"Specialization is for insects."
My first thought was, as they say, “bits is bits”. If there was noise enough in the box to interfere with discriminating between ones and zeroes than it wouldn’t work for any data. It didn’t seem to make sense.
On reflection, though… maybe. Just maybe.
Tracktion as a company seems to be not only supporting Linux and the Raspberry Pi, but quite enthusiastic about it… about “democratizing” home recording by using the latest in inexpensive tech to make it much more affordable.
I yielded to the temptation… the Marantz SG-58 “Professional Audio Scope” (302 mm shotgun mic) was apparently introduced at $79, then slowly ratcheted down in price over time. Last week it briefly hit $13.44 (Amazon Prime shipping) and I “bit”. Hard to pass up at that price, even just out of curiosity. Shortly after I ordered the price bounced back up to $49.98.
Maybe this dynamic microphone classic is worth the $400 price tag, “Made in Mexico” and all. Maybe not. It has certainly proven itself many times over. Thing is, I’ve got no business owning one even at a quarter of that price. I’ve got negligible microphone experience in recent decades (when I last sang on stage the Electro-Voice EV664 was the mic of choice- ancient history). There’s no way I can remotely justify spending $400 (not to mention $150 for a Cloudlifter CL1, which seems to be the “trick” setup) on this thing.
Of course, I still want one.
I may be about to make an exception for “studio (reference) monitors”. I have, admittedly, pretty much zero experience with them, and I went into learning more about them with an open mind. Having done so, I can’t say that they are or are not worth the money that professionals pay for them (which is often extreme), but I can say for sure that many of the reasons that I’m being fed for that make no sense.
A few days ago there was a deal on Slickdeals (now expired) for the Samson Go Mic USB Microphone. I think MSRP on this is $50, it seems to go for just under $40 normally, the deal was for $30 from Adorama with a $5 mail-in rebate* for a net cost of $25 shipped. I had seen it and read some things about it before, so I was intrigued- but the place is filling up with microphones, I clearly didn’t need another, so I resisted for a few days. Finally curiosity won out, as it usually does with me, and I ordered it. It got here yesterday and I played around with it for a few hours last night. Turns out I don’t regret the purchase in the least. I’m impressed with the little beastie, I hope I can express why.
There are things that are very cool functionally but aren’t impressive to look at, and there are things that are cool to look at but not impressive functionally.
In the first category I think first of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. There is a ton of potential in these little things, but you really have to know what it is and then think about what you can do with it to really appreciate that. To the eye, it’s just a very small circuit board, it doesn’t look particularly interesting, much less cool.
In the second category I think first of the prop-replica field, and especially the sort of stuff that Adam Savage turns out in Youtube videos. These look very, very cool, but it’s all skin-deep, the bottom line is that they may look and sound and even to some degree act as though it does something really interesting, but it’s all “a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”. It’s basically a toy, a fake… and somehow that really isn’t cool at all.