Why is D unpopular?

[claptrap]

On Monday, 2 May 2022 at 15:22:16 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Monday, 2 May 2022 at 14:34:24 UTC, claptrap wrote:
>> Genius isn't having the idea, it's more often than not making 
>> the idea work.
>
> For the most interesting stuff is what comes from people 
> associated with institutions like CCRMA, IRCAM and the like, 
> but I am not sure I would ascribe *genius* to anything related 
> to audio. Most of it is layers of knowledge, not one amazing 
> discovery.
>

Yeah genius is probably the wrong word, but what I mean is its 
like that quote about genius being 1% inspiration and 99% 
perspiration. Focusing on saying the idea was obvious is doing a 
disservice to whats involved in actually getting it working.

And to be far almost all human knowledge is built up in layers. 
Even when someone solves a really hard problem you usually find 
lots of different people have chipped away at it in different 
ways.

> I guess Chowning's FM synthesis could qualify, but in general 
> it is a series of smaller steps.

See to me that's less impressive, I mean I reckon people were 
doing FM synthesis with analog hardware already. So it was more 
likely just a refinement, or exploration, it's actually 
technically pretty simple. I mean real time pitch tracking and 
artifact free pitch shifting are orders of magnitude harder 
problems than FM synthesis.

But maybe the implementation was harder because of the limited 
digital hardware back then?