Category: General

The illusion of cornice and iPad remote leaps forward.

Now there’s a headline you never thought you’d read.  On first glance, there would appear to be a good reason for that.  It makes little sense.  So permit me to enlighten you.  Firstly, this post relates somewhat loosely to last month’s Plasa festival of fun – we were there with Polar Audio , our UK distributor, and had a couple of great spots thanks to their very very stand being right at the entrance to the show.

I was down in the big smoke for four days, and we stayed at the Holiday Inn, Kensington.  Stay with me – there is a reason for this amount of seemingly unnecessary detail.  Each morning we walked from the hotel though some lovely leafy, not at all expensive, squares, past many not at all expensive cars to Earl’s Court.  Being creatures of habit, certain things always happen on this journey.  One of these things is to call at a little newsagents/grocers on the last leg of the journey for chewing gum/mints/bananas/pills (previous evening dependant!).  It was here that I spotted this sign in the window:

It's all about the "illusion of cornice" bottom right.
 

This handyman does all the usual things – painting, flooring, wallpapering, and then his services get a little more arcane.  You’ll need to click on this and look closely at the service offered in the bottom right hand corner.   That’s right – “illusion of cornice”.  Not being entirely sure what this mysterious entity might be (was it a force for good or evil?) I took the photo so I could look it up when I got back.  Soon, all was revealed – it’s no mere illusion, dear readers, it’s real – REAL!

But it’s not just an illusion – it’s real!

It’s also somewhat less exciting than its mystical tag line suggested, but it certainly kept us amused for many hours at the show with the tantalising hint of DIY magic 😉  Good luck to gingellfixit and thanks for keeping us entertained!

So back to the show…

This year, Plasa felt a little less well attended overall, by manufacturers as well as punters, but it was still a good show and it’s always good to catch up with a people who you otherwise only communicate with by email or speak to on the phone.  I was glad to talk to Alex Hadjigeorgiou from Wigwam who has been singing the praises of the DP548s and put his money where his mouth is by getting a bunch (that is the correct collective noun for several DP548s ;)) of them on tour with Coldplay – cheers mate!.  More on that on the website at a later date…

I also was pleased to be able to spend a proper amount of time with Andi Zeh – my German buddy who has written the iPad and iPod apps.  He was showing me the continuing work he’s been doing to improve the capabilities and features of the apps, in particular the ability to connect to a network of devices and allow full copy and paste facilities.  This really does add a whole new dimension to the system and makes it a much more powerful tool.  It’s still in beta, but I have a couple of screenshots to give a flavour of how it will look and it’s every bit as intuitive and stylish as the rest  of the app:

See a rack of units with real time meters and click on one to get in for editing…

You’ll get a rack of connected units and real time metering along with basic info about each unit – tapping on any device will open it for editing.  He also showed me a full screen mode for EQ editing on the iPad which is a great improvement on the previous version and makes much better use of the extra screen estate:

 
EQ editing can now take full advantage of the bigger are on the iPad and run full screen so you can pinch your ‘Q’ and drag your nodes about with even greater abandon…

 

When this is ready for release, if you already have the app, you’ll be notified, and if not – buy it!  I’ll post about it when it goes live in the appstore. 

 

 

 

Out of a Jobs.

Thought I’d lead you all in with a sneaky apple reference in light of the news today of his stepping down as CEO.  Fair play to the man for making apple what it is – a master of self-promotion and re-invention.  The lack of self worth it instills in the public who buy its products is indeed “magical”.  Great products though… 🙂

Anyway that’s not what I meant – I meant I was soon to be out of a job if what follows is anything to go by.  We have recently had Richard’s son Matthew in with us for a week’s worth of  work experience.  He spent time in production, test, service, and finally R&D.  I like to think it was in R&D he was suitably inspired by spending time with me showing him how I help design the look and feel of the products that made him create this masterpiece in a bit of dead time sat in his dad’s office.

Now before you see it and judge, bear in mind this was drawn on a Windows tablet PC with a stylus using Paint.

Let’s read that again – Win XP, Tablet + Stylus, and Paint.

And here it is:

Organically grown and without the use of pesticides. It’s the future. And a bit of a funny shape.

Personally, I think it’s fantastic.
What do you think – should we make a t-shirt from it for Plasa?

There’s an app for that.  Probably.

Our alien technology?

I have Dave Robinson, the esteemed editor of PSNE, to thank for this.  I had an email from him earlier this week filling me in on the fact that if you search for “XTA” on Wikipedia, you get redirected to an interesting alternate source…whatever clown set that up, well they are off our Christmas card list 😉

I’ll say no more – you have a limited period to check this before I go and fix it!

Job Vacancies…

Well, OK, vacancy, but a good one.  Your good friend and mine, Gareth Green, has got a new job (within the company – well done that man!) and so the role of Service Engineer has become vacant.

Closing date is the 30th of June so best get in touch pronto!

Don’t worry though – Gareth’s still responsible for all your servicing until his successor is found and will of course assist in the handover to whoever the lucky person turns out to be, so your returns will be handled just as efficiently and competently as they always have been.

Sorry about that 😉

As an update to this post – the service job applications have now closed but there’smore to look at so click on the link and see fi you fit the bill!

Pro Light and Sound 2011 – Kate Middleton

Totally irrelevant but incredibly popular.  That’s not a judgement on the imminement new royal, just a means of incorporating a contemporary topic ;).  Actually it’s not totally irrelevant – almost – but not totally.  So here comes this year’s report…
Waring and Bill making a mess during set-up…
then moments later…Ta Daaaa!
Ready for the masses...
Your beautiful hosts: Dan, Richard, Bill and Waring
There were moments in Frankfurt where it felt a little like a street party this year, it got so busy.  This was of course a good thing and we had plenty of interest in all things DP548, along with some great stories of DC1048 installs in Israel and Slovenia.
All bottles were filled with water. Allegedly.

I don’t want this to turn into an Oscars speech where it’s a credit roll of notables. but I’d like to acknowledge a few people I was delsighted to see there.  I had a great chat with Daniel Grubac of DV2 in France who always shames me with his infintely better English than my French will ever be, and some interesting conversations with John Newsham of Funktion One about ambisonics. 

As I am sure many of you know, F1 love a bit of boundary pushing as far as the clubbing experience goes, not only by ensuring that clubbers are getting faithful sound, (using the best amps and processing of course, cough cough ;)) but by also exploring more emmersive environments such as multichannel surround sound installations.  We talked about using the DC1048 as a centre for the production of 8 channels of surround information derived from a stereo source, with all the various combinations of LL, RR, LR, L-R, L+R being swooshed about (technical term) a circle of speakers. 

It was also great to see Nagao san and all our friends from Otaritec in Tokyo – I mention Nagao san in particular as he treated me like visiting royalty when I was over there a few years ago (see the Kate Middleton connection now?) and I’d not seen him since.

Peter Trojkovic (of CMI Australia) turned up for a catch-up from Melbourne on the Thursday I think, and it was good to hear about things progressing down under.  We were all limbering up for the Atlantic Audio party that afternoon as crates of beer and other assorted drinks started to arrive after lunchtime.

Spot the difference (apart from Viktor) - that'll be the Becks in the next one.
Delivery number one (it's hard to hide this sort of thing on a stand)...

After a brief soujourn by myself, Richard and Mr. Clarke to the L-Acoustics stand to see Stuart Down (and maybe the promise of some free champagne – that’s what drew Terry over, like a moth to the flame ;)), the Atlantic Audio evening party got underway in some  style.  As ever, they put on a great event which always attracts a big crowd and is not only a very relaxed and enjoyable affair, but also a great way to meet up and discuss things in a less formal atmosphere.  By ”less formal” I obviously mean ”drunken”…

It's like extra gravity - the smell of free food and the mention of free alcohol 🙂

This year I am sad to report we have no animal molestation stories to relate, as DAS Audio were attempting to steal some of the anniversary thunder that was rolling about (Martin Audio were celebrating their 40th year) by staging a party of their own in a venue across town which all of the xta team decamped to early on in the evening (apart from myself, having made arrangements for a meeting – doesn’t that make me sound important?).  Reports back from this were of a second-to-none extravaganza featuring Manowar, who incorporated the party into their tour schedule and scared the very vol-au-vents out of peoples’ hands with the volume, apparently 😉

I had a good evening, much of which was spent chatting to Andi Zeh – him of the iPod and iPad app fame.  He’s done some great things for the iPad release including a full screen EQ editing more which has the intuitive ability to ”pinch” a filter to change its ”Q” – very cool.  He had made us a pile of free vouchers for iTunes to give a way copies of the apps, and we still have a few left so email me if you would like to try a copy  – they’re only valid for another few days!  Thanks again for all the Gitanes Andi 🙂

I couldn’t sign off without posting a picture of the most striking bit of kit I saw on my travels to Hall 5.1 – that of all things esoteric recoding and mastering.  I would like to tell you exactly what this was, but I can only guess at an EQ of some sort.  I was a little scared to approach without applying SPF 50 – but it did look very interesting…

Anyone know who makes this monster? All the staff were wearing SPF 50 during demos...

 

And finally to this year’s sad comedy moment.  I’ll leave you with a picture of Gobo the Clown.  Nuff said I think!

Appearing in a town near you soon...
 


iPad 2? Form an orderly queue…

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).

A Litte Bit of History

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!

 

 

New year, new OS?

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?

Condom trainer?

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.com and search for “knobs”.  Scroll down the results and be educated…