the watmm GAS thread

[thawkins]

1 hour ago, rhmilo said:

See, but a concert hall would need robust and doesn’t care about all the crazy routing and a small studio already has a computer.

puzzling.

Maybe if you think it's only professional classical music places that call themselves "concert hall", but I think a lot of times it is "big room someone wants to use for audio". This includes nice places, but also some regular beer hall tent somewhere or just a bar where the owner knows nothing about audio so it's safe to just blow some more cash because then the box they will get is probably Good Enough.

For example, all the corporate meeting rooms also need mixers and mikes and all that crap because of recording, sending audio-video feed overseas, etc. It's way more easier for corporate accounting to just buy a machine that does everything instead of spending time and putting thought in it and setting up a custom good studio quality audio set up.

[chim]

I'm getting a corporate vibe as well. Maybe it's a great market?

[Limo]

@thawkins : point taken about the level of professionalism for a "concert hall". But then: if it's *not* professional, wouldn't € 3500 be a bit steep?

Where I work we have a Behringer mixer that's insanely overspecced. It has 12 channels and all sorts of effects and all we use it for is to amplify people who are speaking to large groups of students.

That is what I think of when I hear the word corporate.

And I'm pretty sure it cost no more than a couple of hundred or so.

Anyway, wrrd.

[thawkins]

@rhmilo yup 3500 is kind of steep, but - after finally watching the video - it makes sense. It's got all the whizbang DAW features (compare to $600 protools perpetual license) and it's pretty much a computer that is very closely integrated with a physical audio workstation (easy $1000-1500 for parts). It's also gloating a lot of quality ADC-DAC hardware and motorized faders so manufacturing can't be really cheap either.

It's a perfect thing to sell to old school audio engineers who "never got into computers" (I know some of those) so there seems to be a huge market in making the "computer" into something the old school engineer is used to.

And corporate spends a lot of money on stupid overpriced shit - you can have a regular conference room with a $25 usb mic and some cheapo tablet running the software, but all this is marked up to €10k because of support contracts (someone who comes to install and fix when it breaks) and ease of use (because regular people aren't audio experts and it's literally cheaper to spend €2k on some bells and whistles shit than to spend the time on researching the best solution).

[Braintree]

It's not steep at all. It's pretty cheap as far as concert halls go. A brand new professional board will cost you somewhere between $10-50k if you're serious about it. This looks like it does all of the basic shit you need for a decent setup at half the cost. Would be a good buy for mid-tier venues that are still using old ass Midas analog boards and looking to upgrade.

[chim]

WATMM can always be trusted to collectively decide what these things are for...

[TubularCorporation]

Just scored a Vidionix MXPro MX-3000 four channel video switcher for $33 plus shipping.  If it works (and they accept returns for a month so I'm not too worried - but most people are asking $300-$500 buy-it-now for this model lately so if it's a dud then I'm not getting another any time soon) I'm finally going to be able to get into the world of dual-mixer crossfeedback.

 

Not as stylish, knobby or well built as the Sony switcher/editor I've got, but a lot smaller, more inputs and claims to have around "400" effects (actually more like 10 plus a few dozen transitions, they're just counting every different setting as a unique effect) and transitions compared to the Sony's 16. Plus it has "learned environments" that are user-defineable preset templates kind of like parts in an Octatrack, and apparently you can record custom "scripts" that seem to be more or less the same as Photoshop actions - a batch list of up to 250 different commands that you can execute with a single button press, which seems like it's going to be pretty crazy.

 

EDIT: it can flip video horizontally or vertically, so some rorsach style effects should be easy enough when I've got it patched up with the second switcher.

Edited November 21, 2019 by TubularCorporation

[Limo]

8 hours ago, chim said:

WATMM can always be trusted to collectively decide what these things are for...

Beats Gearslutz, that always collectively decides something sucks. 

[chim]

7 hours ago, rhmilo said:

Beats Gearslutz, that always collectively decides something sucks. 

Yeah, another good example is Super Best Audio Friends... For people tired of 4+ star ratings.

[YEK]

Ack! Too many synths! I can't decide which to get

[kakapo]

I've put down a payment on the Expressive E Osmose which was just announced.  I was considering the ASM Hydrasynth largely for the polyphonic aftertouch, the interface looks great also, but couldn't shake the fact that I'm not overly keen on the sound engine.  I think this will suit me better.  I may pair it with  one of the Black Corporation synths if I decide that's my big synth diy project next year.  I was dead set on the Kijimi but it looks like they have messed up the diy version, so probably either the DD or Xerxes.

 

  

[TubularCorporation]

What's wrong with the DIY version of the Kijimi?  I'm about 2/3 of the way through getting the parts together and was planning to start building in January if all goes well.

The only things I've heard of are the ones listed in the unofficial build guide, and the only serious  was the capacitor that was silkscreened wrong on the PSU board so people were installing it with the polarity reversed.  Everything else is pretty minor, and the capacitor is no problem now that it has been identified.  Has something new come up since August that isn't on there yet?

[kakapo]

6 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

What's wrong with the DIY version of the Kijimi?  

 

There always seems to be a lot of chatter on the fb build group about problems, particularly over the last weekend.

[acid1]

I been GAS'ing pretty hard for a Nerdseq eurorack tracker. Anyone rocking one of these?

[thawkins]

Anyone know where to get this sample pack? 

[TubularCorporation]

4 hours ago, kakapo said:

There always seems to be a lot of chatter on the fb build group about problems, particularly over the last weekend.

Uh oh.  I haven't logged in to Facebook in a few years, but I guess I need to go check that out. At least I haven't touched the actual boards yet, hopefully it's all stuff that can be worked around or if it's completely breaking maybe they'll offer replacement boards or something.

Edited November 22, 2019 by TubularCorporation

[kakapo]

29 minutes ago, TubularCorporation said:

Uh oh.  I haven't logged in to Facebook in a few years, but I guess I need to go check that out. At least I haven't touched the actual boards yet, hopefully it's all stuff that can be worked around or if it's completely breaking maybe they'll offer replacement boards or something.

It looks like people are trouble shooting and working through it, so I don't think it's a write off, but I'm holding off any decision until there are more working diy builds in non expert hands.

[TubularCorporation]

Yeah, it's a pretty big build, although the PCBs themselves, which I've had since April, are actually pretty uncluttered and look like even the SMD parts will be fairly easy to work on in terms of the actual physical assembly (although I did get a set of SSI2144 to SSM2044 adapters so I should be able to install the SMD filter chips on those and then use the SSM2044 option on the Kijimi PCBs with sockets, rather than risking the actual Kijimi boards to my not so amazing SMD skills).  Hopefully the problems are more about the documentation being kind of sparse considering how big the actual project is, rather than major, deal breaking problems.  The fact that there ARE working builds makes me optimistic. Thanks for the heads up, though, got pending requests to join the Facebook groups so I can follow things more closely. This is going to cost me just about all of my disposable income from the past year when it's all said and done, so I don't want to dive in to the build until I'm as sure as I can be that it's going to go well.

[TubularCorporation]

1 hour ago, acid1 said:

I been GAS'ing pretty hard for a Nerdseq eurorack tracker. Anyone rocking one of these?

If I had a Eurorack setup I'd be looking at it since I love trackers.  I do kind of feel like they should have included a USB port for connecting a computer keyboard, though, since being able to work really quickly and precisely from nothing but a standard keyboard is kind of the main reason trackers are still so useful, compared to things like LSDJ where the tracker interface seems like a good compromise to pack as much as possible into a small screen but actual data entry is a bit cumbersome since you're entering hex values from a d-pad and a couple of buttons.  I don't know, to me trackers always seem like such an inherently typing-based paradigm.  This still seems like it could be cool though.

[acid1]

2 minutes ago, TubularCorporation said:

I do kind of feel like they should have included a USB port for connecting a computer keyboard

Interestingly, they got an expander to allow you to connect a Genesis gamepad to it.

https://xor-electronics.com/product/nerdseq-io-expander-black/

[kakapo]

2 hours ago, acid1 said:

I been GAS'ing pretty hard for a Nerdseq eurorack tracker. Anyone rocking one of these?

I've considered it in the past, but was concerned about the ergonomics of something like this sitting in the rack.  Having said that I have an er101/102 and metropolis/planar combos sitting in 2 separate 4ms pods, so I can move them about, which would probably work quite well for this.

[TubularCorporation]

24 minutes ago, acid1 said:

Interestingly, they got an expander to allow you to connect a Genesis gamepad to it.

https://xor-electronics.com/product/nerdseq-io-expander-black/

Huh.  I mean I get that because it's electronically really simple to implement but I don't know, I still can't quite relate to a tracker if I can't type everything in. Probably a lot of people out there whose first tracker was LSDJ though, at this point, so it makes some sense.

[acid1]

1 hour ago, TubularCorporation said:

I still can't quite relate to a tracker if I can't type everything in

I am in the same camp as you. I spent years in Renoise (and Buzz -  I've seared typing "09 FF E8 01" into my brain ). This is why I am curious how other people feel about the workflow.

That funny bloke Look Mum No Computer cooked a relatively banging jam pretty fast (10 minutes) on one of these things.  

 

[modey]

On 11/22/2019 at 9:35 AM, kakapo said:

I've put down a payment on the Expressive E Osmose which was just announced. 

I'm very surprised by the price, it actually seems pretty cheap for what it's capable of.

 

8 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

to me trackers always seem like such an inherently typing-based paradigm

Yeah, same. The NerdSeq looks cool, but as well as the lack of keyboard control, for me modular has been about getting away from super detailed sequencing and just controlling things by chance etc. That said, I am about to build a MIDI to CV interface so I can use my OT to sequence my tiny setup.

[TubularCorporation]

30 minutes ago, modey said:

I'm very surprised by the price, it actually seems pretty cheap for what it's capable of.

 

Yeah, same. The NerdSeq looks cool, but as well as the lack of keyboard control, for me modular has been about getting away from super detailed sequencing and just controlling things by chance etc. That said, I am about to build a MIDI to CV interface so I can use my OT to sequence my tiny setup.

Are you building a Dubldeca?  I've had a board set and panel sitting in a box almost as long as I've had an Octatrack, in case I some day actually build a modular system. I figured $30 or whatever it cost with shipping back then was worth it just so I'd be ready.  Some day.

Edited November 23, 2019 by TubularCorporation