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. 😉
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…
Slipping in just above the iPod and just behind the 360, the DP226 makes it into Pro Sound News’ (unscientific) poll of the bits of kit that just keep on working. I can testify to that, as we still get plenty of units back for service. That’s not to say they all are turning up broken, it’s generally for basic things like dead back-up batteries, squashed encoders where the rack’s been dropped on its face, bent fronts – general wear and tear. It would be worse if we didn’t get any back, as that would imply that they were no longer in regular service, but that certainly can’t be the case.
What’s even more heartening is the conversations with customers concerned about how long they’ll be without their equipment – it’s generally only a couple of days – as they depend on the units so much. That’s good to know. What’s also good to know is that above and byeond the 5 year guarantee with all our units, we can still service and repair everything we have ever manufactured so don’t be put off buying second hand. Ideally buy new gear of course (!) but the reason the second hand prices remain so high is partly down to the fact that you aren’t buying out of date gear – just used.
This relates to the last post as well, as the main reason for the update is to include new DC1048 firmware that’ll work with both the original and the new DSP platform as mentioned in the said post.
What do you mean you didn’t read it?
There is also new firmware included for all MC2 Ti-Series components – the new firmware for the amps and breakouts uses a different comms ID generation algorithm so be aware that when you update any Ti-Series components you’ll have to rescan the system to find everything again. This only needs to be done once.
My advice would be to make sure before you update firmware in the Ti-Series components, that you go on-line and name each amp/breakout with an identifiable description, rather than the default “No Network Name Has Been Set!” string. This way, when you rescan, you’ll be able to work out what’s connected where if you’ve used the zones to group devices in physical locations.
Yes, I had a lovely holiday – thanks for asking. Anyway – I came back to a several hundred emails offering me the usual courses in “Graphic Design” (which I take as a personal affront) and member enlargement (which I do not) . Amongst the detritus were several genuine mails from customers enquiring why some of their brand new DP448 units had firmware version 2.10 and there was no sign of it on the website. Things like this happen when you go away for a week.
The answer is easy – the units with version 2.10 have a new DSP platform in them. This was first used in the DP426 (hence it being at firmware version 1.83 whilst all other 4 Series are still 1.82) and then the DC1048. We are methodically moving over to this newer platform and so all new units apart from the DP424 and the DP444 will be version 2.10.
This new firmware will be released when it is finalised for the entire 4 Series.
There is no need to worry about upgrading current units – the firmware is operationally identical to 1.82 (or 1.83 for the DP426).
After 5 weeks of gruelling training, the “XTA Hardcore” Works Fours rowing team were pumped and ready for the 25th anniversary regatta here in sunny Stourport on Severn. Each week since mid May, we met at the boat club by the river Severn for a mentally and physically exhausting training session of up to 45 minutes. On one occasion this was twice in a single week. The punishment. Yours truly was in the “Stroke” position (more on that later), supposedly setting the pace for our now streamlined rowing machine.
What happened on the day was closer to a streamlined washing machine. Our first race was at 9:45 am. We duly turned up resplendent in our iCore team shirts, looking altogether like a team that meant business.
N-n-n-n-losersSomeone's nicked the bally boat - hilarious.
Just before the race we scope out the competition and I give a highly motivational team talk, being the self-appointed captain and all that. I think what I was probably saying was more along the lines of “Do you think there’s time for a slash before we go?”, or “Someone wake Lewis – we’re up next.”
Must have been important - look at the gesticulation.
So we row to the starting line, and get into position. Steward shouts “Attention…go!” and we’re off – in a ferociously fought battle to the
OK so we lost.
And discovered later that the team we raced against had entered the past 3 years so we didn’t feel quite so rubbish then, this having been our first go.
Cheating swines. Losers of the first race got one more opportunity to get back into the running (or rowing), and things were looking good initially in this race, until a seating malfunction which resulted in my seat breaking, and falling off the back into the footwell behind me. Remember I mentioned I was the “Stroke”? Well, during that race it just looked like I’d had one. We eventually limped back across the finish, but did get a good cheer and some friendly abuse from the commentator so not all was lost.
If you want to watch some carefully edited highlights, which show us not losing, here’s your chance.
Obviously by “Victorious” I mean “Not submerged”. All good fun none the less and we’ll be back next year to whip them. Maybe 🙂
