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Re: Hardware Loopers--Tools or Collector's items?




On Mar 11, 2004, at 11:01 PM, 
Loopers-Delight-d-request@loopers-delight.com wrote:

>> I've been thinking about this a lot, and I still think
>> hardware loopers may be on the way out.

Nah.   Like guitars are on the way out, replaced by synthesizers?  Or 
like synthesizers are on the way out, replaced by samplers?  Or 
samplers are on the way out, replaced by virtual analog synthesizers?

Purpose built tools, those things stick around forever, if they're even 
halfway useful.  Software tools get abandoned and systems dependent 
upon them become difficult to maintain.  I knew a guy who was really 
dependent on a Powerbook 140 running, I believe, Mastertrax.  It was 
this great sequencing program that did everything he wanted it to and 
very little of anything else, and he had his two-man band doing wacky 
covers with all the other parts being handled by the computer.  His 
program wouldn't  run on any version of the OS made after '95 or so, 
the OS wouldn't run on any computer made after about '97, and now he's 
got hundreds of files on floppy in Mastertrax song format.  Sure you 
can find parts for ancient powerbooks on eBay cheap, but who the hell 
wants to bother with piecing together vintage computers?  Or following 
some never-ending upgrade path in both hardware and software?  We're 
talking hundreds of songs that have to be converted and doublechecked 
everytime you switch to some new freeware sequencing program.  And 
we're talking about technology that's only a decade or so old.

Other people have brought up the point that you're more likely to 
develop a deep relationship with a tool that has a fixed feature set, 
rather than some software-based thing that can be reconfigured and 
extended and changed in a thousand different ways.  But it's worth 
noting again: the ability to easily add features may be more of a 
detriment than an advantage.  When it's difficult or expensive to 
change something, you spend a lot more time considering how important 
the feature really is.


TravisH