The Future of Microsound?

[Rich LePage]

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