Here are a couple of really cool user control devices. First the Optimus Maximus keyboard. Every key of the Optimus Maximus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing the function with which the key is associated. What does that mean? 113 individual OLED displays with a resolution of 48×48 pixels and 16 bit color. The pictures show a light on dark configuration, which is easy on the eyes and perfect for illuminating a keyboard in a dark theatre. With eack key being a display the options are limitless for creating custom key looks for triggering sound effects, showing short-cuts for your DAW or playback software. There are so many possibilities.

Then theres the Jazz Mutant Lemur interface:

The Lemur is a top of the range control surface for audio and media applications, that breaks from the prior art on several grounds. Its major innovation consists in its brilliant modular graphic interface concept and its exclusive multitouch sensor technology. The continiously growing palette of configurable graphic objects enables you to design made-to-measure interfaces by using the free available JazzEditor. This endows the Lemur with the unique and protocol independant capacity to adapt its behavior according to the application you are controlling: sequencers, modular synthesizers, virtual instruments, VJ software, 3D animation tools and light control.

It does a lot and has the capabilities to work with may well knows DAW and music creation programs such as Logic(tm), Protools(tm), Ableton Live(tm), Nuendo(tm), Cubase(tm), Sonar(tm) or Digital Performer(tm). It uses OSC (Open Sound Control) which is ‘a protocol for communication among computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices that is optimized for modern networking technology’ to interface with Reaktor, Max/MSP, Audiomulch, SuperCollider, Pure Data or Bidule and any other OSC compliant device including Meyer Sound’s LCS system.

Optimus Maximus Keyboard
Jazz Mutant Lemur Interface

So I went to NAB for a short while this year, and I thought I’d post a little gripe. If there are any manufacturers listening. DON’T SHOW GEAR YOU DON’T HAVE. I am sick to death of seeing “Empty Boxes” at trade shows. I realize this is a competitive business, and everyone wants to be the first on the block with the cool new stuff, but ‘fer cryin’ out loud.

A certain company (I have to work in this business too) was, yet again showing another empty box. The last “empty box” didn’t turn into a a “full box” for 2 years after it was first seen at a trade show. (And it still doesn’t work very well). I talked with many manufacturers, and many of them showed me cool stuff that was under development, but these devices weren’t on the floor, looking like real products. They were shown to a handful of people who were told, in no uncertain terms, that they were looking at a product that was under development, and made no promise of ship dates, or added functionality. One manufacturer didn’t show me the box at all, and was very honest about not being able to ship, and therefore not being able to show.

He deserves an award.

Maybe next year I’ll bring my own empty box. It’ll do everything I can think of, cost next to nothing, and have it’s own sliding ship date. I wonder who can build that for me.

If you can’t ship it, don’t show it.

We tried something a little different this past year with the batteries we have been using in the wireless mics. It has always been the case that rechargeable batteries were too flakey to use in a show. I never trusted them. However, I had the opportunity to try some rechargeable AA batteries, and was actually impressed. Energizer’s line of NiMH rechargeable batteries are quite impressive. In a Sennheiser 5212 transmitter we were able to get 7 to 8 hours of operating time using the 2500mAh model. We have been using them in shows for 6 months without incident. 4 batteries can be purchased for between $10 and $15, making them very cost effective. We have gone the route of replacing them every 3 to 4 months, as they do start to loose some of their performance. NiMH batteries are also easier to recycle than standard alkaline and don’t contain the highly toxic cadmium like NiCad rechargeable.

Regardless of weather you use rechargeable or disposable batteries, please recycle. There is a company called Toxco that handles a lot of Federal, State and HazMat recycling contracts. Toxco has a program called The Big Green Box For a purchase price of $58 you get a UN rated corrugated container that is 13″L X 13″W X 8.5″H that has a 43-pound weight capacity. Once The Big Green Box™ is purchased, all shipping, handling, and recycling fees are included. The Big Green Box™ includes a UN approved, pre-labeled container, pre-paid shipping to and from the recycling facility, and of course, all recycling fees. You simply buy it, fill it, seal it, and call UPS. The Big Green Box can be used to recycle batteries, such as alkaline, lithium, nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, lithium ion, and other household batteries as well as cellular telephones, pagers, wireless communication devices such as PDA’s, MP3 players, chargers, portable tools, laptops, and any other devices that are designed to operate on battery power.

The Beatles are releasing the LOVE album both as a stereo CD and a 5.1 mix on Audio DVD. These mixes are amazing… You can see the press release on The Beatles web site. The album will be sold as a CD or a special edition containing the CD and DVD versions of the music. The track list contains nearly all the pieces created for the Cirque du Soliel show at the Mirage in Las Vegas. It even includes the music from the transition moments in the show, and the oft mentioned mash-up of Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows.

While the album is set to be released on November 20th in the states, the Telegraph has a comprehensive review of the album on their site.

“The music is stunning. I think the most amazing thing about it is that you can pull it apart and all the elements carry with it the essence of the entire song,” said Olivia Harrison.

The track list is as follows: (from The Beatles News Letter)

1. Because
2. Get Back
3. Glass Onion
4. Eleanor Rigby
Julia (Transition)
5. I Am The Walrus
6. I Want To Hold Your Hand
7. Drive My Car/The Word/What You’re Doing
8. Gnik Nus
9. Something
Blue Jay Way (Transition)
10. Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You (She’s So Heavy)/Helter Skelter
11. Help!
12. Blackbird/Yesterday
13. Strawberry Fields Forever
14. Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows
15. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
16. Octopus’s Garden
17. Lady Madonna
18. Here Comes The Sun
The Inner Light (Transition)
19. Come Together/Dear Prudence
Cry Baby Cry (Transition)
20. Revolution
21. Back In The U.S.S.R.
22. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
23. A Day In The Life
24. Hey Jude
25. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
26. All You Need Is Love

Amazon is taking pre-orders for this historic album:
Love (Special Edition CD + Audio DVD)

Cadac recently issued a press release about the announcement of the S-Digital console. If anyone got the sound and automation for theatre right it will be Cadac. I can’t wait to see and hear this one. Brian found pictures on Flickr!!

Entertainment technology has been steadily moving the way of switched networked systems, and more specifically, wireless networks. Entertainment technicians are generally very good at troubleshooting. Due to the nature of live entertainment, we have become very good at quickly and efficiently finding and fixing problems. After all the show must go on. Wireless networks pose an interesting problem. While dealing with a wired network, the methods of finding and fixing, are tried and true, when the wires are absent and the network part of the network seems fine, serious tools are needed to diagnose and fix problems. Wildpackets makes software and hardware to analyze several layers of the OSI model. The most difficult of which to troubleshoot is the physical layer, when it is wireless.

OnmiSpectrum is a suite of analysis tools to visualize and identify signals, interference, channel utilization in the 802.11x bands. The hardware/software package is very affordable, especially when compared to other spectrum analysis tools. OnmiSpectrum also offers the user a great deal more information about the nature of the signals than a standard spectrum analyzer.

It is able to help answer the question, “Is it my equipment, or my environment?”

LAS VEGAS, July 3 PRNewswire — Cirque du Soleil, Apple Corps Ltd. and The Mirage hosted a gala premiere for LOVE with more than 4000 guests invited to an exclusive party after the performance to celebrate LOVE at The Mirage.
The reviews have been good so far. Take at look at these:

Some Multimedia content, including Red Carpet footage and B-Roll can be found at PR News Wire.

I have been doing a lot of researching and reading as of late. One of the items that has become of great importance to me is a good Serial to TCP/IP converter, or server. A good number of audio companies are still using RS-232, 422 or 485 for various forms of communication, configuration and monitoring.

It’s not a real big deal to plug it in to a computer and get things talking, however if your rig is portable, finding a laptop with a COM port is becoming increasingly difficult. If you have multiple, remotely located serial devices, getting the system talking can become more complicated. One method is to convert 232 to 485 and run the balanced serial signal to a remotely located computer. Then there’s the discussion about using a 485 interface in the computer, or adapting the signal back to 232. Multiple COM ports can be a pain, even for experienced serial gurus. Enter the serial to TCP/IP converter.
We are running more and more CAT5 and fiber with our systems. Essentially the infrastructure to support packetizing serial already exists, all that is needed is a converter. I found some good options on SerialGear.com 1,2,4 and 8 port Serial to TCP/IP servers.

VS-NetCom 111 is an industrial-strength network-based serial device server for connecting ONE RS232 device directly to the 10/100Mbps Ethernet network running TCP/IP. In addition to allowing serial devices to get networked, any host (PC Server or Workstation) without network access can also access remote serial device via adding NetCom devices to the existing serial port.

SerialGear is part of a larger company called CoolGear.com , which has sister sites, CableGear, IRGear,AdapterGear, USBGear and many others.

Coolgear Enclosures SATA Drives Infrared Serial Hardware and More!

The Daytime Emmys will announce a new award for video aired on computers, cellphones and video iPods. The New York Times reports:

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, best known for handing out the Daytime Emmy Awards, is expected to announce on Tuesday that it has created an award category to recognize original video content for computers, cellphones and other hand-held devices, like the video iPod and PlayStation Portable.

The new award will first be presented during the academy’s Sports Emmys presentation, and ultimately be added as a category for other Emmy presentations as well. The category will not be included in the prime-time Emmy Awards.

Why might I find this interesting? It’s great to see a professional orginazation keeping up with technology, and realizing that new technology leads to new art forms that are equally worthy of award. The Broadway Theatre League still doesn’t recognize sound design as a design element, and thereby sound is not worthy of award. That would be to progressive….

Today Meyer Sound announced the acquisition of LCS (Level Control Systems).

Although the screen shots of the yet to be released, Galileo 616 loudspeaker processor on the Meyer web site do look like the CueStation interface, it was little known that LCS was collaborating with Meyer on this project. It will be interesting to see how Meyer leverages LCS’s technology in the future. I think LCS does have a leg up on some of the competition, with it’s cross platform, client-server topology. If Meyer can use it’s marketing power to promote and educate people about LCS, they could make quite a wave in the industry. Alternatively, perhaps Meyer plans on using the software and hardware LCS has developed to take their speaker lines in a new direction.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see….

Meyer Press Release - Meyer Acquires LCS