Microsound used for National Symphony Orchestra

[Rich LePage]

I agree with your logic, but it sounds very un-trivial in terms of what I think might be required to do the things you mentioned. Dave would know much more about that however. To move projects to/from the Digi world for instance might be daunting, I'd suspect difficult in some other "worlds" too.

But as a concept, yeah, that would be terrific-- though you'd be limited to 4 hardware outs in the MTU world, I think.

About your Norton thing: Finally those folks have a tool you can download (Norton Removal Tool). You can search for it at the Symantec site. It helps. However, it doesn't always remove everything though it claims that it will. After having huge problems with some Norton stuff a few years back and getting endless junk from what they call "support" (nearly all of which did not apply to the problems I'd run into), I really gave up on anything Norton, except Ghost (v9 for XP and now v12 for Vista) and Partition Magic which they bought.

As a rule except when no other possible way, I won't let the audio machines go on-line. With your networked approach, I wonder if you do the same thing? I often don't even set up Internet access on 'em.

But for general use on other machines, I've found the ZoneAlarm free firewall works well, and Spysweeper with anti-virus seems to do a good job too, though it adds some overhead for sure. I also use V-Com's Fix-It Utilities which has a different type of virus and spyware scanning in it, though I mostly use it for fixing problems and cleaning up the registry etc. And Ghost, of course. Fix-it and Ghost have really saved me a few times when stuff got real weird on some systems.

Hope it helps you.

[Gary Boggess]

Originally Posted by Rich LePage

I agree with your logic, but it sounds very un-trivial in terms of what I think might be required to do the things you mentioned. Dave would know much more about that however. To move projects to/from the Digi world for instance might be daunting, I'd suspect difficult in some other "worlds" too.

But as a concept, yeah, that would be terrific-- though you'd be limited to 4 hardware outs in the MTU world, I think.

About your Norton thing: Finally those folks have a tool you can download (Norton Removal Tool).

I would imagine what I proposed to be very challenging if not nearly crazy to consider. But I just had to get the thought out here. I would also agree that IF anything is developed further, it's imperative to be able to record IN and OUT at least 16 or more channels... and using 3rd party hardware would be the best options for doing it... both from a COST and MANUFACTURING position.

As for Norton... I say bye bye & good riddens to useless schmuckware!!!

[geezer]

....Yeah my wife's computer got a really, really bad virus from connecting to the Norton site!....AVG free seems to function a whole lot better, frankly.

This thing about running in other programs or other programs running in MTU might not be as far out as you think......I bit the bullet this week and actually went ahead and started to learn a video editing program. Even though I own Adobe Premier, I decided to start with a simplified, cheaper version of Sony's Vegas + DVD that's called Sony Movie Studio (Platinum) plus DVD Architect...To make a long story short, the program asks you what audio editor you want to use inside of it, and sends you out to the program and brings the files back in relatively seamlessly. This thing only cost $125. at Best Buy, and its high-end brother only cost something like $500-$600.....It doesn't seem to have any problem communicating with other programs or doing file conversions and keeping them synced.

So maybe it's not that far out of an idea.

On the other hand, Wavelab does do virtually everything MTU does right now....Is there really a point?.....That's really what the discussion should be about:

A)What are the qualities and working methods that exist in MTU that can not be duplicated or even improved upon in Wavelab? B)Can MTU really be exported/rewritten to work in the native environment?

.....I am very curious what answers others out there would have to these questions.

[Gary Boggess]

[quote=geezer;66800]

This thing about running in other programs or other programs running in MTU might not be as far out as you think......I bit the bullet this week and actually went ahead and started to learn a video editing program. Even though I own Adobe Premier, I decided to start with a simplified, cheaper version of Sony's Vegas + DVD that's called Sony Movie Studio (Platinum) plus DVD Architect...To make a long story short, the program asks you what audio editor you want. So maybe it's not that far out of an idea.

On the other hand, Wavelab does do virtually everything MTU does right now....Is there really a point?.....That's really what the discussion should be about:QUOTE]

I also am using Sony Movie Studio (Platinum) and am planning to buy the FULL Vegas Video ASAP. I'm producing short video and DVD projects... and use it to produce DVD DEMOS of my sound effects design works for feature film. And you're right... it does allow you to SEND audio out to a preferred audio editor, and then automatically saves the processed file into VEGAS and even IN PLACE! It's amazing. But you know, I thought it only worked with SoundForge so I wasn't too amazed, but you're right, it lets you CHOOSE others if you want to!

SO... DAVE... maybe this is a BIG hint of some options!!??

Frankly, I don't have ANY BIG issues with MicroEditor, but the EXPORT/IMPORT format limitations, the lack of real time VST & Directx, the lack of multichannel I/O, and there's a handful of utilities for keeping organized. Too, I'd like to see a ONE EASY step to CLICK, and all the segments would automatically EXPORT to a .aif, .wav, .sf, OR other... and automatically RE-IMPORT into place, named and intact as they were as ME segments. THAT WOULD SAVE SO MUCH TROUBLE AND TIME DOING IT MANUALLY. <<< As I said in a previous post, I've adopted a daily protecol of saving/exporting to WAV and then IMPORTING and replacing default .sf files.

#1) Doing so protects against deleating permanantly, and allows me to process the files with SoundForge and Wavelab. Once they're WAV files, I can do what I will with them, and when I re-open the MicroEditor project, they automaticaly import PROCESSED!. It's admitedly a work around, but it's really not too much bother compared to the benefits.

#2) It also protects against hitting the BUFFERED .SF2 FILE SIZE LIMITATION OF 2GB!!!

Why raise MicroEditor from the dead? Because we want to.

[Rich LePage]

This all sounds very interesting to me - and I hope it might lead somewhere positive!! Looks like a def. maybe... but hoping so anyhow.

Did not know that about Vegas, many eons ago I beta'd an early Sound Forge version but have not kept up with it since Sony took over etc. I'll give it a demo too when I get a chance, along with Wavelab.

Demo schedule at the moment is kinda full but will get to it. Messing with a mastering EQ program called Har-Bal right now, but just started and there's a learning curve to it, so too early to tell much. After that there is a new Izotope demo I want to try for de-noising and restoration.

Def. one of the downsides of being a real small biz like most of us are!
(Endless Windows and Norton stuff etc being just a few of the others...)

Keep the dialog going in any case-- I think the input is great, and hearing about other programs and how they could potentially work with Medit is invaluable, I think really for all of us.

[Gary Boggess]

Vegas 6.0 seems to be a double bonus...

a) a great video editor, great for delivering audio & video... and more

b) a means to gives us 5.1 encoding

[Rich LePage]

Sounds cool.

If anyone's interested, Adobe Audition also has had a surround feature
for some time now, though we haven't messed much with it. It supports 5.1 work with a number of features.

It also allows video into Audition in a basic form to be able to do audio for video work. For more extensive video, Adobe has their suite. Audition used to be part of that - which may be why they bought Syntrillium/Cool Edit.

The downside was that with Ver 2, it installs a lot of suite related stuff whether you want it or not, which adds to its overhead. It also has an application called Bridge which allows you to move audio easily (it sez) between its other products. It's apparently a librarian and asset manager.

I can't say, we don't have the Creative Suite.
I just know that the stubs of some of the things it installs (with no option to not install them) took quite a bit of time to run down and were def. clogging the Pent4 2.5gig machine we often run it on. I used a program called Startup Commander to disable them one by one to see what really was/was not needed for running Audition for audio-only work.

With the coming version 3, they seem to have abandoned that approach and are developing Audition more as a non-suite thing. Their newer application, Sound Booth, seems to be more targeted towards the suite user. I think their logic is do basic audio work with Sound Booth integrated into their suite, and use Audition for its strengths in spectal processing, more intensive editing, and multi-track.

More info on their website.

[geezer]

....The insane thing about this low cost Movie Studio program is that it allows you to work in 5.1, too.....With all of the surround stuff I have done in the past outside the box, I don't really expect to be diving into this aspect of the cheap program, but I am just amazed at how much it does and how well it seems to do it. I have found a couple of little bugs (some VST plug-in preset saving weirdness), but found the workarounds pretty quickly.

I basically bought this thing to put together a DVD of a funeral service that I took on as a duplicating job that came through my new phone number at my new building.....small money, but LOCAL!....Anyway, one thing that really impressed me was this: The handycam video was recorded at slow speed MiniDV with 32k audio. I brought it into the computer digitally, then processed the audio using my Waves plug-ins and printed a new audio track in a single pass that came up with a 48k track in place in perfect sync!....When I dumped it out to my pro MiniDV deck to test it, it automatically came up with the bars and pre-roll, etc., and controlled the deck flawlessly.

The program seems to have most (probably all) of the functionality of Final Cut Pro of 4 or 5 years ago (with some definite additions), and maybe actually works better in a lot of ways. Truly mindblowing. Kind of hard to comprehend that the non-DVD version of this can be purchased for under $100.....And, even though the manual is printed in an unreadably small font, the online help and tutorials inside the program pop up all the time and lead you right through it pretty logically.

I have overseen all kinds of video projects over the last 10 years, and really understand most of the issues, but I had no intention of actually doing any real video editing on my own. I was sort of forced into it by the economy of running my little business, and the economy of the native software made it possible to get in pretty quickly without much of a learning curve.

Native, native, native. That is what is driving everything. Plus file interchange, file interchange, file interchange. This incredibly cheap program has a truly intelligible mechanism for bringing files of all types, both audio and video, right on top in the program all the time. It just makes sense, and really doesn't even require the amount of computer savvy needed to keep your files together for Medit (which, of course, is not all that much).

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This incredible economy of development has, of course, been accompanied by a real shake-out and consolidation of the software developers. Sonic Foundry was taken in by Sony, Syntrillium by Adobe, Steinberg by Yamaha, etc. Some of this, of course, means that big money has been thrown at software development. It also means that the "big boys" have forced some more standardization of file formats and interchange methodology and protocols, and that the I/O hardware has also become more standardized and higher quality.......Aside from all the Pro Tools stupidity, all these protocols and hardware improvements and standardization seem to be readily available and usable for any developers, even small ones. The clarity that has developed around all these issues in the last 3 or 4 years is pretty astounding.

So, I guess that's how I see the situation for MTU. Can MTU really rework its programming for the native world? Since the death of its hardware (Motorola) is often touted as the original event leading to the end of development for Medit, this has certainly had to be on everyone's mind there for quite a few years.

I am not a programmer in any way, shape or form. I do, however, have a pretty good handle on what has distinguished the "good" native programs from the others:

1)The paradigm. This should be easy for MTU to deal with, though will have to be examined thoroughly. Without going into the whole "studio in a box" thing, MTU should be able to translate its initial elegance into an updated form.....I have my doubts that MTU would or should ever try to capture the "all-in-one" program market (Nuendo, Cubase, Logic, etc.), but the business model clearly has all these other companies putting out "all-in-one" programs as part of their whole cash flow stream....(some of these "all-in-ones" don't have some things -CD burning, for instance- but, in my experience, people don't have a problem with buying a second program for this once they get hooked on the studio in a box of their other program).

The ONLY program I have seen that has anything like the original Medit paradigm going is Wavelab. In order to see this, I had to kill the MTU concept that "tracks" are a negative, and that see waveforms all the time is not necessary or helpful. It turns out that tracks, when not tied to some limitation or intended to ***** a multitrack machine, are a very useful organizational tool. It turns out that seeing accurate waveforms all the time increases your speed by a lot, as long as there is no big redraw issue (Wavelab, like most of the other programs, achieves this by creating a waveform file when you first bring the file into the program).

2)The "audio engine" quality. Around the time that I started buying native software, everyone started becoming aware that there was a difference in the sound of the various "audio engines" being used to calculate things in the different programs. Not being a programmer, I have no idea what ultimately makes this different thing happen in the different programs. I know that MTU was ahead of its time with accumulator depth and 32bitfp in the hardware days, and I'm not sure how that translates to software-only programs. It does matter, though. I think there is general consensus that the Magix folks (Samplitude, Sequoia) have always had a great sounding audio engine. Logic is supposed to be up there as well. SoundCube/Wavelab are definitely good sounding.....The 64bit environment of SoundCube might be a clue for a direction to follow. I don't know.

In this same arena, my brother informed me that a major software company told him that "we all lose at least one bit at the mixdown buss", meaning for the multitrack, "studio in a box" programs. This is why the people with better ears use outboard summing solutions when they use these programs.

I do feel that MTU would definitely need some serious consultation with audio pros with good ears if it were to go down the path of attempting to come up with a good sounding native audio engine. Achievement of quality in this realm actually involves the asking of some very complex questions, in my opinion, and requires a particular mindset and some particular experience.

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----------One other thing that I have been thinking about today: The failure of MTU to get the NPR contract a few years ago.....why, how, etc. There are, of course, many things about this interaction that I do not know, but there is a lot about it that I do know:

--Jan Andrews (main engineer in charge of new projects there) asked me about Medit's internal bit rate before they gave the contract to someone else. I did not know what it was, and had never thought about it. In hindsight, MTU was probably the only product on the market at the time with that high an internal bit rate. Why had Jan not been informed of this by MTU? What was wrong with that communication mechanism, and why wasn't MTU touting those specs back then?
--There was the perception that Medit would not network well, wheras Sonic Solutions would. I think that was probably a false perception. Again, a communication breakdown.
-- Sonic, when it got the contract, went into a long period of development and changes in their product for the NPR contract. It is my understanding that hey never achieved this, and simply cost NPR a whole lot of money before they backed out (I was told they received 1 million and never came up with a product....don't know if that is true). I ran into the main liasson from Sonic for that contract at NPR when they were way into that process. He described for me what they were trying to get Sonic to do (every part of which MTU already did), and said they had only been able to achieve 15% of it at that time.....Again, a clear case of miscommunication up front, for whatever reason.

There is the other part of the equation about giving the contract to a bigger company with deeper pockets, but something about the initial communication was clearly faulty. I always wondered why that was, and why neither Charles nor myself were asked to help out with that process.

.....The only point of this would be to aid self-examination for MTU if they were to embark on a new development and marketing program.

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Anyway, my 2cents to the 10th power for today....