(Paid) Processors of Swing

The NYT has a short article that mentions the growing focus of processors for music. Mark Knopfler's most recent album thanks AMD for making some new chips specifically optimized for the processing needs of digital music production.

I orginally wrote a post that is linked to below.  Before I was even finished with it, a friend of mine who is a major player in the digital music industry started to set the record straight.  But, later, wrote more to me that is much more important.

It transcends the issues of digital music and goes back to the credibility of mainstream media.   As my friend said, "This would be a great angle for a story if it were true, but it's not."

The NYT Article says:

"This is not a coincidence. A.M.D., a chip maker in Sunnyvale, Calif., and a competitor to Intel, set up a digital media and entertainment team to spread the word about its products to musicians and artists and to win endorsements."

My friend replies:

This is true.  In fact, i have personally been the recipient of their largesse.  They gave me and [a fellow musician] a bunch of computers for some shows we did.

The NYT Says:

"Many musicians use the recording software Pro Tools, for Macintosh or a modestly configured PC. But Mr. Ainlay and Mr. Knopfler prefer a program called Nuendo, which they say can capture higher-quality audio but requires a more powerful chip."

My friend says:

This is complete nonsense.  Nuendo does not sound even a tiny smidgen better than Pro Tools. If anything pro tools sounds better.  The quality of the sound has absolutely nothing to do with the AMD chip.

Pro Tools generally sounds better and works better because Digidesign makes their own audio-processing hardware that connects to your computer.

The NYT Says:

"Mr. Knopfler and Mr. Ainlay are not paid for endorsements, but they help A.M.D. increase its visibility among audiophiles. "

My Friend's damning testimony continues:

This means that AMD supports Mr Knopfler by giving him free equipment rather than cash payments. ... as they probably did also for the writer of this article.  I think i can safely say that there is nothing you can do with an AMD chip that you can't do with an Intel chip or vice versa.

So what we see here is a PR campaign meant to influence buyers using the media with no real valuable information.  The NYT is duped and we along with it.

Photo: Kenn Kaiser

Technorati Tags: AMD, MIDI, digital music, Protools, Nuendo, Payola, PR 

Original Article

The NYT has a short article that mentions the growing focus of processors for music. Mark Knopfler's most recent album thanks AMD for making some new chips specifically optimized for the processing needs of digital music production.

It's been interesting to watch the ebb and flow of specialized computing devices and chipsets for things like music.  When I got my first Soundblaster audio / MIDI card (which didn't really do MIDI, it just said it did), I was a trendsetter.  Living on the edge with David Byrne and Laurie Anderson.  A few years later I could do all that out of the box with any machine I bought.

Today's entry level systems you buy your grandmother eclipse my old system by a wide wide margin.  These AMD chips are likely the same, cutting edge for people who need it - standard equipment in a few years.  There's gotta be a Moore's Law for that too.

Incidentally, a friend of mine who is deeper into digital music that probably even Mr. Knopfler says that the article is "bullshit." 

He says:

[08:11] MysteryGuest: "Many musicians use the recording software Pro Tools, for Macintosh or a modestly configured PC. But Mr. Ainlay and Mr. Knopfler prefer a program called Nuendo, which they say can capture higher-quality audio but requires a more powerful chip."
[08:11] MysteryGuest: that is nonsense
[08:12] MysteryGuest: "This is not a coincidence. A.M.D., a chip maker in Sunnyvale, Calif., and a competitor to Intel, set up a digital media and entertainment team to spread the word about its products to musicians and artists and to win endorsements."
[08:12] MysteryGuest: not to mention paying off NY Times reporters for some favorable coverage
[08:12] MysteryGuest: BTW i have a dual-Opteron system here at work
[08:13] OurFounder: lol
[08:13] MysteryGuest: i don't think its so great tho
[08:13] MysteryGuest: that entire article is nonsense
[08:13] MysteryGuest: except for the part about AMD paying people to endorse them

Comments

[novachild]

From the bench tests I've seen, AMD does process audio faster, but only marginally. And this is usually because they release their newer chips ahead of Intel.

Still, if AMD was giving me free shit, I'd stretch the truth just a bit, too.

Without real qualitative bench tests, though, (and not just one or two machines side-by-side) it's all just speculation anyway.

[Jay Fienberg]

I recently read the Electronic Musician (June 2006) interview with Terry Howard (who was the recording engineer for Ray Charles) where he talks briefly about using the 64-bit programs (he mentions Cakewalk Sonar and Nuendo).

He says he can hear the difference, and uses the comparison of perceived stereo separation between digital and analog mixes.

His basic equation is that digital noise aggregates (from each track) and DAW mixers require more processing power to achieve the kind of stereo separation that one finds in analog consoles (which evolved in the 1970s to deal with analog noise from many tracks).

Of course, to your friend's point: the places where the desktop processor power matters may be very few in the total scope of process that effect the quality of sound. A lot of the processing power required for A/D/A conversion happens in specialized processors outside of the CPU.

But, in my own experience with purely digital, in-computer, processes, obviously, more processing power can translate to higher fidelity in terms of software effects like convolution reverbs and virtual instruments that do lots of floating point calculations to render complex sounds.

[gse]

I'm not sure what the big surprise is here.

One person thinks PT sounds better than Nuendo, another thinks the opposite. The NYT refers to 2 musicians on one side of that debate. Your friend is on the other side.

Nuendo requires "a more powerful chip"... sure, it uses native DSP to do all the heavy lifting, unlike PT.

AMD is sponsoring musicians... just like Ludwig, Gibson, Fender, whoever.

And the NYT did a lightweight piece on some of the above. So?

Unless your friend has any basis for the idea that the NYT author got free AMD machines and then wrote this article, he oughta relax. Maybe the author was looking for a trend to write about, or maybe it's an example of typical buzz generation. See Paul Graham's neat essay about this stuff: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Not that the latter is defensible, but who reads big papers for real news like this anyway?

[Jim Benson]

I think the larger issue here is the manipulation of mainstream media and not the difference between software packages.

But, after being through interviews with media and talking to others that have, I also understand that what ends up coming out of the media shoot is not what goes in.

It's very probable that Knopfler would say, 'well, that's not quite what I think.' I know I've been there.

The "Lightweight" article is misleading at best, at a time when mainstream media is having credibility problems - if they can't get a book report like this right ... what other errors are out there?