Strangely, all I had to do was install PLAY and, er, play with it.

Then again, I have always known that I'm special.

Quote redleicester:

---

Really is a fairly simple rig, but given the above, I am rather bored of being told I don't know what I'm doing, and that clearly it's all my fault as I don't know how to set up a kompooter properly...

---

Sure, but you do realise that with every bit of gear you attach to your rig, your chances of encountering an incompatibility increase accordingly?

Go on, try the bare bones approach I suggested earlier. I'd be very surprised if you couldn't get PLAY to work that way.

Quote Tui:

---

Quote redleicester:

---

Really is a fairly simple rig, but given the above, I am rather bored of being told I don't know what I'm doing, and that clearly it's all my fault as I don't know how to set up a kompooter properly...

---

Sure, but you do realise that with every bit of gear you attach to your rig, your chances of encountering an incompatibility increase accordingly?

Go on, try the bare bones approach I suggested earlier. I'd be very surprised if you couldn't get PLAY to work that way.

---

Already done chap, on one 32-bit and one 64-bit slave built from the ground up...

--------------------
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

... And..? Enquiring minds want to know.

Quote Tui:

---

... And..? Enquiring minds want to know.

---

Sorry, thought the answer was implicit in the explanation - no joy, zip, nada, nix, naff all. Made little discernable difference, still didn't work to any reasonable standard of operation.

--------------------
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Bummer. That's really bad.

Now, can you do the same with one of the Macs? That simply has got to work. When I said I never had a problem with my two Intel Macs, I honestly meant it. Up until this thread, I was unaware of the massive problems some (many?) people seem to encounter.

If I remember correctly, I think I noticed a couple of samples in SD2 that didn't play well or perhaps glitched, but considering the size of SD2, I didn't take much notice and pretty much forgot about it. Most of my libraries contain the odd duff sample (Kirk Hunter, for example), and I kind of take that for granted. Importantly, however, PLAY never gave me any real problems, but happily works alongside all the stuff I listed earlier.

Quote Pete (Conz) Connelly:

---

Everything should be built to protocol that will work universally, in a way that MIDI was devised back in the early 80's. If component manufactures worked together and stuck to standards, life would be a LOT simpler for s/w developers.

---

That's exactly how it's supposed to work - it's called an API. Nothing is going to talk directly to anything - it's always going to be through several layers of abstraction. That's not to say that many APIs aren't over complex, badly documented or just plain buggy of course. There are also of course platform specific.

To other comments earlier, what hardware you have plugged into your DAW really shouldn't make any difference - but admittedly you are opening yourself up to any bugs in the associated drivers.

All of these really does sound like incredibly poor testing on EW's part. It really shouldn't be this hard - highly likely their code is just poor, also inexperience could mean they are invoking stuff in pretty non-standard ways and exposing platform bugs or they themselves are using some pretty buggy 3rd party libraries. Either way it does sound totally unacceptable.

Quote Tui:

---

If I remember correctly, I think I noticed a couple of samples in SD2 that didn't play well or perhaps glitched, but considering the size of SD2, I didn't take much notice and pretty much forgot about it.

---

Aha!

Tui, do me a favour chap if you would, load up the following midi performance please:

Glitch Ma XXXitch 4/4 130. What do you get?

If you get the drop outs, mute the following sample: 130bpm Glitched drone. What do you get now?

Cheers

Quote Kevin Nolan:

---

- Sound on Sound reviews, in not identifying and flagging this significant issue should not be trusted; and at a bare minimum the reviewer(s) of EW products should be disregarded from here on in.

---

Not entirely sure I'm with you on this Kevin - reviewing software in particular is a tricky business, and can easily swing both ways: You could (as clearly Dave Stewart did), have totally plain sailing and see no issues, even if that was a million to one shot, it could still happen.

Conversely you could have crashes/bugs/issues on a machine that no one else experiences, and support staff cannot reproduce... Basically just the same as a user themselves may have a utopian experiance or a dystopian one.

I think it's a little unfair to point fingers at specific reviewers, it's not an easy exercise as anyone involved in the field will agree I'm sure, and others would be just as quick to leap on the over-cautious reviewer for being paranoid or picking holes if they covered every single itty-bitty fault found.

That said I am astonished that there have been nothing but positive reviews, given the number of issues raised on these forums and on countless others over the past 18 months, and that scant attention has been paid to looking back and wondering why.

--------------------
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Quote HugoL:

---

That's exactly how it's supposed to work - it's called an API. Nothing is going to talk directly to anything - it's always going to be through several layers of abstraction.

---

The other issue for things like sample playback engines is that not all APIs are realtime safe, the audio handling code typically must not (for example) call anything that might allocate memory (Thereby causing page faults), and typically the audio code cannot even draw anything on the screen (memory management and locking issues), this sort of bug can be **HARD** to track down and its appearance can be highly system dependant. Realtime programming is a totally different mindset to writing GUI code.

Quote:

---

That's not to say that many APIs aren't over complex, badly documented or just plain buggy of course. There are also of course platform specific.

---

All too true, and often all three at the same time. There are also the cases where poorly documented API behaviour changes between different versions of the 'same' operating system.

You can test till you are blue in the face, but sometimes code that worked perfectly in all your test cases, crashes and burns when released to retail customers (Had it happen, it is painful). Of course the modern practise of pushing stuff to market without an adequate set of beta and release candidate testing (It adds a year to your release cycle if you do it right) does tend to make problems with early releases more likely.

Avoid any version number ending in .0 for anything, and especially avoid 1.0 else you WILL be a beta tester.

The real test is in how the company responds to a decent bug report.

Regards, Dan.

--------------------
Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!

I absolutely agree Dan. It does sound EW are being less than pro-active though - you'd think even if they couldn't reproduce (and I've also experienced things going wrong you'd never expect) they'd supply select people with debug code to assist.

Quote redleicester:

---

Quote Kevin Nolan:

---

- Sound on Sound reviews, in not identifying and flagging this significant issue should not be trusted; and at a bare minimum the reviewer(s) of EW products should be disregarded from here on in.

---

Not entirely sure I'm with you on this Kevin - reviewing software in particular is a tricky business, and can easily swing both ways: You could (as clearly Dave Stewart did), have totally plain sailing and see no issues, even if that was a million to one shot, it could still happen.

Conversely you could have crashes/bugs/issues on a machine that no one else experiences, and support staff cannot reproduce... Basically just the same as a user themselves may have a utopian experiance or a dystopian one.

I think it's a little unfair to point fingers at specific reviewers, it's not an easy exercise as anyone involved in the field will agree I'm sure, and others would be just as quick to leap on the over-cautious reviewer for being paranoid or picking holes if they covered every single itty-bitty fault found.

That said I am astonished that there have been nothing but positive reviews, given the number of issues raised on these forums and on countless others over the past 18 months, and that scant attention has been paid to looking back and wondering why.

---

Listen - people are paying hard earned money on these products. SOS are reviewing many of them and they have mentioned nothing of this issue, let alone its severity.

If this was a Car magazine or Audiophile magazine (as ridiculous as some Audiophile issues can be) they'd hunt down the issues until they were revealed. I'm not on an SOS bashing session for the sake of it; but I was about to purchase EW Pianos partly on the basis of SOS's recent review.

SOS reviews are increasingly toothless. They should stress test these products on multiple platforms. It should not cost a lot of money to install each of the major DAWs and test plugins in them. Virtually always, SOS reviewers clearly indicate that they review software on only a single platform / DAW. That's no use to most users.

SOS claim they are a major music recording publication, but look at the disaster that is EW Play, and not a peep out of SOS. What's the actual point of them reviewing if they are not going to highlight vital issues?

EW are one of only two major orchestral sample release companies, so many people like me have invested heavily in them. This makes it all the more vital that the likes of SOS do thorough and robust reviews. But they are not. Too often their reviews are like a summary of the brochure, with nothing of substance or real world insight. This issue verifies this to be the case.

I'm honestly shocked at the severity of this issue, the apparent disinterest of EW as a company and that only a month or two ago SOS gave a great review to EW Pianos on Play. How on God's name did that reviewer not encounter this issue? It must have been the most superficial of tests.

Kevin.

Kevin, you can't pin ALL the blame on SOS. A lot of car magazines gave rave reviews to the Ford Pinto until, much later, Ralph Nader exposed a disturbing tendency for the fuel tanks to explode.

What do you think SOS is, when you demand stress testing on multiple platforms? It's a little cottage industry with a handful of full time employees. 99.9% of readers want to know about new products quickly and in as much depth as is reasonable - not 18 months after they've been launched to suit your desired "scientific peer-review" standard.

If something works OK for a reviewer on his own platform, is he really supposed to say "something wrong, surely"?

I'll concede however that in the light of widespread experiences such as this thread reveals, it might well be worth another article, underpinned by some searching questions to EW's management.

--------------------
Dynamite with a laser beam...

I have to agree though, I doesn't seem like asking too much from SOS, when we expect a major piece of software - and an expensive one at that - to get tested thoroughly on the only two universally prevalent platforms: PCs and Macs. I thought that's what we are paying our subscriptions for? If I wanted to read sales blurb, I could go to the company web sites. No, honestly, that's not good enough for "The World's Best Recording Magazine". If I had bought PLAY and couldn't get it to work on my system, I'd be fuming too.

Rousseau, is there really a file labelled "Glitch Ma XXXitch 4/4 130"? I never knew. Strange name, though, doesn't bode well for PLAY's stability, does it. I'll give it a go later when I'm back home.

Quote Steve Hill:

---

A lot of car magazines gave rave reviews to the Ford Pinto until, much later, Ralph Nader exposed a disturbing tendency for the fuel tanks to explode.

---

The difference is that (presumably) the exploding fuel tanks were not a common feature of chat on the web.

It would seem reasonable for the recent reviewer to have done some background research on the forums and to have been aware of the stability issues.

I'm finding SOS reviews to be less and less helpful. Reading a typical review (not the obvious slatings) will suggest that there may be a few issues but as far as general quality is concerned the purchase will be a good investment.

As an example consider the microphone reviews. A typical review of a 'budget' microphone will read much the same as a review of a high end system except that it will say things along the line of 'much better than the cost would suggest' or "not quite as good as the really high end but you'd have to pay a lot more to get a small increase in performance".

They never say, this microphone is ok for starting out but after you've been recording for a few years you'll wish you'd bought quality right from the start.

Increasingly the reviews have to be read 'between the lines' and opinions sought out on these forums (fora??)

J

Quote Setter:

---

Quote Steve Hill:

---

A lot of car magazines gave rave reviews to the Ford Pinto until, much later, Ralph Nader exposed a disturbing tendency for the fuel tanks to explode.

---

The difference is that (presumably) the exploding fuel tanks were not a common feature of chat on the web.

---

No internet in those days. However, it cause a major controversy not least to due to the now infamouse "Ford Pinto Memo" which basically stated that it was cheaper to pay off any resultant law suits, arising from a fatality, than implement the fuel tank redesign. Perhaps EW have decided it is cheaper to take the heat and the criticism rather than fix the issue?

Edited by thenaturallevel (08/12/08 11:08 AM)

Quote thenaturallevel:

---

No internet in those days.

---

Just testing

I should have done some background research first.

J

Quote Tui:

---

Rousseau, is there really a file labelled "Glitch Ma XXXitch 4/4 130"? I never knew. Strange name, though, doesn't bode well for PLAY's stability, does it. I'll give it a go later when I'm back home.

---

There is Tui and thanks that'd be great.

Quote Setter:

---

Quote Steve Hill:

---

They never say, this microphone is ok for starting out but after you've been recording for a few years you'll wish you'd bought quality right from the start.

---

err... isn't that what's implicit when the words "good for the money" , or "better than cost implies" and paraphrases thereof , appear ANYWHERE in a review?


reality = you get what you pay for.

it always has, and it always will
.

re: toothless SOS reviews - all credit to the management for letting a thread like this develop in its less than complimentary direction. If this was the EastWest forum, it would have been spiked by the second sentence of the first post.

As for 'reading between the lines' which seems to be the default excuse for the limp nature of most SOS reviews - that's all very well if you've some kind of insight into the MT world, but if you're a sixteen year old kid about to splash all your cash on your first mic / interface / bit of software, you don't want to be subject to the sophistries (oooh I love that word) of some been-round-the-block reviewer. Have some balls, risk offending a manufacturer and earn the respect of your paying readers - if a mic is just another Chinese bag of bolts with a new name on it, say so. If a piece of software doesn't function as advertised, say so.

Or is ad revenue always going to be king?

So many times I've read reviews of software only to think "dang, I wish I had the review version rather than the one I bought".

A case in point is Cubase SX. Early versions were PLAGUED with bugs that even a two minute use of the program would highlight, yet none of them ever seemed to affect the review machines. And these bugs were apparent on ALL systems as they were major bugs in the software, not in the system configuration.

ad revenue as king....

yeah right....

not at SOS it isn't , it never has been, and as long as Ian Gilby owns it, it never will be either..

Rousseau, I had a closer look at PLAY on my system. Some more info:

Mac Pro-8 3GHz, 8GB Apple RAM, OS 10.5.4, clocked via BNC from an Apogee AD into the Digiface.
Logic 8.0.2, I/O Buffer Size 512.
SD2 version 1.0.044. Play component version 1.0.056. PLAY preferences: Engine Memory 240 MBytes, Max Voices 256, Prime Buffer 320 kBytes, Play Buffer 384 kBytes, Engine Level 2.
Samples streamed from two software-raided Lacie FW800 d2.

For the test, I brought up a jingle I did recently. Stereo, 44.1/24. Plug-ins by Apple, Flux, PSP, URS, Schwa, Voxengo. The file has, open and loaded, 11 instances of PLAY, even though the actual tune features only the "Nepalese Two-Headed Drum" preset. Voice Limit is 16, the same as on the other, unused presets. Result: No problems, except for the GUI that turns almost entirely white when I enable Logic's window-linking feature and select a different channel. Annoying, but no big deal. This might have been fixed in a recent update.

To see if PLAY falls over or does anything strange, I added some voices - 8th and 16th notes - to all previously unused instances of PLAY. The instruments used:
Nepalese Two-Headed Drum
11 Bowl Gongs
Brake Drums
Chinese Cymbal
Finger Cymbal 1
Finger Cymbal 2
Finger Cymbal 3
Finger Cymbal 4
Giant Buddha Bell
Gongs 24inch to 35inch
Gongs 7inch to 22inch
Again, no problems, except for the GUI strangeness I mentioned earlier. To be sure, I soloed and grouped all 11 instances of PLAY, to listen for any glitches. There were none.

Now the file you mentioned, "Glitch Ma XXXitch 4/4 130", which appears on my screen as "Glitch Ma XXXitch 44 130.ewi". I loaded it, in addition to the other 11 instances of PLAY. Everything seemed well, and I got different instruments on different midi channels, as expected. For the test, I was just about to record a simple drum pattern on channel 4, when... Logic crashed. Whoooooooooooooops!

So, I re-launched Logic by loading up the same tune again (I also had to re-launch Drumcore, since it is a Rewire client). I loaded "Glitch Ma XXXitch 44 130.ewi", and recorded a few burping-type noises on channel 1. No problems, they played back in sync with the rest of the tune. I then tried to record some drums on channel 4, this time without problems. They played back in sync, no glitches. Logic held up as well, 100%.

I then loaded "130 bpm glitched drone.ewi", replacing the previous multi. No problems. It played in sync with the tune, no glitches.

There you have it. On my system, with a version of PLAY that is probably outdated (I haven't checked for a while), I only encountered serious issues once with the multi you mentioned (I didn't try other multies, since I generally don't use them). However, individual presets seem to always load and play OK.

Quote Tui:

---

Bummer. That's really bad.

Now, can you do the same with one of the Macs? That simply has got to work. When I said I never had a problem with my two Intel Macs, I honestly meant it. Up until this thread, I was unaware of the massive problems some (many?) people seem to encounter.

---

To which effect I earlier said:

Quote Redleicester:

---

PS - For my detractors amongst those who know me, I should also be at pains to point out the Macs are not mine.

---

'Fraid not chap - I'd probably wreck some warranty, scare myself or trigger the wrath of the Job's Deity if I dared open a Mac, and the MacPros I have seen die are not mine, they're at colleagues studios...

Quote Tui:

---

Rousseau, I had a closer look at PLAY on my system. Some more info:

Mac Pro-8 3GHz, 8GB Apple RAM, OS 10.5.4, clocked via BNC from an Apogee AD into the Digiface.
Logic 8.0.2, I/O Buffer Size 512.
SD2 version 1.0.044. Play component version 1.0.056. PLAY preferences: Engine Memory 240 MBytes, Max Voices 256, Prime Buffer 320 kBytes, Play Buffer 384 kBytes, Engine Level 2.
Samples streamed from two software-raided Lacie FW800 d2.

For the test, I brought up a jingle I did recently. Stereo, 44.1/24. Plug-ins by Apple, Flux, PSP, URS, Schwa, Voxengo. The file has, open and loaded, 11 instances of PLAY, even though the actual tune features only the "Nepalese Two-Headed Drum" preset. Voice Limit is 16, the same as on the other, unused presets. Result: No problems, except for the GUI that turns almost entirely white when I enable Logic's window-linking feature and select a different channel. Annoying, but no big deal. This might have been fixed in a recent update.

To see if PLAY falls over or does anything strange, I added some voices - 8th and 16th notes - to all previously unused instances of PLAY. The instruments used:
Nepalese Two-Headed Drum
11 Bowl Gongs
Brake Drums
Chinese Cymbal
Finger Cymbal 1
Finger Cymbal 2
Finger Cymbal 3
Finger Cymbal 4
Giant Buddha Bell
Gongs 24inch to 35inch
Gongs 7inch to 22inch
Again, no problems, except for the GUI strangeness I mentioned earlier. To be sure, I soloed and grouped all 11 instances of PLAY, to listen for any glitches. There were none.

Now the file you mentioned, "Glitch Ma XXXitch 4/4 130", which appears on my screen as "Glitch Ma XXXitch 44 130.ewi". I loaded it, in addition to the other 11 instances of PLAY. Everything seemed well, and I got different instruments on different midi channels, as expected. For the test, I was just about to record a simple drum pattern on channel 4, when... Logic crashed. Whoooooooooooooops!

So, I re-launched Logic by loading up the same tune again (I also had to re-launch Drumcore, since it is a Rewire client). I loaded "Glitch Ma XXXitch 44 130.ewi", and recorded a few burping-type noises on channel 1. No problems, they played back in sync with the rest of the tune. I then tried to record some drums on channel 4, this time without problems. They played back in sync, no glitches. Logic held up as well, 100%.

I then loaded "130 bpm glitched drone.ewi", replacing the previous multi. No problems. It played in sync with the tune, no glitches.

There you have it. On my system, with a version of PLAY that is probably outdated (I haven't checked for a while), I only encountered serious issues once with the multi you mentioned (I didn't try other multies, since I generally don't use them). However, individual presets seem to always load and play OK.

---

Interesting. Why 11 instances of Play? Why not use one multitimbrally as it's designed to do?

--------------------
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

What I meant was, can't you get hold of a spare HD, install OS X and your DAW, then PLAY, to see if it still doesn't work? No need to open any boxes - us Macoids never do such scary things anyway.

Quote redleicester:

---

Interesting. Why 11 instances of Play? Why not use one multitimbrally as it's designed to do?

---

11 instances, because I thought I was going to use the sounds from those presets for several ethnic-type jingles. Basically, I worked from a self-made template. In the event, I only used that Nepalese drum sample in PLAY, and all other percussion sounds came from Drumcore and Kontakt. So, 11 is a rather arbitrary number.

You say that PLAY is designed to be used multitimbrally. I'm not sure about that. I remember reading on their forums that EW actually advises against using multies, but encourages their customers to use individual sample banks whenever possible. I forgot the exact reason, something to do with memory allocation, or something.

Also, I don't like it when software tries to make composing and sound-design decisions for me - I'd rather pick and choose the sounds myself, thank you!

Quote Tui:

---

Quote redleicester:

---

Interesting. Why 11 instances of Play? Why not use one multitimbrally as it's designed to do?

---

11 instances, because I thought I was going to use the sounds from those presets for several ethnic-type jingles. Basically, I worked from a self-made template. In the event, I only used that Nepalese drum sample in PLAY, and all other percussion sounds came from Drumcore and Kontakt. So, 11 is a rather arbitrary number.

You say that PLAY is designed to be used multitimbrally. I'm not sure about that. I remember reading on their forums that EW actually advises against using multies, but encourages their customers to use individual sample banks whenever possible. I forgot the exact reason, something to do with memory allocation, or something.

Also, I don't like it when software tries to make composing and sound-design decisions for me - I'd rather pick and choose the sounds myself, thank you!

---

Doug and Nick have indeed on several occasions espoused using multiple instances, which rather defeats the object of their marketing it as a multi-timbral instrument!

So you load a single instance of Kontakt per sound you're going to use too?

--------------------
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Quote Tui:

---

Quote redleicester:

---

Interesting. Why 11 instances of Play? Why not use one multitimbrally as it's designed to do?

---

11 instances, because I thought I was going to use the sounds from those presets for several ethnic-type jingles. Basically, I worked from a self-made template. In the event, I only used that Nepalese drum sample in PLAY, and all other percussion sounds came from Drumcore and Kontakt. So, 11 is a rather arbitrary number.

You say that PLAY is designed to be used multitimbrally. I'm not sure about that. I remember reading on their forums that EW actually advises against using multies, but encourages their customers to use individual sample banks whenever possible. I forgot the exact reason, something to do with memory allocation, or something.

Also, I don't like it when software tries to make composing and sound-design decisions for me - I'd rather pick and choose the sounds myself, thank you!

---

Thanks for the experiment Tui, and sorry for crashing your computer.

I think the irony of a revolutionary multitimbral sampler that the designers encourage you to use monotimbrally - cos they know it doesn't work properly - is totally lost on EWQL.

Quote redleicester:

---

Quote Tui:

---

Quote redleicester:

---

Interesting. Why 11 instances of Play? Why not use one multitimbrally as it's designed to do?

---

11 instances, because I thought I was going to use the sounds from those presets for several ethnic-type jingles. Basically, I worked from a self-made template. In the event, I only used that Nepalese drum sample in PLAY, and all other percussion sounds came from Drumcore and Kontakt. So, 11 is a rather arbitrary number.

You say that PLAY is designed to be used multitimbrally. I'm not sure about that. I remember reading on their forums that EW actually advises against using multies, but encourages their customers to use individual sample banks whenever possible. I forgot the exact reason, something to do with memory allocation, or something.

Also, I don't like it when software tries to make composing and sound-design decisions for me - I'd rather pick and choose the sounds myself, thank you!

---

Doug and Nick have indeed on several occasions espoused using multiple instances, which rather defeats the object of their marketing it as a multi-timbral instrument!

So you load a single instance of Kontakt per sound you're going to use too?

---

Actually Red, I load up a single instance of VE2 for each articulation honest

Quote redleicester:

---

So you load a single instance of Kontakt per sound you're going to use too?

---

Yup. I find it easier to keep track of the sounds I've got available or currently playing. Also, I can't be bothered with clicking through a myriad of microscopic sub-menus in Kontakt or PLAY, until I've found what I'm looking for. At any rate, there don't seem to be any disadvantages in working this way.

I also prefer the single instance, single channel approach.

Multitimbrality was great in the days where you had to maximise a single multi-timbral synth to get everything running in realtime, but it was always a compromise.

In this day and age, unless we are running *really* massive arrangements, I don't personally see much sense in getting one instance to do 16 parts, and then routing them all out in the plugin to aux channels and so on.

Quote desmond:

---

I don't personally see much sense in getting one instance to do 16 parts, and then routing them all out in the plugin to aux channels and so on.

---

Agreed. Just for the labyrinthian routing alone, I'd imagine working multitimbrally to be a right pain in the posterior. Unless you don't want to add any further processing anyway, that is.

A final thought: Could it be that PLAY reveals minor faults in RAM? Perhaps it would be worth doing a thorough RAM check (on the Mac one can run Rember, for example).

Quick heads up in case it helps some of the Mac bretheren...

EWQL leap today released a long awaited update - some 138mb - to PLAY. No version 1.1.6

Still no fix for the aforementioned issues at least on our systems.

Oh well, roll on the next update.

Quote Tui:

---

A final thought: Could it be that PLAY reveals minor faults in RAM? Perhaps it would be worth doing a thorough RAM check (on the Mac one can run Rember, for example).

---

Do all Macs have memory faults? None of my listed systems here have shown any with MemTest and the Vista Tester....

--------------------
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Quote redleicester:

---

Do all Macs have memory faults?

---

Well no, obviously. Mine don't.

Apple doesn't manufacture RAM, so the RAM chips are essentially the same as in any other PC. Macs really ARE PCs. There are more and more people who buy Macs with the intention to primarily run Windows on them. Strange, but true.

What I meant was, my (outdated) version of PLAY clearly has some bugs, but it's not unusable in the way some people describe it. I was wondering whether PLAY is also highly sensitive to minor faults in RAM. That was only a wild guess, nothing more. I'm still trying to figure out why PLAY won't work on your systems.

Quote idris y draig:

---

reality = you get what you pay for.

it always has, and it always will
.

---

If that were the only issue then we wouldn't bother with a review at all, we'd all buy things on price and know precisely what quality we were getting.

Clearly that ain't the case and we use reviews to get an idea of where on the 'quality / price' graph a given microphone (or any other piece of kit lies). My problem is that recent SOS reviews of the cheaper kit tends to give the impression that they lie sufficiently close to the high quality stuff in performance that most people will never notice the difference.

My laptop is really cheap. It is perfectly adequate for what I want (on location recording of three or four tracks'. paying more for a faster computer would get be different features (lots more plugins) but as I never need them it wouldn't improve the quality of what comes out. My point is that with new technology, it isn't always clear that the old price / quality still holds in the same way and we beginners need some help in the reviews - not just on the forums.

I'm treading a difficult line here between appearing overly critical of a magazine I think is great and pointing out a problem I have. I also recognise that this is way off the original topic- so I'll but out now. Maybe this discussion of review trends could be continued in a separate thread?

J

Quote Setter:

---

Maybe this discussion of review trends could be continued in a separate thread?

---

maybe in the Magazine Feedback section? since it's specifically about SoS? you'll be more likely to get a direct response from the mag then, too.

--------------------
hourglass | random thoughts | doubledotdash!? collective

Quote Setter:

---

Quote idris y draig:

---

reality = you get what you pay for.

it always has, and it always will
.

---

I've got some really nice speaker cables you might be interested in

--------------------
http://www.jeremycorbett.co.uk

Lol hoobs..... i'd need a significant portion of the gnp to replace all mine with that stuff.....


Setter.... in my view, frankly it's only as you advance along the path of the audio geek that you begin to appreciate the finer nuances of high end , expensive, equipment.... and often no amount of well intentioned , experienced, advice , will persuade you to buy much more than the entry level budget kit....

there have been no end of times that i've told someone what piece of kit I'd choose for a specific job, and they've refused to believe that they really had to spend another grand or two to do it properly.... and several years later had the "you know what, you were right, I should have just started with the right tool for the job in the first place" conversation with them...


any time the phrase , or intent of "it's a good budget effort at an XYZ device... and performs well for the money" appears ina review... you can bet that there's a better , and initially more expensive, tool for that same job out there......

PLAY SUCKS BTW.....


(in case anyone thought I might feel otherwise)