The Logic Off Topic list

--- In logic-ot@yahoogroups.com, "Sascha Franck" <S.Franck@g...> 
wrote:
 
> As said before, EASI was said to be a WAY better protocol 
> than ASIO too.
> It's almost unknown these days though because ASIO allready 
> was good enough.
> Whether that is a good thing or not I'm not able to decide, 
> but it clearly shows that once you established something 
> for a wide amount of people it's hard to make the folks 
> believe there's something better - no matter if it is
> or not.

Hi Sascha!

Yep, I think the "good enough" point is relevant ... if people 
already have something that works, any replacement has to seem to 
offer /significant/ advantages to make the switch worthwhile, 
otherwise the inconvenience of switching (and worrying about whether 
to switch or not, and compatibility, and migration) can be the 
overriding factor. 
Apart from some of the more "techhie" people, I think people just 
want stuff that works, that they can do music on, without thinking 
too much about what's going on under the hood.


In a similar vein, the .DLS ("DownLoadable Sounds") format was 
allegedly a superset of the SoundFont2 standard, got adopted by the 
MMA as the "official" sampled instrument standard ... but nobody much 
seems to use it apart from Apple, because the switch to yet another 
format and another set of tools just wasn't worth it for most people. 
Creative's "Vienna" SF2 authoring tool really isn't that great, and 
I'm prepared to believe that DLS authoring tools might well be 
better, but most of the people who use these formats are end-users 
rather than authors (most of us don't write softsynth code or publish 
sample sets).  
So even if DLS /was/ technically better, it wasn't better /enough/ to 
give people a compelling enough reason to withdraw their .SF2 
libraries and replace them with .DLS versions. 
AFAIK, there wasn't the unique DLS-based content that would make 
people want to go specifically looking for DLS software or hardware

Erk