Letters to Tape Op / Jan- Feb 2010

[blaccard]

Hello.
Was reading Letters to Tape Op and came across the " I am Disgusted" lack of support heading about manufacturers dropping support of products without notice.

Larry, you fail here to understand the statement. Although you block out the name of the manufacturer with "XXX" I'm assuming this is a software issue. Recording is is not limited to software and computer related operating system upgrades. The recording world does not revolve around what version of Apple or Windows studio computers run on and it shouldn't. Take for example Tascam and Mackie hard disc recorders and digital consoles. The Mackie D8B has several upgrade versions while the DM24 was completely dropped from Tascam in favor of the DM32 - 48 series. Microsoft makes it clear online when support for a version of Windows will be dropped and warns you about it with plenty of room to make financial decisions as to what the overall impact of moving to Windows 7 may cost you. Manufacturers dealing with software and digital hardware that may require interfacing in some sort of form with a computer should be smart and do the same. Its the right thing to do.

Without this type of information and honesty from manufacturers or some sort of buy back program, to go out and have purchased a DM24 and then have it dropped 3 months later without any mention on the website will steer me clear of that type of manufacturer's products in the future. Products that are used by many of people interviewed in Tape OP such as the Alesis HD24 recorder are in jeopardy. That recorder uses an ATA drive that although is cheap is really not available in stores like CompUSA in the storage size it was designed for, even the common Masterlink used in many studios uses ATA drives. Ebay is the only way to find these legacy drives. These systems need to migrate to SATA drives now. You would think that with all the products sold, Alesis would have spent some their profits on developing an upgrade, but they failed at it. The Alesis HD24 is still being sold today, running on hard drive technology that will no longer interface with today's machines. Firewire isn't even included on many new machines so to purchase an Alesis Fireport to backup your files doesn't work unless of course you build a custom PC and hope newer operating systems will support 1394 Firewire.

Paul Blaccard

[TapeOpLarry]

I'll simply say that anything related to software, hard drive and computer-based tech is going to always become obsolete at some point and we all have to be prepared for that eventuality. It sucks...