Wow, this never ends, ok it's official you will never be left in the cold with useless hardware, every single version of Scratch LIVE that is released will work on your hardware.

But will there be better (e.g. Firewire / USB 2.0) hardware released at some point with better D/A converters? I think this would be a very good thing...

Paul

Well the increased bandwidth of firewire or USB 2 would not necessarily provide better latency, for reasons AJ explains in another thread.

By better convertors do you mean bit depth and sample rate, or higher quality e.g. better S/N ratio? we actually have very good convertor quality at present...

To answer your basic question though, personally* I believe a new hardware release will be inevitable, but that does not mean users with the current design need be left out, they just might not be able to use _extra_ features dependent on hardware. Compatibility is guaranteed.

*this is my opinion, not an announcement! the reason for new hardware would be added functionality, not to fix deficiencies in the current design.

Sure



Ultimately I'm after high quality sound, a better S/N ratio would, of course, help matters in this area. I'm not saying the current hardware is bad, just that I think it could be better with Firewire or USB 2.0



I'd welcome new hardware, as long as exisiting users aren't left in the cold

Paul

Audio quality has *nothing* to do with USB or Firewire! If the latency is low enough I don't see any reason to change the hardware.

Adding MIDI could be something for the future, in which case I hope also existing MIDI IO's are supported (as I already have MIDI IO on my box).

AFAIK it does to the extent where it allows higher bandwidth, which could allow the use of higher bit depth and sample rates for D/A conversion. Also (though I don't know if this is USB 1.1. or not) the current S/N ratio is not that great compared to many standard music production sound cards.

Paul

S/N on FS or on SSL?

As long as you are playing mp3's instead of 24bit wav files the DAC will not be the weakest link. When you play 96 kHz/24bit wave files USB1.1 will be a problem, but in a club environment you will never need this.

SSL

The S/N of SSL is much much much higher than vinyl - isn't that what matters? I was actually thinking of making a (semi-serious) request for a noise button. At the moment you can tell when I mix from vinyl to an mp3, the sound is so much cleaner. More importantly you can tell when I go back to real vinyl. I was thinking of a way to degrade the sound from SSL to reduce the difference. Some nice pops in quiet bits would be perfect ;)

Hehe. Maybe in the future when we can use plug ins, it could be possible to have some VST plugs which emulate the warm sound of vinyl :-)

But about the S/N, radish dont forget, that some use it with CDs, so I dont know how the S/N of SSL compares to the S/N of a decent cd deck. Any thoughts?

Since the thread was locked in the other post I created (sorry for opening a can of worms by the way). I'll say one thing. FS and it's hardware problems were always the least of my worries. I'm confident that they were goin to get around to releasing a new hardware revision sooner or later (which they obviously did).

The thing that pissed me off was that Stanton and NI never fessed up the the hardware problems (in secret NI was pointing the finger at Stanton all the while saying "it's their hardware problem and we can only program so much").

Back to my point.... Stanton and NI have HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE. It just plain sucks...which is why I left and bought SSL in the first place. Sure, FS2 might rock and might be stable...but what if is isn't? what if there's MORE problems. You're back to having to deal with their shitty ass customer service...which, for me, is the straw breaking the camel's back.

Point blank, SSL's Customer service rocks. They address issues and provide more than stellar information on builds, dates and other stuff to keep the customer in the loop. Aside from that, their system works...period.

My opinion, dump FS and stanton's bullshit service and join SSL, Rane and Serato's compassionate hardworking people will more than make up for any glitches that may be in the system IMHO.

If and when there is a hardware update it is perfectly reasonable for rane/serato to be payed for the product. When a new generation of mac laptops come onto the market, I dont expect to be given one for free.
Otherwise start doing your push ups cause its back to lugging plastic around.

I have sold my FS.
As soon as possible i will buy my SSL system.

Thank's all for your answer.

But SSL !! you will be CRAZY with it :)
it's a GREAT system. I'm an old FS user and SSL is much better my friend !!!