audioMIDI.com: Synth Legends Night DVD

This is a very cool DVD produced by and available from audioMIDI.com. Bob Moog (in his last public appearance), Tom Oberheim, and Dave Smith (of Sequential Circuits and Evolver fame) are the featured speakers at an event moderated by Roger Linn (who designed the LinnDrum, the AKAI MPC, and more recently the AdrenaLinn). Later on in the proceedings, they're joined by Marcus Ryle (Line 6's founder) who got his start working at Oberheim along with Russ Jones (founder of audioMIDI.com). The history and stories told are fascinating. Dave Smith, who pretty much invented the MIDI spec, talks about the early days when nobody wanted to adopt it except the Japanese. Each designer talks about his history, but the roundtable at the end is when things really get interesting. It's also neat to see how much these former competitors respect each other. The production value isn't too high here as the hired video crew never showed up, but the audioMIDI folks made do nicely with their Handycam. It's a triumph of content-over- production though (something we engineers should always remember). I actually found this much more insightful than the recent Moog documentary, which had a much higher budget and better production value. T-shirts from the event are also available. ($19.95 direct; www.audiomidi.com)