1. Apple/Intel Thunderbolt Interface

For low latency systems such as Pro Tools HD, we depend upon dedicated PCI-Express (PCIe) cards. They support data transfer of up to 16 GB/s which is a tremendous speed and can handle high quality audio with low latency quite well.  However, the PCIe cards still require a computer that has expansion slots.  For the mobile musician wanting to write with his/her laptop, the lack of these slots leads to high latency which leads to unhappiness.  The solution, however, is quite simple.

Apple and Intel have partnered to create the new Thunderbolt interface.  It is literally thinking out of the box with PCIe by moving the devices outside of the box that is your computer.  You can now have an external DSP device for Pro Tools HD and plug it into your laptop, thus negating the need for the internal expansion slots.  Even better is that you can daisy chain up to 7 devices together and increase your total capacity!  The technology is already on the market and some consumer devices are incorporating the new technology.

Unfortunately, there are two issues with Thunderbolt that keep it from reaching us musicians.  First is the transfer speed.  At only about 800 MB/s (about 1/20th of the current internal PCIe cards), it is an improvement over Firewire but still can’t handle large amounts of audio as easily without need for compression and thus latency.  And in the case of daisy chaining several devices together, they do share the same channels and thus daisy chaining becomes less effective.  The second issue is that there aren’t many Thunderbolt devices available for the professional musician yet.  Until both of these are solved, Thunderbolt is a technology that we just won’t quite have access to.

Solid-State Drives

So you go to load your project and have to wait for the hard drives in your computer to get up to speed.  Then at speed, the heads have to jump all over the disc to fetch the files you need and thus can take several minutes to load even a basic project. You curse your computer out even though it is limited by a physical mechanism.  Once your project is loaded, you have to keep extra delay in place to give it time to buffer the sounds from the hard drive to memory for playback and calling too many sounds in often crashes your session (Pro Tools users know this too well).  Like printers, anything that has a motor in it that is connected to your computer becomes a mortal enemy.

Solid-State Drives (SSDs), on the other hand, provide long term storage without the need for moving parts.  They give you quick access speeds to your data that can compete with your RAM.  Imagine your sessions loading in just a few seconds and streaming from disc no longer meaning an extra dozen milliseconds or so.  So how much will this dream cost?

Well, if 1 TB (1,000 GB) on regular hard drive costs about $100, then $100 should buy a 1 TB SSD.  Nope.  $100 can get you about 64 GB.  1 TB SSDs cost about $500.  And added onto that you have to consider the interface and such which can end up costing more if your computer uses interfaces that are meant for servers.  I would recommend waiting for these to come down in price and to go through more rigorous testing before putting all of your data onto these things.

Fiber Optic Internet

The most exciting innovation of computers is the internet.  We originally started off on dial-up systems that made transferring 1 KB in a single second seem insanely fast.  Now I can download at 3 MB/sec and upload at 1 MB/sec.  Now with fiber optic internet, the only major issue is the speed of light through a fiber optic cable.  And with this faster internet, it can change composing as we know it!

Imagine being given a project that requires downloading a 60 GB video file and downloading the entire thing in less than 30 seconds.  You can connect via the internet to others and make changes live with high quality audio rather than having to scale down.  And delivery can take mere seconds over the internet rather than having to wait long periods of time for the data to send.  So where do you get these extremely high speed fiber optic connections?

If you are living in the United States and don’t have a large amount of money to spend on a dedicated internet connection such as a direct line to your local switch, expect your fiber optic speeds to be equivalent to current Cable services.  These 100+ GB/sec speeds are rare in the US, although Kansas City seems to have gotten lucky thanks to Google.  For the rest of us, a fiber optic connection really won’t make much of a difference until companies such as Verizon stop throttling the connections to these slow speeds.  So for now, just stay on your cable/DSL lines and keep pushing for higher connection speeds.

What technologies are you excited to see in the future for computer music composition and production?

Just released, the 2011 annual holiday piece, “A Winter Finale!”

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Wunderlist

I am a Wunderlist addict to the point that I even put on reminders to breathe into my task lists!  Anyway, 6wunderkinder did an amazing job at creating a task manager that syncs across Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Web, and paper (manual sync only on this last one; limited by ink and tree supplies).  This simple task manager offers a nice visual interface in which you can create multiple task lists, quickly create and add tasks, set due dates while adding the tasks, be non invasively alerted to upcoming and overdue tasks, and sync task lists with other users.  All of the syncing is done in the background.  Although Wunderlist is free, it’s still a quality product as you can see that 6wunderkinder has put their own love into creating a replacement to paper task lists.  Anyway, I use Wunderlist for planning on projects, maintaining a timeline, and collaborating on projects.  However, I will be dumping Wunderlist shortly when 6wunderkinder releases their new solution: Wunderkit, which will satisfy my needs to a greater extent..

43things

Social networking through goals may seem strange, but 43things has found a way to make your bucket list social.  It gives you a public solution to post your personal long-term goals and provide updates.  Not just that, but you can also send and receive cheers to encourage and help others with their goals.  Although it may not get your work done now, it does help provide encouragement to get your work done.  The only downside I see so far is a lack of iPad and Android apps.

Chains.cc

Chains.cc is based upon an idea that Jerry Seinfeld used to write comedy.  It’s still a small website, but it offers a very simple way of getting work done.  You create a daily task you want to start doing as a new chain.  Every day you do that task, you mark that day as complete.  After a while, you want to see how long you can get the chain to be without breaking it, thus providing encouragement to get it done and helping build a new habit.

Dropbox

“But this isn’t directly related to organizing my work!” you may say, but it will help you work more efficiently.  Dropbox is a folder that syncs.  That’s it.  You install it on your computers, drag a file into the folder on one, and it syncs to the others in just a moment or two.  No pushing sync or setting up connections; it just works.  You can also access your folder online at Dropbox.com to manage and access your files from anywhere while also setting up shared folders with others.  It takes only a minute or two to set up but will save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

Google Calendar

Okay, time management is no secret.  The nice thing about Google Calendar is that it can be extended with plug-ins via Google Labs that can allow you to better plan out meetings with others.  It ties in well with GMail, can be synced with iCal and your cell phones, and has absolutely no reason that you shouldn’t be using it.

Post-it Notes

Nothing beats pen-and-paper.  It requires no batteries, is highly compatible with many output devices, saves data easily, lasts long, doesn’t crash, and this particular application includes a light adhesive!  Post-it Notes are great for increasing productivity in a very simple way.  Take your large project and divide it into individual tasks.  Write one task on each post-it note.  Now finally post those in a location that will annoy you and get in your way, thus giving you reason to complete that project so you can remove those blasted low-tech devices.  When I really get close to a deadline and need some encouragement, my MIDI controllers become covered in little yellow squares to annoy me.  And I will tell you, this is a very efficient system of increasing productivity while also learning to hate yellow squares.

After what seemed to be a rather long hiatus from writing music, I would like to introduce The Final Efforts.  The Final Efforts portrays the climax of a story of a village being won back from an invading force; or at least it portrays that in my mind.  This piece served mainly as a warm-up for some work that I’ll be doing over the next several weeks, so keep a watch here for any new developments.