terryfalafel wrote:The 'it's more convenient' stuff does sound a lot like bollocks for the casual user.
The other reason they mentioned seems like good sense to me. It's worth some faffery when upgrading to protect the device against being totally bricked if a firmware update goes wrong.
ow, I'll admit it does sound quite reasonable from an engineering point of view, and on paper.
I mean, the protection issue seems like a good idea, but I never had any firmware update go wrong in the past in all those years, so yeah, what can I say : I guess I'll see if that makes sense in a few years from now.
I don't know, I don't want to come across as a complaining motherfucker who doesn't even bother to do a little research on shit or whatever. I mean, if I had looked into that issue of Live freezing up on me when I was on the net too long, I would have found out about that bug fix ages ago. (But as said, I kind of liked the improvement on the workflow it had as a practical result.
)
But nonetheless, I will always, in general, look at things from a simple
user point of view, not from a technical engineering point of view. So yeah, more convenience, my ass...
I was thinking yesterday evening about what it is that gets on my nerves about things breaking down, or companies giving you lousy upgrades/updates/customer service/...
And honestly, it comes down to 2 kinds of things :
the stuff you have the feeling you can learn something from,
and the stuff that you'll learn nothing new from at all, and that will just get on your nerves for days, weeks, possibly even months, and will just cost you money.
To me, that's a very important distinction there.
Let's think of a few examples...
A few years ago, I got a new Midas mixer, got some patch bays, and rewired the whole studio.
I just replaced all my unbalanced cables with balanced ones.
For some reason, as soon as I played the kick of my Jomox through my mixer, it would go "tack", just some sort of extremely loud high snap sound. Reason : the signal just got far too hot instantly. Problem was solved immediately when I ran an unbalanced cable from my Jomox to my patch bay. Funny thing was this was only necessary for like 3 or 4 of the maybe 8 outs. No idea why, not a real motivation/interest to find out either.
Took me some time, and a few crappy mails back and forth with mr Michaelis
(who can be a grumpy bastard at times),
but afterwards, I really had the feeling "hey, now I really learned something, I knew on paper the big difference in signal levels between balanced vs unbalanced, but boy, hearing it like that sure puts that carved into your brain in a way you won't soon forget".
And of course there's so many other little problems.
In the last 1,5 years or so, I had each of my monitors fail on me. Good thing I have a tech that can make them for a very reasonable price, but you're still temporarily fucked.
Then my power conditioner broke down, like 4 months out of a 5 year warranty.
Then I had it fixed and it broke down again like 3 weeks later, so I just went out and bought a new one.
And power supply's, who just get cheaper and cheaper, so of course they break down more easily.
And fucking USB cables man... I had at least 3 or so break down on me in the last 6 months.
And though I never remember one single MIDI cable break down on me in my first 15 years with synths,
I somehow had at least 4 or 5 break down on me in the last year...
You learn from the problem solving shit. You learn to think about every different aspect in the chain that could possibly be the reason for something not working. And of course there is a certain sense of pride when you get it solved. Especially if, like me, you are someone with no technical background whatsoever earlier on in life.
But it's always the stress, the fucking stress, and the frustration, and the "losing time again" feeling.
So yeah, in the end, I just wonder : what the fuck was this or that ever useful for ?
Like the whole fucking irritating experience with the FW to TB and the lousy Apogee response ?
That was just a huge fucking waste of time (and money when you think about it).
Things break down, I know - I even have an emergency fund for my studio which I save up for every month,
just so I have some cash for when something "serious" breaks down - and I know I shouldn't expect every stupid little breaking down moment to possibly hold some value in the end. But nonetheless, it's a way of looking at frustrating shit to make them less negative in the long run. Call me naïve.
But a few weeks ago, some of the keys of my trusted XV88 have stopped coming back up,
only after 15 years of heavy (and very loyal !!) service.
I use this thing every day, so it's very annoying to me.
I know I can send it in, and then wait for a few weeks and then pay a few hundred euro's probably.
But I looked around on youtube a bit, and found this video of some guy showing you how you can replace the keys yourself. So yeah, fuck that shit, I'll just order me some keys and try it myself.
After all, this is more a mechanical problem. It's not some bug in a program somewhere that I can't even touch.
You know what I mean ?
So, to end my long rambling,
I found the ethernet upgrade just a waste of time tbh,
and I have the feeling I learned fuck all from it in the end.