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Ethernet/firewire


daveq

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What happened to the idea of using Ethernet (or was it Firewire) for connecting guitars to preamps? I remember seeing Neal Schon demonstrating it on CNN over a year ago (maybe 2 years?) but have never heard of it since then. He was saying that it sounded better to him than wireless technology but I don't know if he compared it to a standard cable.

Is this technology still in the works or has it been abandoned?

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technology seems to be around. I mean i think Line 6 has done great technological advances with music. They almost got down the real sounds of amps by technology of pc chips and programs. WiFi, i think there is a wireless system similar that i saw a few months ago. I forgot though where it was. But it seems that the more int o the future we get, the more musicians want to get more and more outdated with their equipment. I mean people like the old gibson sound more than the new one, and same with mashals and fenders. Personally i like the newer technology becuase if they really fiddle with the technology, you can get the old stuff as well. I know most of this has nothing to do with eithernet connections but its is technology.

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The main problem I see with digital guitars is converting the analog signal to digital - really good, high-res A/D converters are still expensive and power-hungry, so if you want the sound of the actual guitar it becomes a somewhat daunting proposition. If you simply want pitch and intensity information to manipulate samples or digital signals with, MIDI is a lot less complex and has an installed support base to build on. I simply think digital audio is going to have to get a lot faster, cleaner and natural-sounding to compete with analog, except maybe on home computers. Modellers still don't sound or feel close enough to the real thing for most players, even with analog inputs.

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Gibson had a Les Paul with their "MaGIC" system that used Ethernet. Gibson Magic They used to have a page on the gibson.com webpage for the MaGIC system, but it's gone now.

Basically, the Hex Pickup captures the signal from each individual string, converts it to digital, sends it out via the Ethernet jack over Cat-5 at distances up to 100m to a breakout box, which then converts it back to analog.

Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...

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There is a problem with MIDI. Midi, although there are pickups that make it a lot easier, to mathematically edit the guitar it take many mathmaticians with a lot of time to get it down to a real guitar. MIDI can get close, but it will still be very artificial sounding without paying a lot of money with a lot of math skills and time. Although we are bridging the gap slowly and slowly, but for now its easier to record with other technology than MIDI.

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That MaGIC standard that Gibson's been toying with is a great interface, at least in theory - supposedly, it's capable of "...up to 32 channels of 32-bit bi-directional high-fidelity audio with sample rates up to 192 kHz...". It still doesn't address the A/D conversion, but it does look like a viable audio transfer system. Thier new site address is http://www.gibsonmagic.com/ . Unfortunately, the last "news" item on their site is a Feb. '04 announcement of a 2003 design award, so there doesn't appear to be much happening over at the ol' MaGIC lab. :D

Monkey, you're confused about MIDI - all MIDI does is encode pitch and amplitude info to control a sound source - it has literally nothing to do with the quality of the output sound, that's a product of the sound generator. The biggest problem with MIDI as currently implemented is latency, and I think that could be improved substantially though design refinements if the customer base demanded it, but so long as you can re-align everything time-wise in Pro Tools with a couple of mouse clicks, nobody seems to care.

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Yeah, they've been threatening for about the last year, but again, all the info on their digital guitar site ( http://www.gibsondigital.com/ ) is copyright 2004, so we know it's at least 6 months old, and those demo kiosks haven't materialized. And while they go to great lengths describing the hex pickup and the breakout box (which they call BoB :D ), their only mention of any A/D is this: "The Hex Pickup captures a separate signal for each individual string and sends it to the Onboard digital converter which uses Gibson's patented MaGIC digital transport technology to send the signal out of the guitar via the Cat-5 Ethernet Cable.". No info leads me to believe that the "converters" don't exactly rival MOTU's or RME's - even the lowly GuitarPort publishes their A/D specs ( of course, 24 bits at 48KHz ain't too shabby, and even the fallback to 16 bit, 44.1Khz is still CD quality).

You're right, it'll be interesting to see what, if anything, Gibson's come up with. It might be great, the potential is certainly there, but with their corporate hi-tech record for shooting themselves in both feet repeatedly, I'm not holding my breath. :D

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To jump back a post or two, in MIDI, the R&D should be directed at a faster, more versatile sound generator because that is where the most complaints are? That is a question, LK. I am trying to figure this out because I have always assumed people were just not happy with using a keyboard controller and wanted the most guitar-like controller they can get. Something that measured as wide a range of guitar dynamics as possible. Bends, taps, attack, harmonics, etc. Oh, and don't forget string-slide.

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There is a problem with MIDI. Midi, although there are pickups that make it a lot easier, to mathematically edit the guitar it take many mathmaticians with a lot of time to get it down to a real guitar. MIDI can get close, but it will still be very artificial sounding without paying a lot of money with a lot of math skills and time. Although we are bridging the gap slowly and slowly, but for now its easier to record with other technology than MIDI.

yeah midi has its draw backs but shoot i was playing with one of those old casio's nearly ten years ago with newer roland modules and loving every minute of it, took about an hour to adjust my playing to the cheap casio guitar with the plastic strings. still got to get another one, but cash is tight right now

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