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

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?”

So I’m looking for a portable RAID array… After a little searching it seems that there are a lot of choices, but, as usual, my requirements severely limit the playing field.

Here’s what I want:

• 1. Portable, or somewhat portable.
• 2. 4 drives - would like 5
• 3. SATA interface for the drives.
• 4. Firewire interface for the device to the computer
• 5. Able to do Hardware RAID level 5.
• 6. Hot swappable drives.

It’s a tall order. Here’s what I found.

First, it seems that finding a unit with SATA drive interfaces and hardware RAID just doesn’t exist, which is unfortunate. So, IDE interfaces all around.

Micronet Platinum RAID: FireWire800 + USB 2.0 - Looks to be a solid unit. Built on the ARC-5010 (IDE-to-IDE Subsystem) by Areca, then packaged nicely in a chassis that looks to be a Shuttle XPC from a couple of years ago. This unit has all of the above listed items. There is also the NitroAV VANGUARD V from Firewire Direct. The specs look remarkably close to the Micronet unit. This one comes packaged in a brushed aluminum chassis and has the drives mounted horizontally as opposed to the Micronet which mounts them vertically.

LAcie has the “Biggest” series of RAID enclosures. Their wares sport 4-bay arrangements ranging from RAID 1 to 5. Perhaps the most recognized name on the list, these devices look solid as well, and carry a 2 year warranty in the US.

You may be able to find the Micronet on Amazon… it seems to come and go.
MicroNet PR1000U2F 1.0 TB Platinum RAID USB 2.0, FireWire 800
LaCie 1TB Biggest F800 with FW800 and USB2.0

I’m Posting this one again, because I think everyone needs one of these. I got one for Christmas and I love it. Here’s a neat gadget. I am always looking for new toys. I can use to play my music library. I have a Turtle Beach Audiotron in the family room hooked up to the stereo, and I love it. It’s great to have my whole library available to me at the touch of a button. This Christmas I’m looking to put some kind of digital music receiver in the bedroom. For the longest time I was sure it would be another Audiotron, but the Roku Soundbridge looks very promising. Like the Audiotron, it plays all the standard audio files (mp3, wmv, aac) as well as wave files, which is very important to me, as I have ripped many of my CD’s as wave files. I also wanted a unit that would be able to retrieve the music files from my computer with out the need to be logged on and/or running a particular piece of software. The Audiotron does this.

The Soundbridge uses a new(ish) collection of technologies to provide seamless serving of music files form the host computer. On a PC it uses Microsoft’s Media Connect which runs in the background as a service. It’s reasonably transparent, although I found out later it doesn’t run on Windows Server 2003, or support serving files on file shares. Alternatively one can choose to run Musicmatch and use their UPnP server, which works, but has a limited feature set as compared to the MS products. For the Macintosh audience, the Soundbridge integrates with Apples iTunes, and uses the Rendevous and other proprietary technologies. There is also an option to use Twonkyvision . Soundbridge can also use the Open Source SlimServer, which gives you access to playing ogg files as well, but is not supported by Roku. (but it works just fine) For more info the server stuff see this link.

As far as DRM (yuck) goes it depends on which server you choose to use, however it seems that it won’t play DRM protected AAC files purchased on iTunes music store. It seems this is Apples doing as they won’t allow protected music to be streamed to third-party devices. The Soundbridge comes in three models, the M500 ($179), M1000 ($249) and the M2000 ($499). There is essentially no difference in the operation or features, but the M2000 has a 12″ 512×32 vacuum-fluorescent screen that displays 4 lines of text. The M1000 has a smaller 280×16 2-line vacuum-fluorescent screen. Both units offer IR remote control, wired and WiFi (via compact flash card) connectivity.

Other Music Machines:

There is a cool new class of digital media players out there that really appeals to me. I have 2 ReplayTV’s and I love them. They are networked with each other and I love the freedom of having my TV in a flexible digital format. I have always wanted to take it with me without the hassle of carrying a laptop, and all the accoutrement that goes with getting picture on a TV screen. Several companies now have digital media players that function like portable (playback only) Tivos, and look a lot like an external USB hard drive.

There is the Mediagate MG-25 Multimedia Jukebox, a portable MPEG-4 player, complete with IR remote control. There is a nice review and lots of pictures on Akihabara. This device supports a multitude of video and audio formats, including MPEG 1,2 and 4, Divx, MP3, Ogg, WMA, jpeg. It also has the ability to play back video in VOB containers, the format of choice for DVD’s. This unit comes without a hard drive installed.

Iomega has a device called the Screenplay Multimedia Drive. Just like the Mediagate, it is also capable of playing many popular formats. While I found one review of the ScreenPlay that states that it can read VOB containers, the information on the Iomega site doesn’t mention it. The ScreenPlay comes with a 60Gb hard drive.

UniBrain has the iZak Portable Mediacenter. Mostly the same feature set as the others, but also has the ability to play DVD’s in ISO format, and WAV files. It comes in 40, 80 and 100Gb versions. As the CNet review says, this one is more expensive, and has that annoying “i” in the name, but still a good performer.

Here’s a neat gadget for those of you looking for an easy way to transfer your vinyl to a digital format. Ion now has a turntable with a USB interface called the iTTUSB. (It’s cooler if it starts with a lower case “i”) There are a multitude of titles available on vinyl. Some DJ’s swear by it, and often many of the best tracks are instant sellouts. Here in Vegas, I have had the pleasure of meeting several very good DJ’s, and they typically carry a wide range of media. From milk crates full of vinyl to cd’s and computers to playback, mix, and organize their media.

I’m not really into the club scene, but there have been some really cool products for this market segment in the past couple of years. Many still border on pro-sumer and offer are not a robust as pro gear, but the innovation of the product evolution for a market that is changing very rapidly is impressive.

Take the Scratch Box by Serato (and distributed by Rane) I saw this a couple of years ago at LDI. I don’t personally have any need for it, but I gotta say it it’s a great deal of fun, and in the hands of the right DJ presents a host of possibilities. Scratch Live lets one use turntables (or CD turntables) to control music playback from a PC.

The Scratch LIVE interface connects almost any computer to an ordinary pair of turntables or CD players, and the software faithfully tracks every subtle movement of the stylus on the included control records. The same movement is then instantly applied to any digital audio file in the user’s collection producing a sound and feel that is indistinguishable from vinyl.

If you pick up the needle and drop it the digital file follows. Grabbing the platter and stopping it applies the physics of the motion to the digital file. Moving the needle on the control records produces the same function through the digital file. It’s fun, and allows vinyl like control over digital files.

How about the Pioneer DVJ-X1. Allows control of DVD video in the same manner as a CD turntable. Scratch, rewind, fast-forward, sample, loop, mix digital video and audio. Yet another product that held my attention for longer than it should have.

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!

It has finally been discovered ;o) that it takes a little work to rip CD’s to MP3’s that sound ok. Back in the hey-day of Napster there were many files to be had, but most of them didn’t sound very good. I guess that the general public is beginning to realize that size isn’t everything…:O|

Wired News: Old Rips: May They Rest in Peace

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