@GravitateMediaGroup @subco

I am certainly not going to tell anyone to shush about suggesting the idea, but I will answer the question about mixing viability and the reasoning for doing/not doing certain things. :)

While there are many settings authors on the site (mpgxsvcd, Ralph_B, mozes, balazer, bkmwcd, driftwood, Lpowell, cbrandin, just to name a few) not all of them have the same goals or approach. My father used to say that entrepeneurs make poor employees, and what that means is that some people do their best work when it is "their baby" and are not as all as effective when placed in a framework setup by somebody else.

I mention this not as a critique of the settings authors (who are doing a great job) but as a look at why they may be doing a better job now then they would together.

That said, it is of course a generalized statement so let us get specific. Some settings (Sanity 5 and Flowmotion 2.02 for example) are designed as self-contained systems. That is to say, they are (in the words of their authors) so balanced in different areas, so interconnected in their other settings and matrices, that it would be very difficult to swap anything out from another author and maintain similar reliability and performance.

On the other hand, driftwood, bkmwcd and cbrandin have more similarities to each author in approach, allowing them to contribute things to each other. One of the reasons for this is because of a different goal. Flowmotion 2.02 was designed as an all-around setting that would be, in essence, the one setting tied to the author at a given time, balanced so that it could be the only setting a given user would load: a single branch of development tested extensively and rarely updated, by the very design. By contrast, at any given time bkmwcd and driftwood have several settings being developed, all with a different emphasis and goal. Swapping in a new component can result in a new branch of development in that framework because users are expected to choose their preferred emphasis as opposed to getting a single suggestion as to "the best one".

Driftwood (up until recently) had devoted the overwhelming majority of his time to high bitrate intra (GOP1) 24H settings, with all other shooting modes being secondary. GOP1 settings did not meet the criteria of most other settings authors. With the recent Cluster releases that has changed (which is not to say that significant modifications to modes such as SH were not made during that time, as even a casual glance through the Quantum betas reveals). Flowmotion has consistently treated all modes equally.

So that is why, as a user, my perception is that given the different approaches, many of the authothers benefit the community more working in their diverse approaches as opposed to in a single group effort.

@GravitateMediaGroup I think one of the most succesful purely group efforts (between for-profit companies) would be the MIDI standard. I wish they could have gotten together and done a MIDI 2.0 in the same way later on. :)

@Sage I wonder if UHS-I support will make a difference on the GH3 if it gets hacked, as far as that goes. Then maybe it could support some of "limited recording time" modes you were able to devise for SH for sustained lengths.

Of course, it remains to be seen what the released GH3 brings to the table in terms of image quality and whether it ends up with the sort of community support the GH2 did. I really hope moire and aliasing are as good as the GH2 or better - it would be a very unfortunate trade-off for them to get worse.

@LPowell What I said about MIDI was not in contradiction to what you said (though it does of course get into the complications of it :) What I meant is that the companies recognized that implementing at least some of the functionality in all of their products was more useful to them than trying to develop each of them developing their own. Compare this to audio plug-ins (MAS, RTAS, AAX, VST 1 2 3, Audio Units (specific to different OS X versions), DirectX, DMO, Logic proprietary, Buzz proprietary, etc.)

I guess I should have been specific in what sort of "group effort" I meant. In this case I was only talking about "implementing the standard" or "building upon someone else's work", not in terms of everyone collaborating in creating the underlying structure. You brought up an important point though, demonstrating that even in that framework individual independent work was the driving force in the creation.

I truly admire the audio tech. guys that built so many groundbreaking technologies. Whether it be the synth gurus like Dave Smith and Bob Moog, or the sampling geniuses like Mitch Marcoullier at Synclavier, there were so many utterly essential things done before the computer even became center of music creation and playback that it is today. I think one of the most unrecognized figures is Ernest Cholakis (who I often have the pleasure of working with) who was very ahead of his time in impulse response work (and continues to be ahead of the game today).

As far as FM v2, it has been really useful to a lot of people so I think the revision process yielded good results, whatever the timeline.

I think UHS-I and the new cpu should probably make for a bitrate heaven. I hope the GH3 proves a winner (the resolving power question keeps one up at night)

Lpowell, an 'extreme' variation of your patch would really be ideal. Your 3gop, with a more intense bitrate, would be the forefront of quality. The bottom 2 stops need the love.

Incidentally, I've got an only midi project open at the moment

@Sage I hope so too.

@driftwood @Lpowell @Sage Ah, the power of music. :)

Speaking of "The Power of Music"... (NSFW) http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/233972

And just in case you're wondering, though I had nothing to do with the above number, I once sang it to one of my professors in college to familiarize them with the material, solo a cappella, with an audience of the professor and one other student.

@tinbeo More often it was MIDI data being transferred over other protocols (e.g. USB, etc.) in the case of so many keyboards, etc. But I still use MIDI today - I just it integrated into my audio interface as opposed to as a dedicated device. :)

But of course it varies from person to person. A lot of people still use MIDI as a triggering system - it is still more widely supported than various OSC options, for instance - even when working with samples.