On 07/02/2011 20:54, Andy Farnell wrote:
..
In this respect I cite the often-quoted definition of an engineer:
"someone who can build for two bucks what anyone can build for
three".
That's one pretty narrow definition of an engineer, and a little
uncharitable. Sure you can get those kind of engineers to build
you a Tahoma bridge or solid fuel boosters for your space shuttle,
but the dollar saved will cost you two. Here's a real engineer for ya:
I can't put a lot of time into this reply, too much else to do. But I
will paraphrase my quote as follows, as I fear you have completely
misread its import:
"An engineer is someone who can make a process run in real time on a
small slow cheap CPU that anyone can make run in real time on a large
fast expensive one." Engineers know how to do more with less, while the
rest of us manage to do a little with rather a lot. Charitable enough?
There is already talk on the bench that computers are now so fast that
there is no need to bother with code optimisation any more. Except that
all of a sudden people want to run a music studio on their iPod.
Engineers needed!
..
I just came back from a meeting at a major research university
where they are so afraid of submarine patents in "unrelated
areas" that they have no choice but to "jump in an take a risk"
because the complexity and cost of search is overwhelming.
Does that sound like a system that is working?
I never suggested the system was working. Indeed I agree that it is not.
You want to dismantle it altogether, which I suspect is unlikely. It was
supposed to protect the solo inventor against exploitation by "the big
guys". That is still IMO a good idea. Rather than throw it out, I am
suggesting that there must be an, um, pragmatic engineering solution -
get it working properly so that it ~can~ protect the little guys.
..
Are you saying that no software implementations of FM, whether in
stand-alone or plugin form, whether free or for sale, were ever
held up or stifled by the existence and interpretation of the
Yamaha "FM patent"? What about hardware implementations that didn't
infringe on Yamaha's patent but never made to market because of
fear, uncertainty and doubt? That _never_ happened right?
I can't answer huge generalities of this kind. I am certainly not aware
of any such case. I was watching both the industry and academia really
closely all through the 80s and beyond as I was writing a reference book
about it all. The cheap FM chip in the early Soundblaster cards (and
very widely licensed at clearly not high cost as those cards were cheap
cheap cheap) is still revered in some quarters. If you have some
specific cases, you need to cite them.
"plugins" is in any case somewhat of an anachronism with respect to "the
FM patent". That expired around 1995; the first spec for VST appeared in
1996 according to Wikipedia. Around the time, in fact, when a lot of
people mostly of the younger generation "brought up on digital" were
claiming we no longer needed live musicians, orchestras, etc, as you
could now "do everything digitally".
My impression is, FWIW, that the success of the DX7 and its kin brought
digital audio to the consciousness of the mainstream, both for the
general musical public and in academia, and triggered a massive
flourishing of innovation and ideas everywhere - it created a market
where there basically wasn't one before, it made analogue synths (for a
while) absolutely out of fashion as everyone "went digital". We have to
remember that digital audio was "around" well before the analogue synth
"revolution" epitomised by "Switched-On Bach" and the MiniMoog; but
confined entirely to the few departments that ran software such as MUSIC
V and had access to audio converters. And remember that Stanford first
showed the FM idea to Hammond (of organ fame) and they saw no point in
it at all. So much for being "obvious". It really wasn't, at the time
(all those pesky Bessel functions). Hindsight is always 20/20, etc.
...
(BTW, I'm a ~particularly~ deserving
inventor of something not a million miles from FM, but it needs
HPC-style resources to run in real time).
Well that's cool. Maybe I've got a couple hundred thousand and
looking for a project to put some money into. Problem is, I'm
a bit nervous about this patent mess. Tell you what, you fund a
patent search and come back to me with irrefutable proof that your
design doesn't infringe on any existing patents and we will talk. ;)
It's all in the public domain already, and called "Transformational FM",
made possible by the Sliding Phase Vocoder. Presented at ICMC 2007 (with
John Chowning in the audience - I suspect he was somewhat underwhelmed).
And yes, it's in Csound. Sound examples here:
http://dream.cs.bath.ac.uk/SDFT/index.html
Now, it needs serious hardware to get it viable for the consumer in real
time. Unlikely as a plugin for many years yet, if at all. But it's
already in the public domain so it can't be patented - yay! So the
chances of a company developing custom silicon to run it affordably in
real time are probably vanishingly small. No chip, no card, no plugin,
no new effect. No composer will be able to make use of it unless they
are veeerrry patient and abandon all thoughts of MIDI control. Don't
even ~think~ of implementing it in PD. Still, "watch this space" etc...
Richard Dobson
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