As far as I’m concerned modern abstracts aren’t “too perfect” they’re TOO MECHANICAL. It’s not that it would be hard to emulate the scanning part of a Laserium console in software; it’s that doing so would be the antithesis of what made Laserium special. (caveat: You can’t do Laserium with one scan pair.)
A number of Laserium Mark IV, VI, 600 and CS control consoles were built. It’s important to note hardly anyone else ever built a number of identical consoles that could actually be played. There was some inspired design in the Laserium consoles. There was also plenty of pretty much what you might expect in terms of quadrature oscillators, 2&4 quadrant multipliers, summing amps, analog switches & multiplexers, VCOs, etc. It’s still a competent system, and has been oddified (?Really Sigmund?) modified over the years to provide new capabilities, but it’s never been just about the hardware – the Laserist has always been in the loop. Doing shows live defined Laserium. Doing the shows live is what made Laserium – not just different – but with a great Laserist BETTER than anything that could be done by someone sitting in a studio. So how did someone become a great Laserist? By doing shows live. By watching, working with, watching, being challenged by, watching, and sharing with other Laserists who performed the shows too. You develop the ability to visualize how something you see is done - REAL TIME - it’s really that simple. It might have been just an accident of the times that Laserium shows were live – we couldn’t afford the technology that would allow recording the shows way back when – and when that technology evolved - we had Laserists whose second pass through a show was better than their first, their Nth pass could be mind blowing, and their Nth+some could blow your mind even farther.. And they learned how to be “those guys” by doing live shows.
Moog didn’t change part of the world’s musical landscape by designing electronics that made sounds. He changed it by hooking the electronics up to a keyboard so musicians could play those sounds. Now, I’m sure there were introverts who took those keyboards into the studio rather than hone their work (and craft!) in front of an audience. I just want to point out to the introverts out there that want to be Laserists – laser shows are done in the dark… – and being out of your comfort zone can lead to great things… Or in the words of John Tilp when the modifications installed the night before for the premier of Laserium Lightyears in St. Louis screwed up Danube in the matinee of Laserium I, “Well do SOMETHING!” Sometimes what you try doesn’t work, but if you strike a chord with the audience – they’ll forgive you if you miss a note here and there.
There’s a lot of hype about what makes a great console great. Laserium I was performed on a console that didn’t have any Burr-Brown chips, had manually trimmed multipliers, and simple open loop scanners. Laserium I ran for 92 weeks in St. Louis and was still selling out on the weekends at the end of its run. It’s not about magic, phases of the moon, or parasitic inductance. It’s about Art.
The reason you rarely see consoles running today is they’re expensive. They’re all prototype level hardware. The potentiometers are expensive, the switches are expensive, and the assembly is expensive. The electronics behind the controls are expensive. And keeping it all running takes its own special kind of ability. And after all that - you still have to learn how to run it…