The Future of Microsound? [Archive]

MMVOX

December 1st, 2006, 09:10 PM

Hi Geezer,

Well, okay, not really a "sin". I wanted to get back to you, now that a ton of time has passed. Although I've used and loved MicroEditor since 1994, I've been forced to relegate my system to backup status. I've gone to Pro Tools and it's excellent. I would have preferred to stay with MicroEditor, but two things forced my hand:

1) Lack of development and support. To this day I find it hard to believe that MicroEditor would not be supported over the long term by fans such as myself, and those that I've turned on to the system. Granted, this would take a bit of effort on the part of MTU...the software development needed to keep up with the times, and equally important the marketing drive to get the system into catalogues, dealers, etc. so that people are actually aware of its existence.

2) On a personal level: I got ripped off. A while back I contacted MTU about purchasing a backup hard drive and CD burner for my system. I could have bought this stuff anywhere, but I went to MTU out of loyalty, respect, and for their expertise. I purchased FROM THEM the equipment THEY recommended. When the hard drive proved to not be compatible, I requested a refund. They refused because I had waited longer than 30 days after purchase. (It was in fact longer than 30 days...installation of this drive wasn't an emergency or anything so my computer tech was in no rush to get to me.) Although it's not much, I am responsible for at least 10 MicroEditor systems being purchased from MTU between 1994 and 1999. That said, and since it was THEIR equipment recommendation that proved to be inaccurate, I would have expected a refund, or a credit, on the hard drive. Their inaccuracy occurred at the time of purchase, not after the 30 days.

Certainly it's not the money...MTU obviously needed the cash more than me. It's the principle that is important to me.

But it's been a great learning experience. They demonstrated a valuable lesson to me about how NOT to treat my clients, and as a result most of my business is from repeat clients. They forced me to be open minded about embracing and learning a new system, and Pro Tools is great, fun and very well supported. And finally, they showed me that all that wacky religious crap that appears in the MicroEditor manual under "Credits" is nothing but lip service...like most religious zealots, they can talk the talk but cannot walk the walk.

geezer

December 1st, 2006, 11:51 PM

Happy to see you are settled in to a new system.

As I have said elsewhere on this forum, I found my highly affordable, high quality replacement for Microeditor a few years ago with Steinberg's Wavelab. Once I figured out how to use it, it was actually faster than Microeditor and enough of an improvement in quality that I was able to figure out a whole new set of quality considerations with digital audio, and really upgraded my mastering skills for CDs.

I still have 2 functional MicroSound systems, but have actually not powered them up in 2 or 3 years at least.....I should probably pull them off the shelf and spin the drives up to see if I can salvage any of the somewhat important files still in that format, I guess.

....There was a "golden age" of support and development for MTU and Microeditor that, when I think back on it, was actually pretty short for me....perhaps only 3 or 4 years. The amazing thing, though, is that the original product and paradigm were so elegantly designed and forward thinking that the lack of continued development did not kill it completely for maybe 5 years after that. It certainly would have been better for MTU to have been more forthcoming about the dead end they were aimed at, but the quality did ultimately justify the investment, I guess.....even though, in my case, that investment was pretty considerable ($12,500. in 1994, and at least another $3,000. over the next 3 years or so).

Although it would have been nice for MTU to have made the transition into the new age, we are actually living in pretty lucky times right now. All the companies still left standing have managed to come up with very mature, good sounding software packages, and the computers they ride on have lots of power right out of the box.....At least we all have some place comfortable to land after our the wings fell off our airplane in mid-flight. I was definitely a little scared when I heard the engines sputtering back around 2001-2 (after several years of entreating MTU to give them a valve job), but my heart stopped racing when I got Wavelab working....and there are lots of other functional systems now. Whew.

MMVOX

December 2nd, 2006, 08:47 AM

Hi Geezer,

Very well said. You are right, we are fortunate to have the choices in software/hardware available to us right now. Many of them are excellent.

I made the move to ProTools in 2004, but I do power up my MicroEditor once a month or so just to spin the drive and see if it still works. And it does. I was just extremely disappointed because MicroEditor was the first DAW that I learned, and it opened up all kinds of possibilities for me in broadcast audio and music production, allowing me to be more productive and creative. Ironically, one of the last voiceover projects that I recorded on MicroEditor was a narration for Avid/Digidesign....makers of ProTools.

admin

December 2nd, 2006, 11:39 AM

Well gentlemen, this is an interesting set of posts.

First, MTU IS and always WILL BE the Grandfather of the DAW industry. MIX Mag documented that we were the first in their Sept. 1997 "The Audio Industry: 20 Years" issue. We knew that as we watched everyone else come in after us. I even sent MIX 12 pages of history, some of which they weren't aware of, that proved to their satisfaction that we were the first.

MTU pioneered and defined the "bleeding edge" in DAWs and microcomputers, starting in 1968. We cut the path from nothing. We then paved the road for others to drive on. No matter what you want to think or say today, we did it, and Digidesign and Steinberg benefited from our pioneering work. We were shipping 9 years before Digidesign started their first product, before even their Sound Tools. Steinberg was more than a decade later.

Motorola killed Microeditor. Although we had a 5 year guarantee from the DSP Manager, with 3 of his managers hearing (and later attesting to) his promise, 8 months later we received our "last buy" warning on the 56401 Digital Audio chip... which was the clock heart of the Krystal DSP card. We ordered what we thought would be enough for then next few years, based on our sales forecasts and past performance. To redesign Krystal, was out of the question. We had lost our senior engineer to SAS. He was both hardware designer and lead programmer. There was no way to keep him at any price as the DAW market was too volatile for him. Redesigning the hardware would have taken probably $150,000 before we were tested and released. It was not feasible.

Radio producers needed one set of advancements, studios a different, and video yet another major shift. Thus, our markets required diverging technologies.[/b] MTU didn't have the staff to excel in 3 different directions, and you both know MTU never shipped junk! Our "advisors" were pulling us in different directions, and made it clear that unless we did what they recommended, we would not make it. Well, I agreed.

The DAW market shifted drastically within a year. The software only products became usable, and ate the market from below. Lots of sales we used to make for editing work were now going to... Goldwave, CoolEdit Pro, Sound Forge and others. These had no hardware cost like our Krystal card so their retail price was below our manufacturing MATERIALS cost! :e

The other "high end DAW" systems with hardware, were in the same boat with us. They too had to redesign from ground up to support 192KS/s, add POW-R dithering, change from SMPTE, and more... or die. Most also died with us that were at the "mid range" in price. Digidesign was sold to Avid, which aided their survival and eventually winning the "high end" market.

Steinberg, Syntrillium and Sonic Foundry were sold, and their products survive today. "Small" companies are gone, and the market players are Mega-Internationals now. Simply stated, the DAW market we pioneered... matured. MTU would NOT have made it even if we tried. As President, I made the right decision because unlike most of our DAW competitors, MTU is still around for you to post in our Forums! :g

Geezer, you were one of our lead "advisors". You pushed the envelope all the time. Your suggestions were superior, and drove us to higher excellence. I can't estimate the massive number of hours I spent thinking about each suggestion you made; implementing many of them as you know. And one of your posts in 2004 (http://forum.mtu.com/showthread.php?p=24588) said it all: "That is, I would not have realized how to work fast or how fast you can work - and how good things can sound- without having used Microeditor." However, we couldn't afford to go where you and others made it clear we "had to go". After doing my own analysis I agreed. Given the 4 points above, which I clearly saw coming, and with no offer to sell out, we got out before bankrupty.

Markets change  *  Technologies change  *  Companies change  *  The world changed

MMVOX, your request for a full refund was made more than 180 days after you received the drive! :r And just like you, we didn't need the money... it was the principle of the matter. We all dropped our jaws when we got your first letter demanding we refund and take the product back after so long. Had you requested after 60 or 90 days, we would have negotiated a refund. Also, as I remember, the technical problem wasn't ALL MTU's fault, but its not worth proving it now. We always dealt ethically with you, proven by your own claim that you recommended us from 1994 -1999. We walked the walk. I truly am sorry that you feel you must insult us now. Un-forgiveness destroys a person. It is time to let it go and move on in life.

I'm glad you both have found new audio tools. Enjoy them. I wish you well in your endeavors.

We all worked well together for a Season and a Reason, but not for a Lifetime. Be glad it happened. Don't grieve it is gone. :)

geezer

December 2nd, 2006, 04:08 PM

Well, Dave.....although there were some critical communication errors made by MTU to its customers during that fatal period in the late 90s, you know I understand what you went through and why it happened. I also always understood the anger from other users that surfaced. There were express and implied promises that were not kept. This is old hat now, however, and anyone with their eyes open knew what the deal was by 2001 or so.....As I said in my previous post, I did not feel cheated. Saddened and paniced for awhile, but not cheated. Microeditor carried me through just fine until its replacement(s) appeared.

I always thought that you would have been saved if you had called on me and/or Charles to help you sell your product to NPR....I went back there briefly again in 1996 during the time that Sonic Solutions was exercising its attempt to develop its product to meet the NPR spec. I ran into their rep there and asked him what they had to do in the way of development (mostly things that Microeditor already did!) and how much of it was done (15%!!!). They never finished, and I heard that NPR had to eat something like a million dollars that they had paid them.

I recently had an opportunity to write an article for Radio magazine about the state of the DAW that you have maybe seen. In doing so, I ended up rehashing a lot of the history you alluded to above. It is still amazing how far you were ahead of the pack you were when I bought my system in 1994. Sound Tools was trash, and the early Pro Tools was not really any better. Sonic Solutions was just barely beginning....As far as I can tell, MTU was the only system out there with internal 32bit architecture and high bit rate accumulators.....(But I did not know that was why the system sounded good. This meant that when my colleague from NPR asked me what the internal bit rate of the system was during the time that they were looking around, I couldn't tell him....a crucial communication/selling deficit.)

In that same Radio magazine article, I talked about the state of customer support now, which, as we all know, is basically FAQs, slowly answered e-mails and downloaded manuals. MTU is the only software company that ever provided the incredible kind of customer support I got from 1994-1998 or so, and I am still thankful for that. I think most of your customers who were angry were disturbed by the disappearance of that support, even though noone else had ever provided anything like it. It was a tough pill for many of us to swallow. I'm sure it was even a tougher pill for you to swallow.

....But, you know me. I'm a realist. I came to MTU after running through the capabilities (some of which were vaporware) of another editing system in under 2 years, and having them completely change their business model and abandon their pro market in that same time frame. I have seen digital multitrack machines with incredible functionality and quality come and go in as little as 2 years, even when marketed by huge, international companies. The 8 years or so I got out of my MTU systems is a lifetime compared to most, and, as I said earlier, we are lucky enough to live in an age where computer recording and editing has really matured and become extremely affordable.

I thank you for your intial support and your and Larry's initial commitment to elegant programming. MTU's history from 1977 to 1998 was unmatched, really. It would have been great if the transition was a little more elegant, as well, but you did not simply abandon the product as so many others have done during this past, volatile decade. It would have been great if someone besides me were actually telling everyone on the forum that development was over, but you were definitely not making any new promises and you kept the forum up for everyone to get info. I thank you for that as well.

Like I say, I don't feel cheated. I got my money's worth.

admin

December 7th, 2006, 09:45 AM

Thanks Jim.

Hindsight is 20/20. All the communications I had with NPR, which included my traveling to DC and meeting with who I thought was the right person, came to naught. Their myopic view of DAWs was singularly focused on their funding of Sonic Solutions as you say. To have changed and allowed MTU in would have been tantamount to admitting their mistake. At the time that we needed to see some progress with NPR, it was not possible. Such is life.

I can say that even this week I have discussed trying to take parts of the Microeditor Paradigms and embed them into a new software-only product. This discussion happened when one of our contractors was trying to do the equivalent of create a simple segment, and then go back and extend its ending to now include more of the original file. Sound Forge wouldn't allow it, and we wasted minutes going back to the orginal and redoing a new file.

Thus, I can truly say there was never a point where I made a FIRM DECISION that MTU would never again take up Microeditor. If there had been, I would have said so. The technology we have in source code is still extremely valuable, if we could see a way to penetrate a viable market.

However, to survive, as we have in the past, we migrated to a new emerging market - Karaoke - that allowed a small company to thrive. We are on the verge of making some major thrusts this month that may change the way Karaoke is done. It will be our first attempt to change an industry other than defining the bleeding edge... and others reaping the profits of our pioneering work.

Time will tell. Bryan often reminds me our current market does not have the savy or technical chops that our Microsound customers did. Tis true, and we miss you guys a lot.

I hope you and your wife have a Merry christmas! :)

geezer

December 7th, 2006, 10:53 AM

....And Merry Christmas to you, as well.

I know you thought many times of developing a software-only product. The time has probably passed for you at this point, however, because some of the products are so well developed. From what I have seen, Sound Forge is a dinosaur that works about as well as my Turtle Beach system from 1991....But Wavelab, Adobe Audition and other very affordable packages all work quite well and have had good backing for continual development.

Wavelab still seems to have the most similar functionality to Microeditor. I always felt that this was in part due to what I understand to be a single programmer working on it, which is similar to the way you guys developed Microeditor. I also felt that some of its functionality had to have taken cues from observation of MTU's work.....the "S" hot key for clip splitting is the same, for instance. Since clip/segment splitting was my most frequent action in Microeditor, this caught my attention right away....But all the other things it contains would probably take you a very long time to develop on your own, and with Yamaha's money behind it now, you would probably never catch up....This was, of course, clear back in 2002 or so, and is now old hat.

At any rate: Ho, Ho, Ho and a very Happy Karaoke to you all....and to all a happy audio computing experience.

MMVOX

December 11th, 2006, 11:44 PM

Hi Dave (I assume it’s Dave),

You know what? You’re absolutely right. On everything in your post except one item. Also, there is an apology which appears later in this post.

I agree that while MicroEditor lead, others followed. You did, in fact, pave the way. MicroEditor was brilliant. Absolutely, positively no doubt. The concept of “floating tracks”? Sheer genius. And when you say “We all worked well together for a Season and a Reason, but not for a Lifetime. Be glad it happened. Don't grieve it is gone”; those are wise words indeed, an insight that I should have come to on my own, but did not until reading your post.

I consider it extremely fortunate that I had the opportunity to be introduced to digital recording and editing on MTU’s MicroEditor. To this day, I recall the excitement of going through the tutorial, learning the program, and realizing the awesome potential. I used the system to create better and more creative productions faster, and even during the dog days of radio industry consolidation from 1996 – 1998, MicroEditor allowed me to meet preposterous deadlines and workloads without throwing my standards out the window. I even won awards for my work produced utilizing MicroEditor. I’m also proud that, during this period, I was able to successfully fight off corporate attempts to convert all station DAW systems over to inferior products like Sadie, SAW, Fostex and others. Although frustrating and challenging at the time, (because most of these folks had never even heard of MTU or MicroEditor) all it took was for me to demonstrate MicroEditor and upper management would also come to realize its superiority. Even when I started my own business, I chose to purchase MicroEditor due to its reliability over ProTools at the time.

I bring this bit of insignificant ancient history up because it was difficult for me to understand how MicroEditor would be in a position to just end. Before reading your post, I was not aware of your issues with Motorola or with the loss of your primary programmer. Nor was I fully aware of the paradigm shifts in the world of DAWs until a few years ago. I was in a position where I was using a great system, and had no need to research others. Sort of like if you have a great, reliable car you may not have a need to go to other dealerships to look at other models. This is the kind of brand loyalty most companies can only dream of having. And it is a fact that every other producer to whom I introduced the system felt the same way. Marketers call people like me “sneezers”…someone who spreads the word to as many people as possible. When the time would come for my business to grow to the point where I needed multiple workstations, MicroEditor would have been my first choice. So, from that perspective, my recent post reflects a certain amount of frustration upon realizing that the originator in the field of Digital Audio Workstations was pulling the plug. For that, I apologize. It comes from me being such a rabid fan.

Part of my business involves performing voiceovers at studios throughout the Northeast, primarily in New York City. Most of them use ProTools. But I don’t understand how MicroEditor, if they were aware of its existence, would not meet or exceed their needs. Yes, for music production they would require simultaneous multi-track recording and on-board signal processing. But just like my friend the chef who once told me that all he needs to create a great meal is a pan and source of heat, it seems to me that all the basics were there in MicroEditor.

I teach a college level Broadcast Performance course, and I can’t help but think how great it would be to teach on MicroEditor instead of Adobe Audition (as required by the College) and the subsequent sales potential for MTU of students who eventually might be in a position to make DAW purchases either on behalf of their employers, or for their own project studios.

So, Dave, it’s not a matter of moving on. That’s been done. However, from time to time I choose to check back on the MTU site to see if there is any sort of development with MicroEditor. Most recently I went to the site after receiving an email regarding a sale on your Hoster karaoke products. While I was there I wanted to follow up on an old post.

Apparently, years ago, everyone else had come to the conclusion and realization that MicroEditor was done, except for me. Our hard drive issue/dispute opened my eyes to that same realization. In retrospect, I was spoiled by the great performance of MicroEditor and by the previously responsive customer support from MTU. Yes, it is a fact that I waited a long time to request (not demand, as you said) that MTU take back the hard drive. It’s not like the drive is fruit or vegetable produce that goes bad after a while. The proof of that is I was able to sell it to someone on Ebay. I did not cash that person’s check until I was sure he was happy.

It seemed strange to me that an incorrect recommendation was made by one of your employees, but MTU would assume no responsibility for this inaccurate equipment recommendation. The incorrectness of the recommendation is an event which preceded my delay. You, Dave, did not handle the recommendation or sale of the hard drive, but Doug did. I still have a copy of my original inquiry and his response and recommendation. I know (and he knows) that he was not as straightforward with you has he could have been. Why would I buy a component from MTU, the “mothership” as it were, if it was not compatible with my system? Can you answer that question? If the tables were turned, I believe that you would feel the same way that I did. It wasn’t the money or anything. It was only a $180.00 expense. I just wanted a way to back up my system – in my mind, a reasonable goal. It’s interesting to note that, subsequently, MTU chose to not recommend any sort of workable solution to my interest in having a “replica” or backup of my main MicroEditor hard drive. A solution for which I would gladly pay.

In retrospect, I acknowledge that my own policy of “when in doubt, do the right thing”, while suitable for my business, may not be suitable for other businesses. So I shouldn’t expect that sort of service from others. Although I have to admit that I do sleep really well at night.

Let’s be clear: Outside of the issue regarding the inaccurate hard drive recommendation, MTU always dealt with me in an ethical manner. I never made any sort of statement to the contrary. For you to insinuate and imply that I did is not truthful.

I owe you an apology for the insulting comments on my post. At times I use language which is more colorful than called for. My posted comments reflected a lack of good judgment on my part, and for that I apologize.

That said, I wish you the best of luck and success with your karaoke systems. And I still look forward to some sort of return of MicroEditor.

Rich LePage

December 21st, 2006, 08:10 PM

Gosh, hadn't checked in for a while and then saw all these new posts.

Just wanted to say that I still use it, nearly every day. I've yet to find a better/faster/more intuitive toolset for a lot of the intensive dialog editing jobs I seem to get - also very often for compositing sfx and other BGs.

That said, for sure some things are lacking due to development ending, and things like plug-in handling that really never did work. That's a shame given all the plug ins that are currently around. And of course, surround and many other things can't be done completely with the systems anymore.

I've been using Adobe Audition for that. When they came out with 2.0 earlier this year, many things that sort-of or "almost kinda" worked now seem to work much better, and some new things appeared too. It's far from perfect, and like many huge companies, Adobe is less responsive, though better than my Digidesign support experiences for sure!! But of course MTU always had support that others did not.

I still do a lot of my first pass intensive editing with Medit/M'sound and then save out the material as WAVs and bring them into something else for future compositing and mixing, and that seems to work well for many projects, except when greater than 16 bit material is involved and/or Bcast WAV files.
Just spent all of today doing that in fact.

I also still do CDs with it. Usually I'll mix down digitally (but sometimes analog still!) and go into a 2nd Medit system, many times roughly hitting in track markers on the fly, then going back and sliding them where they need to be and doing any other tweaking needed.

Then I make the image files with MicroCD, but do the actual burning with Golden Hawk's CDRWIN as I've described previously here. It supports many more newer CD burners than MicroCD did.

Funny enough, the very first CD burner bought from MTU- when they were still expensive-- a Yamaha 102 caddy drive-- continues to yield really good results for slow speed burning when I check the result with the Clover analyzer. But many of the newer burners do as well - though a lot of 'em won't do a 2x burn anymore. The MAM-A media lately though has been problematic-- with quality (in terms of errors that can be repeatedly measured on the Clover) all over the map, from extremely good to really bad. Taiyo media runs better (though not in the real old burners) -- but they only make 80 minute blanks, and I've had differing answers from replication plants about sending a master on an 80 minute blank for what will ultimately become a Red Book compliant (74 min max) end product CD.

But like the others, I still wish Medit etc had been developed more -- even just to allow Broadcast WAV files in and out if nothing else.

Still, all things considered, it continues to play a big role in a lot of the projects we do. I have a Pro Tools 002 type system here, but I nearly never use it-- and often scream when I have to! ( compatibility is really the only usual use we make of it). Audition - at least to me-- is way more intuitive than that, especially using it with an inexpensive control surface (which actually does work in version 2). And it seems to host the Waves, Izotope and other plug ins pretty well in current version.

But nothing I've found works like Medit does, and I'm still using our several systems all the time. That MTU has continued to exist is something I'm very grateful for, even if they had to drastically change direction. My systems of various vintages are still a joy to work with when you're faced with the zillion-edit type things we often seem to get into around here. You get a lot more done in a given amount of time, and the stuff sounds good.

Like everyone here, I sure wish it had kept going, but completely understand the several dilemmas Dave and MTU faced with it.

Best wishes to all here for great holidays and a wonderful 2007! I'll keep running my old Win98 and WinME Medit stuff for a long time to come, I bet.
I actually have it working pretty well on one XP machine too.

Rich

Gary Boggess

October 19th, 2007, 02:47 PM

I still use the MicroSound with success and pride. I've done my own comparisons... but am not sure if ProTools published specs are MEASURED and TESTED the same as was MicroSound's. I understand the differences in features, outputs and etc. But I've been challenged by potential clients about the quality of the D/A I/O.

Here is an excerpt of what I've written to potential clients who have inquired:

Gary's Comparisons between MicroSound & ProTools HD3 & other notes:

Needless to say, 100,000 tracks is a pretty good bonus. But, who cares right? ProTools is like Paris Hilton... popular.

#1) MicroSound has more useful sample rate frequencies to choose from. The highest being 48Khz... which is still considered to be more than adequate for all kinds of recording from broadcasting, orchestral recordings and etc. My conclusion is that 48Khz is still more than adequate for recordings. The benefits of 96-192Khz are academic and NOT practical... and it's like writing checks your ears can't cash. The market place will never HEAR the benefits of 96-192Khz sampling rate...especially NOT on I-Tunes!!!!

#3) ProTools may have higher sampling rates... but ProTools and MicroSound BOTH have 24-bit encoding D/A converters. That's that for that. TWENTY FOUR BIT ENCODING IS TWENTY FOUR BITS. But lets' look closer at some other factors that ARE NOT THE SAME:

a) The Krystal DSP audio card analog A/D and D/A converters provide excellent quality. The Krystal's THD+N (Total Harmonic Distortion+Noise) is 0.006%. Krystal's noise floor response below 1kHz is quite flat giving a very clear sound. (See the chart above). Now here's BOMB DROPPER:

PROTOOLS & MICROSOUND THD+N NOISE RATINGS COMPARED: THD+N=Total Harmonic Distortion+Noise

PROTOOLS INPUT THD+N> THD+N: 0.00056% (-105 dB); -1 ' @ 997(1000) Hz (Note 1: Measurement made using +4 dBu inputs or outputs) plus PROTOOLS OUTPUT>>>THD+N: 0.00056% (-105 dB); -1 ' @ 997(1000) Hz; see Note 1 >>>INPUT AND OUTPUTS ADDED TOGETHER EQUALS 0.00112

MICROSOUND THD+N> The chart shows the THD+N distortion to noise in both the input and output analog circuits TOGETHER or combined at 0.0121%. So when the channels are rated ONE at a time like ProTools rates their specs, MicroSound comes in at a THD+N for ONE input channel = really 0.006%!!! ProTools wins by 0.00038. So MicroSound comes out fairly well considering MTU nearly MATCHED ProTools TEN YEARS AGO!

The major POINT IS>>> ProTools specs are measured ONE input and ONE output channel AT A TIME where MicroSound measured theirs as a TWO CHANNEL measuring the entire card... for a actual per channel input or output 0.0015 THD+N rating each... which is just a tad higher than ProTools as of 2007. Hardly anything to argue about! And it's certainly no reason for me to go out and spend $40,000 or more... for 99,744 LESS TRACKS than ProTools total of 256! I mean... duh!

#4) MicroEditor mixing computes with 24-bit precision. Even projects using 16-bit sound files can output digitally as valid 24-bits after fades, gains and mixing, sounding better to human ears than many competitor's 24-bit sounds! So even though MicroSound is recording in 16-bit @44.1Khz... EVERYTHING; editing, fades, mixing, processing, and ALL AUDIO processing is ALWAYS HAPPENING at 24-bit, using 56-bit accumulators to ensure bit depth and bit word accuracy!

#5) ProTools advertises their "2007 FLAGSHIP" D/A I/O module to have the (Dynamic SNR) SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO of 115 dB

From the Krystal card manual: MicroSound's ten year standard for (Dynamic SNR) SIGNAL TO NOISE is 110 dB averaged across all frequencies, not just at 1K... so again, hardly anything to argue about.

#6) ProTools bandwidth is listed at >> Sample Rate = 48 kHz, Noise BW = 22 Hz – 20 kHz unless otherwise noted

Page 210 in the MicroSound manual states bandwidth specs at @48Khz sample rate to be a reported bandwidth of 0 Hz to 23,400 KHz. Saying that "MicroSound achieves a -3db down (half-power) point at 48% of Nyquist... one of the highest bandwidths available in a computer DAW"

So much for specs... MicroSound's over sonic integrity stands neck to neck with ProTools and EXCEEDS ProTools in BANDWIDTH.

And when you consider that it offers:

* instant fades (unlike ProTools process of writing each fade to a file)

* accurate fade ramps (unlike ProTools' quantized group sample or step zipper fades)

* 100,000 tracks (unlike ProTools' 256 max)

* Zero occurrences of audio file corruption (unlike ProTools historic issues)

To list a few major benefits... it's just STUPID to say MicroSound can't compete with ProTools. While all my friends are STILL (one last month) loosing projects due to corruption on their $40,000 plus ProTools HD3 systems... I relax and get work done! AS for 24-bit, I don't worry about it because between microphones that top off at 16K and guitar amps that still buzz and hum, and end product increasingly selling as I-Tunes MP3s... it's rediculous to talk high sampling rates. And in according to Moultan below, we can't hear 24-bit, and if we DID we'd be hearing it at the LOW END of the dynamic range.... well below the noise floor of 90% of the listening environments and playback levels. READ THE FOLLOWING!!!!

Dave Moulton, with his son Dr. Mark Moulton, provide subjective measurement of audio systems and devices for companies such as Lucent Technologies. Moulton is a monthly columnist for TV Technology Magazine and has regularly written for Recording Magazine since 1992. http://www.davemoulton.com/index.html
Moultan says: "In fact, double blind tests often seem to show that listeners can’t reliably distinguish between 16-bit audio and 20-bit audio! When we increase the resolution of the signal to 20 bits, we don’t change the magnitude of 0 dBFS, all we do is push the magnitude of the Least Significant Bit further down toward the grunge and noise floor, so that for a 20-bit word, the LSB is equal to .012 milliVolts. We’ve increased the overall magnitude of the signal by only .18 milliVolts! Going to 24 bits from 16 bits only gains us .2 milliVolts of signal resolution!! we have a serious mismatch of reference levels here, and it unreasonably diminishes any benefit we might expect from the enhanced resolution of 20 or 24-bit digital signals, relative to our venerated 16-bit signal. Failure to reasonably manage the relative headroom of analog and acoustic realms vis-a-vis our digital signal has painted us into a serious wastage of dynamic range. It also means that the resolution benefits of 20-bit and 24-bit signals are not only hard to hear, they’re, well, inaudible as we currently do it. Uh-oh!"

Checl this data out yourself at: http://www.moultonlabs.com/weblog/more/bits_really_bits

So, I am posting to invite Admin (Dave Cox) or someone who KNOWS, how much better, if any, is the new HD3ProTool HD3 192 I/O???? Especially in the THD+noise measurements. -Gary
******************************************

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfmitemid=4892&langid=100
ProTool HD3 192 I/O $ 3,995.00

Overview Features Specifications Download

192 I/O, the flagship of the Pro Tools|HD interface family, is the best-sounding audio interface ever offered from Digidesign, rivaling similar products costing more than twice its price. In addition to support for up to 16 channels of analog and digital input and output, 192 I/O features a wide range of analog and digital I/O options to choose from, including 8 channels of high-definition, pristine-quality analog I/O, 8 channels of AES/EBU, 8 channels of TDIF, 16 channels of ADAT, and 2 additional channels of AES/EBU or S/PDIF digital I/O.

192 expansion cards
Along with its outstanding sonic specs, 192 I/O includes an additional I/O option bay, allowing you to add more inputs or outputs, and making it one of the most unique and flexible audio interfaces on the market. To expand the analog I/O capacity of 192 I/O, you can add either a 192 AD card, providing 8 more channels of high-definition analog input, or the 192 DA card, which gives you 8 additional channels of analog output. 192 I/O can also be outfitted with the 192 Digital card, which adds 8 channels of AES/EBU, TDIF, and ADAT I/O connections.

192 AD Expansion Card
192 DA Expansion Card
192 Digital Expansion Card

Digidesign
2001 Junipero Serra Blvd.
Daly City, CA 94014
www.digidesign.com

In designing the Pro Tools|HD environment, we didn't just stop at supporting up to 96 kHz sample rates — we decided to go all the way and support up to an astonishing 192 kHz. As the flagship audio interface for Pro Tools|HD, 192 I/O supports 192, 176.4, 96, 88.2, 48, and 44.1 kHz sample rates.

With 192 I/O, you're prepared for both working with the latest standards in the world of professional audio production as well as for the emergence of future standards. The new, higher sample rates and 24-bit resolution you get with 192 I/O mean you're able to capture every nuance of sound with the utmost clarity and precision.

50 possible inputs and outputs (yeah... for about $35,000+ with interest)

Supports up to 16 simultaneous channels of high-definition I/O

Extremely flexible analog and digital I/O

Card option bay for analog or digital I/O expansion with 192 AD, 192 DA, or 192 Digital cards

World-class 24-bit/192 kHz A/D and D/A conversion

Comes with a wide range of digital I/O, including 8 channels of AES/EBU I/O, 8 channels of TDIF I/O, 16 channels of ADAT I/O, and 2 additional channels of AES/EBU or S/PDIF I/O <MicroSound has all of this stuff too...

Word (1x) and Slave Clock (256x) input/output

Switchable, real-time sample rate conversion on digital inputs on the 192 Digital card, which allows easy streaming of digital signals at any sample rate

Soft-Clip Limiter that allows higher levels to disk for punchier, hotter recordings

Expansion Port that allows for direct connection of another 192 I/O or 96 I/O

Legacy Peripheral port that allows for connection of 888|24, 882|20, 1622, or 24-Bit ADAT Bridge I/Os*

* At 48 kHz or lower sample rate
Dimensions

Width: 19 in / 48.26 cm

Height 3.5 in / 8.89 cm

Depth: 15.19 in / 38.58 cm
Weight: 20.17 lbs / 9.15 kg

A/D
Sample Rate: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192 kHz ±10%

Dynamic Range: 120 dB (A-weighted), 118 dB (unweighted); see Notes 1 and 2

THD+N: 0.00035% (-109 dB); +21 dBu @ 997 Hz; see Note 1

THD+N: 0.00035% (-109 dB); +21 dBu, 20 Hz – 20 kHz; see Note 1

Frequency Response: ±0.05 dB @ +2 dBu, 20 Hz – 20 kHz; see Notes 1 and 3

D/A

Sample Rate: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192 kHz ±10%

Dynamic Range: 118 dB (A-weighted), 115 dB (unweighted); see Notes 1 and 4

THD+N: 0.00056% (-105 dB); -1 ' @ 997 Hz; see Note 1

Frequency Response: ±0.05 dB, -20 ', 20 Hz – 20 kHz; see Notes 1 and 3

Sample Rate = 48 kHz, Noise BW = 22 Hz – 20 kHz unless otherwise noted, Tambient = +25 C

Note 1: Measurement made using +4 dBu inputs or outputs
Note 2: ADC measured with analog input at -38 dBu @ 997 Hz
Note 3: Measured relative to level at 1 kHz
Note 4: Measured with digital input at -60 dBFS @ 997 Hz

geezer

October 19th, 2007, 04:01 PM

....There are a lot of A-D and D-A boxes out there now that "sound good", and you will find proponents for many of them, at all price levels. I think "sounds good", however, is a highly relative term, and any given system, sync method and upstream/downstream device setup will yield different sounding results....They may all still "sound good" but will sound different, in my experience.....

That being said, I don't think there is much doubt anywhere that nearly all converters these days that sample at 96k and up are usually supererior sounding to those of the era of the MTU boxes, when, that is, they are properly and well clocked.....MTUs converters, as far as I know, are limited to 16bits and 48k (+,- their syncing range). They were/are very good sounding within these limits, very good sounding, indeed.....Some of the best sounding for that era. I have noticed, however, that when I use newer, higher bandwidth converters, I tend to notice more detail and clarity (especially in the higher frequencies) than with the converters of the earlier era, depending on the material I am feeding in.

That, of course, is the bugaboo.....On one forum I used to participate in, someone was touting a new set of converters (AtoD, I think), and I asked this question: "What converters are you using to listen to your converters?"...Noone ever answered me, but that is the issue. The whole chain matters, and how you hear it at the end of the chain will color all opinions about any other part of the chain....

So, enough philosophical theory. As far as bang for the buck and great quality, I hear more and more about the Lynx Aurora 16 channel A-D and DA, which can be gotten for a street price of around $2500. Many people are foregoing the Apogees for these, especially since the Apogees cost at least twice as much (since you buy separate A-D and D-A).....Lynx also makes an 8 channel bi-directional version of the same box for, obviously, something like half the money.

As far as the new ProTools HD I/O, my only experience with this system was producing a recording at the NPR studios last year. NPR does not use the I/O boxes, but uses the conversion in their huge Studer digital console. I could not tell you whether that was a good decision or not, but I know they probably made the decision based on supposed technical and quality considerations from their point of view. Would I agree with those viewpoints? Would you? Who knows.

I personally will be taking a hard look at the Lynx box when I get some money, but my views may be different than others. I know Prism and Mytek have the votes of some of the high end guys and gals, but I like the converters on my DM2000 console for a lot of things, and I've been told they sound "gritty" by some of my trusted colleagues.....I also like the converters on my TC6000 because I can hit a button and change the way they sound! ("Vintage", "Bright", "Natural", etc.)

ProTools stuff is plain expensive, too, so that always colors my thinking about anything from them.

The other thing about the newer converters for me is that it has opened up a whole can of worms about digital stuff....When everything was limited to 48k, and you kept things in 16bit most of the time, the quality considerations were markedly fewer, to my way of thinking. I miss that sometimes. There are a bunch of my old 02R mixes to Medit at 16bit that still hold up really well....They may sound a tad band-limited to me compared to some of the newer stuff, but they still hold up.....When I made the change, it took me a long time to get things to settle down to where I understand what was needed to work with the new perception of greater bandwidth and detail. I don't really want to go back, but there are days when I miss the simplicity.

.....It is definitely confusing sometimes, too. I was just listening to one of my Blues Alley albums ('92 or so) yesterday, and much more pleased than I remembered. It was recorded to a 2" with Dolby SR through my Soundcraft 600B console (that printed eq to the tracks, which was a smarter decision on my part than I really understood at the time), then mixed back through the Soundcraft to DAT in sections, and edited on the Turtle Beach 56k editing system that I abandoned for MicroSound in '94.....It sounded better than I remembered. All the A-D conversion was solely at the input of the Panasonic 3700 DAT machines I was using.....In those days, there wasn't any real CD "mastering". People were just transferring to 3/4" video decks and inserting track IDs (PCM1630?).

So, all the stuff from those days sounds quieter, but the sonic characteristics seem to hold up. Pretty interesting.....There is one album from that era that I edited mosly on Medit (with a little bit of pop and click redrawing on Turtle Beach, which Medit never did, and which Turtle Beach did well) that received a loudness boost from an early TC box. The loudness change was astounding, and sounded pretty natural, but I can hear the compression now, at least compared to the newer software and hardware boxes.

I'm not sure what all this means except that I think the Lynx box is pretty spanky, and that the quality of the converters these days has a lot going on, but kind of increases our decision possibilities again, so doesn't exactly make our lives easier.

Rich LePage

October 20th, 2007, 12:38 PM

Ya got me on Digi specs- not sure they would tell how they measure for that matter either.

Only Digi stuff we have is an 002rack, and I nearly never use it. I did run it briefly with Audition 1.5 (an old version) using Digi's WAV (not ASIO) driver because 1.5 did not talk ASIO. Audition 2 (and 3 soon) does though.
I might mess with it as an i/o again (but Digi is XP only right now, like Waves) when Audition 3 shows up, and try to compare it to other stuff, but it's Digi's lower end anyhow.

In general, I just never liked Digi much. We bought the 002rack to be compatible with others, but that has (surprisingly) turned out to not be that big a deal for most of what we do. It has nearly never come up. We do a lot of our stuff start to finish. But many times with other work people send us elements to build with, sweeten, mix and master.
I thought being compatible would be impt with that, but nope- they just usually send "selects" and I also try to get the out-takes in case we need to use bits of them here and there.

From various friends and friendly competitors though, apparently Pro Tools compatibility is a big deal at some levels of the NYC market. Many high end ad clients bring in drives with PT sessions on them, says one guy I know who does a lot of that work. He winds up needing to have just about everything out there in terms of plug ins, etc to handle what comes in. But in reality, he does a lot of his work by taking stuff off PT and using an old NE Digital (the Synclavier folks) system that he's used for years with great success- then putting back into PT. I wonder if the clients even notice or know....

I've also heard good things about the Lynx stuff from folks whose opinion I value locally, as I value Jim's views. I'll have to give that a try too at some point.

I see Jim's another vintage Soundcraft fan. I mixed for ages on an old 800A board we still have, much modified - some non-standard EQ, whole board was re-capped, mostly new op amps too, and we added a better grade of Penny+Giles faders than it shipped with (when the original ones got noisy!)

But all those Digi specs (and all their marketing) are probably meant to drive the endless upgrade (just send $) and demand from some types of clients that you just gotta have that.

I did quite a bit of that kind of work for a long time, at various NYC studios.

That kinda client will jump whenever the place down the block gets the next upgrade of newest/latest. A lot of studios in NYC tried to cater to that market-- and few managed to do it with much success, though some did ride the endless new/improved cycle for a while. (prob they had rich investors! - in fact I know some did.) To me that's more the hotel biz than the audio biz.

We try to attract clients where it's more about the end result, not how we got there. I'm sure that's true of most of us Medit folks.

Gary Boggess

October 20th, 2007, 04:18 PM

is a talented user.

The end result IS what it's all about. All the AES hypesters and the MIX magazine advertisers can blab on endlessly about this spec and that spec.
I always say... it's NOT about what you have, it's what you can do with it.

I usually express it like this:
Go ahead... you can go buy Tiger Woods' clubs... but can you play HIS game with them? Sure enough, he could BEAT YOUR _SS WITH YOUR CRAPPY OLD SEARS CLUBS!!!! Even if with a significant handicap!

I've seen many great musicians play very well on standard instruments. It always kills me when some of these guys come in the studio with a ie: $3700 hand made bass... but can't play a decent bass line to save their life.

Rich LePage

October 20th, 2007, 05:04 PM

Totally true, indeed. My original mentor in all things audio
was/is Les Paul, and he sure proved that well enough!
I've heard stuff he did in the late 30s, disc to disc to
disc (like 4th or 5th generation, adding more parts
each time- the hard way!!) and for their time, they
sound damned good. Of course he was using a recording
lathe he built -- using an old Cadillac flywheel!! (not kidding).

Just talked w/him yesterday, his "home studio" (probably the
ORIGINAL home studio!!) is near here. We go back a lotta
years, I grew up with one of his sons. And that's
where my audio fate was sealed early on...

He still plays in club in NYC one night a week when he's up to it,
at age 92+ -- and he packs the place, too. They did a nice
American Masters on him that was recently on PBS, catch
a re-run if you can.

Gary Boggess

October 20th, 2007, 06:23 PM

Well... you can tell Les I said he was recording as good as 224-bit back in the 40's... because he actually HAD SOMETHING to record. What good is 24-bit in most sessions today? Might as well be at 0-bit because these so-called musicians today aren't 1-bit of good compared to the MAJORITY of the artists, writers and musicians in Les Paul's early years.

geezer

October 20th, 2007, 07:03 PM

I agree totally with the concept that the operator is the key.

I have never like PT/digidesign much, period, but I thought the tracks I recorded at NPR (PT HD) sounded pretty good there, though maybe a little more suspect when I got home. Being HD, I could never use their session data (totally encrypted), but, also being HD, I can walk away with Broadcast Wave files wish plop down just fine in almost any other system.

Earlier (TDM) PT sessions can be readily translated by some EDL software I have, so there really is no longer a big compatability issue unless you are locked into plugins and mixes on an HD session that noone is willing to translate backwards for you (which is obviously what Avid/Digidesign is hoping for).

People do say that HD sounds better than TDM, and I usually was able to hear problems with TDM mixes I heard.....However, one of my longest friends and musical colleagues who mixed his last couple of albums at home (stellar sounding) and mixed his daughter's hit album in Canada (she's like no. 2 there) makes his TDM system sound just fine. Really sweet, really pro......It should be noted, however, that he is not using the mix buss in PT world, but bringing stems out to a Mackie D8b. That still seems to be the key: summing it externally......Anyway, the Canadian branch of Universal that his daughter is on was pretty freaked out by how good it sounded. I was thoroughly impressed myself.

Soundcraft: That mixer (a 600B I bought in 1985) probably only has a market value of $500. or most likely less. Amazing. I sold it with all the patchbays and direct out mods for $1,100. around 1999 or 2000, then bought all the patchbays, cabling and external direct out amps back for something like $500-$600........I have an open search function on ebay for Soundcraft stuff, and am always anguishing about whether I should buy one of the boards that comes up, but haven't gotten the courage to do it yet.....Listening to that old Stanley Turrentine album of mine that I was talking about in the earlier post has really gotten me thinking.....plus I did a little acoustic, non digital sound job about a month ago that reawakened something in me......I don't know........I can't give up the automation, and my DM2000 sounds great and is capable of a bigger sound than that 600B, but I am definitely thinking things through yet again...

My fond remembrances are always chastened by the looming maintenance issues with analogue consoles....aargh!

Gary Boggess

October 20th, 2007, 08:43 PM

Without going into here too deep... I was utterly shocked at what happened to my old TASCAM Model 5A mixing console here. Mixing... err... I use it more for monitoring... although the keyboards and mics go through it to the MicroSound via a APHEX 124A -10 to +4 box.

Yeah I know... your probably saying TEAC??? GEESH!!!!

Well... I was in a decision last year to replace it or improve it. After reading... studying and really tearing into what mods could do, I chose to mod it.
I rebuilt the power supply, better caps, all new regulators, external transformer... and better grounding internally... w/12ga stranded throughout.

Then I removed all of the op-amps, and used a mix of 5532's, TLO72's and Burr Brown 2604's. Why three types? Sound. They all have a sound.
It's not an EQ difference in sound... it's more how they handle complex
waveforms. Tones all passed the same way... but with music, each chip
responded differently. My thought was, since they all do have a sound, it doesn't makes good sense to USE ALL OF THE SAME op-amps.
I figured, if I had a lense filter that was very slightly pink, 15 of them
would be RED! And so, I thought mixing op-amps was similar. I chose these
three chips because I took consenus on the web by designers... about which
chips they preferred. The TLO72's were chosen because they had a overall
brittle sound... and were easy on the power supply. The 5532's were popular peformers, stable, handle wide variety of input impedences and sounded tube like and low noise footprints. The OP2604's for their high output peak safety, low noise, and warm low end friendly sound. Together... they sound awesome!
For the short story, I tested each... and ended up putting the 5532's on the inputs, the TLO72's in the middle ciruits and the 2604's on all of the outputs.
I also replaces all of the signal path caps with Panasonic FC series audio caps.
And then replaced all of the audio path resistors with metal film resistors.

The end result? Incredible. It was like a veil dropped. It was a lot of work, but a fraction of the cost of replacing the board, and rewiring the harness and patchbays. Noise dropped significantly, and the sound is (to my ears) very warm, defined and clean.

Yup... I've used Neve consoles, SSL, Euphonix... and Soundcraft... but after this experience... I wonder why most boards use all of the same op-amps???
They clearly HAVE a sound... and if you pass your audio through 30 of the SAME op-amps... you've got a very COLORED end result. I would same my approach appears to blend and balance it all out some. At least, it makes some logical sense.

Gary Boggess

October 20th, 2007, 08:44 PM

Without going into this too deep here... I was utterly shocked at the improvement mods made to my old TASCAM Model 5A mixing console. Mixing... err... I use it more for monitoring... although the keyboards and mics go through it to the MicroSound via a APHEX 124A -10 to +4 box.

Yeah I know... your probably saying TEAC??? GEESH!!!! :e

Well... I was in a decision last year to replace it or improve it. After reading... studying and really tearing into what mods could do, I chose to mod it. I rebuilt the power supply, better caps, all new regulators, external transformer... and better grounding internally... w/12ga stranded throughout.

Then I removed all of the op-amps, installed sockets, and used a mix of 5532's, TLO72's and Burr Brown 2604's. Why three types? Sound. They all have a sound. It's not an EQ difference in sound... it's more how they handle complex waveforms. Tones all passed the same way... but with music, each chip responded differently. My thought was, since they all do have a sound, it doesn't makes good sense to USE ALL OF THE SAME op-amps.

I figured, if I had a lense filter that was very slightly pink, 15 of them would be RED! And so, I thought mixing op-amps was similar. I chose these three chips because I took consensus on the web by designers... about which chips they preferred. The TLO72's were chosen because they had a overall brittle or digital/edgy sound... and were easy on the power supply. The 5532's were popular performers, stable, handle a wide variety of input impedances and sounded warm or tube like and had a low noise footprint. The OP2604's for their high output peak headroom, low noise, and warm low end friendly sound. Together... they sound awesome!

For the short story, I tested each... and ended up putting the 5532's on the inputs, the TLO72's in the middle circuits and the 2604's on all of the outputs. (I did use two 2604's on two inputs for variety). I also replaced all of the signal path caps with Panasonic FC series audio caps. And then replaced all of the audio path resistors with metal film resistors.

The end result? Incredible. It was like a veil dropped. It was a lot of work, but a fraction of the cost of replacing the board, and rewiring the harness and patchbays. Noise dropped significantly, and the sound is (to my ears) very warm, defined and clean.

Yup... I've used Neve consoles, SSL, Euphonix... and Soundcraft... but after this experience... I wonder why most boards use all of the same op-amps??? They clearly HAVE a sound... and if you pass your audio through 30 of the SAME op-amps... you've got a very COLORED end result. I would say my approach appears to blend and balance it all out some. At least, it makes some logical sense. Would I like to own a Neve or similar console? Sure.
But mine has paid for itself over and over again since 1977!!!!!!! :g

Rich LePage

October 21st, 2007, 12:22 PM

You're right of course about the op amps and the rest.

Amazed though you'd mod a Tascam Model 5 in terms
of the cost of the mods versus the rest of the parts, like
faders, switches, and so much else. But if it works for you,
that's great.

Your logic about diff coloration seems sound to me.
I know several folks who have done diff channels of
a board set up completely diff. in terms of channel
strips, op amps, EQs, pres, and so on. One guy managed
to build a board with Neve, Trident, API and several other
modules in the thing- in blocks of 8 channels I think.

I still have a real ancient Model 5 somewhere in storage, from
way back when I used it sometimes with a Teac 1/2" 8 track
and DBX. I did some location jazz albums in clubs that way, but
the stuff wasn't exactly built for the road and could get pretty dodgy.

I viewed that stuff mostly as "acquisition devices" for work like that.
You could do those jobs taking up only one or two tables in a jazz
club-- which was a big deal to the club owner too...

Big studio boards suffered from the same "go through so much stuff"
you mention. Examples include MCI boards (and mult passes through
the VCAs especially), and Audio Designs, which were real popular
around NYC for a while. With Audio Designs you were also going
through a zillion transformers. Every stage of the board was
boosted up to +4 or +8 and balanced- then passed on to the next
stage and done all over again, whether it was needed or not.

Result was a TON of coloration. I'm sure not against
transformers (many folks were/are)-- but that many-- geez-
between that and the early op amps it was a battle every time.
Phase shift, and the slewing problems of the early op amps--
you could def. hear all that stuff big time- not to mention
noise buildup from all those gain stages.

Luckily that vintage usually had a lot of patching and so you
could bypass some stages of the board if you had a zillion
patchcords and got there plenty early before the session start!
I used to carry around a bag of extra patch cords back then...

With the MCI's (later Sony) a lot of people modded them,
I know a few who still use 'em. One in particular is still used
for a lot of high-profile acoustic jazz work and sounds very
good -- but HEAVY mods.

Neve did things differently. You sure can't say Rupert's
stuff didn't color things, but a lot of folks still prize that
partic. coloration. A lot of those boards were parted out
because the modules etc became worth more $ individually
than as an entire console.

Cleanest (in terms of coloration) preamp we have is an
early one by John La Grou (Millennia) who was an Medit
user as you likely know. Probably a result of his extensive
classical recording work.

I like the old Soundcraft, we still run it in one mostly analog
production/mix room which also has 2 old Medit systems
with Microsync (486 CPUs, m/boards with an ISA slot!!-gosh..)
At some point that room will get repurposed probably,
but we still do some restore-from-tape work and other things
that it's useful for, though less every year. Oh yeah, a convection
OVEN is also a feature of that room! (for shake and bake that tape!)

And like Geezer noted, every time you use that stuff, you are
SO reminded of all the alignment and tweaking issues that used
to be part of every day work. Often hard to just sit down and mix
without first having to put on the tech hat for a while.

Gary Boggess

October 21st, 2007, 08:21 PM

You're right of course about the op amps and the rest.

Amazed though you'd mod a Tascam Model 5 in terms
of the cost of the mods versus the rest of the parts, like
faders, switches, and so much else. But if it works for you,
that's great.
.

Well... the faders, pots and switches aren't causing issues.
BTW... I've got the 12 channel Expander, for 20 channels total.
Since I don't actually mix or eq very with it very often, it's
mostly a monitoring mixer, sub mixer for MIDI, and 90% of the
time, I use one channel with an AKG 414 for the vocal booth.
I have a couple tube mic pre's but since using the OP2604's,
op-amps I have found the modified mixer to be cleaner!

I will admit that I chose to mod the Model 5 instead of buy
a new board... due to cost and time. Remaking 20 or more
channels of harness to the patchday, with inserts, direct outs,
tape in, monitoring outs, effects returns and all... I was looking
at spending approx $5500 in closts plus a month or so down time,
verses piece meal caps, IC's and metal film resistors,
one channel at a time.

The upgrade costs total approx. $245. And since I don't use the
board to MIX, (doing that on the MicroEditor) it was the easier
road to improvement. And fortunately, the improvement was
stellar. Along with a religiously implemented start grounding scheme,
I have no noise, hum, or buz.

When I worked at Electric Melody Studios, on the 2nd floor of
the Lantana Center in Santa Monica overtop Lucas' Skywalker Sound...
we had a 48 channel Neve with flying faders in our main mixing stage.

In the pre-lay room where I was set up, I had a 32 channel
Soundcraft board that maybe needed overhauled.
It was noisier than my TEAC Model 5B BEFORE my recent mods!
It really had some major hiss. I was amazed how our $$$ Neve console
was so under used! We barely had time to employ the flying faders.
I remember we rarely bother to use to EQ. With two to three session
per day, for movie trailers, TV commercials and general voice overs,
we didn't have time to LOG eq's and etc. Even with flying faders,
we hardly had time tap the Neve's offerings. There was always
the fear that today's project may come back for a change,
and if we had used eq, we wouldn't be able to match.
We used a 32 track Mitsubishi, a 24 track MCI, and a 16 track Post Pro.

Paying for all of this stuff was also a major burden...
pushing us to take on as much work as possible.
We had nearly $3M in leased audio gear! So although we were
well equipt, we really didn't use it to the fullest benefit.
However, it looked impressive as heck!!

So, when I look at my modified TEAC Model 5 mixer, I see a tool
that does what I need it to do, and it's paid for. And since the mods...
I wonder if this piece of crap thing isn't BETTER than some of the newer
stuff. I get plenty of tracks in here from other studios. Tracks recorded
through Mackies, SSL's, Yamaha's and others... and just recently, drum tracks
recorded into PT HD3. All I can say is, track to track,
I'm recording tracks CLEANER with my old antique. :t

Rich LePage

October 22nd, 2007, 09:30 AM

Yep to all of it-- it works for you and you're getting the
results you want, and to me that's always what it's been
all about.

My Model 5 days usually involved the expander too,
though for some of those live-in-a-club gigs there
wasn't room for it. In some jazz clubs how much space you
were gonna take up was a big deal to the club owners,
and could make or break whether they would allow
the artists to record live in their place, despite the
publicity etc it would generate for them.

I still use a few diff analog boards here, like you mostly
for monitoring, though one style of working I've done
a lot of is to build in Medit using a 4 channel system,
then mix down analog. Big thing for me with that style is
the ability to use various vintage things like LA2s and Pultecs
on the mixdown w/o locking them in using Medit.
Then back to a 2nd Medit system, going back to digital
via a TC Finalizer or other stuff.

Lately I seem to do that less, though I will also do
it at times when using Audition as a multi-track, often
after pre-editing elements in Medit first. But with Audition
2, it functions much more intuitively in the multi-track
mode, more like a board with sends, bussing etc. And the
UA emulations of the LA2, 1176, Pultec and some other
stuff are good, so I'll use them.

It can max out a Pent 4 2.5 gig machine quickly though,
even though the UA stuff runs on its own card.

Gary Boggess

October 22nd, 2007, 09:41 AM

How did you get through my previous post with all the typos?
I just read it again... all I can say is...
I must have been more worried about the Cleveland Indians losing to the
Boston Red Sox than I thought! :?

Gary Boggess

October 22nd, 2007, 10:07 AM

A final note concerning my heavily modified
"antique" TEAC TASCAM MODEL 5:

Socketed IC's are a wonderful thing.
(As long as you use the gold plated ones
to ensure optimum contact.)

Having looked over many of the newer mixing
boards at various audio retailers... I see
a maintenance issue I don't have with my
old module based Model 5:
the larger scale circuit boards used currently
make repairs a major ordeal.

When I have a problem, I have two choices:
a) Remove two skrews, pop the front panel, remove one *****
I meant skrew, *geesh Dave*
and PULL the channel module, pop in a few new op-amps,
and re-install. The process takes less than 15 minutes.

b) Change out a module... but how could I improve on (a) ?

I stock at least 50 spares of each chip type thanks to Ebay.
A while ago, I bought a 3rd Model 5 board as a spare
and for remote use. So, I've always got SOMETHING
to get through the moment.

If I had a newer mixing board... repairs would THEN mean...
UNPLUGGING THE ENTIRE CHASSIS and unscrewing a
major portion of the casing, just to replace an op-amp!

And in my case, where I've harnessed the entire board's rear
I/O's to the PATCH BAY, it just looks like a newer mixer would be
the more trouble than it's worth!

RE: screws, ***** or skrew...
(Pitty to the forum if Dave or "the web meister" get their
hands on a Thesarus of Rap and Heavy Metal words!!!!)

Rich LePage

October 22nd, 2007, 11:18 AM

Yeah, these days are def a "when it acts up,
replace it" type of thing - another symptom of much else that's
not as fixable as once was.

It has made some stuff very cheap and reasonably
quiet... but fixable- not! Everyone uses "surface mounted
components" which are almost impossible to repair --if
you can even get parts that will fit. (Mouser and Digikey
are a couple places I've often bought from)

I had left a pair of Audio Technica 4033's at an outside
studio for a few days, someone used them w/o my OK,
and dropped one hard. I sent it to A/T but not repairable
in the end. They tried and sent it back, but it sounded so
diff we refused to keep it.

Just about everything else is same- from your wall oven
to (in my case) a Jeep SUV. Squirrels from hell munched
on its wiring and fried its 2 computers- resulting in not
running at all, big tow bill, and bigger $ to replace both
"modules" and rework the main harness.

When we did the work on the Soundcraft and also on some other
old stuff, we indeed socketed many things, same reasoning as
yours w/the Mod 5. I also had done that for ages on Ampex cards
and on some old UREI pieces - in partic. the "little dipper" filter
set they made, which I used to use a lot.

Gary Boggess

October 22nd, 2007, 12:45 PM

I used to but newer "state of the art" stuff.
These days, I don't. Not unless there's a client
asking for it or a project I KNOW will be significantly
better if I upgrade something. As I did last year
with the WAVES plugins. I've watched too many
studios COME UP and GO DOWN because of debt...
while trying to BUY ALL THE LATEST AES hype gear.
The sentiment of "buy it and THEY will come"
is too risky in our current economy.

Once, I paid $9800 for the Emulator I.
(Synclavier was WAY WAY WAY too expensive for me).
I was the first (I know of) studio in Ohio to have a sampler.
For six months, I did have calls to the Cleveland area ad
agencies to do effects sampling and musical application of
hamburgers frying, chopping sfx and etc for GD RITZY commercials.
And there were a few others.

While I was paying monthly for the Emu I... for 3 years...
Sequential Circuits came out with the Prophet 2000
with 10 times the features for $2500 the next year!!!
I bought one ASAP... and eventually two!
I still have them... the filters are ONE OF A KIND!
I also have FOUR Emulator samplers (two e6400 Ultras/E4X/e6400)
which I bought off of Ebay for a total of $1350...
plus I've spent $$$$ on sample libraries too.
These samplers are incredible musical tools... and
sound BEEFY, MUSICAL and have real KNOBS!
I know that many who traded their Emu samplers
for the newer software versions have retreated!
So I love advancements these days... the "crowds"
dump their great stuff for newer junk...
and I can buy great tools for pennies on the dollar!

Unless it's a monitor speaker, or a sensitive device
that's easily damaged, I say buy it off of Ebay
and take your wife to dinner with the savings.
The newer junk isn't THAT much better these days...
and the savings from buying TWO or more years
OLDER gear is just too smart from every aspect.
If you want it today and it's $950, wait a year or
two and you'll buy it for $300 or less.

Not to mention that people are trading off their
stuff way too early to know if the new stuff is actually better!
And in numerous cases, I've determined the NEW
STUFF is often the future CLASSIC STUFF people
salivate for. Case in point, my Moog MINIMOOG Model D.
I bought it in 1972 for $1250 and it's worth over $3700
now if not more. And many of my music clients ask
me to use it on their music.

Old isn't necessarily old... and new isn't necessarily better.
MicroSound is also such a case (for the most part.)

For me to spend money... my decision to BUY is
based on one or more of the following points:

it has to make my work:
a) more profitable and be requested by clients
b) faster and easier without causing more issues

and it has to:
c) be something I need or at least WANT
d) be manufactured with integrity so I can rely on it
e) fit within the design concept of my facility
f) significantly IMPROVE the audio quality to a noticeable extent

And with all that in mind... you'd think I'd already have ProTools!
Truth is, I get about two calls a year that ask for ProTools.
However, I know of several Tampa area ProTools studios
who are no longer in business. The rest of the inquiring people
just want to record and produce their projects.
My hourly rate seems to be the major deciding factor... to
the point I often ask: "does it matter if the person who records
your sound has any experience or knowledge that would make
your recording good enough to actually SELL & MAKE money?"

Gary Boggess

October 22nd, 2007, 01:39 PM

I used to buy newer "state of the art" stuff.
These days, I don't. Not unless there's a client
asking for it or a project I KNOW will be significantly
better if I upgrade something. As I did last year
with the WAVES plugins. I've watched too many
studios COME UP and GO DOWN because of debt...
while trying to BUY ALL THE LATEST AES hype gear.
The sentiment of "buy it and THEY will come"
is too risky in our current economy.

Once, I paid $9800 for the Emulator I.
(Synclavier was WAY WAY WAY too expensive for me).
I was the first (I know of) studio in Ohio to have a sampler.
For six months, I did have calls to the Cleveland area ad
agencies to do effects sampling and musical application of
hamburgers frying, chopping sfx and etc for GD RITZY commercials.
And there were a few others.

While I was paying monthly for the Emu I... for 3 years...
Sequential Circuits came out with the Prophet 2000
with 10 times the features for $2500 the next year!!!
I bought one ASAP... and eventually two!
I still have them... the filters are ONE OF A KIND!
I also have FOUR Emulator samplers (two e6400 Ultras/E4X/e6400)
which I bought off of Ebay for a total of $1350...
plus I've spent $$$$ on sample libraries too.
These samplers are incredible musical tools... and
sound BEEFY, MUSICAL and have real KNOBS!
I know that many who traded their Emu samplers
for the newer software versions have retreated!
So I love advancements these days... the "crowds"
dump their great stuff for newer junk...
and I can buy great tools for pennies on the dollar!

Unless it's a monitor speaker, or a sensitive device
that's easily damaged, I say buy it off of Ebay
and take your wife to dinner with the savings.
The newer junk isn't THAT much better these days...
and the savings from buying TWO or more years
OLDER gear is just too smart from every aspect.
If you want it today and it's $950, wait a year or
two and you'll buy it for $300 or less.

Not to mention that people are trading off their
stuff way too early to know if the new stuff is actually better!
And in numerous cases, I've determined the OLD
STUFF is often the future CLASSIC STUFF people
salivate for. Case in point, my Moog MINIMOOG Model D.
I bought it in 1972 for $1250 and it's worth over $3700
now if not more. And many of my music clients ask
me to use it on their music.

Old isn't necessarily old... and new isn't necessarily better.
MicroSound is also such a case (for the most part.)

For me to spend money... my decision to BUY is
based on one or more of the following points:

it has to make my work:
a) more profitable and be requested by clients
b) faster and easier without causing more issues

and it has to:
c) be something I need or at least WANT
d) be manufactured with integrity so I can rely on it
e) fit within the design concept of my facility
f) significantly IMPROVE the audio quality to a noticeable extent

And with all that in mind... you'd think I'd already have ProTools!
Truth is, I get about two calls a year that ask for ProTools.
However, I know of several Tampa area ProTools studios
who are no longer in business. The rest of the inquiring people
just want to record and produce their projects.
My hourly rate seems to be the major deciding factor... to
the point I often ask: "does it matter if the person who records
your sound has any experience or knowledge that would make
your recording good enough to actually SELL & MAKE money?"

This is a repost to correct some really dumb typos! :g

geezer

October 22nd, 2007, 02:21 PM

....Yeah, back in the days when I had my truck up and running with the 600B, 2 inch and Dolby SR (early 90s), my famous younger brother (Paul R. Smith) had been invited by a major studio musician to record his band at a newly renovated studio on music row in Nashville......He brought the tapes up to the truck for a listen and quick mix kind of thing......Classic Neve console, well constructed rooms in the current design mode, etc.

I have to say that the tracks, although they had a certain kind of big time flavor, were not particularly good sounding to my ears at the time, and several had some pretty good hum on them. What was that all about? I think it was probably: a)maintenance issues on the big board b)doing things the "way they were done" instead of the way they sounded best c)low attention paid to essentially a non-paying client inside of that very busy atmosphere d)recording with a very particular set of effects and eqs planned for use later at mix time.

When I built my truck, I made it multitrack only as an afterthought. I had come up in the live sound and NPR school of mixing to 2 track, and all of the truck was designed that way.....Perhaps it was a little arrogant and foolhardy, but the idea was to get it right the first time. I printed any eq and compression (didn't use much then) I used live right to the multitrack, and I did not have a way to mix back from the tape live. The original notion was that the tracks were only going to be usable if I could get a decent live mix.......The multitrack tape was so expensive at that point that most of my public radio client base couldn't have afforded to pay for it anyway.

Even though this put me in the pretty precarious position of not really knowing how my tracks sounded until after the fact, I tended to get praise for the sound of the tracks when they went out to other studios, even though recorded through a mid-level Soundcraft......I think my sort of classical use of eq made up for the less dynamic and bandwidth capabilities of the Soundcraft compared to the Neves, etc......Plus, I had spent some money and time having one of the old school NPR design engineers build me a balanced, carefully level matched set of direct out amps for the board.

I had not really done any serious multitrack work when I started that series of Blues Alley albums (other than 8 track work at a couple of friends studios). It was a pretty big shocker when I tried to get the mix of the first set of tapes to sound as good as my live mix....with the obvious goal of sounding better in the end, of course. It was not only an issue of hearing the alterred sound off of tape, but also me being removed from the live situation....A real eye opener. It probably took me a week to get to that point with the first tune on the first of those 5 or 6 albums.. ...Over time, I have always added the things I learned in the multitrack mixing back into the live mix, however, so some of it was certainly just gaining new skills on my part.

The other thing going on here, though, is probably the slightly mid-level state of the Soundcraft as a summing mixer.....In other words, the direct out amps I had built were really tweaked, and all happened before anything entered the stereo buss....so when the tracks hit the tape, they were pretty darn optimized sonically....when they came back though all the gain stages and the stereo buss, they were probably slightly degraded compared to the world of API and Neve.....who knows, but it was all a major learning experience for me.

Even in that relatively simple set-up with that relatively simple console, I did have maintenance issues with the 600B which nearly put me out of business a couple of times, and definitely degraded one of the albums in that Blues Alley series. My operation did not have a lot of financial headroom, so this was a very big deal indeed.......My general impression has been that the maintenance issues tend to become more frequent and more expensive as the complexity and retail price of the console goes up. The brand new 8000GB SSL we had at BET (a broadcast version of the 4000) had constant little issues, and SSL wanted $12,000 a year to maintain it. I always though that was a good deal for BET, but they did not go for it, and paid the price in console down time.....When I have gone into lower budget studios that have picked up vintage consoles inexpensively, there is almost always a relatively serious maintenance issue that crops up.

I have since gone to monitoring and mixing off tape, etc., for all the obvious reasons.....This really did not work so well with the 02R, but the 02R was fabulous for mixing the tracks I recorded (digitally, starting with DA88s) on the Soundcraft. The first day I had the 02R, my multitrack mixes suddenly sounded bigger and more pro.....I am sure most of this was 1)The fabulous automation, and 2)suddenly having 50 compressors available......

The DM2000 works really well in "big time" mode for mixing off tape, and has a lot of the same kind of analogue depth as the big time analogue consoles, so I guess, after swallowing the credit card debt, I'm in a pretty good place now. It is certainly a more powerful console in most ways than the big, bad analogue boys, and requires virtually no maintenance. With all that power comes some complexity that doesn't always make things easier, though, and I guess that is what started me down this whole path of thought.....

I'm not really nostalgic for the analogue days, just trying to figure out logically if I have lost anything since then, and if so, how I can get it back without losing the new stuff I have......I'm an old man, and I get a little confused about this stuff from time to time......Just mining memories to see if I can clear my head a bit.

Gary Boggess

October 22nd, 2007, 02:47 PM

I had a younger guy in hear one day who said the reason I may think my modified mixer was quieter was because I'm old (55) and I can't hear anymore!!!! :e

Of course, he wasn't right and he's not a client either!:g

We're all older. And I say thank God for it. We've seen a lot and we know where it all came from.

As for analog recording... I don't miss spending hours tweaking head zenith and the 50 million combos to alignment. I did it often enough to KNOW that nothing under 40hz was really there, and that anything above 14kHz was a blessing. I used DBX type I NR and it worked very well... even flawlessly to the point where I could abuse the medium a little. And I did.

But miss analog? No way. However... I miss being able to do something the average Joe Bag o' Donuts can't do. I sit here at my COMPUTER and click and peck way... missing the days when I worked with a console all lit up and the multi-track spinning around with meters and lights flashing. It was something unique.

Now, in a certain way, I'm just another warm body with a TV screen and a Windows based computer that doesn't work. And I can attest... I spend 10 times the time troubleshooting WINDOWS, as I did in tape machine alignment. Microsoft is the WORST part of this new technology. I resent their monopoly, and I resent being forced to essentially be a subsidiary of MicroSoft Inc. Without them, I and most of us HAVE NO BUSINESS. And yeah... it might be worse if there WERE 4 other OS systems. But at least there would be competition to produce the BEST OS and one that is reliable. The way it is now... Bill could care less... put up and shut up. He's a philanthropist now and more concerned that he leaves a legacy about how he tried to save the world.

So what have we lost? IDENTITY. CONTROL. FUN... and the sense that we were doing something unique that few others were doing. Now anybody with $450 bucks and a computer can record and mix and process with effects and basically, achieve a semblance of audio quality WITHOUT US. It's similar to what I'm seeing in the film world... they buy a digital video camcorder, a Mac G5 with Final Cut Pro and they're a filmmaker/director/producer. Don't laugh... it's happening!

And don't dare question them about what frame rate their film edit is at because they'll get real mad! Honest. It happened last week. According to this "filmmaker" ... SMPTE wasn't important. And when I told him differently, he was insulted.

geezer

November 8th, 2007, 08:04 PM

So, here's a little story from some local work I did today that illustrates what I think the real problem is for updating and resurrecting MicroEditor:

I am transferring some Bach organ recordings for a man that his mother had recorded on 1/4 track tape 48 years ago. After putting a lot of effort into finding a functional playback machine (went through 3 before I got one that works) and a source for splicing and leader tape (only one in the US as far as I can tell), I transferred the recordings successfully into Wavelab. There was a lot of starting and stopping, and the levels were all over the place between different takes. All takes had relatively high 60cycle (120, 240, 480, etc) hum on the right side mostly, which really destroyed the stereo image and was loud enougnh to be beating noticably at times with bass notes from the organ.

On takes that were really quiet, I had the output of the tape machine cranked enough that the combined hum, tape noise and tape machine amplification noise were literally riding as high as -12DBFS!....and were often up at -30dbfs or higher.

I felt relatively sure, since the noise level was pretty constant for each take, that I could at least clean this up some.....If I had done this with the original DOS DNoise, this probably would have required at least an hour's worth of experimentation, then at least 2 passes of an hour's worth of processing for every few minutes of audio.....In addition, I don't know if I actually could have made it work that well for noise levels only 12db down from the max.

I checked through my Waves plugs, and realized I had not purchased their high end restoration tools. Before going on line with my credit card, I remembered that I had really thought highly of the Cool Edit noise removal, so I opened up my mostly idle Adobe Audition 2.0 to see if it still had that function built in.......The long and short of this experience is that I was able to get the noise out of every clip within 30 seconds (including defining the noise section and all processing) with 24 bit audio, and yielding a 32bit file. There was virtually no decision making on my part and no multiple passes needed, and the resultant files have virtually no loss of loudness or fidelity issues. They sound every bit as good (if not better)as the files I labored over all day with Dnoise in '96 or '97...Even the file with the -12 combined noise level! It literally sounds identical to the files with the noise down around -35......It was effortless, and I have never used the program before. I did not have to think at all, and the files are sitting in the same folder I started for the Wavelab project and will go effortlessly into the Wavelab CD Montage.

All this on my 5 year old laptop. How can MTU compete with this kind of software? Adobe Audition costs something like $250 on the street, and has the full multitrack/mixer thing going on.....It still doesn't seem to have the effortless, open-ended thing that MTU has, but Wavelab certainly does.

Am I missing something here? Is there some kind of business hole left for MTU to fit in?

I can't imagine what the Waves noise removal stuff is going to sound like. Yikes.

Gary Boggess

November 8th, 2007, 08:33 PM

Yup, there are various alternatives for noise removal that are more effective than I found DNOISE to be. Although I think denoise works good on many things. But it takes a scientific effort.

I have the WAVES plugins for noise... and it DOES work wonders... but not so hot on complex noises like you find on 78 records.

For that, I recommend DC Seven

http://www.enhancedaudio.com/dc_seven.htm

If their demos are REAL, they have found the Holy Grail
in dnoising. Of course, their program is about $1800.
But it appears to work miracles... literally.
They've got some OTHER software too... and all I can say is,
if I could make money in this business, I'd own all of their
software. But alas... this business is getting more and more
rediculous by the day. After 37 years... I'm trying to figure
out what else could I do for a living. All these schools are
graduating "audio engineers" by the truck load... and by the
time they can't find work, and then start wacking down the
rates, thus reducing the marketplace to non-profit
status... I have to ask what's the point anymore?
CD sales are less and less... and piracy is more
rampant daily. The public now thinks they're entitled to FREE
music and movies. So... where does that leave us?
BROKE... POOR and unemployed.

Hate to dump negative vibes here... but...
we're all in a pickle.

Rich LePage

November 9th, 2007, 09:38 AM

I must have missed a few posts here, didn't get an email that there was anything new but just did now.

Yeah, the Audition noise removal and also its spectral editing are things I've used to great advantage at times, especially with stuff that comes in with problems.

Same deal with the spectral editing, really handy tool.

The new version has been delayed and now won't ship till end of Nov.
Good about the 24 bits, having not done much with that I'm glad to know it can handle it well.

Yes on the Diamond Cut stuff, I've used that too to advantage, but overall I like a lot of what Audition does. The Audition click removal tool is something I use often too. There is also a 3rd party diff type of de-clicker that was written specifically for Audition.

On Gary's age etc stuff-- yeah, we're all of that general vintage and I've sure seen that kinda thing. Folks don't value expertise and experience and yep, you're another guy with a pile of gear. It's become VERY commodity and too many clients don't know the difference -- many don't listen at all either.

In the ad work I did piles of, too often you couldn't pry the client off the phone, much less get them to really listen. It was more of a "camp out in the studio" thing, and very much like the hotel biz. I began to realize that with them it wasn't about the work or the value I was trying so hard to add-- at all-- it was about lots of other stuff, from decor to lunch to their own internal politics.

What I've found in some cases though is that once clients go somewhere else and run into problems- because the competitor just doesn't maybe work to the same standard and try to exceed what's expected-- they come back.
(Not the ad guys as much as others though!) I've had many situations like that, where they realized after the other experience the difference in quality and also just overall easiness of getting the work accomplished in a good manner.

Comments are like "gee, your stuff is so much smoother", or "so much more detailed" or "just flows better" or whatever. Sometimes I'm asked to fix up other's work, too. When that happens, you hear all too often some really big things that anyone should have noticed -- but apparently didn't- or just didn't want to bother with them or whatever. (gosh, maybe that's what their def. of "smooth" is...)

But there are still plenty of people who don't listen. Also with many larger companies, the people who buy the services have totally nothing to do with the people who are closely involved with the actual work-- and so they never hear it at all. They only know if they have heard there are/were problems with something.

Another downside is that sometimes we're never even considered for a project because of being such a small biz. I've heard "well, if he's in the studio getting the stuff laid down, he can't be editing and mixing at the same time and that will affect our deadline". Yeah, but gee, we could have worked that out by just scheduling it intelligently and made that work to their advantage, but too often not given the oppty.

You're right, it's harder than ever. And in what's become a commodity business with everyone under the sun professing to be an expert, I guess it can be hard for the customer to determine who DOES have some expertise - if they don't even listen! I keep trying to hang in, but all the stuff Gary mentions definitely impacts all of us.

On Micro CD, I had an inquiry from another user about newer burners.
One new solution I have found with Golden Hawk apparently going away is that you can still use MicroCD for making images and use Nero (version 7 in my case, prob. works with current version 8 too) to burn them from. Nero will find the MicroCD/Golden Hawk CUE and WAV files and you can burn directly from the CUE file with it.

It came up recently when I couldn't update CDRWIN and couldn't reach Golden Hawk at all. The last version of their stuff we have did not support a new Plextor burner I bought-- found it as a reader, but not as a recorder.
But Nero 7 found it, even though the Plex model was not out when Nero 7 was (now Nero has Version 8). It's a little cumbersome, but it works.

I think NTI's burning programs will also handle cue sheet burning, though pretty sure Roxio for instance does NOT. I had a copy of Nero 7 here and it wound up working. (never opened since bought last year until this, I've used OEM versions of Nero for moving data and doing CDROMs for ages though -it comes bundled with some OEM drives).

Rich

geggyboy

November 19th, 2009, 01:54 PM

And MTU only. My goodness me.. I aint been here for soooooooooooo long. Are we all still alive????

Yep still on MTU....sorry to be that old dino, but everyday, all day, mostly all night as well, MTU Krystal is still going. In fact I type this on the very same machine on which my editor is installed. Of course the computer is a 2 core duo yappiddy whippidy dingly dangly now with a zerabyte of ram.. but still MTU Krystal on board and a twin system in the video suite.
I talk with Jack Parnell quite a bit.. He is way up now in years, more than me even, but still using 2.7 on Win 98 but EVERYDAY threatened to move up. Maybe he did by now, but up to what??? Krystal cards are as rare as unicorn dung now.

You would be surprized what the so-called pros out there are doing. Digital up the ying yang.. The best converters.. the THD better than a vacuum... yet still MOST pro studios using the 'Analogue outputs' of their bog standard computers.. Yes sir/madam!! You would be shocked. Try going studio to studio like we do everyday using ISDN. Here we struggle to stay digital and the kit accepts it.. (Mayah buit in- and Audio TX - with 3rd party sound card), good Lord above.. we find sample rate mismatch 98% of the time with the other ends not having a clue what is going on.. 'BUT IT WORKS WITH EVERYONE ELSE - I'VE RECORDED 6 COMMERCIALS TODAY AND A DOC FOR HISTORY.. ALL FINE.. NOBODY COMPLAINED".... Of course not.. Because they are using analogue. (another reason we'd kill for wordclock on MTU).

Anyway: Got Two Pro Tools systems for the very same reason Rich got his - to be there in case.. Digi 001 and a Digi 003 . I HAVE NEVER EVER EVER USED THEM.you might even see some rough old pix if you go to my web site www.geghopkins.com (I will eventually take some better pix - but these are accurate as such - early 2009)
Got 48 tracks of Alesis HD24s..still - Yamaha DM2000 (like Geezer Jim)
Still got the old Akais 24 track DR16 + 8 in sync.. still work wonderfully.
Got Cubase. It came free with DM2000 Version 2 update.. but we already had it.
Got Audition which we use in the video ALL THE TIME.. But it is fed from the MTU. We record NOTHING directly to it.

Most of the time for music on the fly - I use the Yamaha AW4416 in 24 bit mode @ 48K.. Try beating it.. You cannot.. it is a lovely sound off that... But all digital not analogue in and out - and all cuts, edits and final.. transferred to MTU ..

Nothing touches MTU. If it goes another 5 years... then it will more than likely out live me and there is really NOTHING new out there... it has all been invented.

Anyway.. I came on here really to find out two things. I don't suppose Dave ever got to grips with wordclock for the Kyrstal although it supports it.. (onboard receptical socket) as far as I know the software doesnt... Maybe I am out of touch..

The other thing is.. I am still trying to get the Krystal to default as the Windows sound card, like I did before with the Rev J I think. I can't ever remember doing it with XP --But so many years gone by.. maybe we did.
G

Rich LePage

November 19th, 2009, 02:49 PM

Nice to see Geg is still out there and still using the stuff too.
Also very nice to see these forums back up and running.

Yep, wordclock would be nice, not essential here for my use,
but nice to have.

Enjoyed talking with Dave a month or so ago, too - it had been
ages.

Lately, still using Medit (in fact using it right now) as a first pass
device (also to lay stuff like v/o down with usually) and then I usually move
WAV files made from 1st pass editing over to Audition and pile on the
plugs as needed. Often I use Ozone now, also quite often will go to the UA digital plugs which are very good. We have several of their DSP cards, the old and new ones both. A few of the
Waves plugs often seem to get used too, though less than a few years
ago - I tend to prefer the UA ones for many things and they run well
with Audition.

Also nice to catch up a bit with Jim Smith - it was right around the time
my original mentor Les Paul passed away and so particularly insightful.
I'd spent a lot of time with Les in his last several months, though much of
it was in hospitals, including his last birthday in June.

Medit continues to be a really solid tool for me and very reliable.
Usually I will mix down (digitally mostly) from a multi-track Audition environment to a MTU system too, rather than "render" in the box with
Audition. It's also very handy for some jobs to be able to put in track markers on the fly while doing that and then go back and align them correctly after everything is done. I still use it for making all CD masters - or at least the images the masters will be burned from. Then I take the cue files and WAV image file over to a Nero system (to support the newer burners) and make the masters using that, mostly with late-model Plextor IDE burners.

Golden Hawk - whose underlying code was used in MicroCD- seems to be totally gone now, they still have a website but are not reachable.

The P/Tools gathers dust here. I did hook up the 002 Rack module on a test machine to mess with using Audition, but I wound up liking a TC firewire interface better - lower latency and overall better sound. We have a MOTU one as well that sounds good but seems a bit more of a resource hog so it works better with the higher-end machines, dual or quad core etc etc.

I did upgrade the software to version 7 at one point, played with it for about an hour, confirmed I still didn't like it and put it away. As for comptability reason we originally bought it -- it just has not ever been an issue. Oh well.

The interface (other than MTU) that has been very reliable is (of all things) an old Aardvark Q10- with the only Win XP drivers they ever made for the thing. It's been very rock-solid on a Pent 4 3.2 gig system for a long time,
which runs Audition and usually several of the older UAD1 boards.

What's so curious about that -- is that the DSP chip on their PCI board is none other than the same one MTU used in Krystal. Likely the reason Aardvark suddenly went out of business was same thing Dave faced with Motorola!!

I only ever got Medit happy with Win XP on one machine - the other Medit systems here run on Win98 and WinME- might be ancient now, but they work very well for what they do. The other systems are all XP except one office machine which runs Vista- which for me has been rather quirky. No Win7 boxes yet... though I did set up a Ubuntu machine recently using old junk parts and a Pent 200 and was pretty amazed how well it runs for simple stuff using old - and today really slow- hardware. It has Audacity in it because they have a free version for Ubuntu/Linux. But I just use it for playing around, nothing serious.

Another editor I've been hearing some about over at www.audiomasters.com (which is a Cool Edit/Audition user group) is Reaper. But have not tried it - might when I have a little time though.

I don't record much directly into Audition either though seems to work fine when I do that. I'm just so used to MTU way of working that it works better for me -- besides sounding real good.

Hope all of us stay well and stay working- best regards to all - and thx MTU for putting back this forum. Back to some editing here...

Rich

geezer

November 19th, 2009, 03:45 PM

Hey Geg, et al!

My understanding about getting Krystal to take wordclock is that this was one of the original problems noted about Motorola, etc., and that it just never will be able to do it.

HOWEVER, it is certainly easy to make Krystal sync to incoming digital via the AES port, and this is a perfectly good substitute. I am always doing this with my Alesis Masterlink, by the way, and it makes an enormous difference in the resultant playback sound.

My two MTU systems are still sitting on a shelf in the barn unused, though I took the CD burner out of one of them to install in my youngest son's newly purchased used AW4416, which does work amazingly well, as you suggest, Geg. I got him up and running and doing automated music mixes in a single day on the thing.

I have had occasion in the last year to do some critical listening and comparisons with newer stuff to my last couple of CDs mastered on MicroEditor with MicroCD from 24bit projects, and have refined what I think about that....have made comparisons with the old 16 bits-all-the-way-through stuff, too.

Although I still find the MicroCD dither-free bit reduction to retain most of the frequency response pallette of the original file, I also find it to have a bit of a "veiled" sound overlaid. When starting with 16bit files, this additionally veiling does not happen.......But I am still struggling with how to bring ANY 24 bit file to a CD without destroying it.

I am still using Wavelab with Waves plugins to achieve this most of the time, but still have to experiment heavily with each product to get it to sound the way I want.......A big time mastering engineer that has been mastering some major label albums for a good friend of mine seems to achieve this simply by doing all processing in the analogue domain, and having superior converters on either end of the process.

The importance of conversion has really been hammered into me over the last couple of years. Luckily, I have found what I consider to be the ultimate, perfect D to A converter, and now have that in my monitoring chain so that I feel I always know what I am hearing while working on anything......This is the converter built in to the Dangerous Music "The Monitor" monitoring/switching unit. It syncs instantly to anything you switch it to, so you can be working with multiple sources at different sampling rates that are not clocked together and make instant A-B comparisons.

This has been a godsend. Before having it, I was going through enormous contortions making sure the monitoring section in my DM2000 was clocking correctly to whatever I was listening to.......And the accuracy of the Dangerous converters is vastly superior to anything else I have heard. The result is that when I listen to my old mixes, the stuff which was always good still sounds just fine, but the stuff that had some problems that I could not quite fix now sounds TERRIBLE and I now know exactly what I should have done........Something about the phase accuracy across the whole spectrum.

Unfortunately, Dangerous is not making A to D converters, so that is a whole other can of worms I am still thinking about......but at least now I can trust what I am hearing all the time.

I am still using Wavelab as my primary editor/mastering environment, but I am about to enter the DAW multitrack world a little more forcefully than I had ever intended. This will mostly enhance some long distance production and music making that I have started in on......and will probably force me, kicking and screaming, into the Pro Tools HD world.

I am, just now, finishing up the album that was tracked at NPR 3 years ago on PT HD, and I have also been doing some long distance consulting with a friend for his major label mixing on his brand new PT HD system using a Dangerous 2 Bus for external analogue summing.......In both instances, I have to say that there is just something about the PT HD files that I do not like. It is hard to define....some kind of low level dithering cloud or something, but it is there. I have not had the opportunity to really dive into the use or setup of a PT HD system, so I don't know if I can find ways to use it that avoid this. I do know that every time a file makes a trip through the system, dithering is added, so maybe that is what is going on.....but that should not have affected the NPR files.....who knows.

I am still very, very happy with my DM2000. I bought an 02R96 for my live work, and have found that it sounds almost identical to the DM2k as long as you keep it in the digital domain.......The converters in the monitor section sound awful compared to those in the DM2k, however, which is how this whole quest for converters started with me......I actually ended up dropping money on the other Dangerous switching/monitoring box (Monitor ST with DAC ST) so that I could have the same kind of confidence in what I was hearing when I was out on gigs. Big money, but big relief, too.

I still have 7 DA78s and 2 MX2424s, but I have been using the HD24s almost exclusively for all my live work. Both of my machines have the XR converter upgrade, and I have come to think that they actually sound quite good. I used them in tandem to record a festival in NY last summer, and they worked flawlessly in that environment.....Although it seems as if Alesis is getting ready to discontinue them (the supply of EC-2 converter upgrades is drying up completely), they are simple enough, and there is enough support coming out of the forum, that I think they will stay useful for quite a while. One guy on the forum is making caddies that take SATA drives, and another writes fabulous software that allows file transfers, repairs damaged files, etc.

The only other choice out there seems to be the X48, which has some other nice features, but a few drawbacks, as well........Even though it is priced very fairly, I can't justify the expenditure for it at the moment...not enough work.

Anyway, I am just sort of dawdling along. Just got the last kid out of the house, and my oldest just made me a grandfather, so this generally takes the front seat and the audio stuff sits back a bit.

I have been trying to branch out a bit more into video editing.....I produced a Blu Ray presentation for my brother at NAMM in January, and I am finding all the hi def stuff pretty exciting.

I may try to crank up one of my MTU rigs to salvage some files from an old album.....If so, you guys are sure to hear from me, because I can't remember anything about how to use them.....it has just been too long.

....good hearing from everyone. Don't hesitate to contact me directly:

mudsmith@earthlink.net 304-261-9426

geezer

November 19th, 2009, 03:56 PM

.....Just wanted to add that my purchase of the Lynx AES 16 card as my primary desktop interface for various software packages a couple of years back made a HUGE difference in my ability to get quality sounds in and out of the computer. The thing is just rock solid. Zero jitter bit stream.

I also just upgraded what I am using with my laptop to the newer RME Multiface and mobile card, and that sounds a lot better than the old version, too, but was pretty expensive.

I am sure there are new, less expensive options that I have not used.

Rich LePage

November 19th, 2009, 04:56 PM

Wow, cool to hear from Jim again here too!

The summing thing is definitely a road I plan to investigate.

And great to hear about the Dangerous D/A and monitoring and the Lynx- they are roads I think I too will travel before much longer - work and funds permitting!

The dithering thing is interesting too. I want to play around with more 24 bit stuff and see if I hear what Jim noted, I don't hear it (as he noted) on 16 bit projects.

All best to you guys!

Rich

geggyboy

November 19th, 2009, 05:08 PM

We are still at it! Not only that..my username geggyboy and the password still works. Then suddenly notification. Just can't believe it..
Well hello there.. Hope you are all fine. (Jimbo and I talk techy quite a bit but not for a while now.. Time i did maybe and teased him a bit about Obama)

I gave a mate of mine a Krystal a couple of years back as he left Bahrain for home in San Antonio. He called me today as he has 'JUST" started to use it. He was a bit miffed; "The *&*^ MTU forum is *&^& nothing working anymore.. How do I ...... dah dah dah" etc..
I can help him out somewhat, but with XP it should just start working if he gets his connections right.

Anyway, Low and B. it is here..proof, we are speaking on it now... But whether there is anything to be gained from it technically now - is a bit abstract. We've all said it all! Dave made his decisions.. Amen!

Reaper! Tried that once.. An Ozzie guy who sold me a Krystal on here was using it and told me it was good, so we downloaded. Yeah..not impressed so forget that one.. I like the TV series though.

Rich u use the Fireworks? I like that kit. I like TC or did.. All my TC kit failed at the same time last month. The power supplies sort of faded out all within a few days of each other. Same fault... had to wait half and hour for them to come on. Two Gold Channels and Two Finalizers. I got power supplies sent out, but no good.. Finalizer lost its boot.... The Gold Channels make the most horrendous electrical noise now and I don't know what it is. For a year or two now i have noticed the background noise, like ambience and a bit of hum, which I always thought was just that....no amount of digging holes and running copper in the garden adn watering every day - seemed to make a difference. Turns out it was the Gold Channel.. Not too kosher that considering what the beast is supposed to be for. TC got fed up with me asking how to fix it.. I can if I have the diagrams.. Well sometimes..

I note on a very old post of mine about using the Krystal as the default Windows player.... there is a sentence added by Dave or Brian.. Says: NO LONGER SUPPORTED I never knew that it ever was.

WC..if you read the 2.7 manual it mentioned about the Word Clock plug on the top of the board... and ''''future software upgrades will include support''' Hmmmm! But yeah.. I'm not sure what you mean by the Krystal will clock to incoming AES/EBU. I thought it did that as default.. I don't know how to set the Krystal clock.. Internal or input or output...etc.. Is there a method??
(I only use Krystal on digital.. AES IN/OUT with a monitor to the 02R 2Track Digital in off the SPDIF output at the same time. )

I have just had a big run in with the guy that sells AUDIO TX and the Marion MARC 2 card. The card is ok, but i find the analogue outs are terrible but he says 10,000 of his customers are using it and ALL analogue to a mixer and no complaints. I can hear others using it down the line when I am connected ISDN.. I hate PCI sound cards... but with the ISDN stuff, sometimes you have to use them as the USB or Firewires time out the needed synchronous elements when using software ISDN codecs. In other words.. you go out of sync/frame/lock

Got the TC KONNECT 32.. firewire.. Cannot get it to work or stable enough and that is on a SHUTTLE X. Anyone else used it?

Oh I know what I wanted to say Jimbo... Boot Krystal.. as I said I am monitoring off the SPDIF to the 2 trk in dig of the 02R.. (AES goes to wherever need for recording) Sometimes I have to hit the monitor switch on the mixer twice - switch out and switch in again - to lock the Krystal and stop it ESSING!! I always thought it was the mixer, but I think it is the Krystal. But I posted about that years and years ago (before I had an 02R).

We got Pig flu in the house here.. (confirmed) so off to die for a while.. Later guys - Great to hear from you.. G ..

Rich LePage

November 19th, 2009, 06:43 PM

Hi again,
No not Fireworx - We have a Konnekt 24 D which I have been liking. Originally I hated it, but the newer drivers made things better and much lower latency. It only has 4 analog outs, but I mostly don't use them anyway - stuff goes out SPDIF - there's no AES on it. In that setup, I monitor off whatever is end of the chain, which is often a 2nd MTU system the stuff is being mixed to.

You can also use it as a standalone set of preamps and/or mixer, which I tried once or twice but mostly don't use. I don't care for the "onboard DSP plugs" (Fabrik C compressor, an EQ and a Fabrik R reverb) but it seems to work well as an interface with a not-high-horsepower Pentium 4 single core machine. I think they make a cheaper one without the DSP as well. Konnekt 8 I think.

With Audition, I use a Frontier Alphatrack sometimes, also once in a while a cheap Behringer controller box. They can be handy for some things.

Have not had a problem with the TC Firewire's power supply (a wart) which I do use rather than bus powering the thing. It seems to have plenty and is likely over-spec'd. TC says the box will run on a range of voltages and current anyhow.

I had that recently with a Linksys router a friend found in a dumpster and gave me. No power supply - so looked it up and found a 12volt wart that made it very happy. Other then reprogramming it and adding new firmware, it was perfectly fine and now runs a few machines as a little sub-network -- sort of a router behind the main router.

Interesting your observations though re TC. I HAVE had some unexplainable power glitches sometimes with their Finalizer and also another unit we have called a DB Max. I don't use them so much anymore, but in past for no reason they would crackle and do strange things and even shut off. Usually shutdown for a half hour and re-power and all was well -- maybe bad caps I thought. But the power on/off on those on the front doesn't really power it on/off- the switch on back does. My problems were the front panel power switch - which I think just powers on the mainboard while the other one switches the actual power supply.

I have pretty clean power running them, so I doubt it was that.

I sometimes have similar problem with a digital Aphex Compellor, where for no reason 1 side only (left) of the digital signal suddenly drops way down in level. After a minute or so it might go back and might not. The fix always seems to be power the thing off and then on again - a delay while it locks to the incoming signal and then it's fine. Never figured out why- and it would happen with nearly ANY incoming digital signal. It does not occur with analog input signal at all.

FLU-- gosh, sounds awful. Hope that resolves quickly and w/o problems for you.

I've heard others have the Gold Channel problem you mention- in fact I heard it do that during a demo in a store when it first came out. I concluded it was not for me-seemed a little pricey as well. I have a couple Millennia units I use a lot and a few others. John La Grou of Millennia was an MTU user at one time, met him once at an AES show - he used it to record classical music in San Francisco for a long time.

All for today - hope all goes well on that flu front especially. Nasty stuff. I was in NYC yesterday and one v/o actor brought his kid. Said he'd had a fever the day before - no flu -- but the school would not allow his kid in after having had fever the day before as a precaution. First I'd heard that.

Rich

Gary Boggess

November 19th, 2009, 06:59 PM

Hey all,

Got the notice to check in here. I'm on my way to dinner with the girlfriend soon, but here's a short contribution:

I'm still using my Microsound for everything I do... which hasn't been too much this last year due to the economy here in Tampa. But, last July, a film I did audio post for got some attention. I did all of the sound design, dialog editing, Foley (cloth, walking, props etc.), music editing, BG's, and the final mix on the Microsound. The feature film, "Loren Cass", opened in New York City and got rave reviews by Variety, MOMA, the Village Voice and other reviewers. What was a shocker was that the New York Times loved it too... and went so far as to mention the audio work... which is rare for reviewers to do for an opening film:

The New York Times writes about our audio post work for feature film, "Loren Cass": "Equal credit for the movie’s power and poetry goes to Gary Boggess for his extraordinary sound work, a dense, enveloping mix of drones, disruptions and howls..." - 7/24/09

LINK to the review:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/movies/24loren.html

So, I see some of us STILL can't find a reason to abandon our MTU's... I know I can't. MicroEditor does exactly what I want it to do... EDIT, ASSEMBLE and MIX without getting in my way. It's still the BEST audio editing device I've ever seen... and I've spent time with protoys the last two years. I was on the advisory board and a frequent lecturer on music and film sound production at the Tampa International Academy of Design and Technology. I've sat in during sessions in their protoys studio. And I had to HUSH my thoughts often. Most of the time as I watched them (protoys certified instructors) work... I was thinking: "HOLY CRAP!!! I COULD HAVE DONE THAT OPERATION (or EDIT) IN SECONDS (w/MTU) AND THEY'RE STILL TRYING TO MAKE IT WORK!!!!"

So... long live the Microsound. I own FOUR computers with Krystal cards each. I have ONE 4in/4out external balanced I/O module, and ONE 2in/2out balanced I/O module, one extra and TWO OTHERS full systems, plus FOUR small 2- I/O boxes!!! I have most of this in storage out of paranoia of my main system failing. At age 57, I (or someone) will be able to work on MicroSound until long after the 2nd Coming!. ;P

btw, not taking swine flu vaccine... am convinced its all bio-weapons... and depopulation agenda. ;(

geezer

November 19th, 2009, 09:03 PM

....Although I no longer have any memories of which Medit software versions were which, I do remember going through some official release statements I found a while ago that were from around maybe '97 or so when Dave still thought he would continue development. There were all kinds of future promises about multitrack, etc., but they all turned out to be vapor.

I know Dave WANTED to include wordclock input, and had been told he could implement it with the Motorola chip....but I also know that he later realized that some significant Motorola promises were false, and I specifically remember him telling me that this was one of the promises that went up in smoke.

As far as syncing to the AES port, or SPDIF port for that matter, I simply meant that the card will do that anyway when you specify that port as the input port, as long as the input signal is coming from whatever device you want to lock wordclock to. This method of deriving wordclock works just fine, really, and I used it as a means of maintaining sync for a long time on video projects after the implementation of Krystal. This was important to figure out because the initial, very high quality chase ability of the rack mounted analogue I/O was undone the minute you started coming in digital only with Krystal......but it still worked in the same way as all the modern, native computer systems. In other words, as long as Medit lined up with incomimg SMPTE initially, then ran on the right wordclock derived from the incomimg digital signal, it will stay in sync forever.

The original rackmount I/O would actually varispeed the analogue output (by varying the clock) from MTU to match up with incoming SMPTE, but the Krystal card could not do this. The original system would really "chase", which was the initial reason I bought the system.

.......The most important rule about digital is this: Any digital input must sync exactly with the wordclock of the source, or to another wordclock source that is exactly in time with the digital audio source. Before the proliferation of wordclock ports, the only way we had to do this was syncing to the input source.....and many times that is still the only way. I mentioned AES because it is slightly more solid in this way, but SPDIF works okay, too.

When I am clocking my Alesis Masterlink for playback to its AES input, I am actually using an AES output of my master wordclock generator usually......but I would obviously be syncing to the input stream if I was recording on it, or to something else if it had to be in sync to something else....

geggyboy

November 20th, 2009, 01:14 AM

Lucid GENx 192

geggyboy

November 20th, 2009, 02:23 AM

I sat with my morning tea and biscuits and wrote a tremendously profound and of course 'long' as we each seem to do because we obviously all type very fast. post to you all... but all that came out was LUCID GENX.. Which was the start of the very last para referring to Word clock. Your authentication process authenticated itself into a twist Mr.Cox. But there yah.. was never meant to be and my tea got cold..

admin

November 20th, 2009, 10:46 AM

The original rackmount I/O would actually varispeed the analogue output (by varying the clock) from MTU to match up with incoming SMPTE, but the Krystal card could not do this. The original system would really "chase", which was the initial reason I bought the system.
Well almost... The MicroSync card did the sync-lock resolving to TimeCode, and it could lock to a +/-50% varispeeding TC... best that I found of any product that sync-locked.

ALL our I/O Modules could sync-lock resolve to TC, not just the Rack Mount. In fact, if you look inside the Rack, you'll see the stack of cards (Clock Board on the bottom) that also would slide into the smaller "blue box" case. Same cards, different cables for the Rack to go to XLRs.

Congratulations Gary! It does my heart good to hear of Microsounds still running. We designed them like a Sherman Tank to last forever.

If Mototola hadn't lied to us or we had used a different AES/SPDIF digital chip, we'd still be shipping Krystals and Medit. Took the wind out of our sails forever. Alas, Microsound was our Crown Jewel development of my now 41 years doing developments. I'm glad some of you are still making profits with your investment!

geezer

November 20th, 2009, 06:59 PM

Well, admin (Dave, I assume), I understood the sync locking trick....wasn't sure the "tabletop" I/O did it, because I got the rackmount first and never tried chasing TC with the tabletop I eventually got at the end of the system's usefulness to me.

But, for all out there, it is important to note that that chase lock was varispeeding the wordclock to a potentially incredible amount, if needed, just as Dave says....and this tends to be pretty unusuable in many situations if one is utilizing the digital out instead of the analogue.....It worked so well, though, that I really did not have to think about the whole issue until I started trying to use Krystal locked to TC and started looking at other systems.

The good news ended up being that there are some very functional ways to achieve good synclock with native setups.....While there are some WC generators that will actually push the wordclock around according to incoming TC, the most stable systems will simply pass TC through to your computer, but lock the WC to incoming video signal or blackburst.......The computer DAW software will usually just look for the first good incoming TC address and start playback from there, but won't look at TC again....It will, however, play according to the incoming WC. So, if your video deck has good TC locked to picture and you feed the video output to your wordclock converter, then the deck and software should stay locked.

I had very good luck doing this with an early version of Nuendo using Steinberg's Timelock Pro (a repackaged Rosendahl box) to generate the WC straight from a normal video output.....even when chasing a VHS HiFi work tape (TC embedded on one channel of the HiFi audio), it would stay solidly locked for 90 minutes.....once you were sure that the program made a good decision about the first incoming TC it saw.

...And, while I was still using Medit to lock to TC, it seemed to work fine in more or less the same way as long as I had it clocking to a digital input that was releated well to whatever it was chasing.......This no longer worked for the VHS HiFi deck, but did work with a lot of other digital devices.....And when I had a pro video deck that could be synced to blackburst, I could use the blackburst to generate an AES output from my wordclock generator that would sync up Krystal.....only did this once or twice.

The ease of Medit chasing with the RevJ and I/O boxes, however, is a goner. DA88s would also chase this well and perform just fine, as long as you were using analogue I/O or dealing with a digital transfer where the varispeed was okay.

geggyboy

March 16th, 2013, 04:38 AM

Good morning campers.

Can I have a gold watch someone?

Hammering into 2013 and time rolls on, as does the Krystal. I do believe I am up to the MTU quarter century mark now. (I imagine there are a few of us still out there deserving of an MTU birthday award).

I do believe my first contact with Dave was in 1988 or not far off that. As with the Yamaha DM2000, I was among the first in the world to go digital with their 8 channel DMP7 (circa 1987). I scanned pages of music mags to see if anyone was using computers to edit and contacted all I found - from Sonic Solutions to 'River' something or other. With my 286 desk top up and running Wordstar, I typed a fax,. (no internet then) Mr. David Cox was the 'ONLY' one to reply from a company called Micro Technology Unlimited. I duly bought the system including a massive 500 MB SCSI drive (if I remember right or maybe it was 650 MB, some odd number. It was the biggest available and I still have it somewhere for sure - I upgraded to 1 gig and the drive was bigger and heavier than my Jeep ).

Relative to my status then, it cost and arm and a leg, that with a desire to re-quip using a 386 mother board and the glorious Hollywood extra at great expense; The 'maths co-processor', running Windows 3.1. All up $30,000. (One could buy a card farm and a half Pro-Tools system for near half that now - not that I ever would).

Windows 95 came and died as did 98 and the ISA slot with it and indeed the REV J, WHICH STILL WORKS on an old Pent 4 I have stuffed under some table, running Win 98. I bought the Krystal soon after they appeared (delayed at that) and among to the world's first 24 bit ability. Mr. Cox eventually had it ported to Windows XP and no more floppy swapping and mayhem installing. A new world order had descended. Happy as pigs in.... I bought 3 or 4 Krystals over time, still have 2 - 2 found their way back to the States and colleagues and to my knowledge (touch wood, pray whatever) none of them have EVER gone wrong .................yet.

I wish this bulletin board allowed Jpeg attachments rather than silly motocons and I would post you a pic or two of either the set up or indeed me, still sitting here in March 2013, using my MTU krystal EVERY SINGLE DAY - often as much as 18 hours a day. It has been said so many times' "Nothing has ever come close - for practicality, ease of use and reliability'. Oh yes, I have Pro Toys, I have Logic, I have Cubase, I have computers coming out the ying yang, I use up-to-date plug-ins for processing and sometimes even recording, but all goes 'back to the MTU' at some stage. Should I see a doctor???????

I've just moved office (times are tough, smaller much cheaper unit) On the shelf, I see my old AKAI DR16s, gathering dust - again they still work perfectly I guess although I never upgraded them to 24 bit. I was thinking of poshing out the facility with racks and showing off, but decided nah!!! Just going to stick the two MTU editors there and a sound booth and keep going until I or it dies...... Really.. should I now see a doctor??

I bet my old buddy Jack Parnell is still doing the same in Memphis.

If only MTU editor was ported to VST - ASIO - USB or Firewire dah dah dah.... and an emulator to run in Mac or Windows 8, every You-Tube junky out there would be using it for quick clips to upload, far easier than all the Adobe, Logic or Cubase stuff and far far more flexible than say Sound Forge or similar.

Oh look, there are daisies growing above me. xx