very cool. In fact, it's even more viable to me than a Linux EDP.
It ain't about cloning features that are already not exactly serving me, or
even about piling up new features in endless software versions......it's
about having the tools to completely personalize them. The promise of the
software looper isn't that it can become or match an EDP in features. It's
that it can be whatever I want, now.

So, for me, it isn't a question of when software will match hardware, or
can it?...it's do I even NEED the hardware anymore?

<<But I'm
willing to be proven wrong about that. I'm just tired of hearing about this

great promise that is never fulfilled, so I'm challenging you to show me
some results. Where is it?>>

Since you don't have Reaktor, will screen shots do?
dc