Unearthed just the other day when accounts were having a spring clean were these gems. They were put together by a marketing company in Wolverhampton (“Marketing Matters” they were called) and are interesting not just because it’s good so see the genesis of the company logo – what it could have looked like and how it has changed over the years, but also how these ideas were presented.
The last one is closest to what we actually use.
What may not be immediately obvious form the image is that these mock-ups were hand drawn on draughting paper and the “brown” outline was actually in gold pen. Imagine that – no-one has just typed in ”xta” and then flicked through a list of fonts on their computer to choose some that look the part. They’ve had to sketch them and put the drawings in the post. (I changed that last sentence from “…and post the drawings” as even that these days would more likely imply they had been put up on-line not dropped in an envelope…)
Back in the day when people still USED compliments slips...
Also included in this bumper pack of goodies was a sketch of what the logo would look like when used on a 19 inch panel – the log on this panel actually made it into production very briefly on the DS400 mic/line splitter – the first product.
This could have been the DS400…
The rumour also goes that the company name of ”XTA” was going to have been ”XKT” due to our strong links with another pro-audio firm who shall remain nameless. The possibility of litigation stopped that idea from developing!
It’s come to our attention that a bug has crept into the latest version of AudioCore that prevents loading of individual preset from xbl files. Attempting to load a preset via the Modify Device > Load Preset route will all appear to work (you can select the xbl file and browse the list of presets within it), but when you actually load it, only the name appares on the device title bar in AudioCore but no settings are sent to the unit.
As a temporary workaround, please uninstall version 8.70 and then reinstall 8.60. Unless you are using DP548 units, there is no operational difference between these versions. You can get V8.60 here:
and it’s always available through the software revision history on the website. Apologies to anyone who has encountered this, and be assured we’re getting it sorted and will release an update shortly.
So it’s the second week in January and all the cold weather, burst pipes and tyre snow socks are behind us, hopefully. What did you get for Christmas? Amongst other cool things I got was something I bought for me, from me to me (Really – for me? Oh you shouldn’t have, thanks you so much). This was an Android tablet.
Only wanting to have a (cheap) dabble into the tablet world, after a good few years of using Windows tablet PCs here at xta, I was curious to see how usable a tablet with an OS designed to be used with your fingers and not a pen/stylus might actually work.
I am pleased to report that, all things considered, it all works rather well. I bought a 10 inch Chinese iPad rip-off (in terms of styling and packaging, not performance or quality, that’s for sure) first. This was actually pretty appalling, and went back 24 hours after purchase. Even at £185.00 I reckon on getting something that doesn’t need a reboot every 20 minutes, drop its WiFi when it goes to sleep, and with a battery that lasts more than an hour.
Never one to learn from his mistakes (!) I then went onto the lunacy of eBay and bought a 7″ Chinese MID ePad (see what they did there). This was on the grounds that it was all black (obviously very important, or not, but would at least not be covered in tacky plastic chrome), supposedly was loaded with Android 2.2, and was well under 100 quid delivered.
Ignore that misleading 'flash' icon on the screen - it's a lie. Bit like the Internet Explorer icon - who are they trying to fool?!
Several things to learn from this:
1) UPS can still sting you for import duty and that invoice can arrive any time after delivery! (Still came in under 100 so not a disaster)
2) Google clearly don’t allow access to the app market in China (after their little falling out) so any ‘market’ installed is filled with a load of old toss and very little of use (this can be got around by downloading apps to the SD card on a PC and installing them that way)
3) Despite what you may have been told, flash doesn’t run or can’t be installed on Android 2.2 (although again this could be China’s fault, as I know the Samsung Galaxy Tab runs 2.2 currently and has flash support)
4) You get what you pay for 😉
Point 4 aside, for getting your email, having a quick pick about on t’internet, or downloading a bit of music (and saving this to the micro SD card!), it actually works rather well. Battery life isn’t amazing, but it’s OK, and whilst it’s only a resistive touch screen, and won’t win any awards for speed, it’s relatively zippy and has yet to crash once (and that’s with a few weeks of use now).
So with new releases of Android imminent, although they are always imminent, will ‘Gingerbread’ or indeed ‘Honeycomb’ make tablets a viable alternative to the iPhone and almost as ubiquitous iPad as a cheap and simple remote platform?
What, in the name of the royal wedding, might that be? You may well ask…
In a completely legitimate and routine search on a well known electronics supplier’s website,
it threw up a shocking result.
I’ll say no more apart from:
– Who would have thought such a thing existed, and…
– Who would have thought you could buy one and put a digital storage ‘scope on the same order 😉
To see for yourself – go to www.rapidonline.comand search for “knobs”. Scroll down the results and be educated…
Well, lasers, jetpacks, food in tablet form and of course robots. Robots that bring you dinner (so that’s just some pills on a plate then), do the housework, order the shopping, pick the kids up in a jet car from school and so on…
As we are acutely aware, very little of this Utopian future has yet to materialise (talking of materialising, where’s the teleporter, hmm?). Our tentative steps into an automated future have just about got as far as closing the curtains automatically at night and, if you’re feeling very flush, possibly running you a bath at a time of your choosing. Personally, I find the idea of a tap turning on when I am out a little bit of a step too far. If I wanted to flood my house when I’m away, I’d just take the lagging off the pipes over the winter holidays…
Some electronics companies have, none the less, made a living out of remote controlling as many aspects of our domestic and working environments as possible and, when implemented well, these systems can offer a genuine improvement on the way we work and live. The companies I am thinking about are Crestron and AMX who are the two major players in home automation systems (there are now many others but to my mind these two are still the main players – please feel free to correct me if I am wrong!).
With the release of the DC1048 about a year ago, xta were pitching for the upper end of home installation, as well as any venue that needs the best sound quality in a unit that is tailored more to the permanent install both in terms of features and style.
Sleek and subtle for more style-conscious venue installations...
So, to go with this new sexy look, we brought out a new sexy touch panel to remotely recall some presets.
Discrete LEDs illuminate in each circle to show you which preset is running.
With a view to offering the most flexible options for automation, the remote doesn’t rely on complex serial comms or specialist protocols – it connects up with a Cat5 cable (only because it has 8 cores!) but it emulates contact closures and this allows several panels to be parallelled up around a location. If you don’t want to use this panel, or want access to more than 4 preset configurations, you simply change the setting on the front panel of the unit and use the port to recall more presets, or connect things back to relays in whatever system you have.
We’ve received good feedback about this flexible approach, but of course there will always be instances where something more or something different is required. What if you need volume controls? Do you want to leave the preset config changes to be handled automatically by the DC1048s built-in scheduling, and just have some level control in the venue? With the simplicity of the GPI hardware it is also possible to have 2 pairs of up/down volume trim controls that can be assigned to any input or output so you can adjust (withing a fixed [programmable] range) gains. I say ”it is possible” as currently it’s not implemented, so any feedback would be gratefully received on this topic!
What we have implemented is a simple serial protocol which works via the RS485 bus for those instances when you need a bit more control. I know I waxed lyrical a few paragraphs ago about obviating the need for learning complex remote protocols to perform any automation, and this system really is designed to be simpler than the full remote protocol used when programming via iCore.
It alows any input or output to have its gain adjusted (absolute settings, not trims), mute control, and preset recall. There are no fancy checksums or CRC codes to deal with so any Crestron/AMX system (or anything else – from a humble batch file up to an iPad) can control it.
With the release of the DP548 imminent, the final testing of its integration into AudioCore is nearly complete, and the ante has been well and truly upped with the implementation of the Dynamic EQ.
Any of you who came to see us at Plasa in September will have probably had a sneak preview of an early beta of the DEQ running on a tablet, but things have come a long way since then. The version shown at Plasa had three bars showing gain reduction (or expansion) superimposed over the centre frequencies of the inputs DEQ frequency response.
Whilst it was cool to see these react to their individual bands’ settings as far as envelope and threshold etc. go, everything still had to be ‘dialled in’ by hand at this stage (up/down spin buttons by parameters – not really quite as interactive as we might like these days…)
It was never intended that things would stay like that – anyone who has played with a SiDD will remember the ability to drag the threshold point on a transfer function window with a bouncing ball showing the closeness of the input signal to the threshold, and how intuitive that made setting the threshold. This has been incorporated into the DEQ (and compressor) windows for the DP548, but the DEQ has gone well beyond that.
The individual bands of EQ are now draggable just as they are in any main EQ editing scenario, with the bandwidth (or ‘Q’ depending on which you prefer to think in) adjustable with your mouse scroll wheel. The gain adjustment meter mode is still in there, with the transfer function drag point allowing the ideal threshold to be easily worked out.
More conventional display with gain reduction (or expansion) meters centred around each band of DEQ.
A right click on the curve display allows you to change to the real time individual curves which move in real time showing each band’s response with the shadow showing the maximum permissible response change that has been set.
Each separate band's EQ contribution is shown superimposed on the shadow curve which represents the maximum allowable effect level.
These curves moving about in real time is cool enough to watch and soon the operation of the DEQ becomes even more intuitive, especially as far as adjusting the attack and release times go – suddenly you can ‘see’ how the band is cutting or boosting in response to the audio, and how fast you want it to react.
However – the masterstroke is the combined response mode. Selected again from a right click on the display, this works out the interaction of each band with the others and displays an overall response curve, again in real time! This truly is brilliant to watch and I can honestly say I’ve not seen anything like it elsewhere. If you have – let me know and I will call you a liar, or a very efficient plagiarist 😉
You won't have seen anything like this before! DEQ bands interaction is shown in real time including the effect of the attack and release times of each band to show how the EQ is responding to the incoming audio...
The static images don’t really give you a good feel how this is working so below is a quick video showing the different modes – the bargraphs, the individual curves and the combined response mode. Notice how the sections of the curve move at different speed due to the different attack and release times set on each band, especially the yellow midrange band. If you watch carefully when the track stops you can see that this band must be set to ‘boost below’ with a long release time – as the bouncing ball drops below the threshold, the EQ band slowly boosts up to it max level.
I would post some screen shots of the compressors and the matrix, but I think that’s enough of a lesson for one day! More on them on the website when we go live with the DP548 product info 🙂
UPDATE: Rather than this end up in a different post, I decided to add the hints and tricks about the compressor and matrix here so it’s all in one place.
Threshold is draggable in real time on transfer function window, and bouncing ball shows input level relative to this.
When editing the compressor, each output can be cycled through 1-8 then back to 1 by pressing F8 on the keyboard. This will also cycle outputs on the matrix editing screen, and inputs on DEQ editing.
The threshold can be dragged in real time on the transfer function graph by holding the mouse over the “knee” and left (normal!) clicking and dragging. A right click on this graph also allows you to enable/disable peak hold for the ball. (Same on DEQ).
The ratio can also be adjusted by clicking and holding the mouse as if you are about to adjust the threshold, and turning the scroll wheel (if your mouse has one). Page Up/Dn also achieves this.
The knee can be adjusted by by clicking and holding the mouse as if you are about to adjust the threshold, and the pressing the left or right arrow keys.
To get the unit into Matrix mixing mode, it’s accessible from the dropdown list you’d normally use to choose a crossover template (2 x 4 way, free assign etc.):
Select matrix mixing in the list alongside "Free Assign" mode and the other routing templates. Accessed from "Device > Modify".
Once in Matrix mixing mode, you’ll see that the routing shown in the device window is replaced by a large rectangle mysteriously labelled “Matrix”. What could that possibly do…? 😉
Well, as with all the other processing blocks in the device window, clicking on the “Matrix” block will bring it up for editing.
Sliders set the "send" levels from each input to your chosen output.
As with the compressor editing, and the DEQ editing, F8 will cycle round all the outputs allowing you to set up the mix send levels quicker and compare output settings.
…don’t know why as yet, but it started playing up this afternoon, and now seems to be completely dead.
In the meantime get to the site via audiocore.wpengine.com.
Please stand by – normal service will be resumed shortly.
It’s come to my attention that there is a bit of confusion surrounding recent shipments of 4 Series and their seemingly massive jump in firmware version from 1.82 (or 1.83 in the case of the DP426) to version 2.10.
Just to explain…with the introduction of the DP548 imminent, the DSP platform in the 4 Series has been updated to a new processor. Performance, facilities and specs remain unchanged, but the new DSP needs new code, hence the firmware version change. The new version will work in existing 4 Series as it can detect which DSP platform is in place and load the DSP as appropriate…
We’ll post this new firmware on the website soon (final testing of the DP444 firmware is just being finished), but there’s no need to update your existing units when this is released – nothing will change, except the version number you see when you turn the unit on! For those with mild OCD, you can update your units and then switch them all on together and gaze in a satisfied manner that all firmware version numbers now match. In the meantime, don’t – you’re only making it worse for yourself 😉
Just a quick post after a review of the DC1048 from AV – the very cool Australian audio and video installation magazine. They seemed to like it – obviously had it been a terrible review I’d not have mentioned it…
It’s gone live today, and it’s got a whole load of new stuff that I thought was worth a quick post about. You can download a guide to the key new features here if you can’t be bothered to read this on-line:
Assuming you’re still with me, let’s examine the evidence, m’lud.
Firstly, you now get full support for all 4 Series units. That includes the downloading (so, unit to PC) of presets AND the ability to copy and paste settings from these into DC1048s, so if you’ve a favourite crossover preset from a manufacturer or want to compile a group in your 1048 you can now do this.
4 Series all playing happily together in iCore...
Just in case you’ve not done any copy and pasting, it’s very comprehensive and is also context sensitive – the fancy name for “you get different choices when you click on different things” – but remember it’s a right click on panels to get at this stuff 🙂
Other new big feature is the ability to create your own custom panels. This is pretty impressive stuff as you’ve basically got “carte blanche” to add as many buttons, knobs, faders, LEDs as you want to a panel and “attach” them to any parameter of any unit anywhere on the system.
So, you could have a fader that adjust the gain of a low shelf filter on an output of a 1048 (or several outputs if you link controls – more on that later) – label it “Bass” and you’ve got…a Bass control. A-MAZ-ING. Seriously though – the possibilites are vast for custom panels – gain control linked to disparate types of device and even things like the ability to add buttons to bypass individual bands of EQ should that sort of thing take your fancy.
Probably the most useful thing is being able to set up simpler panels (not massive complex ones) for staff of limited knowledge to use. That’s the polite way of saying, keep the fancy stuff out of the way of the fools who don’t know what they are doing. “I was just messing about and it all went off”. So, maybe some gain controls for a few amp channels and a mute that silences everything, and a standby button to put all amps to sleep.
You can even include your own pictures and design new buttons and knobs, should you feel very creative but, as the example below shows , you don’t have to do a lot to come up with a simple serviceable panel that is easy to use and looks a little more bespoke.
Design mode for a custom panel - just a few useful controls so as not to confuse the natives...
Last thing worth mentioning is the ability to link parameters across different units on the system – it’s similar to “Global Ganging” in AudioCore, and also allows these newly created link controls to be used on custom panels, so a single button can be linked to as many mutes (or anything else that toggles) as you want. Even parameters with different ranges can be linked together (although they do have to be of the same type – you can’t link a frequency on one unit to a gain on another – why would you want to, unless you’re some sort of audio sadist who take pleasure in confusing end users. Having said that, maybe as you turn up the gain it could turn up the low pass frequency to protect drivers…no no NO!).
The next post won’t be so much of a sales pitch. 😉
