A technical post for you, courtesy of Tom Taylor from Brighton, who called us last week about problems he was having installing the Aten UC232a converter on his Win 7 machine. Whilst we have not experienced any issues with our Win 7 machines here (64 bit version), I did try an install on the phone with Tom and came across some strange behaviour.
The standard manufacturer supplied drivers, which work from XP through to Win 7 are here , but Tom also sourced some alternate drivers through a forum post, which are here.
Thanks again Tom for your assistance – we’re never to proud to accept help!
Wow – it’s a proper technical article on the TechBlog! I have Daniel Grubac of DV2 en France to thank for bringing this to my attention and I am not too proud to admit that I didn’t know this worked!
In days long gone, when designing presets for the DP224 and DP226 in Library Manager, when it came to building a set of presets into a binary file, the option was available to additionally disable changes to the crossover configuration by ticking a box (no need to go into this further now – email me if you need ot know more… ;))
This facility was (somewhat strangely) left out of the 4 Series as an option, and Daniel enquired today about what to do instead. As it transpired, after a little head scratching, he was one step ahead of me by thinking about locking things out using the standard system locking through AudioCore. On thesecurity set-up window, there is an innocent little check box that is labelled “Configurations” as you can see below:
Select “Configurations” to stop anyone changing ANYTHING…
Considering I wrote the AudioCore manual, I really ought to have known that this did a little more than just prevent you from accessing the ability to design a new crossover. If you tick this and nothing else (so all other aspects of the unit remain unlocked) and send this locking status to the unit, what happens is that all menus accessible via the menu key disappear, with the exception of the memory menu and the security menu.
The implications for this are that if you’ve set your unit to a certain Interface mode for remote control purposes, or have enabled AES outputs for example, and you want to protect these features from unwanted change, but leave the audio editing fully accessible, this is how you achieve it!
Worth knowing (well, worth knowing if you own a DP548) that there’s an updated version of the manual now on-line. The new dynamic equaliser features have meant a few adjustments to the operation of the DEQ filters, so rather than confuse you all with an out of date document, we have made the necessary adjustments and a revised version is now on the website.
The very observant of you will have seen the new banner on our website extolling the virtues of the DP548 as your means of making the best of your sound no matter what the application may be – live sound, club install, theatre, cinema, karaoke bar (if you are Chinese this seems to be an increasingly popular choice!).
Well, excuse me for this cliche, but the best has just got better. To coincide with the Frankfurt ProLight+Sound show in Frankfurt (6-11 April – what do you mean you aren’t going? We’re in Hall 8.0, Stand F60 – thanks for asking), there is a new release of firmware for this, our flagship processor.
Anyone who has played with a SiDD, or a D2, you’ll be aware of the fact that the dynamic EQ filter could be switched to a high or low shelf response as well as working like a traditional parametric band. In the case of the D2 ”outside” bands could also be set to full range allowing the band to work as a compressor or expander as well.
This functionality has now been added to all bands of dynamic EQ in the DP548, greatly increasing the flexibility of the dynamics on the input side of things. Let me explain further…
Switching an band of DEQ to full range and changing the mode to cut below the threshold, transforms this band into a downwards expander, so can be used for soft gating. Change the mode to cut above the threshold and stay with full range, and you’ve got a compressor.
Switch two bands to boost below the threshold and set one to low shelf and one to high shelf and you’ve got a dynamic loudness control that will progressively end up at a flat response above the threshold you choose. If you set very slow attack and release times on these bands, and make use of the ”max gain” setting to limit the amount of shelving emphasis, this will provide very effective compensation at low levels then disappear as the night gets louder…
Switch one band to cut below the threshold and turn it into a high shelf – using a reasonably fast envelope (attack at about 50mS, release at about 100mS) and you have a handy single ended noise reduction system to curtail HF noise and clean up hissing mic channels.
All but the auto-loudness application only use one of the three bands on an input so you’re still left with a couple of DEQs to tidy up any other problems. Remember that the sidechains can be linked (as long as the channels are control linked) so your stereo image will be preserved.
If you’ve any suggestions for other uses we’d be interested in hearing about them 🙂
Let’s not get into a debate about the merits of the world’s favourite tablet (after paracetamol). It clearly does a similar job – a panacea for many ills. If you’re not sure what’s wrong, take some paracetamol and have a lie down. You’ll probably feel better afterwards. If you’re not sure what’s wrong buy an iPad and have a rest after all that queuing. You’ll probably feel better afterwards.
So as apple’s last gadget is written off as passe, and everyone pats themself on the back for their original and indiviual purchase of the latest and greatest, I get down off my soap box and am delighted to fill you in about an update to the Dp4 Remote iPod app 😉
Andi has been working away on it and is going to release a shiny new version in time for ProLight+Sound in Frankfurt next month. By far the most significant change to the software is the implementation of curve dragging for adjustment of filters. On the previous version tipping the phone on its side would slide across a frequency response curve (and if tipped the other way for inputs, reveal the graphic equaliser).
This has been updated to include numbered nodes for each filter (and un-draggable nodes for high and low pass filters) which can be dragged in real time to adjust filters.
Touch and drag a node to adjust the filter...
This works really well and looks particularly good on the new iPhone with its “retina” display. The phase response is also shown and updated in real time. You can choose what things are to be shown on-screen – phase, gain, x-over filters – switching these off speeds up response time, especially on old iPhones/iPods.
Touch interconnections on the routing matrix to adjust the routing – simple.
Other notables are the revised selection of routing which now takes place on the “home” screen, along with the metering. Routing mode is very intuitive with nodes on the matrix between inputs and outputs simply being touched to connect things together.
There have been various other additions and tweaks to the software, including native support for IOS4 and the new iPhone to take advantage of the improved screen quality and faster processor, but the biggest news is the release of the first version of the iPad app.
Unsurprisingly it works in a pretty similar fashion to the iPhone app, but with more screen estate to play with, some layouts have been changed. I’ll say no more about it beyond showing a few screenshots here and telling you that if you come along to see us in Frankfurt next month at ProLight+Sound, you can have a demo, and if you can prove to us that you’re a bona fide xta user with a walkabout kit, we might slip you a free copy of this and the iPhone app 🙂
Home screen showing device overview.PEQ adjustment allows curve dragging and direct input.Memory handling is clear and simple to store and recall just the parts you want.
Don’t say we’re not good to you…see you at the fair (Hall 8.0 stand F60).
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.
Also…irrelevant, but was a slightly more interesting tag line than “Post-PLASA 2010”.
The show was very good this year – we had a prime spot thanks to Polar Audio, right at the entrance on their natty stand where we commandeered a disproportionate number of meeting tables and general space due to our very enthusiastic staff presence (or should that be due to our very extensive staff presence)…
The DP548 went down a storm – more so than I expected – the view that it was more than a sum of its parts was neatly highlighted by one customer who explained how he would use one when they were available – his plan was to use inputs A&B feeding outputs 1&2 as insert processing on his master vocal channels, leaving him with the equivalent of a super-powered DP226 on inputs C&D feeding outputs 3-8.
There were a few good suggestions about alternative uses for the unit as well, which mainly focussed on the idea that it needn’t be thought of as a 448 with dynamics, but more as the main parts of a channel of SiDD, so maybe we should look into doing a 4 in – 4 out version for people to use it like that…any comments would be appreciated.
The other star of the show was the new version of iCore which now includes full 4 Series support, so presets can be pulled in from any unit and reused in the DC1048. The ability to design custom panels has now also been implemented, and for anyone who didn’t see our demo at the show, we had a little 10″ resistive touch screen monitor (a snip at £160 from amazon!) wired up to a laptop with a nifty panel set up to control various devices on a system on the stand – channels of amplifiers, Ti1048, Breakout box gains etc, all neatly combined on a single panel.
iCore version 2.0 will be released later this month – we are just giving it one last check over and getting some documentation finished explaining the new features, including wireless support using the “Walkabout Kit” hardware.
I met up with Andi Zeh, the man responsible for the iPod apps for the 4 Series (the new 4 Series mini one is now in the app store – see previous posts for more info) and he showed me his prototype iPad 4 Series app – it looks good so far and it’s only just been started so keep up the good work Andi – sorry I couldn’t make it out for a drink 🙁
On a different topic entirely, I unearthed this video from Frankfurt a few years ago (before MC2 merged with us) of Carol opening Ian’s wallet at a restaurant – enjoy!
The desirability of a product is inversely proportional to its availability. As often happens, once something goes out of production, people are desperate to get hold of one. More often than not, this is just to put on a shelf and admire as a great example of its genre, or maybe as the first ever version of something. They’ll never use it again properly, except to occasionally show it to a fellow admirer.
I am guilty of this type of behaviour, especially with technology. Not so much of the clamouring for something because it has become rare, more because it holds a certain nostalgia, or is a piece of great design and worked really well. Without going too much further into this I would just mention the XO Laptop – designed as the ”$100 laptop”, whilst it has yet to achieve this price, it’s good to know that to date nearly a million and a half of these little machines have been given away to developing nations’ kids to help them educate themselves.
XO Laptop – Yes, I have one, and yes those are aerials for the WiFi.I bought one of these as part of the ”Give One Get One” program a couple of years ago (thanks again to Kevin Markowitz at Group One for helping with this – cheers mate!) and it’s a masterpiece of practical design that has been so carefully thought out as to extend to things like spare screws inside the case so kids can fix it themselves if anything ever needs replacing. This would be my example of good design that also does its job extremely well. It was criticised in some quarters as not actually being a very good computer, but that wasn’t its design remit – it was supposed to be a leaning tool for collaboration in classrooms in developing countries and so not only was the software important, the hardware and of course cost were crucial if it was to be a success. But enough of that – read more about it here if you are interested: https://laptop.org/en/
My geeky, retro nostalgic example would have to be my Vectrex. I am not a gamer by any standard or definition, but this console still can entertain me for hours with its incredibly smooth and fast vector graphics and crap sound chip blurting and squirting effects though its (really very loud) little speaker. I can’t remember exactly when this was released (early 80s?), and I’d be lying if I said it was a beautiful piece of design, but it does work very well, and I love mine dearly. Sad. Sad. SAD. More on the Vectrex here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex
Vectrex – MineSweeper anyone? You will lose.So maybe now I should get to the point. First we had SiDD – xta’s first foray into digital dynamics came about as an extension to the work we had done in perfecting the limiters that went into the DP224 and DP226. One of reasons for the success of these units was not just how good they sounded under normal circumstances, but how good they sounded when they were being really THRAPED (for non UK residents, that means driven hard :)). This was all down to the limiter algorithms being so transparent. Other companies limiters had a far from linear response, despite the assumption that a digital limiter would be a perfect model, and this non-linearity manifests itself as distortion, not all that measurable on a steady state signal in a test environment, but definitely audible with music. As we don’t tend to go to a concert to listen to sine waves (unless it’s Pendulum, but why bother?!), the musicality of the limiters set the units apart, and continue to do so to this day.
So SiDD – the ”Seriously Intelligent Digital Dynamics” unit was born. Two channels of Dyamic EQ (only one band though), a compressor with sidechain EQ, a noise gate or expander with sidechain EQ, and a limiter with look ahead delay and again, sidechain EQ. Harmonics generation, a delay line and a pile of parametric EQ made this a formidable box of tricks, forming a pretty comprehensive engineer’s toolbox, capable of sorting out all manner of problems and also being used creatively in a studio environment.
The only real criticism SiDD faced was that with all that power, it was hard to access everything, even though menus were kept to a minimum and there was a powerful Windows package to run with it. So along came the Series 2 processors: the best bits of SiDD but with knobs on. In particular the C2, dual channel compressor, and D2, dual channel 3 band dynamic EQ proved to be what people had been waiting for – analogue sounding perfect dynamics but with the advantages of digital – repeatability, AES inputs and outputs, pristine sound quality. And of course lots of knobs and lights which every engineer likes 😉
Eventually when we were forced to discontinue the Series 2 units, of course everyone suddenly realises how good they are, and how much they rely on them and wants to order more! The only option was to either build them again with new guts (expensive development and eventual probably expensive units) or take advantage of what we had learned over the course of the SiDD and Series 2 development and use this to enhance something we already had.
So the new flagship is the DP548 – everything you love about the DP448 plus the equivalent of a pile of Series 2 processing for little more than the cost of a single C2. You get the equivalent of 4 D2s thrown in (one across each input), and 8* C2s (one on each output). Add to that the fact that we have also opened up the routing to allow matrix mixing from any input to output (you can still do traditional routing if you want) AND you get the ability to store and recall dynamics settings (can’t do that with knobs!). Of course, being a DP product means it’s also integrated into AudioCore for an amazing level of control and detailed monitoring if you want it.
Like I said – there’s not much it doesn’t do (you’ve still got all the power of the high slope crossovers, the PEQs which you can swap to a multitude of different behaviours including esoteric ones like elliptical and resonant, the two stage limiters, the Graphic EQs etc. etc.), so come to Plasa and see it in action.
*OK so technically it’s only the power of 4 C2 compressors, but as all 8 channels are linkable in any combination it’s as useful as 8 individual units…I think so anyway.
So, moving on from that, our good friend Andi Zeh in Germany has been working away (in his spare time it should be mentioned) on the iPhone app and has added a curve draw feature showing an equivalent of the “Global View” in AudioCore.
Curve view shows frequency and phase reponse for each output.
Falling out of the work he’s done on the full iPhone app, he’s also developed a cut down version of the app called “DP4 Mini” which shows a single screen with control of gains, and mutes, and display config, names and metering. The good news is it’s only a few Euro, so if you just need a quick tweak then this is the one to try…
Gains, mutes and mentering...
He’s also been beavering away with an iPad so watch this space for future info on what develops there…
Here, actually. Well, not exactly here, as I’m not going to explain them all again, but there is an updated guide to help you choose the best one for your application. It covers all the interfaces we stock, with part numbers and shows what you get with each kit. You can download a copy from the Tech Support section of the site, under the “Remote and Interfaces” section or directly from here: https://audiocore.wpengine.com/tech-support-docs/Remote_Interfaces.pdf
Now, onto more important things like our sea-faring activities of late… 🙂
