Tech Blog

Post-ISE and Pre-Frankfurt – the show must go on…

…and I must not lose my passport this time.
I was intending to regale you with the tale of how, after a very chilly show in Amsterdam at ISE I managed to lose my passport on the day before I was due to leave which resulted in an entire day of trips to police stations, the British Consulate, lost property offices, banks, and finally the airport, all in a blizzard with 6 inches of snow, and no trains or taxis running.

I was going to tell you about it but I decided I wouldn’t 😉

Instead I’ll look forward to tomorrow and the pilgrimage to Pro Light and Sound in Frankfurt…

Our exciting news is two-fold – firstly – I got my hands on the beta version (due for imminent release) of the latest iPad app to control our gear and it is brilliant!  I am allowed to say that as anyone who has been following this story will know, we didn’t write it.  That in itself won’t make it brilliant (and if it did then I’d not being doing a great job at this company promotion thing!), but we finally scraped together all the spare change form the back of the drawers in the sales offices and bought an iPad so we could have a go with it and show it to you all properly.

It was duly connected to the sacred system of units that lives in the demo room (it’s the only place you can guarantee to get  a full complement of 4 Series units along with everything else, as they’ve been tie-wrapped into the rack to prevent them “wandering” 🙂
This new version now scans for connected units and shows a virtual rack as they are found…very nice.

But it gets better – after everything has been located settings can be downloaded from the units and the metering on the units in the “rack” starts to work – in real-time and at a refresh rate that I would not have believed had I not seen it myself!  Admittedly we only had 5 units connected, but that constitutes a pretty big system (40 outputs), but the speed of the metering was on a par with a wired connection through AudioCore.

I was impressed and I’d not even done anything yet!  Taping on a unit then opens it for editing and this is where the iPad comes into it’s own with a big screen.  Monitoring and little changes are OK on an iPhone, but having the benefit of full screen modes for both PEQ curve dragging and the Graphic EQ with the longest faders you’ve ever seen on a GEQ) makes it a pleasure to use.

The copy and paste features also allow for settings to be copied from any channel to any other on the system, and this is sub-divided into useful chunks such as PEQ, GEQ, limiter etc. dependant on what you’re editing – a quick double press at top of the edit window pops up the feature.

Now I could have added a load of screen shots in this, but I haven’t for two reasons. 
Firstly – the iPad’s already left for Frankfurt so I missed my chance, and secondly, you should come along and see it for yourself at the show!  Andi Zeh who has developed this has also informed me that in time for the new release, the will be a month-long sale on the app starting on the 21st of March when the new version goes live.  It’ll be 60% off and so only cost £20.00 (or 23 Euro, $29.99). 

Whilst you’re marvelling at that, we’ll also be revealing a brand new product at the show…all I can say right now is it’s 2U, lights up lovely in the dark and has lots of options!

Piqued your interest?  Come along and see us then – there’s a free cup of tea in it for you, brewed by an MC2 E100 powering our kettle 🙂  We’re in hall 8.0 Stand F60.

Rodeo-related customer satisfaction email of the week.

The first in a very niche series:

Hello Waring,

After so much turmoil and problem after problem We solved it all.  Everything was flawless and as stable as the Statue of Liberty.

Thank You so so Much.  I have never used or played with anything like this before. It was my first rodeo out of the gate and after a four year non-compete judge ordered stop work order and only have one thing to say. Truly awesome just flipping awesome.

As I flew off our mix riser and barreled thru the crowd –  Straight to the barricade with my security in tow,  finally able to tune, delay and shape the main hang, downfills, front fills and subs.  It was getting laid the first time.  Hats off to Waring Hayes and the extended XTA family.

 Your biggest fan,

 Sincerely,

 David A. Cramer


 
Let’s just bask in that glow for a moment shall we?  OK, so that’s enough basking, best get on… 😉

Dave attached some pictures to his email, but the one of greatest interest unfortunately appears to have been taken on horseback but you can just make out a Fujitsu tablet with AudioCore running on it (the laptop to the right has their logo shown on it).

Drive-by photo. OK, ride-by then.

 Always good to hear from people when they’re happy – and we did have a lot of turmoil with this one as Dave suggested, but it was all sorted out in the end and in time for the show which is, of course, the important thing!  Thanks again Dave – your free unit is in the post 😉

Need to lock your AES Mode or Interface Mode but still edit the Crossover on a 4 Series? Here’s how…

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!

Daniel – vous etes une etoile!

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. 

 

 

 

iCore Version 2.20 – more dynamic than ever!

With this latest release of iCore, we’re pleased to announce that it now includes the DP548 with some very cool metering and control facilities.  The dynamic EQ screen alone is worth a few words as I doubt you’ll have seen anything like it elsewhere (except maybe in AudioCore but we’re allowed to say that!).

DP548 DEQ in full flow…

Click on that to make it a bit bigger and so see how very cool it really is.  The transfer function graphs at the top show how the band will react to incoming audio like a normal dynamic module – so you can see where the threshold is and how the gain will be manipulated above (or below) this point.

The coloured section built into this graph is actually the metering showing closeness to the threshold – green below it, yellow at it and red when you’re into gain adjustment.  I have to get away from using the word ”reduction” when referring to DEQ – gain can be manipulated to increase or decrease depending on whether the mode is set to cut or boost at the threshold…

The frequency ressponse curve shows each band with a dynamic meter built-in underneath again.  The actual curve is the maximum effect that is to be allowed (this is especially useful when set to ”boost above”  mode – preventing excessive EQ being applied ad infinitium with I would reckon pretty extreme results!).  The coloured ”shadow’ below the curve shows the real time amount of EQ  being applied in real time.

Static screenshots of this don’t really do it justice – the best thing you can do is either buy a DP548 (or at least borrow one and then buy it when you’re suitable amazed) and try it out for yourself, or come to Plasa this year and see it in action for the first time…

We’ll try and get a demo video up on the youtube channel soon and I’ll post a quick message when it’s there.

Before I go on, there’s also a DP548 firmware update to coincide with this release of iCore – this version 1.21 adds an enhanced metering message to improve the response of iCore when it it displaying all this metering – it will work without the firmware update but it’s a lot slicker with it.

So let’s just touch on the other main DP548 new thing you won’t have seen (matrix mode is handled just like the DC1048).  The compressors on the outputs:

DP548 Compressor adjustment with individual channel’s transfer functions and GR meters.

The metering showing closeness to the threshold is handled in the same way as the DEQ bands but the transfer function now also shows the interaction of the soft knee feature in a very useful way.  If the knee is set to ”hard” (0 is hard, 12 is softest) then the transition between below threshold (green) and gain reduction above threshold (red) is marked by a small yellow section on the metering.

As the knee is adjusted to become softer, this is not only reflected in the curve softening around the threshold, but also the sharp change between being above and below the threshold is ”blurred”.  The yellow section of the meter expands to show that gain reduction is now starting below the threshold and the ratio is effectively applied in a ”softer” manner so the full ratio is not reached until well over the threshold.  This visual representation is exactly what’s happening in the audio :o)

The meters show the gain reduction being applied as you would expect.  All in all this is a very worthwhile addition to the iCore armoury of devices it supports and what with the custom panel possibilities using the DP548 it’s worth downloading even if you’ve not got one yet and having a play – it’s free, it’s here, and you can set up custom panel stuff off-line to see how it might work for you.

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!

DP548 Manual Update for Firmware Version 1.20

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.

 

AudioCore Version 8.71 now on-line

Just a quick update for those of you with RSS feeds – the latest version to coincide with the release of the promised DP548 new firmware is now available.  Remember to update your 548 as well as downloading the software to unlock the new features in the dynamic eq bands and have a play around – you’ll be amazed how powerful a seemingly small change can be!