Orange Crush-puter

Mages · Post by **Mages** » Sat Apr 17, 2010 4:52 am

DGNR8 wrote:Here's the real question: why are we still using a 30 year old software language for music (MIDI)?

because so much stuff is compatible with it. you can use your 80s drum machine or keyboard as an interface to trigger stuff on your computer or vice-versa. it rules.

Reece · Post by **Reece** » Sat Apr 17, 2010 10:32 am

mage wrote:
DGNR8 wrote:Here's the real question: why are we still using a 30 year old software language for music (MIDI)?
because so much stuff is compatible with it. you can use your 80s drum machine or keyboard as an interface to trigger stuff on your computer or vice-versa. it rules.

I wrote an essay on this once.

MIDI is well specified and it's grown to incorporate a bunch of extra stuff since it was first conceived. It came along and blew away all the weird proprietary connectors and protocols that synth makers were using.

It does exactly what it needs to most of the time.

robroe · Post by **robroe** » Sat Apr 17, 2010 1:10 pm

i used to put my PA speakers on both sides of my old TV. back in the day everyone came over to my house to watch Mtv because it was so FUCKING LOUD.

anyways it developed a rainbow oval in the bottom part of the screen very quickly. i just got used to it and didn't give a fuck.

if you want to have a lot of fun, go to the flea market buy an old 10" woofer for like 5 bucks and tear the magnet off it and play around with an old tv set by putting the giant fucking magnet right on the screen.

hotrodperlmutter · Post by **hotrodperlmutter** » Sat Apr 17, 2010 2:53 pm

...and that concludes robroes magical scientifical fun projects you can do it at home that have a 99.9% probability of pissing your parents off. tune in next week when discover what happens to skin and flesh when you spray a can of compressed air upside down.

NickS · Post by **NickS** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 8:43 pm

BacchusPaul wrote:Surely strong magnets and vibrations around are hard drive are a bad idea?

Definitely a bad idea. Just shouting at disks can cause retries.
[youtube] [/youtube]

avj · Post by **avj** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:32 pm

I don't think you guys are giving these engineers enough credit. Do you really anything mentioned in this thread was not already addressed long ago in the design and testing process? Granted, there have been plenty of incredible engineering missteps around the world in many areas -- but I don't think we'd even be hearing about the product if they had yet to work out the most minor of details, such as placing a giant vibrating magnet near a supposedly-functional computer.

Also, the final product could work if there were some incredibly ridiculous restriction, like the speaker will never operate while the computer is running. Sure, you can record and do all sorts of fun stuff direct to the computer, but the speaker will not operate; once the computer is powered off, it returns to normal amplifier mode. Note that there are the typical speaker/headphone/line-in jacks on the rear panel. The press release is written in an ambiguous enough way that this could very well be the case.

Having said that, I do think it happens to be a completely impractical idea -- but there is most likely a market for it.