OK, at the risk of this turning into a big back-and-forth thing here, I totally disagree with, well, not all of that, but definitely with the idea that an LTC trigger is somehow more "relevant" in the modern age than a MIDI trigger. The bottom line is that this console without MIDI is significantly hobbled in any circumstance in which it needs to be sync'd to or triggered by anything other than LTC. What happens when you're not syncing to an audio track? "They say" that one of the markets that they're targeting with this product is installations. Without the inclusion of MIDI, you've necessarily excluded any installation that isn't using LTC. Forgetting theater for a minute, there are PLENTY of architectural/entertainment installations that don't require syncronization to audio.
In fact, to me, if they wanted to market a less expensive console, a more flexible option would have been to include MIDI and exclude an LTC audio option, since there are existing, cheap, no-brainer, off-the-shelf solutions that convert LTC into MTC, which is what plenty of folks out there are already doing with Hog PC. As far as I'm aware, there is currently no way to do the reverse i.e. to convert SMPTE into a Midi Show Control signal, which doesn't even make any sense anyway.
I'm no software engineer (so please forgive any potential ignorance on my part), but it seems to me that at this point, the addition of MIDI would be pretty simple anyway. The console already has functioning USB, I can buy a MIDI interface for $50 or whatever at the local Guitar Center, the Windows drivers for said MIDI interfaces have already been written, and the Hog 3 software can already deal with MIDI just fine. Seems that the ONLY reason not to add it would be for some kind of marketing reason.
I'm also no market anaylst, so I can only speak from my own experience. I'm just saying that the potential cost-to-power ratio of this console is SO great that I could see myself using on maybe as much as 40% of the shows I do, however the lack of MIDI renders it unusable for at least 90% of them.
OK, at the risk of this turning into a big back-and-forth thing here, I totally disagree with, well, not all of that, but definitely with the idea that an LTC trigger is somehow more "relevant" in the modern age than a MIDI trigger. The bottom line is that this console without MIDI is significantly hobbled in any circumstance in which it needs to be sync'd to or triggered by anything other than LTC. What happens when you're not syncing to an audio track? "They say" that one of the markets that they're targeting with this product is installations. Without the inclusion of MIDI, you've necessarily excluded any installation that isn't using LTC. Forgetting theater for a minute, there are PLENTY of architectural/entertainment installations that don't require syncronization to audio.
In fact, to me, if they wanted to market a less expensive console, a more flexible option would have been to include MIDI and exclude an LTC audio option, since there are existing, cheap, no-brainer, off-the-shelf solutions that convert LTC into MTC, which is what plenty of folks out there are already doing with Hog PC. As far as I'm aware, there is currently no way to do the reverse i.e. to convert SMPTE into a Midi Show Control signal, which doesn't even make any sense anyway.
I'm no software engineer (so please forgive any potential ignorance on my part), but it seems to me that at this point, the addition of MIDI would be pretty simple anyway. The console already has functioning USB, I can buy a MIDI interface for $50 or whatever at the local Guitar Center, the Windows drivers for said MIDI interfaces have already been written, and the Hog 3 software can already deal with MIDI just fine. Seems that the ONLY reason not to add it would be for some kind of marketing reason.
I'm also no market anaylst, so I can only speak from my own experience. I'm just saying that the potential cost-to-power ratio of this console is SO great that I could see myself using on maybe as much as 40% of the shows I do, however the lack of MIDI renders it unusable for at least 90% of them.
