[OT] Gibson goes digital... Line6 Variax competition?

[A.S.P.]

http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM06/Content/Gibson/PR/Digital-Guitar.html

http://www.gibson.com/Products/Audio/MaGIC%20%282%29/

[aron]

I can't believe they are still pushing this. Oh well.

[nelson]

Can I mod it?

How do I get more bass response?

Where does the battery go?

Can I use a CAT5E crossover cable?

I want to make it more transparent.

How do I lower the bitrate?

How can I compress the signal to mp3 in real time?

When is Line6 going to release a compatible multi FX?

[tommy.genes]

I can't believe they are still pushing this. Oh well.

It seems like this began as a way to promote the Gibson MaGIC standard, but it seems to have morphed into a product all its own.

Without wider adoption of MaGIC, however, the guitar is not much more than a Les Paul with an over-engineered hex pickup.

MaGIC has subtantial competition in the marketplace: Yamaha mLAN, Peak Audio CobraNet, Aviom A-Net, Digigram EtherSound and new Giga-EtherSound. The Gibson MaGIC website doesn't seem to list any licensees, but the others do.

Interestingly enough, both Gibson MaGIC and Peak Audio CobraNet ASICs are fabbed by Cirrus Logic, but only CobraNet is actually mentioned by name on the Cirrus homepage. One might think that the two share some technology, but CobraNet is designed to be fully compatible with off-the-shelf Ethernet hardware, while MaGIC is only compatible with Ethernet at the physical layer (which means it really isn't Ethernet, but rather its own thing).

-- T. G. --

[Ge_Whiz]

Have you seen how cheap the cheaper Variaxes are nowadays?