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Comment by vemv | Hacker News Reader

I own a Push 1 and 2, although at hobbyist level.

The standalone Push 3 seems a great step forward. macOS has increasingly become user-hostile when it comes to audio (and other pro) users.

For instance I have an expensive sound card that became useless with after a minor OS upgrade. I never got to troubleshoot it or find an official solution.

That was incredibly discouraging - enough to move on to other hobbies. And I'm a programmer - don't want to imagine the pains that musicians have to go through.

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Musician here, most of us (the ones that aren't also programmers) just have to pay up the arse every time for every thing.

I've been teaching myself keys the last few years and had been planning to one day get myself a big $6k stage keyboard, when I felt that I had sufficiently developed to warrant it.

I have since tried out Zynthian, and my conclusion was that with a pianoteq license and a good controller, I can have way more functionality and sounds and every thing for a small fraction of the price of that Nord.

Your comment is fascinating, because domination of music is one of the pillars of Mac's success. If they're not just neglecting that, but actively screwing with people... They've lost the plot. Like so many giant piles of capital masquerading as a company.

> domination of music is one of the pillars of Mac's success. If they're not just neglecting that, but actively screwing with people... They've lost the plot.

They’ve lost many plots.

Musicians, developers, and even photographers.

Apple’s playbook seems to have changed to:

- Hook a demographic with functionality that’s anywhere from just good enough to excellent

- Railroad them in to using as many first-part services as possible (especially if that means getting them to buy more Apple devices)

- Slowly lock them down so it’s harder and harder to move to competitors (aka boil the frog)

- Move staff from those first party products as the users are trapped and it’s no longer necessary for the quality to be excellent

Google famously discontinued Google Reader despite it having tens of millions of users because it represented a minuscule contribution to their bottom line.

Apple isn't a software company, it's a phone company. Everything that isn't an iPhone represents a minuscule contribution to their bottom line. Apple doesn't give a shit about pro users, even if it's profitable, because they're too big to care.

I was questioning your “Apple’s a phone company” claim, figuring services long ago surpassed iPhone sales, but in fact, services sits at about 30% of their revenue and the iPhone sits at about 55%, which is roughly 5% growth from last year!

Services may be at 30% but their profit margin for them is >70%, more than double of what they have for hardware.

I think they were conceding the point :>

So, Chokepoint Capitalism.

FWIW, I recently replaced "Pianoteq license and a good controller" with a Nord. I've found that the friction involved in getting the laptop warm and Pianoteq started/running, while relatively low, is still enough that I didn't often just sit down and play. The Nord is a simple appliance and is always there inviting me to practice.

I still have the laptop and Pianoteq and use them with the Nord as a controller sometimes, when I want to work with digital music. But most of the time, the laptop stays shut, and I've found I am able to more deeply engage with the music that way.

I’ve also been in that situation and considered something like a Roland Integra 7, which can be found for around $1k in good condition if one is patient and willing to buy second-hand from Japan. I already have a pretty nice Studiologic 88 key hammer controller, but using that with Ravenscroft 275 on an iPad with an interface, mixer, preamp, and the speakers in the living room (studio monitors) is still a pain to turn on and use when we want. Acoustic pianos are obviously the most immediate, but a Nord or other stage piano with powered monitors is pretty convenient too.

If I had the money... Well I'd probably get a Hammond actually, but I would take it if I could afford it. But I'm a lot of house repairs and more important devices away from that point lol

Nords are for gigging artists that want every feature accessable via physical controls on the device with minimal setup. If you are willing to bring your laptop on stage there are probably better cheaper options. That being said used Electro's can be affordable and they are really fun devices to own. There is also a nice small community of people hacking on them. My current hobby project is reverse engineering the electro 5

I had considered going the route of a nice midi controller and software, but ultimately when I wake up in the morning and sit down to practice I don't want to be on the computer with the seemingly infinite potential for distraction. I bought a Nord Grand a couple years ago and I'm really glad that I did. The action feels great and the sounds are good enough (although I really would love a new grand piano sample). My teacher even has commented that he's surprised by the dynamics in my touch on his grand at his studio, which in his experience often can get lost when practicing on a digital keyboard.

Anyway, I'd recommend it for anyone that's at that point of taking their practice seriously, but might not have the space/neighbors for an acoustic piano.

I assume you can buy more sounds for the Nord? I have read up extensively on the Stage 3 but not the piano. Currently making do with a Korg B2 for that.

Anyways, everyone seems to have misread my pianoteq comment as me intending to use a laptop; not the case.

Zynthian is a raspberry Pi project that collects up basically everything Linux has available for music and puts it in a small box suitable for pedalboard, rack, on top of your Nord, etc. It works beautifully and with a hifiberry sound card is the equal of anything, sonically.

It also implements pianoteq as an engine, so with a pianoteq license, it really does do everything the Stage does, minus the keyboard natch, and quite a lot more besides (DSP with stereo in out, mod devices, puredata). So you could have a bunch more piano sounds in a small device that is also a full box of toys for not too much.

They are also weeks/days away from releasing a new hardware version that looks really great, the bdfl has been posting stuff in the discourse.

Things are progressing in Linux, folks. Good times.

Yep, I love my nord for the same reasons as you (and also the excellent b3+leslie emulation on the electro/stage). I stare at a screen all day so when it comes to practice or playing gigs I prefer it over midi + laptop/ipad. That being said, I don't want to discourage anyone from going the laptop route. You gain a ton of flexibility and if you already own the laptop it's way cheaper to get started. It's all just preference at the end of the day.

Seconded. I love my Nord Grand. I still use a laptop sometimes but not having to get the laptop warm/unlocked/software started in order to play is amazing. I can just sit down, flip a switch, and practice.

> I really would love a new grand piano sample

If you haven't already seen the Nord Piano Library, it's amazing:

https://www.nordkeyboards.com/sound-libraries/nord-piano-lib...

The problem is that pure MIDI controllers are often not very good. When you pay $2,000 for a synthesizer, it can have a very good keyboard.

This used to be true, but I don't think it is any more. The Kawai VPC1, for example, contains an incredibly nice action, costs $2,500, and is a pure MIDI controller.

https://kawaius.com/product/vpc1/

Yeah, there are a couple exceptions. Roland used to make a popular master keyboard. My main question is why someone would want a $2500 controller, when at that price you could get something like a CP88.

The osmose by Expressive E is pretty cool too, and Studiologic controllers have nice Fatar keybeds that are considered top of the line for synths and workstations.

If you pay $1000+ for a MIDI controller it can have a very good keyboard as well.

It’s harder to source MIDI controllers in that price range, compared to synths.

I have a feeling of unease too.

OSX occasionally warns me about third party kernel extensions, and that's not an encouraging direction of travel.

I bought my audio interface precisely because RME have a reputation for writing reliable and performant drivers.

I don't think this is true at all. Apple keeps releasing amazing new features for Logic Pro and they are free. They also just released Logic Pro for the iPad, and the new M2 iPad Pros are basically more powerful than Intel Macs at this use case.

Apple is clearly committed to their Pro users, but I can see why them dropping driver support for older hardware is frustrating. It's not that they are dropping driver support, it's just that the hardware manufacturers aren't updating drivers to support ARM Macs and not load as a low level kernel driver (insecure). I think your anger is a bit misplaced - maybe you should direct it towards the sound card manufacturer that refuses to update drivers for years?

Or you could just get off their walled garden that assumes you have thousands of extra dollars per year to pay for their various premium lifestyle objects and services.

If Apple is only concerned with Professionals, they should stop marketing to the peons.

> I have since tried out Zynthian, and my conclusion was that with a pianoteq license and a good controller, I can have way more functionality and sounds and every thing for a small fraction of the price of that Nord.

Yes, but also buy yourself a big old 90s ROMpler workstation for a couple of hundred quid, and keep it around for when you need something, I don't know, just *different*. Or if you need to do an impromptu gig and don't want to cart your super-expensive controller and super-delicate laptop to a pub.

Think of it as the musical equivalent of your gardening boots.

Zynthian runs on a Raspberry Pi, and with a HifiBerry sound card (<$100) I'll take the Pepsi Challenge with absolutely any expensive rig. My whole point is, you don't need to spend thousands, you can spend hundreds and get the same sounds.

If you understand Midi or are willing to learn about storing snapshots and setting channels, you can set it up to be just as convenient (more convenient actually). It rewards the curious more than others, as in all nice things.

My plan - I genuinely did budget myself $6k, I have several times that much in guitar gear so I do take this seriously - is to build several dedicated ones, both for redundancy and to make sure they are extremely robust. Since I can code I'm even thinking orchestration of redundant raid-like units via a digital mixer. This will all cost a small fraction of a Nord Stage 3 and if anyone steals it, I mean, good luck to em lol

offtopic, but what keyboard controller do you recommend?

I have a cheap MIDI keyboard but the keyfeel is all wrong compared to the upright pianos I used to play as a kid. I'd like to get back into piano, and I know I struggled with phrasing/dynamics, and I worry that unweighted keys will teach me bad habits even though they're technically velocity sensitive...

At the moment I'm using a Launchkey 61 when not using my weighted digital piano.

I do also own a Roland VR-09, which by the way is incredibly hackable courtest of Ctrlr and a couple of custom panels. What is pretty cool about the Roland is, in organ mode the keys respond to hair trigger touch like a real B3, so you can do those really fast funky effects. I will probably always return to it for organ, at least until I can afford a real Hammond.

The arguments people are making about having a piece of hardware that you just turn on is certainly valid, but they are also comparing to a stock laptop running a general purpose OS, and also, clearly can afford to spend the money. For those of us who are so well off, Zynthian is a project that greatly streamlines things, and encompasses basically everything out there in the Linux audio ecosystem, including Pianoteq, on a Raspberry Pi. They're also just about to release a new version. I've been messing around with them for about a year now and they're the real deal.

Arturia KeyLab 88 [1]

Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S88 [2]

Both with hammer action Fatar keybeds.

[1] https://www.arturia.com/products/hybrid-synths/keylab-88-mki...

[2] https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keyb...

The best keyboard controllers are made by companies that also make pianos. What I'd recommend is searching for the term "stage piano" -- these are compact instruments that are designed to be a piano first but can also be used as a MIDI controller. You'll get solid piano sounds and an upper-end keyboard action from these out of the box, but can also hook up MIDI to your laptop if you want to explore software-based synthesizers/VSTs.

Most MIDI keyboards aren't really made for piano performance or even really for piano practice. If you want a MIDI controller for this reason, I'd recommend going to a music store near you (if applicable) and playing a few and feeling the keys and go with the one that feels nicest for your budget.

I bought my wife a Yamaha Arius YDP-184 and she loves it. It's not 100% like the baby grand she does lessons on, but it's close enough for most purposes. It has a MIDI interface, but it's not really easily portable.

I'm just a hobbyist, but I've been playing on and off since I was a kid. I have this exact model.

I definitely recommend it, but I'd suggest trying it out in-person if possible. The key weights seem very heavy to me.. but it's entirely possible that this is how higher-end pianos feel and I lack the experience/familiarity.

Seconded. My daughter plays piano, and we have one of these. The YDP line of pianos from Yamaha are very good value, obviously not the same as a grand piano but very very good for a digital piano, and has midi out.

It has midi out and presents itself as a USB audio interface. So if you go into the menu on the YDP itself and turn off the local sound, you can connect it to your laptop via USB and play virtual instruments on it, with the audio going right back out to the YDP's speakers.

I thought that was super cool when I realized that.

Amazing, I didn't know that at all!!

Agreed—I think the economics just don’t justify production of good MIDI controllers. Outside of one or two models, they’re mostly bad. You have to try keyboards out in the store to find one you like. They won’t be a good replica of a piano, but they may be something you like.

The Korg D1 is expensive but has a RH3 keybed, which you might like if you like keys to be on the heavier side.

The Roland A-88 is the closest I've found. It feels great, but it's expensive.

My Pod Studio UX 2 interface works on a M1 Ventura but most of the Line 6 software that I used (Pod Farm with multiple sound packs) doesn't works any more. I've to but Pod Farm 2.5. The software for loading patches to my Pod XT Live doesn't work either.

It's an old Software that runs on... Windows 10...

>> And I'm a programmer - don't want to imagine the pains that musicians have to go through.

Anyone doing it professionally will check all of their plugins/hardware has support for the latest macOS version before updating.

I DJ for money though I wouldn’t say professionally. I have a separate 2015 MacBook Pro with all my software installed and it’s not connected to the internet except to transfer new songs and manual updates to it.

I can promise you there are many, many professional musicians who will be first in line to upgrade their Mac.

I’m a professional programmer it’s not like I test if my mouse or keyboard will work with a new windows update.

None of the pro musicians I know leap to update their OS like that. Some of them even keep their music machines perpetually offline. These computers are tools for music which just happen to run some OS.

I follow the audio engineering subreddits and 'do not allow your computers to update' is an extremely common epithet, and updates wrecking a booked session is a very common complaint.

We're talking about guys who will use a trackball simply because it makes sure their cursor will be where they left it. Their demands for stability are beyond even what I have seen doing sysadmin at a hospital.

It's very well known plugins break with OS updates. The vendors usually send emails warning against updates. Someone making music at home for fun might update on day one, but no professional studio will.

Maybe amateurs…

Professionals tend to keep a stable system running for as long as possible. The first studio I worked in had a B room that was running OS 9 at a point where OS X had been out for 7 years.

My current setup at home is a 2010 MacMini on v10.13, using a firewire interface. I plan to keep it running as long as possible.

What do professionals do when the hardware fails? Do they have regular backups, then buy the same hardware on ebay and then restore the "golden" setup?

I recently tried to reinstall an old MacBook 13" that had a hard drive replacement. I couldn't log in to perform the install, Apple servers were throwing me an error. The only choice I had is to put another OS on it.

Pro Tools has been broken on virtually every major version release of MacOS as far as I can remember, I don't think pros are the ones eager to upgrade their OS. They do it begrudgingly as late as possible.

Logically yes, but anyone who’s been doing it for more than a couple years has been burned by an update at least once and won’t easily make that mistake again.

The mistake here is not the apple update but lack of backups.

Even if you properly backup everything and can downgrade after an update, you’re still burned by an update if it breaks your software. Which is why most musicians will be at least a major OS version behind, giving vendors the time to update.

The mistake here is that assuming things will forever remain the same and thus you don’t need to update your software, when security enhancements require it.

Sometimes... programmers are worse users than general users.

Yep. Truly a testament to how bad modern backwards compatibility has gotten.

Really? Which soundcard? I’ve always understood the core audio stuff to be very hassle free. That sounds like a huge problem and I’m really surprised the manufacturer didn’t fix that immediately unless it’s very legacy hardware.

It takes time to fix this stuff. It always has. I don’t know why.

Core audio is the API. You still need a driver for the audio interface. If it’s USB class compliant, then you get a driver for free. Not all devices are class compliant (for good reasons). You would be limited to the feature set provided by the USB audio class spec.

That’s true, but not working on Mac for a high end sound card is pretty catastrophic. I can’t think of any reputable brand besides maybe Antelope that has ever been straight up broken like that for any significant length of time. There would be riots on the audio forums if UAD or Motu or anyone else had that happen. I’m not an apple apologist, I use a PC for music production, it’s just surprising to me is all. I’m curious about what sound card it is so I can either avoid it or dig deeper into why.

I also think some of the comments in this thread about audio people never upgrading are a little dated. Maybe 10 years ago it was more common for someone to sit on an ancient version of Protools if they were a full time studio, but most of the market is hobbyists and semi professionals who have a single personal MacBook or PC that they use for everything, not just recording. Airgapping something like that isn’t really an option.

MOTU drivers didn’t work for months when some recent macOS came out. I think it was Catalina.

Audio people “never” upgrading is a bit extreme. But it is still extremely common to delay updates until you know that your gear works with the new OS. We’re not necessarily talking about some ancient version of Pro Tools here, but maybe a couple plugins you use that are getting long in the tooth. Maybe you would like to upgrade them, but you’d need to pay.

The biggest issue with Mac is they manage to break device drivers every 12 months like clockwork. On the other hand, Logic Pro is an absolute steal at the price they charge, and it’s gotten some huge (and free) updates.

If they decide to go subscription, the value proposition will be different

Same here. Tried to connect an old Midiman Midi interface to a recent MacOs. Oh boy. Someone built a driver and I´m grateful for that but it was quite something to get the thing working. It seemed to me a waste to buy a new piece of hardware for some antique technology like Midi, just because the driver of the old interface was not working any more. I don´t mind dealing with pain caused by computers in my day job. But in my free time as a musician all those technological hassles are a hindrance of creativity.

I’m not updating my music Macbook Pro anymore, I’m still on MacOS Catalina. VST’s break, (older) audio drivers stop working, etc. I spent too much time getting everything to work as it currently is.

>macOS has increasingly become user-hostile when it comes to audio

Like?

I have a MacBook M1 Max that has been nothing but a pain in the ass when it comes to the core audio. Anytime I attempt to use soft synths that peg the CPU at about 40 to 50%, the speakers will start to occasionally crackle/pop completely disrupting my flow.

Apparently it's not a completely unheard of problem no pun intended. I've had to go back to my windows machine (bitwig and FL) + MOTU, and pretty much abandoned Mac music with logic pro completely. Really ticks me off.

What audio interface were you using?

RME?

https://www.rme-audio.de/

Yes, a RME Fireface UC.

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