Toys, toys, lessee. I really wanna try Lexicon's new Jamman, and somebody's morpher, like either the EMu Morpheus or the Lexicon Vortex. Maybe all of 'em? Also, it's time for a good multi-effects box. This is a toughie, Santa. Do I plunge for TDM and do it all in the virtual realm, or do I ask for some traditional outboard boxes, oh say, an Eventide Harmonizer and/or an Ensoniq DSP-4? Actually, what I really want is a box that has every effect ever created, plus all the side chain and keying possibilities, which can accept and/or generate any kind of digital, analog or control signal, has enough gzintas and gzoutas to deal with real-time surround sound, is MIDI controllable, will save everything in off-line audio files, has a 32-bit digital CPU and an 18" RGB screen interface plus a decent physical control surface with real faders 'n knobs, and only requires one rack space. For, oh say, $700 a pair.

Also, is there anything that Sam would particularly like for her upcoming session? Ask her.

More nerdy stuff: a decent dual-trace oscilloscope. Say what you want, it's still the cheapest and most flexible way to see what is going on with an audio signal. Use it in XY mode to see how your stereo mix is doing, use it in dual trace patched before and after to see what's happening to your signal. Y'know, Howard Tremaine, in the original Audio Cyclopedia, had a whole page on how you can look at a display of a square wave and see at a glance the frequency and phase response of a device as well as ringing and other distortion artifacts. Really cool! Anyway, Hitachi makes a nice cheap one (the V-212), hint, hint.

Oh, one non-audio thing. I need some sort of good telephone controller box, Santa. You know, something I can use to select either of two incoming lines and send them to modem, answering machine and/or the handset, as well as turn them off when I'm doing acoustic takes. Do you have anything that'll do this? Man, y'gotta know, I sure appreciate your help on dorky stuff like this. Thanks.

Anyway, that'll sort of do it for this Christmas. I mean, send the car books, CDs, sweaters, and other stuff too, like always, but for audio, this'll keep me occupied and out of trouble until at least February, ha ha!

But actually, Santa, there's some longer term stuff I need to go over with you, looking ahead for future years. First off, there's some trouble with your elves, and I really hope you can make some adjustments. I know you felt specialization would be good, but your new Virtual Elves are losing it. Seriously. They can't be bothered with the real world any more, so their stuff just doesn't interface very well and they're so hung up on this intellectual property thing that they can't see straight. I was kind of hoping you could get all the Virtual Elves together, y'know, for a retreat or something, as soon as you get some time after Christmas (I know Sam has her heart set on Aruba, and we do have that non-refundable lockout session booked for February, so you'll have to work around those), and, like, talk to them. Get 'em to chill out, fer Chrissakes (oops, sorry about that, I forgot), and get it into their heads we're all in this together. We can't keep pretending that all this digital and virtual stuff is really ultracool and ultrahip when actually it doesn't exactly work yet. Of course it's important, and of course it's going to take over, and of course the infobahn is going to be where it's at and yes we are a global village. But tell those virtual little varmints that they gotta back off on the vaporware, get real about copy-protection, get seriously real about beta-testing, and ship stuff that works out of the box. Man, they are trashing your image! Think about all those kids with their presents under the Christmas tree, that whole sentimental shtick, while the reality is Daddy can't make anything work because he needs extra cables, a mouse driver, and some newer system version in order to successfully run both the sound pulverizer card for Billy and the reindeer space game for Dawn. Aside from the fact that there are no stores open Christmas morning (yeah, right, like Mommy is really going to allow Daddy to run down to Computerama at 9 AM Christmas morning!), it really cuts into this incredibly beautiful spiritual thing you've created and developed, where you've managed to set aside this one sublime twentyfour-hour stretch of really global peace, where we all can hang out and relax, and everything works! It's so great when it happens! Please Santa, work on this one. Thanks, man!