Has digital audio innovation (mostly) stopped?

[hibidy]

I don't know that it's stopped. I think a few years back when the iphone app revolution was on that it was in danger. It really appeared for a while that people that wanted to make music on their computer were going to suffer. I don't really feel that way now.

As far as the idea that you need "new" to be creative......yes and no. I mean, I've got a bunch of lovely stuff that is basically stable and works. But I thirst for fresh ideas (or performance improvements) An example of something I kinda badmouthed and then finally "got" and use now is bitwig. It's not trying to be everyone else. It's almost an instrument inside of itself. To say that it recharged me musically is an understatement.

Since that is a relatively new product and they seem to be in touch with their users, I'd say innovation has not stopped. But it's not necessarily available on every corner.

[blueman]

I think I just got a bit spoiled and greedy; it's interesting to hear your perspectives though.

I was worried about the mobile craze, but it does appear desktop development is continuing onward. I think what gets old fast, for me, is the continuous barrage of simulations/emulations and recreations of the hardware world. That incessant need to near-perfectly copy what was done long ago is what looks like lack of innovation--I really thought we would have worked this out of our systems by now. Okay, whatever, I'm just ranting anyhow

[DJ Warmonger]

It's only recently when I figured out that there are other possible synthesis tools than substractive... wavetable, FM, granular - you name it. Now need to own a plugin that can do each of these, which is actually pretty inspiring.

In fact I see that people still come up with new things and they are actually innovative and not just random rearrangement of existing techniques. Serum is innovative, Bazille is innovative, Mangle is innovative - to me, at last.

As to effects, I discovered Ableton Corpus to be holy grail of (re)synthesis - add physically-modelled resonance to already existing sounds! So far all effects in the chain were more or less destructive, removing frequencies and blurring or distorting the sound. Corpus can add melodic content to the tune which lacks it, including processed samples and granular swarms.

On the other hand, I think that the innovation doesn't come from synths at all - it comes from user. I never had too little ideas, just not enough skills or tools to realize them. And not enough time

[Hink]

I think I just got a bit spoiled and greedy; it's interesting to hear your perspectives though.

I was worried about the mobile craze, but it does appear desktop development is continuing onward. I think what gets old fast, for me, is the continuous barrage of simulations/emulations and recreations of the hardware world. That incessant need to near-perfectly copy what was done long ago is what looks like lack of innovation--I really thought we would have worked this out of our systems by now. Okay, whatever, I'm just ranting anyhow

nah, I dont think you're ranting tbh, I do agree with you though. Sometimes it's hard to see the trees because of the forest in your way and I have that to be the case here at times. For 14 1/2 years we lived at a place where miking a cab was just so impractical because of outside noise. After giving up trying to mic up my cab and record I bought a Sansamp GT-2 in like 97, before we moved in 2010 I went through two generations of the POD, many, many amp sims and really I wasn't complaining about not having an amp. Then we moved here and this whole wave of low wattage tube amps was well under way, now you dont see me in amp sim threads much.

I grew up hearing solidstate amps saying things like "sounds just like a tube amp" or tube amps and solidstate amps alike saying "sounds just like a Marshall". TBT sound wise I am not going to be able to sit down and say "that's a sim and that's a tube amp" just by listening to someone's music and even more important is the fact that I do not have some magical memory that allows me to remember exactly how my old amps from back in the day sounded like. What I can say is at the time I did like how they sounded for me. But would they still sound the same to me 20-30 years later to me?

So I see all that as just marketing and really not only are they trying reinvent the same ol same ol when it comes to gear but they are using the same marketing as well but now it's "sounds just like a Marshall, sounds just like a Boogie" and the list goes on and on and on and on. The fact is for me is it isn't about what it sounds like and nothing is more important than how it sounds when I am playing. Of course I didn't realize that until I had some amps in the house, flipping that stanby switch also flips a switch in my brain I sometimes think. Of course it's all in my head, but it's me playing so that's okay.

Meanwhile, I have to state again that I consider myself extremely lucky to have grown as a person and a musician in this technology era. It seems technology grew parallel to my capability of understanding the new technology which is awesome for me. I dont know what technology will be next but I suspect it will more in the control aspect of using computers, for instance being able to just move your hands and fingers in the air to move faders, knobs and switches on your software.

But by far the best thing is that this is just my perspective from my personal journey and while I may meet people along the way no one else will follow the exact path as me. There is plenty out there for everyone and once again my growth parallels technology as it applies to me. As you posted this Rich I am in a place where I went through getting excited and running out grabbing all these synths and fx/dp. Now as it seems technology has slowed for me it's not a bad thing because frankly, I am sick of installing things and worse re-installing all those things when I get a new machine.

What a fantastic time to be a guitar player, that's really all I am going to care about and I consider myself quite fortunate

[robogone]

I don't know that it matters - no one should be leaning on tools so heavily that innovation of tools is more important than innovation in making music...

[DSmolken]

There's been massive progress in making existing things which were a huge pain in the ass convenient and easy.

Right now you have things like the Seaboard or 46" touch screen mixers which are innovative but very painfully expensive. Given time, they'll probably be cheaply mass-produced. Chopping thousands of samples is still a pain, and someday somebody's going to make it easy and boring to take a batch of drum runs and automatically split them into 127 velocity layers with a few round robins each.

I'm sure there are also people out there working on doing totally weird, impractical and useless things with sound. Someone else will figure out a way to make them pratical and useful someday.

[sbj]

I don't know that it matters - no one should be leaning on tools so heavily that innovation of tools is more important than innovation in making music...

Amen(break) to that

[jancivil]

No, innovation is specifically happening. Stephan Schmitt is still at it.
Take Skanner, albeit three yrs old I believe, it is a novel design. Now, I can imagine people hating to work with it, or failing to grok it, as once you really do stuff with it it becomes rather wild.

Or SonicCouture Geosonics, taking deep field recordings which themselves are really unique and 'tuning' them and the combination of techniques, which are, 'filters and secondary filter envelopes', not in themselves new but the combination in this particular whole approach is absolutely innovative and will tend to produce results that are novel.

And yes, xoxos is innovative kind of as a rule, here. Although I don't have access to his work being on the Mac platform, I can confidently state that out of even a general understanding technically.

[DSmolken]

There's a lot of room for progress in the area of physical modeling, too. I wonder how long it will take until we have a reasonably accurate physical model of a waterphone.

[BERFAB]

We've gotten to the point where the available tools can just about compose and perform the art we supposedly create.

Granted, I'm very old school. As soon as the technology got to the point where I could play on all my tracks with real, or realistic, instruments, and record an unlimited number of tracks, and effect those tracks with an unlimited combination of effects, and mix them with serious hardware emulations, I was happy. Everything else, every new synth, innovative effect, creative sampling tool or instrument emulation, is simply icing on the cake.

That said, I have faith in the creative capabilities of the devs. Everything can be improved in ways that we probably aren't even aware of yet. And thus, we may be in a bit of a lull right now, but the future is both long and bright.

Cheers
-B

[synzh]

Just from my (admittedly limited) perspective, I've played with a lot of VSTs over the years, and here are some that seem to be either fairly unique or a new take on old concepts, that can show there are still tons of possibilities in the future (I'm sure this list could continue to be expanded out ad infinitum):
aalto
enzyme
ppg wavegenerator
glass viper
rayblaster
synplant
iris
breaktweaker
liquid rhythm
absynth
hg fortune synths
nuklear
audio damage effects
the other many ways additive can be done, which have only just begun IMHO

[hibidy]

I don't know that it matters - no one should be leaning on tools so heavily that innovation of tools is more important than innovation in making music...

Amen(break) to that

Really?

I guess then there is really no point to being here either then

[Hink]

We've gotten to the point where the available tools can just about compose and perform the art we supposedly create.

Granted, I'm very old school. As soon as the technology got to the point where I could play on all my tracks with real, or realistic, instruments, and record an unlimited number of tracks, and effect those tracks with an unlimited combination of effects, and mix them with serious hardware emulations, I was happy. Everything else, every new synth, innovative effect, creative sampling tool or instrument emulation, is simply icing on the cake.

That said, I have faith in the creative capabilities of the devs. Everything can be improved in ways that we probably aren't even aware of yet. And thus, we may be in a bit of a lull right now, but the future is both long and bright.

Cheers
-B

I hear yah B-man I say it all the time, we've been lucky haven't we? If I dont talk to you, have a happy holiday season my friend

[hibidy]

I also think that people should not buy flatscreen tvs....what was wrong with that B & W you had before? Or that amc pacer?

And dentistry....why the frig has that changed? You don't "need" braces, you could still eat

Or water treatment. People in ____________ don't have treated water.....does't stop them from drinking water.

Sounds ridiculous? That's exactly how I feel every time I hear this nonsense about not needing better technology to make music. As long as you are speaking for yourself, that fine, but it seems like people are always trying to speak FOR people who want updates and new ideas. That really sucks.

[Mivo]

You could always switch to hardware! Lots of stuff to buy there and at high enough prices to not run out of things that might interest you.

I just bought an Elektron Analog Rytm because I felt software gave me so much choice that I started to feel paralyzed. Hopefully, I'll be making more music with it instead of buying plugins.