Cables are a novel concept; insulated barriers that contain within them the strictly necessary components (mostly copper) required for the affixed devices to operate desireably. Video cables are designed with standard connectors on each end to run from a source to a destination carrying a video signal across its length; these connectors specifications allow for a degree of specialty, as not all pins are imperative to the conduction of the video signals - in fact, early VGA ports on PCs required the modification of cables to exclude various unused pins. The premise of a cable is utilitarian, in that it is designed to fulfill the purpose; quite a binary task in that it either does or does not work (for the most part). A parking lot conversation with Trey yesterday, having watched a Brian Lunduke video discussing the inherent differences between digital and quantum computing, fields I'm a novice in but could still tell that the points were quite diluted to be more palatable for people like myself, ignited a theory surrounding technology manufacturers and consumers move away from cables. Personally, and to the surprise of no one whose seen my setup or been in earshot of my discussions pertinent to tech, I embrace these function-serving tubes for a few reasons; reliability and certainty of connection, which are practically the same point with only small differences. The reliability angle is informed by coming of age in the time of bluetooth ubiquity and dealing firsthand with its associated tediums, so much that I've everything short of proclaimation vowed to never hinge any remotely important task on bluetooth connections if it can be helped. Its not so much that I don't understand or occasionally appreciate the conveniences of tetherless connections, its that I harbor continuously reinforced skepticism for the security and actionless sustainability of systems which employ it. The second angle, which is the certainty of connection, comes in with the concept of ecosystems of devices. While the bluetooth standard is probably decently well accomodating for bandwidth sharing tetherless pairings (through the use of passwords and PINs - cumbersome), there is or certainly would be a degree of uncertaintly regarding the status of components' connections when the number of these creeps ever higher; an analytical infrustructure geared around this specific issue would legitimately repair the concern if these statuses were visibly represented in tandem with some failsafe for preventing commitment to an incomplete signal community (i.e. running a recording with 2 of 10 of the mix components disconnected initially undetected by you), but as these aren't a thing yet, I won't be changing my stance of resistance toward bluetooth. The slow but sure progression to a place of competency and ease in the studio is what sustains me as of late. I think about the caution that people should make technology work for them and not work for the technology themselves, and while on occasion even I think my choices have been perhaps counterproductive, I snap back to what I think really is the lucid perspective, that the journey uphill I'm currently traveling and will continue along for a number of years is in the name of amassing experience and pursuing ideals. I see the marketed systems and flows of today as being false, even regressive in some cases; much like web3 and minimalist design, music technology has seen a gross neutering and sanitization that is personally upsetting. If self censorship and oversimplification are the new norms, I have no interest in conforming to them. I think DAWs should be the ultimate in what I prioritize, which is information and resource organization, but from what I've observed, these are essentially useless when interfaces are as bare / restricted as they are, operating systems are as schizophrenic as they are and the open approach, if ever possessed, compromised. While this criticism is vague, its fair - sure, I do play along with the goofs that mock my desire to separate various attributes of a sound/product like sequences, samples, mixing parameters, etc. as outdated or contrarian, but after however many scoffs at my observations or ideas, I feel compelled to treat it more seriously. It is sorry that the creative ethos that has so much merit has been abandoned and the only representations of it are found in beige fossils. I am not averse or hesitant to act an archaelogist and get these legacy systems operational, to take ample time to familiarize myself with their sometimes rigorous interfaces - this is something one of my comrades has a difficult time grasping. They met me at a time that I was uninitiated to free architectures, and my activity was in the name of productivity, but over time it has become less and less a priority to lay eggs - I am presently more or less in the act of building an egg processing plant while they are complacent in losing a few eggs to various affects; be it a personal practitional obtuseness that suffocates a promising product in any of the trimesters, or not-so-much an obtuseness and rather a simple moment of distraction that taints forever the efforts of a group of people at mixdown (or distro submission, misspelling track titles). The list extends further downward but the point is already fleshed out; I also recognize the consequences of my approaches, which are colder and with a lower oxygen supply - reflecting on the collaborative experiments I've embarked on, I have made around an equal detail of blunders to this person I reference; poor mixing, disregard for (some) of the suggestions of my collaborators, and complacency with the unsatisfactoryness of systems I used (AKAI DR4d screwing up alignment of tracks and creating a real mess of quarter-second latency of instrumental facets). The difference is - none of these results of mine were shown to the world. I've maintained a transparency about my conditions to not release flawed materials in the consideration for myself and these collaborators. And it must be stated that I do admire their gung ho-ness with being 'traditional' - my only real constructive criticism for them is to either widen their mind, or abandon the more ambitious goals they may have; without a drop of desire to learn things outside of the box, they won't be effective. Their scope of audio is entirely FL Studio-centric; they've never touched a physical mixer of any size. Yet they tout themselves as a conossieur of pro sound and map out a five year plan for constructing a venue and rectifying each equation that comes up with 'more power amps'; an application brought to his attention by me. Very curious his border falling beyond power amps and passive speakers but short of mixers. And I know this is because his comfortability with FL Studio and confidence in its sustainability - a laptop paired with a robust interface is all he sees as warranted, and if that is enough for him then I must accept it. Where I would be discontent if I were to exist in his shoes would be with the manual nature of sending deliberate materials to each destination for the scheme to work; his concept of mixtures, while shared by me to an extent, isn't necessarily the most versed; sure, in the context of live sound, this groove of thinking is very expected and is practical for monitoring purposes. For studio applications, funnily enough, the array would be handy for experimental recordings with some sort of proximal/multidirectional microphone, but he surely would never think to use it in that manner, to leverage the foremost distinction that this approach yeilds. If he's so married to the predefined way of working, the dance routine of clay hardening and consolidation, I see no reason for him to sneer at a mixer and conventional PA. It (this stance of his) is a rock solid example of his naivity, and I don't say that in an attempt to make myself appear superior by comparison.