In reassembling and patching my entire studio, I've been reminded of a couple things I forgot about.
First, SCSI sucks. I've gotten so used to Firewire and USB that I forgot how much SCSI sucks in comparison. Odd to think that when Firewire and USB were just beginning to appear, me and whatever other cronies I worked with who also relied on SCSI were skeptical of the new stuff, as are most professionals. When it comes to gear, we're fairly conservative. Give us stuff that works, not stuff that maybe works.
All the benefits are real: hot-swappable, nice, thin, neat cords, no clumsy multi-pin connectors, no stupid termination and ID numbers, etc. It's too bad that I still have two pieces of gear--samplers--that can only communicate with the computer via SCSI. Oh well.
Secondly, wall warts are the spawn of Satan. I understand that companies want to save money and lower the cost of a given piece of gear by taking the AC/DC transformer out of the box and putting it inline in the AC cable, or at the plug, but oh lord does it just make plugging up a studio's worth of gear a pain in the ass, even if I only have three rackmount units that use them. Come on companies: I'll pay a little more to have a properly shielded transformer in the damned box. It's worth it.
My pledge: to never again buy any piece of rack mount gear that uses external transformers!
