Descripción general de Softland ® ERP

In the future, everything will be inside the computer—all the synthesizers, the CD burner (or whatever media storage is fashionable), all the audio filters. The audio studio of the future will be one massive desktop computer with multiple audio ins and outs for microphones (that is, until they figure out how to make synthesizers sound like singers, at which point we won’t need microphones anymore).

But we’re not there yet. So even the most humble PC-based audio studio is often sur-rounded by an array of gear. This extra gear can include a rack of synthesizers, audio pro-cessing gear, and any number of sound making tools.

This auxiliary gear must get hooked up to your computer—today’s primitive PCs still can-not do mental telepathy—so let’s take a look at the various interfaces. Some of these are on their way out, some are growing more popular, but it helps to know about all of them.

SCSI

Pronounced “skuzzi,” this stands for Small Computer System Interface. SCSI is a popular interface for connecting any number of peripherals: CD-ROMs, hard drives, CD burners, and the like. The SCSI interface is fast and is a good choice for audio work, which requires the rapid transfer of data. Over the years, the need for data transfer speed has increased and has surpassed the capabilities originally designed into the SCSI protocol. But computer designers have made incremental additions and improvements to SCSI, hence the refer-ences to “ultrawide” and “fast” SCSI. (Some of these variations are compatible with the oth-ers, some are not.)

So, SCSI remains the fastest and most robust audio interface, but it’s also the priciest, and most home users don’t need SCSI’s capability. By the way, one important tip to remember is that each device connected via SCSI has its own ID number, and two devices cannot share the same number. Many setup headaches are solved by checking the SCSI ID num-ber—if you find that two devices are set to 3, for example, you’ve just figured out why one of them is not recognized by your computer. (Set one of the devices to an alternate num-ber and you’ll be on your way.)

USB

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) has become a standard for hooking up all manner of things to your PC: everything from PC telephones to digital speakers. It’s an easy and straight-forward computer port, and doesn’t require you to do things like set dip switches or IRQs.

As audio interfaces go, USB is comparatively slow, but you’ll find many audio devices that use USB.

The USB port on the Mac replaces the serial ports that were used to connect MIDI inter-faces (in pre-USB days, you typically used either the modem port or the printer port to con-nect your MIDI interface).

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Figure 10.2

Got a question about USB? Find out about this seemingly ubiquitous standard at this site that combines industry and consumer information.

IDE

Intelligent or Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) is an interface used on PCs and many recent Macs. It’s relatively inexpensive, and its data transfer rate has advanced to the point that it supports some of the fastest CD burners, and even hard drives in array configurations.

Many home-based sound designers use IDE quite happily. Its speed enables it to handle complex audio multitrack mixes, so it’s a good choice for most sound applications.

FireWire

FireWire, a newer interface standard, is a popular choice among today’s desktop musi-cians—there’s definitely a buzz about FireWire. However, your computer might not be capa-ble of this interface (if it’s older, it might require a FireWire card, but its CPU speed might not be sufficient). If your computer can handle it, FireWire’s speed and ease of use make it a good interface for audio work. FireWire is hot-pluggable, meaning you don’t have to reboot your computer to change drives. (This is in contrast to SCSI, which should not be hot-swapped.)

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Hot Link: USB Implementers Forum (http://www.usb.org/)

USB is everywhere. Visit the Implementer’s Forum site (see Figure 10.2) to find out more about this highly popular interface.

Figure 10.3

This is far from the only source for FireWire connections, but the Adaptec site is a good source of informa-tion.

Of course, if you want to connect a given piece of audio gear with your PC, its connections must match those of your PC. Attempting to plug in a FireWire device to a USB slot, for example, won’t get you very far. Fortunately, you can buy adapters to adapt your com-puter’s input slots to a greater variety of devices, although not every configuration is pos-sible. Check with your local retailer to see if there’s an adapter available for what you have in mind.

PCI

The PCI slot has become a standard interface for many audio cards. To communicate prop-erly—or at all—with a PCI audio card, the software requires a supporting driver. (A driver is a piece of additional software added to your computer’s operating system.)

For some audio cards, this causes no problems because they’re directly supported from within the software. This works to your advantage in situations when you buy an integrated software/audio card package from one manufacturer, like E-Magic’s Logic. This driver-software sometimes gets more problematic when using a sound card by one company and audio software from another, but that’s become much less of a problem in recent years.

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Hot Link: GetAdaptec (http://www.getadaptec.com/)

Adaptec is a leading name in connectivity technologies such as USB, SCSI, and FireWire. The site (see Figure 10.3) provides information about FireWire as well as related technologies.

Be careful, especially if buying used PCI audio cards. They might not have updated drivers that support newer operating systems, such as Windows XP or Windows 2000.

The Versatility of PCI

If you have a PCI slot in your computer, you can use it to get an adapter card for most any other interface. So, for example, if you want a SCSI interface but your computer doesn’t have one, you can install one though your PCI slot.

Is It Plugged In—And Turned On?

Okay, it seems obvious, but we’ve all done it. Before you come to the conclusion that one of your connections is faulty, check to see if each piece of gear is actually plugged in and turned on. Is the volume turned all the way down? Some musicians think they are being helpful by turning down the headphone volume when they are done—all the way to zero. Moral of the story: Check the simple stuff first.

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NOTE

NOTE

Hot Link: Basic Electronics (http://webhome.idirect.com/~jadams/

electronics/)

The Basic Electronics site (see Figure 10.4) explains electronics in terms that are accessible to learners at all levels.

Figure 10.4

Author John Adams has made teaching simplified electronics a life mission. Take a look at the “Electronics on a Budget” article. A well-done site.