Tech Blog

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...
 


Clean up your acts. New DP548 firmware features!

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 🙂

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!

 

 

Preset loading bug in AudioCore 8.70

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:

https://audiocore.wpengine.com/old-software/AudioCore%20V860.zip

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.

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…

The Future is Lasers

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.

The info on this is a little beyond the scope of this blog, but it’s all in here:
https://audiocore.wpengine.com/tech-support-docs/DP4%20Series%20Remote%20Protocol.pdf

Unleash the geek in you and have a look!*
*Do you unleash a geek, or do you unstick them 😉

Have you ever seen (not heard) Dynamic EQ?

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.