Moog new "Little Secret"

[kuroichi]

The iPad isnt a musical tool. Its just capable of musical results.

Just like when people used to sell calculators with little keyboards in them.

[tekkentool]

I don't understand your point. Sure my computer wasn't designed to solely be a musical instrument but I can put out fully formed and musical tracks using it. But yeah I suppose it is just like when they put a synth on a calculator. Just a little toy designed to amuse people. No bullshit anywhere in that statement.

You will give me an eye condition from the amount of eye rolling that post made me do.

[Ashe37]

Mitch, did you have decent audio I/O connected to anything, or was it the onboard speaker and headphones?

[Stab Frenzy]

well, to me it makes perfect sense that a guy who avoids VSTs would be amazed by an iPad music app which is roughly the specs of a VST from 2003... It just took having 'moog' printed on it to get over the bias...

I feel like a lot of modern digital hardware gets a lot of (undeserved) hype thanks to most people not being computer savvy enough to realize the same s**t has been done for years on the computer end of things (for example, most software amp sims were miles above the POD in quality, with that only even coming into debate again thanks to the pod HD, and the v-piano basically being a 4000+ dollar version of pianoteq a few years too late)

The ipad is a computer, not a 'modern digital hardware'. If moog have made a software instrument for it it'll sound like a VST from 2011 not a VST from 2003. What is your point exactly, that digital hardware is bad, but softsynths are good, unless they're made by moog in which case they're bad? That doesn't really make a lot of sense.

[kuroichi]

I don't understand your point. Sure my computer wasn't designed to solely be a musical instrument but I can put out fully formed and musical tracks using it. But yeah I suppose it is just like when they put a synth on a calculator. Just a little toy designed to amuse people. No bullshit anywhere in that statement.

You will give me an eye condition from the amount of eye rolling that post made me do.

Who said anything about your computer?

My point is that the iPads interface is not designed solely as a musical one. Im not saying it's just a toy, but rather it's designed to be multiple things at once, and that as far as musical interaction its limited to a flat surface. It's essentially the touchpad on a voyager, minus some slight differences. I'm not saying a computer cant make 'fully formed' music, I'm saying it's not an instrument, which might explain some of reason why hardware digital synths etc get more recognition.

Mitch mentions digital hardware being behind computer software, but he fails to mention that a lot of digital hardware, for example the V Piano, has been designed to function through a musical interface one that a musician would (I imagine) find better suited to his or her talents, than a computer, which has no musical responsiveness what so ever unless you tap it and record that sound.

[Adrian Smith]

I'd be interested if it was a program for controlling moog hardware.
14-bit CC faders preprogrammed for the Voyager, Phatties, midi murf, and clusterflux
lot's O' midi LFOs and Envelopes
with a sequencer to automated parameter changes

but with no usb port, I doubt that's what it is

I can fairly confidently say that it will not be a controller of somesort.

Why would there be an audio cable plugged into it in the video?

[MitchK1989]

Mitch, did you have decent audio I/O connected to anything, or was it the onboard speaker and headphones?

Yup. Used a camera connection kit and class complaint audio interface into the same studio monitors I use with my computer (admittedly not amazing, but not shitty stereo or 'computer' speakers)

If moog have made a software instrument for it it'll sound like a VST from 2011 not a VST from 2003.

That's quite simply not true, because the iPad is only as powerful as a computer from 2003, so it simply cannot do many of the more processor intensive functions which set 2011 softsynths apart from 2003 ones (h**l, I have a fairly nice computer and its still possible to bring it to its knees with enough oversampling and audio rate modulations in the synths that will really let you do that stuff like ACE, Cypher, and to a lesser extent NI MASSIVE)

The digital hardware comment was kind off topic, and only slightly related (most digital hardware has DSP chips in them nowhere near powerful enough to run your average modern software synth... Exception being the kind of multiple chained sharc chips you find in the dave bowen solaris and such)

[Stab Frenzy]

the iPad is only as powerful as a computer from 2003

Nope.

[MitchK1989]

the iPad is only as powerful as a computer from 2003

Nope.

Oh sorry, it's actually far less powerful, as in 2003 you could get a pentium 4 with clock speed of 3.0 GHz while the iPad 2 has two cores of 1GHz each (and at least with the current state of DSP synthesis anything that has to be in sync real time with other parts of code needs to run as one thread, so a single synth part can only use one core)

[Ashe37]

the iPad is only as powerful as a computer from 2003

Nope.

Oh sorry, it's actually far less powerful, as in 2003 you could get a pentium 4 with clock speed of 3.0 GHz while the iPad 2 has two cores of 1GHz each (and at least with the current state of DSP synthesis anything that has to be in sync real time with other parts of code needs to run as one thread, so a single synth part can only use one core)

Actually, the 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 was the fastest PC CPU available starting in April 2003 when it shipped, and the 3.2 Ghz model shipped in June. The Ipad 2 also has 1066 mhz DDR2 memory, which is several steps up from the DDR (1) 333mhz that is the best available in 2003. So yes, a bleeding edge PC from 2003 was faster. The average PC not so much. Anything portable, like a laptop was about the same speed or slower. As we learned when moving from 3 Ghz P4s to 1.6 Ghz Core2 CPUs, it isn't all about MHz.

While your synthesis may be running as a single thread, other things can be running on the other core. Also remember that the synthesis engine that is running as a single thread would be for a single note. And just because it is running as a single processor thread does not mean that it is only processing one instruction at a time... processors are capable of and have been capable of processing multiple instructions at the same time (superscalar processing) and everything these days is written for this. (Superscalar processing came into PC processors with the Pentium.)

[Automatic Gainsay]

Im not saying it's just a toy, but rather it's designed to be multiple things at once, and that as far as musical interaction its limited to a flat surface. It's essentially the touchpad on a voyager, minus some slight differences. I'm not saying a computer cant make 'fully formed' music, I'm saying it's not an instrument, which might explain some of reason why hardware digital synths etc get more recognition.

This is the crux of the matter.

[Stab Frenzy]

blah blah blah numbers

it isn't all about MHz.

This.

Processing power aside, eight years of progress in software development makes a difference, especially when we're talking about the eight years between 2003 and 2011. In 2003 software synths were a relatively new thing and so development was still in its infancy. Developers have spent those eight years refining their algorithms to make soft synths sound better, not just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and waiting for CPU clock speeds to increase.

Anyway, didn't you say that digital hardware synths sound much worse than soft synths? Where does a softsynth running on an ipad sit in that spectrum? How do you define 'better'?

[GuyaGuy]

I don't understand your point. Sure my computer wasn't designed to solely be a musical instrument but I can put out fully formed and musical tracks using it. But yeah I suppose it is just like when they put a synth on a calculator. Just a little toy designed to amuse people. No bullshit anywhere in that statement.

You will give me an eye condition from the amount of eye rolling that post made me do.

Who said anything about your computer?

My point is that the iPads interface is not designed solely as a musical one. Im not saying it's just a toy, but rather it's designed to be multiple things at once, and that as far as musical interaction its limited to a flat surface. It's essentially the touchpad on a voyager, minus some slight differences. I'm not saying a computer cant make 'fully formed' music, I'm saying it's not an instrument, which might explain some of reason why hardware digital synths etc get more recognition.

You must have a very restrictive or antiquated notion of what an instrument is. To me, if it helps me make music, it is an instrument, regardless of whether or not it also surfs the web like my computer or cuts wood like a singing saw or holds knick knacks like Liberace's piano.

[GuyaGuy]

Also ipads do a LOT more than what the Voyager touch pad can.
For example, I'm posting on VSE right now not from a Voyager but from an iPad.

[tunedLow]

Im not saying it's just a toy, but rather it's designed to be multiple things at once, and that as far as musical interaction its limited to a flat surface. It's essentially the touchpad on a voyager, minus some slight differences. I'm not saying a computer cant make 'fully formed' music, I'm saying it's not an instrument, which might explain some of reason why hardware digital synths etc get more recognition.

This is the crux of the matter.

Edit - Little Secret - some kind of touch pad interface for the little phatty? I haven't read through all of this thread very carefully, perhaps that's already been thrown out.