The Future of Microsound?

[geggyboy]

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]

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]

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...s/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]

....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]

Lucid GENx 192

[geggyboy]

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]

Originally Posted by geezer

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]

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]

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

[Roy Dennis]

To anyone on this Microsound thread who received notiifications recently. Yesterday the forum had a cyber attack from a porn site it was posting messages in all threads which automatically sends notifications to people who subscribed to threads in the past. The problem was resolved last night.
So now you know the reason for your notifications.

[geggyboy]

Ha ha funny, but not logistically funny.. But hey.. So it took a bit of porn to raise this old boy. Glad you are on the ball so to speak.

[Roy Dennis]

Mmm, very witty

[geezer]

Happy to see you are still doing well out there, Geg.

Although my MTU systems sit unused on the shelf, my initial experience was much the same as yours, though about 6 years later:

I had just completed the SFX track for the 1994 Discovery Channel DDay special, "Normandy: The Great Crusade" using a Turtle Beach (!) "56k" DAW. It worked, but I knew I needed something much better if I was going to be doing any more TV work......and, as with you, Dave called me back and talked for a long time on his dime! I arranged in in-person demo at his office shortly thereafter, was duly impressed, then borrowed the $12,500 I needed to buy that first system.

I did spend more over the ensuing years, but it is interesting that the system price had dropped as much over those first 6 years (after your purchase) as it did over the following years.

Drop me a line whenever you want, Geg. Good to "hear" your voice.

Jim