Weekend Revelations

[blackfoot]

Hey Trockers, I ran across a couple of things I've never encountered before & thought I would share. Marty (Big Ears) Hailey was mixing an EP he'd recorded last week. He'd tracked & was mixing @ 88/24. The mix was summed via 28 stems through a Shadowhills Equinox. It was recorded back into Protools. I've done this heaps of times but mainly at 48k. This setup has the ability to A/B the pre & post summed mix. Upon A/B the mix at 88.2k we noticed a subtle but definate collapse of the stereo width. Even the drummer noticed it. I'm running Protools 8 HD with 2 cards on a Mac G5 'dual 1.8GHz with 4 gig of ram. After a bit of dicking around the solution was to reduce all the CPU overheads, buffers & latency compensation. I guess it's obvious in retrospect & the machine is showing it's limitations. Another revelation was that after much mucking around to run an active firewire extension the plug makes a noise like an angry mosquito. I'd never heard of firewire making a noise before. Why wasn't I told?

[Vic]

I recently had an active USB start giving me noise in a gallery sound installation set up. All was fine until we decided we needed to extend the USB run and add a 15m active cable. The hum was unbearable. We changed it for a 10 meter and made sure everything was plugged into the same circuit and it became bearable (still very faintly there).

Also, I would love, if you have the time, for you to send me your thoughts on the Equinox (even by PM). I have been tossing the idea of one around and it would be great to get your thoughts.

Vic

[wez]

Yeah i've noticed this before, when you have a really big in-the-box mix with a lot of plugs and you're really pushing the CPU on a slower machine - everything just starts to fall apart. you know that moment just before playback stops when your machine rums out of steam... everything goes out the window - timing, imaging, depth - then it crashes.

we get really good at finding that 'crash' point on our (older) machines and learning to live right on the edge! but in doing so we are compromising the result - but we are too busy worrying about other things to hear the changes, at least until we do an A/B like jim is talking about.

CPU 'headroom' might seem quite different to audio headroom... but it would seem a similarly good idea to know how much you have in reserve.

[Chinagraf]

A friend who is a high end audio system designer once said to me that at full tilt "those things are droppin bits like a trucker on ox blood just to keep up", which I took to mean something about data streams being compromised as you near the system limitations.

[jkhuri44]

last time i checked, professional audio applications should stick to PCI interfaces? not sure i'd want USB interfaces or firewire anywhere near a critical application?

[Drumstruck]

but PCI is dead in the water ... so where to turn? USB3 isn't happening fast enough yet, Firewire 1600/3200 is scarcely a blip.... Firewire over Thunderbolt or ethernet or single mode fibre perhaps more likely to succeed....

Short cables are the order - we do it as much as possible with the audio side and should follow suit on the computer side .

Or how about running a CICs on an AIX box to verify your packets and backout / resend dropped transactions

[Sammas]

but PCI is dead in the water ... so where to turn? USB3 isn't happening fast enough yet, Firewire 1600/3200 is scarcely a blip.... Firewire over Thunderbolt or ethernet or single mode fibre perhaps more likely to succeed....

Thunderbolt for all intents and purposes is PCIe. They share the same data protocol, it is just shared via a different connection.

[The Tasmanian]

Glad I kept my shitbox HD PCI rig!!
Never misses a beat - 48 in/out.
No struggling computer - even an old G5 dual 2.7 rocks!
Not dead in my water.

[The Tasmanian]

The technology may be going in leaps and bounds as far as software and plug-ins - but the hardware is not.
that's why I'm not being lured into the Pootools 11 world.
its for those addicted to "improvements" as opposed to making great music & mixes.
I'll stay on Pootools 8 and keep making a living from that format until the hardware catches up.
IMO - firewire and USB 3 hardware is for bedrooms.

[Drumstruck]

but PCI is dead in the water ... so where to turn? USB3 isn't happening fast enough yet, Firewire 1600/3200 is scarcely a blip.... Firewire over Thunderbolt or ethernet or single mode fibre perhaps more likely to succeed....

Thunderbolt for all intents and purposes is PCIe. They share the same data protocol, it is just shared via a different connection.

Excuse my less than precise statement - the PCI(n) slots on motherboards are fast disappearing and that impacts upgrades for those running slot dependent systems.

No aspersions were being cast on the PCI systems around - my profession requires h/w and s/w to be kept at no less than n-1 (where n=current release) and I tend to fall into the viscious circle of upgrades because of that.

I'm halted at PT9 for other reasons.........