No question software is incredibly vulnerable to planned entropy. I've spent a fortune keeping up with the digital Joneses but turns out the digital Joneses are all hula skirts and Hawaiian shirts and no palm trees or ocean - or as they say in country music, 'All hat, no horse'. They keep adding bells and whistles to every aspect of the experience that clog the data arteries. Go figure.
The move from regular wires to db25 which started around eight years ago has cost me a couple thousand pints of blood and totally forces new logic on my studio design. I don't know if anything was gained from that. Dats, ADATS... all worth about as much as a used mousetrap these days.
The old saw is, Digital is a capitalist's wet dream. Like buying a car that, in five years you won't be able to find tires or gasoline for.
Revamping the wiring of my studio now. It's like Extreme Tetris. Enormous logistics, turning the Rubric's Cube this way and that and each time seeing new options and better, more ergonomic ways to set it up.
As I said before, I used to love technology but now I pretty much resent its time sucking intrusion into my creative process. High tech used to work for me, but now I work for it! And the improvements strike me as running downhill.
It's a transfer of wealth from the creative class to technology. So my forty year spending spree is pretty much over - as Rick Walker was sort of saying. I'm not paying Avid $1000 a year to subscribe to hardware and software (Pro Tools HDX) I've owned for decades.
Someone in a third world country could feed, house, raise and educate a family of twelve... and retire in comfort for what I've spent on this stuff.
I do think someone could make a fine living stripping out all the bells and whistles from the OS and selling those versions to recently born again, time strapped Luddites like me. Same with software function of DAWs.
There's nothing like a great guitar and great amp. It's the willing spouse that's ever attractive and exotically faithful. Add some pedals and your kingdom has come! Of course, there's 20 fine guitars on my wall now and ten fine amps in the back room, but as long as I fire 'em up once a month, they will be singing long after this very expensive digital stuff has gone to the recycling centre... or sold for $200.
Don't think my AxeFX II XL+ will be worth a dozen sets of guitar strings in ten years - but it IS fun.
There are some good digital companies like Spectrasonics that makes Omnisphere. Also Native Instruments big Kontakt, although integration into Vienna Ensemble Pro requires huge Tetris finagling and hours under the hood trying to get the pistons all moving harmoniously.
I just wanted to play music - not fly the Starship Enterprise!
I'm hoping this studio revision will make it easier, but I'm sure the software update/upgrade guys will do all they can to eat my precious time.
My current thoughts on Time? Don't spend it all in one place!
:)
Richard Sales