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From: garton@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Bradford Garton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Sound
Message-ID: <1990Mar22.150600.11268@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 90 15:06:00 GMT
References: <404@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <7344@hydra.gatech.EDU> <412@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Sender: usenet@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (The Network News)
Reply-To: brad@woof.columbia.edu (Brad Garton)
Organization: Columbia University Electronic Music Center
Lines: 29

In article <412@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes:
>
>Take your SPARCstation audio file and incant
>
>sndconvert -o nextified.snd -f 1 -s 8012.8210513 -c 1 -r sun-sound
>
> [...] OK, we're only
>talking about telephone-quality audio

For some reason, this point always seems lost when comparing NeXT with
computers X, Y or Z.  I think Sun really missed the boat when they decided
to go with an 8-bit/8k audio device.  No other machine that I know of can
come close to providing the integrated *high quality* audio software and
hardware that NeXT for anywhere near the price.  Yes I know there are
reasonably-priced DSP and audio cards for Macs, Amigas, PCs, etc., but can I
run cmix and csound on them with minimal pain?  Is there any MusicKit or
SoundKit equivalent?  Inexpensive removable media for the large storage
required for serious sound work? Blah blah blah...

We get soooo critical about how displays look, etc. but are willing to live
with sound quality that is poor at best.  I'm hoping that this will change
when "multi-media" systems (or whatever the current buzzword is) become more
commonplace.  May the best sound win!

Of course, I'm probably just a little prejudiced in this respect...

Brad Garton
Music Department -- Columbia University
brad@woof.columbia.edu