Author: Wayne Martz (static-24-214-35-86.knology.net)
Date: 10-23-2008 18:04
(Warning - long rant!)
Sure, 1 has to see a point in doing something. For me, who is a fulltime musician, CAF was my "killer app," and the entire reason I bought a Falcon in the mid 90's. I would say that PC's didn't start to surpass what could be done on a Falcon untill the '98 or so. Even so, my Falcons (got 2 of 'em) continued to be useful tools for music production for years. I still like to use them, 1 with a CT2B, another with a CT60. Now everyone has a reason for continuing to use something like this, but I've never run a demo, and tried very few games on my falcons at all. For me, they have allways been tools. Now at work, I use Cuebase SX on a PC, and have several pcs, desktops and laptops. So my continuing involvement in the Atari is a hobby, like pretty much everyone here. I buy and support whatever and whoever I can who still produces for the Falcon, because I learned about computers on Atari and enjoy seeing it go further. But for me I can arguably still do productive work on a Falcon (music,) and CAF is the peak of music software for it. (No disrespect to some of the things that have come out since, like AceMidi or all the cool electronic cow stuff.) For me music is about real recording and composition, as in scoring. I'm both a classical and rock keyboardist. I've been an organist/choirmaster for traditional churches for 25 years in the US, and played in rock bands for fun for 15 of those years. My wife and I have produced 5 CD's of my own compositions and arrangements, and made many CD's of friends music, all on my Falcons.
While much of the discussion I see hear is not related to music, I expect that some who still use Ataris do so for music. If the limitation of SCSI only could be broken, it could have a profound impact on what is possible with CAF. I've wished for years that Steinburg would release CAF to public domain, but understand that it would have been like giving away the family jewels, as much of the subsequent Cuebase developement was based on it. It'd be great if perhaps now it's been long enough so that would no longer be the case, especially since Steinburg was bought by Yamaha. I don't believe in cracks or piracy, (I'd hate someone stealing my work,)but at this point I think CAF's been abandoned long enough that if it'd let us do more, I'd like to see it.
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