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Looper's Delight
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Hmmm, well a computer is a piece of hardware with software on it. And a rack mount processors is also a piece of hardware with software in it (firmware, embedded firmware, or whatever engineers call it now), albeit a very specialized piece of hardware that only runs that one piece of software/firmware. So, if you can get your computer audio I/O up to snuff with the hardware audio I/O in terms of latency, quality of inserts, etc..then I don't see a lot of difference between the two in principle. In practice, of course, some people are intimidated by computer based systems because of the massive flexibility and hordes of options, plus all the other problems that can come along with a computer...whereas, with a piece of effect hardware, it is basically a finite trick pony. Once you burn through all the algorithm and settings, you've reached the end of that particular effective universe. The true pragmatic test for me is in the output on CD or in live performance. And I can't tell any difference in quality between my hardware effects (Boss VF1, Lexicon LXP5, LXP1, etc) and my computer VST effects, even when one signal is going through a 1/8" IO system on a tiny sound card, and the hardware is running through a balanced 1/4" audio IO. I buy hardware now only for back-up, because it is new and cool, or to relieve my irrational insecurities derived from on playing through hardware for so many years. I think over time, dedicated function hardware effect units will become obsolete, but not for a long time, and maybe not our generation. It's just a hypothosis, veriable only by time. Kris ----- Original Message ----- From: "mark sottilaro" <zerocrossing2001@yahoo.com> To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 3:54 PM Subject: Loop effects: Can software be as good as good hardware? > All this talk about Eclipse/Fireworx vs. Max/Reaktor > made me think, surely dedicated hardware must sound a > lot better, no? Perhaps software is way more flexible > but is it as good? If all you got from hardware was > lower latency I'd imagine ebay would be flooded with > effects processors to the point people couldn't give > them away. I'm excited about what my humble laptop > can do but will it rival even my modest Lexicon MPX1 > in terms of sound quality? > > Mark > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > >