Yes, another obso-elite post

This was 16Mb of RAM. Actually, it still is- It's just that this sort of thing has gotten rather considerably smaller in the past 25 years, not to mention cheaper. Still, a fine example of brute-force, macho problem-solving of yesteryear.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

This is a 16-track digital recorder. It weighs hundreds of pounds, is over 5 feet tall and requires its own dedicated power and cooling. It cost over $100,000 in the early 90s. Nowadays, its functions can be eclipsed by your average PC from Best Buy (though admittedly not with the same stellar sound quality), rendering it worthless to pretty much anyone except obsessive eccentrics. Like me. I nearly herniated my entire body moving it.

Speaking of Awesomeness That's Back...

Wal basses are back as well. Fuck yeah. It's rare that anyone bothers or even knows how to make The Real Shit these days, and even rarer that it comes back after going away. Super turbo.

Awesome.

Looks like reports of the SX-70's demise were greatly exaggerated.
These guys seem to have succeeded, at least for now. Click...

Tinkering

Ahhh, surplus electronics. I found an Ensoniq Mirage - an ancient low-fi sampler from about 1985- at a local electronics graveyard for $15, dead. An easy fix and some internet-ordered OS disks later, and I soon had a charmingly grainy, wonderfully limited machine sitting atop my considerably more expensive but equally-ancient Synclavier (see previous post.) The Mirage worked as it should, but I decided to do a mod which would allow it to have multiple outputs, since it was originally a mono-out machine. Several hours, a trip to an electronics shop and a lot of solder connections later, it works; I now have fake stereo! This basically means that the machine's 8 voices will randomly appear on either of between two and eight outputs, depending on what kind of multi-pin connectors I feel like wiring up, which adds A LOT to its usefulness. So while I'm only using the two-output ("stereo") version at the moment, it's a vast improvement. An added bonus of this mod is that it bypasses the Mirage's noisy output summing and taps directly off its eight CEM filter chips, which dramatically reduces the hiss level.

Encouraging.
I'll probably do this mod next.

Photos: Mirage atop Synclavier, Mirage multi-output mod detail.