Eternal question - AES EBU interface for a laptop (MacBook Pro)

[ISedlacek]

Originally Posted by mixedupsteve

I just meant that if one is afraid of a problem with firewire recording then they could make a backup by splitting the analog signal off into a Alesis HD24 recorder. I've seen this done often.

Up to 48kHz only unfortunately ...

[fifthcircle]

Originally Posted by ISedlacek

How can I find out ? ("about this Mac" says nothing specific). I have quite new one - the previous generation of MBP (not the latest "zebra" one) 2,5 GHz Intel Core Duo

BTW do you use Sequoia for MBP recordings ? (i.e. Windows)

Easiest way to tell is in bootcamp as Windows actually has that info. I've even called Apple to ask them if they had that info and they refuse to release it. My understanding is that it was about 1-1/2 years ago that Apple switched from TI chipsets. In your situation, I'd probably give the system stress tests before I took it out on a gig and would see how well it performs. If there are issues, get a card and run firewire off that.

I'm currently not doing the bootcamp thing with Sequoia, but it isn't for a lack of desire- it is more of a lack of time to build up the machine. I figure when I have to move to Pro Tools 8, I'll be forced to rebuild on Leopard and I'll do a Windows partition then. I still have my RME digiface and would likely use that as my interface. It would give me the advantage of going more than 18 channels wide and would allow me to actually use all of my converters.

--Ben

[d_fu]

Originally Posted by fifthcircle

Easiest way to tell is in bootcamp as Windows actually has that info.

Alternatively, hold CMD+S during bootup to enter "Single User Mode", which apparently also lets you see the FW chipset of your Mac.

Daniel

[fifthcircle]

Ah yes.. forgot about the single user mode (my machine always works so I've never really had to deal with it).

When the computer boots, if you look through the lines of text, you'll get something that will say something like "Firewire OHCI xx" with the xx being your chipset- ie TI, Lucent, Agere, etc...

--Ben

[Sam Lord]

Agree with all above, it is insane. At AES 125, I asked Ian Dennis of Prism, who now own Sadie, why they don't just build a 1RU, multi-input-format bit-bucket (= recorder without AD or DA) with, say, 16-24 channels, 3x flash memory slots, rough 6(?) LED meters... and NO COMPUTER NEEDED. Maybe an SSD hard drive option. No moving parts, not even a fan. Deal a death blow to the rediculously unwieldy HD24. Oh, it would have AES and ADAT I/O and options for FW, MADI, and maybe AES50 to let your laptop be the *backup* recorder and precision meter, just as the gods intended. Could be done for $1k (sans options), no more OS worries, you're covered! FWIW, he was interested--let him know!

[huub]

pretty awesome idea really..

[fifthcircle]

Great idea. I'd absolutely buy something like this. If I see them at NAMM next week, I'll bring it up.

I believe this was a joint project with SADiE, but I don't know anybody that uses it. Klark Teknik | DN9696 It is also quite large in size and track count (96 tracks) The only feature I'd want would be the ability to drop markers while recording (xml?) so that you could get back to specific points easily.

--Ben

[Don S]

Ivo - I saw you were selling the magma/AES16 combo. What about it didn't you like? Just the software?

[Sam Lord]

Why thanks huub and Ben. Ian and I did discuss several features for such a box, like a metadata stream supporting a robust marker system. We talked about pre-roll options (IIRC), and useful, flexible display rules for detection of overs (intersample peaks, anyone?). Whatever Prism might have lacked (not much!) in experience with tracking systems is surely remedied by their acquisition of Sadie...

My repeated point to him was that the market was big, including everybody with a DAW, an HD24, or even the simplest project studio. All would like to be freed of reliance on an OS for tracking, without having to pay a fortune for the good multichannel, multifunction ENG boxes like Zaxcom, Sound Devices, etc. It is incredible to me that there is nothing smaller than the 96-channel DN9696 for the task which *isn't* tied to massive OS.

I also talked to folks at Sound Devices and Nagra about it, but received chillier (though friendly!) responses. They spoke of not seeing a need, but I think they might consider such a product to be a cannibal in their herd.

Ian at Prism was great and very supportive. He of course didn't commit, but I told him to imagine this little feller just a rackspace away from his lovely brainchild, the Orpheus, which should have a brother with MADI options and... Oh they're coming with my medicine, must hide!

Cheers

[huub]

is the dn9696 a real life project?? Can you actually buy one??

I think your idea is brilliant, although a 64 channel 3 hour project is about 95 GB, can one record this affordably to flash memory already? or is this something for the near future?
For me personally, it would be fine if the unit would record BWAV with timestamp, and all other info, markers and what not, would be in a daw.. But that's my personal opinion..

[Larry Elliott]

Originally Posted by huub

is the dn9696 a real life project?? Can you actually buy one??

Yes you can but only as part of a Midas XL8 Console

Larry

[Sam Lord]

Originally Posted by huub

is the dn9696 a real life project?? Can you actually buy one??

Well Klark Tecknik has had media about it for a while and some units in use (demo?), but I haven't seen a price yet. That's not a company given to vaporware.
Klark Teknik Press Release

Originally Posted by huub

I think your idea is brilliant, although a 64 channel 3 hour project is about 95 GB, can one record this affordably to flash memory already? or is this something for the near future?

That's a moving target, or rather rifle, since flash memory bandwidth keeps improving. I was thinking of a 1RU, linkable unit to handle 16 to 24 channels mostly because of the flash bandwidth and size and also I/O space in back. Minimum write speeds I'm seeing for low-cost cards is 5-8MB/s, or about 8-11 channels at 24/96. Most cards are much faster, so I expect 16 ch write bandwidth per card easy to find. I mentioned 3 card slots for redundancy. For 64 channels, three units with 16GB cards would cover you. Maybe 32 channels per unit would be a sweet spot, but I'm thinking smaller.

Originally Posted by huub

For me personally, it would be fine if the unit would record BWAV with timestamp, and all other info, markers and what not, would be in a daw.. But that's my personal opinion..

Sounds fine to me, although markers could be really handy if you did have a DAW failure in tracking.
Regards

[staudio]

All I want is a 1 or 2 space 8 track tape machine in digital format, solid state drives, AES in/out, word clock sync, the ability to drop ID's for playback and take numbering, Firewire for file transfer to the DAW workstation. Nothing more in the system, I don't want anything on the front panel except high resolution meters, a transport, SMPTE display (with options for time elapsed, time remaining, and take duration on an actual dedicated button), a take counter and "new take/drop ID marker" button. Keep it really simple like a tape deck is, no editing, no EQ, no effects, no "options", no over complicated user interface, and no nonsense.

Think Genex 8 track digital recorder without the moronic interface design and unnecessarily features.

Simple is the key word. You can send me one or two when it's ready as payment for the great idea.

[Sam Lord]

Originally Posted by staudio

...Keep it really simple like a tape deck is, no editing, no EQ, no effects, no "options", no over complicated user interface, and no nonsense.
//Think Genex 8 track digital recorder without the moronic interface design and unnecessarily features. //Simple is the key word. You can send me one or two when it's ready as payment for the great idea.

Amen to all that. I'll send the units just as... hey, wait a minute!

[just.sounds]

Yes that would be just what the doctor ordered.

a recorder with just a few buttons like record, stop, play, and marker
All on a sshd would be SWEET!.

Preferably with option boards for different i/o configs

And just a WC input NO SRC!!

[staudio]

Maybe IZ could do a "Baby RADAR"!

[Doc Mixwell]

Originally Posted by staudio

Maybe IZ could do a "Baby RADAR"!

Trust me! I've been telling them that "if you build it, they will come".

[ISedlacek]

Weiss AFI1 coming within a week. Hopefully it will be a great and reliable companion

[Sam Lord]

Adam, I too spoke with iZ about this. They were nice enough, but also seemed to think that schlepping around a 50(?) pound box (they don't know what it weighs) is needed to give that sense of quality. It would give me a hernia... Anyway, if you can't budge them, I surely can't; I'm a part-time amateur. I hope Prism takes the bait, a great company.

Ivo, I got a TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32 (say that 10 times) for this same frustrating reason.
DigitalKonnektX32
Works well, not saying it's better than the Weiss, just an option.

Best wishes

[ISedlacek]

Originally Posted by Sam Lord

Ivo, I got a TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32 (say that 10 times) for this same frustrating reason.
DigitalKonnektX32
Works well, not saying it's better than the Weiss, just an option.

Best wishes

Actually very good option (with analogue and phone outs). If I examined it before, I may have ordered it instead of Weiss ...

[fifthcircle]

Originally Posted by Sam Lord

Agree with all above, it is insane. At AES 125, I asked Ian Dennis of Prism, who now own Sadie, why they don't just build a 1RU, multi-input-format bit-bucket (= recorder without AD or DA) with, say, 16-24 channels, 3x flash memory slots, rough 6(?) LED meters... and NO COMPUTER NEEDED. Maybe an SSD hard drive option. No moving parts, not even a fan. Deal a death blow to the rediculously unwieldy HD24. Oh, it would have AES and ADAT I/O and options for FW, MADI, and maybe AES50 to let your laptop be the *backup* recorder and precision meter, just as the gods intended. Could be done for $1k (sans options), no more OS worries, you're covered! FWIW, he was interested--let him know!

Check this out... I'm going to NAMM tomorrow and see if I can find it, but it looks like the recording Gods are smiling on the remotesters....

JoeCo Home

No idea what it will cost.

--Ben

[Sam Lord]

The JoeCo is nice and compact. It doesn't have digital inputs, so you're limited to its converters (their specs not great). It has lots of nice features, especially the USB drives. I don't like DSub analog I/O for mobile work because of the need for exceptional strain relief and the worries of many insertion cycles. It's a nice light alternative to the HD24. About that Alesis unit... I don't think it's a bad piece or a bad deal, it's just not suited for lots of tasks.

Ben, I did write Ian Dennis, who said that Prism was considering a recording unit. Though I sent him a long wishlist, I hope you can talk to him or email him. I have just a single perspective.

Regards.

[just.sounds]

There are digital input options on their site.

JoeCo BlackBox Recorder ADAT Option

And also AES and Ethernet

[Sam Lord]

Originally Posted by just.sounds

There are digital input options on their site... ...And also AES and Ethernet

My bad, it's right there in the Options tab. It says it's either ADAT limited to 48k for 24 channels, or AES up to 96k. I dunno if the Ethernet means a MADI connection or something else. Thank you for the correction.

[fifthcircle]

Took a look at it today at NAMM:

Analog I/O is an insert cable wired to a D25 connector. ie... the I/O is unballanced. The last 8 channels allow you to actually insert stuff on those channels through the use of a loop out. There will be an optional "balancing box" that you can purchase for it. It will not change the nature of the I/O, but rather it is an add-on (I'd assume transformers, but I didn't ask).

Digial I/O will follow a few months down the road and multiple boxes can be chained with sample accuracy through subcode on the SPDIF I/O.

Converters inside are based on AKM chips. Not great, but not horrible either...

Street is expected to be about $2500 base and a few hundred bucks for each add-on feature (ie digital cards, etc...).

I also went to the Prism/SADiE booth. kicked the tires on the LX3 SADiE system, but couldn't seem to get their sales person to talk to me. After 15 minutes or so of hanging out, I left. This is also not the first time that I've had this experience with SADiE at a trade show. I guess I just don't look "serious" enough. fuuck

--Ben

[ISedlacek]

Two days ago it arrived ... I installed it on my MacBook Pro (in OSX first). It was quite smooth, but first it requires some manual software settings (master clock, frequency, mode etc.). With Cubase under Leopard it worked well.

Then I switched to XP under bootcamp (my main intended area for working in Samplitude) and some troubles started. After proper installation, it just kept saying "driver error, device connection timeout". Simply did not work, although connecting and disconnecting the device was recognised. I contacted Mr.Weiss, tried also the new firmware but no help. I was told the bootcamp may be the reason (not very optimistic)

Then I installed it to my old Acer laptop. There it was installed, worked with Samplitude but when recording, some audible drops (lost ASIO buffers) were happening now and then (a bit weak CPU, RAM and tuning in general).

After that I got the following detailed message from Mr. Weiss' colleagues:

"We have seen a number of issues when using Boot Camp on Mac hardware.

High DPC latencies
Hotfixes from Microsoft should be installed
Incompatibilities with the LSI chipset.


DPC

The boot camp drivers and utilities introduce extreme DPC latencies,
specifically the Keyboard Manager (kbdmgr process) and the WiFi drivers.

When using time-sensitive software and drivers such as with audio
recording, stop the kbdmgr process and disable the WiFi adapter.


Hotfix

Macintosh computers often have an S800 1394B FireWire interface, and the
Microsoft drivers do not handle this correctly without installing a
hotfix (SP2) or making a registry change (SP3). The result without this
is that the driver always uses the interface at the S100 speed, which is
not adequate for high channel-count audio applications.

Windows XP SP2:

- Install the hotfix mentioned in the linked article below. If you add
another OHCI card later you must either re-run the hotfix or manually
fix the SidSpeed field for the new adapter. The first time you run the
hot-fix it will actually update the drivers as well, which fixes other
problems.

XP SP3:

- The SP2 hotfix will not run on SP3, and actually on SP3 the OHCI
drivers are fine. You do however still need to add the SidSpeed manually
if you are using an OHCI card based on a 1394b chip. The article below
explains where to add the registry entry.


See this article for details:
When using 1394 audio devices, users may experience "low resource" "device timeout" or other errors.

After you install the Windows XP SP2update, if you add a host controller for a new 1394 device to your computer, you must add or modify the SidSpeed entry in the Windows registry for the new 1394 host controller.

The hotfix: Performance of 1394 devices may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 fixes the same problem on XP SP2 but the problem was reintroduced in SP3.

Note: Microsoft has assured us that they are working on a hotfix for this issue in SP3, but has not released it yet. Please check the Microsoft support website in case it has been released since this article was posted.

Otherwise, SP3 users can follow the instructions for manually changing the relevant registry setting in the KB885222 article above.



Incompatibilities

Some Apple computers, particularly the new MacBook Pro (from the 2nd
half of 2008) include an LSI (Agere) chipset which is not compatible
with our drivers:

Currently, the only workaround is to use an ExpressCard not based on the
LSI chip set. Like this one (http://www.byteccusa.com/product/xP-car ...
t-ecFW.htm)

We are currently working with LSI and Microsoft to solve this problem.

Note that our drivers work fine when running OS X on these computers."



After applying the mentioned hotfix, the installation of the device under XP bootcamp was suddenly completed (before the installation of the MIDI IO was missing) and the device was fully there and working, also recognised by Samplitude. Additionally I also stopped wifi, keyboard manager, IR, ethernet etc. in the XP device manager. The XP were already tuned to music as per the known tuning procedures.

It all resulted in grand finale: now everythig is working perfect, smooth and without any glitches. I even did test recording of 4 channels in 96k for more than half an hour - just perfect without any problem.

I mention all this in case someone faces a similar situation to show the successful way how to perfectly solve it.

Overall it works great now and for me it is not only a perfect solution for mobile recordings with MacBook Pro but also a complete and full power "studio backup" in case the studio computer would fail (it is a good feeling).

(BTW - after unpacking I was surprised that it does not have rackmounting possibility, but soon I found it was carefully packed separately and just needed a simple installation, which I easily did).

Forgot to mention that I am the lucky one who still has Texas Instrument firewire chipset on his MBP

[rentedroom]

I Received The Weiss AFI1 and it ran for about five hours with Soundblade 1.31(Mac Leopard 10.5.6) and it ran perfectly. On my new MacBookPro it needed to be plugged in to the wall to work or the Weiss was not being recognized by the MacBookPro. As to the sound it worked well but to my ears and blind listening tests with 2 other engineers in the studio and reference CD's that we're made on both systems, the Old Sonic SSP always was preferred over Soundblade by far, using same clock and same convertors. The comments we're that it sounded cheaper and thinner on Soundblade. To me there was a breath of dimension and musicality that the original Sonic had. I don't feel this has anything to do with the Weiss AFI1 because I found the same characteristics with Soundblade using the digidesign engine. Of course there are many reasons for this not the least being "Soundblade and newer software is more accurate and more correct"???? These tests are purely opinions based on the pleasure of listening to music and not scientific of course. I realize using the old system is much harder to use, more time consuming and ultimately clients are fine to just download their files, but for Labels I have to import the file to Soundblade to make a DDP which works well and I guess is the best current choice. I know there are some of you that read this post and can argue numbers for days and I respect that, but there are others who will understand this and if there are any other questions , please don't hesitate to ask.