the watmm GAS thread

[TubularCorporation]

17 hours ago, dcom said:

Do you have power conditioners, filters, surge protectors between your gear and wall outlet(s)? If so, what? I'm thinking of getting this.

I did a bunch of research last winter and ended up going with an Ametek Powervar (mine's the ABC830-11 because it was a good balance between price and load capacity, but any model that has the specs you need should be good).  They're aimed mostly at commercial and medical markets, so there are a lot of them floating aroun second hand - mine was open-box NOS for $80, but it was realyl easy to find a completely sealed one for a little more (the seller I got mine from had something like half a pallet of them new in box for $100 each, mine was  abit less because it was the one he opened to get the photos for ebay) and closer to $50 if they're used. When I was choosing what to buy I even checked the opinions on some of the audiophile message boards. Even they tend to swear by Amatek and one othe major brand of similar commercial/industrial conditioners over the much more expensive stuff marketed for audio.

Very happy with it, it's WAY cheaper than anything of comparable quality that's aimed at the audio and video markets.  At some point I'll probably pick up a lower power one from their medical line for the two reel to reels I have, but I need to do some more reading and figure out if the actual regulation and suppression is better in the medical versions or if the differences have more to do with safety and reliability.  I think it's both but it's been a bit since I read about them.

 

Anyway, I'm really happy with it.  The power at the new place was already better than anywhere I've lived since I moved into a city in 2001.  Everywhere I lived between then and this place dropped at least 5v when everyone on our part of the grid got home from work, and my last place the unregulated mains sat around 127v during the day but would drop all the way down to 105v in the evening during AC season, and about 110v the rest of the year.  But even with a pretty stable 120v out of the wall now, I've actually noticed the Space Echo runs a bit more reliably with the Ametek.  I'm pretty surprised by that, I mainly got it to take some stress off of the two Rolands and a couple other things from the 80s, but I didn't expect to actually notice any change in use.

 

You might try contacting this ebay seller if you're interested.  He's the one I bought from and he doesn't have any listed now, but he told me he had a ton of them new-in-box if I ever needed any more.  

[Taupe Beats]

17 hours ago, thawkins said:

If the main blocker is harmonizing MIDI implementations between different types of gear, I think this is easily technically solvable by having some interpreter layer(s) where you say "OK this MIDI file that I am about to load is meant for a Korg MS2000, but what I have is a Roland JV1080" and then it'll translate the CCs to rough equivalents. This won't ever 100% work for stuff like SysEx, but it will definitely get to the same ballpark.

It will get murky anyway at the point where one synth may have 2 filters-oscillators and another has 3, but messing around with my gear I have the impression that basic CCs like volume, pan, attack, release, cutoff, resonance are quite standard.

This all sounds nice but I'd definitely not call it "easy" in any sense. This is all a ton of manual back work to code all that transposition that would end up being timely and/or expensive (or someone would be a saint and share their own work). 

And to the 2nd paragraph, I promise that's not true. There may not be a ton of outliers but I promise there are plenty of synths who use all the "standard" cc's for stuff that has nothing to do with the intended use. 

It needs to be a foundational change for future implementation first. Then the idea of retrofitting is more realistic. We have learned to be patient for MIDI 2.0 so I'm more than happy to wait and keep my fingers crossed that the new spec is greatness.

[TubularCorporation]

18 hours ago, Taupe Beats said:

The Furman's are designed to fall on the sword if there's a power surge.

Just FYI, surge protection and "suicide circuits" have a limited use life.  Anything decent quality like the Furman should give you at least a decade but I feel like it's safer to just operate under the assumption that there isn't any protection from a consumer surge protector when it comes to anything I really don't want to lose.  This is a pretty good summary:

https://blog.se.com/electrical-safety/2021/12/20/how-long-should-a-surge-protector-last/

 

I go mains -> commercial power condtioner or UPS -> consumer protected power strips for gear, and then switch the conditioner/UPS and the power strips off when I'm not using it (plus the switches on all the gear that's easy to reach without having to poke around in the back of the rack).  If a spike can make it past my main breaker box, a protccted power conditioner, a surge protector, three open switches AND whatever fuse or protection might be in the gear itself, then I did what I could but the electricity won.

[Taupe Beats]

1 hour ago, TubularCorporation said:

Just FYI, surge protection and "suicide circuits" have a limited use life.  Anything decent quality like the Furman should give you at least a decade but I feel like it's safer to just operate under the assumption that there isn't any protection from a consumer surge protector when it comes to anything I really don't want to lose.  This is a pretty good summary:

https://blog.se.com/electrical-safety/2021/12/20/how-long-should-a-surge-protector-last/

 

I go mains -> commercial power condtioner or UPS -> consumer protected power strips for gear, and then switch the conditioner/UPS and the power strips off when I'm not using it (plus the switches on all the gear that's easy to reach without having to poke around in the back of the rack).  If a spike can make it past my main breaker box, a protccted power conditioner, a surge protector, three open switches AND whatever fuse or protection might be in the gear itself, then I did what I could but the electricity won.

Yes this is all true. The analogy is to consider them like bike helmets. You're gonna need it when it counts.

[TubularCorporation]

The bike helmet analogy is closer if you imagine it's a bike helmet that you hit hard with a hammer a couple times every day so you never really know if it's still going to work when you need it or if hitting it with that hammer stresset it too much, and because you do it every day the longer you use it the less likely it is to work.

 

It's more like getting an emergency backup battery for your car, charging it the day you buy it, and then keeping it in the trunk and never checking the charge again. 

[Taupe Beats]

I'd personally say it's not quite "hitting with a hammer twice a day". I guess the point I'm making is that while I agree that there is stress run on it with each use, it's nowhere near the level of stress you're implying and that the devices are overall going to be a good piece of security in a rig. With the awareness of how long the item's been in use as they have a lifetime of ~10 years. I'm not saying it's the only piece of security you need. I could always run my own rig safer, no doubt, guessing this is the same for most. Where I think we disagree is that I would consider it a somewhat important piece for 99% of rigs (the 1% being professional studios with a more heavy-duty solution).

In another subject, the Bastl Microgranny is a sneak wonderful sounding D/A. I really like the way it makes drum samples sound before you even start messing with parameters. Have a feeling it will get more of a reputation for this over time.

[dcom]

14 minutes ago, Taupe Beats said:

In another subject, the Bastl Microgranny is a sneak wonderful sounding D/A. I really like the way it makes drum samples sound before you even start messing with parameters. Have a feeling it will get more of a reputation for this over time.

I've been looking at Kastle and Kastle Drum, they would probably be fun with Volca Modular.

Edited June 18, 2022 by dcom

[TubularCorporation]

3 hours ago, Taupe Beats said:

And to the 2nd paragraph, I promise that's not true. There may not be a ton of outliers but I promise there are plenty of synths who use all the "standard" cc's for stuff that has nothing to do with the intended use. 

This was a lot less of an issue in the 90s and 2000s, it's 80s and 2010s (especially early 2010s) gear that tends to ignore (or predate) a lot of the attempts to standardize that kind of stuff IME.  

 

There are quite a few early 90s synths that were actually made worse in later versions to conform to the GM guidelines after they came out.  Like the Alesis Quadrasynth having an 8mb piano sample set that was one of the best realistic pianos of its era, and then taking it out of the "plus" version to make room for a really mediocre 4mb general MIDI bank. 

 

The whole balancing act between being able to work easily with other gear and perform to standards is pretty interesting, I've definitely noticed a long pattern of MIDI implementation/synth implementation tension in a LOT of gear of the years, the most interesting MIDI synths I've used tend to have nonstandard/werid/incomplete MIDI implementation, and almost all of the synths that I've used that actually have good MIDI implementation are 90s ROMplers and expander-style prosumer sound modules like  .  Hopefully MIDI 2.0 will actually take off and the whole "profile" thing will help.

[thawkins]

18 hours ago, Taupe Beats said:

This all sounds nice but I'd definitely not call it "easy" in any sense. This is all a ton of manual back work to code all that transposition that would end up being timely and/or expensive (or someone would be a saint and share their own work). 

And to the 2nd paragraph, I promise that's not true. There may not be a ton of outliers but I promise there are plenty of synths who use all the "standard" cc's for stuff that has nothing to do with the intended use. 

It needs to be a foundational change for future implementation first. Then the idea of retrofitting is more realistic. We have learned to be patient for MIDI 2.0 so I'm more than happy to wait and keep my fingers crossed that the new spec is greatness.

I don't doubt that it will be a lot of manual work, but I feel like it is a more realistic scenario to expect volunteers over the world share mappings to their gear (just look at the public Max 4 Live patches library for an example) compared to expecting manufacturers correctly implementing a complicated specification (just look at Bluetooth audio for example).

Having said that, my knowledge of MIDI 2.0 is 2 minutes of googling and seeing that the official spec mentions protocol handshakes, which to me means it would be a nonserial protocol and that's already way more complicated than existing MIDI. Ditto for the other advanced functions.

The main issue is probably that there's not a lot of MIDI enthusiasts who care about this AND don't already have their gear sorted out in a way that works for them. So why should manufacturers care about implementing this new standard in a compatible way?

I feel like big synth makers today are more likely to adopt deliberately incompatible standards so that KORG has some fancy thing on all their gear that Roland does not and vice versa.

Happy to be proven wrong though.

Edited June 19, 2022 by thawkins

[Taupe Beats]

5 hours ago, thawkins said:

The main issue is probably that there's not a lot of MIDI enthusiasts who care about this AND don't already have their gear sorted out in a way that works for them. So why should manufacturers care about implementing this new standard in a compatible way?

I hear this (lookin' at my rack of nothing but AMT8's). With that considered however, technology is about what's attainable rather than what's practical, for better or worse.

One of the big debates with MIDI 2.0, has the 1.0 spec been around for so long with so much money invested into gear designed for it. I look at other types of tech and the willingness to abandon it after large monetary investments (home media formats, data port types, etc.), and feel confident MIDI 2.0 will arrive eventually.

[TubularCorporation]

21 hours ago, Taupe Beats said:

I'd personally say it's not quite "hitting with a hammer twice a day". I guess the point I'm making is that while I agree that there is stress run on it with each use, it's nowhere near the level of stress you're implying and that the devices are overall going to be a good piece of security in a rig.

Yeah, a better analogy is more like

 

You are a prepper, so you decide to keep a barrel of clean water in your basement so you can survive the apocalypse. The tap is mostly air tight but it's not hermetically sealed or anything, so the water will slowly leak out eventually. You have no way to monitor the water level or add more water.  It could take 5 years, it could take 200 years. There's no way to know how fast you are losing it, if/when you will need it, and how much you will need if you do.  A consumer power strip is like a five gallon jug, a good power conditioner is like a 50 gallon barrel, and anything that's actually permant commercial installation is like a giant cistern buried in your back yard.  The cistern will probably last a lot longer than the 5 gallon jug, but sooner or later the water will all be gone.

 

As far as MIDI 2.0 getting widely adopted, I hope it does but if it doesn't I won't be surprised because

-The industries that really need its performance already adopted OSC and MIDI-over-ethernet a long time ago

-Industries that need its performance control got sick of waiting and developed MPE themselves, and that is already gettign a pretty good foothold.

-MIDI 1.0 is more than enough for connecting 5-10 desktop pieces, which is what most amateur and professional musicians who use hardware are doing

 

 

I have a gut feeling that interfaces and higher end gear will probably adopt it but most stuff will stick with 1.0, maybe there will be a trend of marketing MIDI 1.0 stuff as "MIDI 2.0 compatible" over the net couple years.

Edited June 19, 2022 by TubularCorporation

[thawkins]

Also we might be at a point where an increasing amount of old gear will a) be copycatted and released by behringer (with newest tech additions) or b) virtualized/modeled entirely from the circuit board up, so it's more and more possible just to have your things talk in whatever way necessary, and MIDI and CV is just the barest fallback that you have using physical cables.

[xox]

Yall mad

5000 words about power conditioners and obscure midi shit

[Taupe Beats]

13 minutes ago, thawkins said:

Also we might be at a point where an increasing amount of old gear will a) be copycatted and released by behringer (with newest tech additions) or b) virtualized/modeled entirely from the circuit board up, so it's more and more possible just to have your things talk in whatever way necessary, and MIDI and CV is just the barest fallback that you have using physical cables.

[zero]

10 hours ago, xox said:

Yall mad

5000 words about power conditioners and obscure midi shit

*ahem* these dudes have actually been providing some resourceful knowledge about shit most normal run o the mill MF's don't give 2 fucks about, sir...to each their own, I guess... btw I actually bought a Korg Volca Drum thanks to what was being discussed a few pages back. thanks all

[dcom]

8 hours ago, zero said:

I actually bought a Korg Volca Drum thanks to what was being discussed a few pages back.

Drum is definitely one of the most interesting Volcas, right up there with FM; If I would start from scratch hoarding Volcas, I would pick up Drum, FM, Bass, and Kick (I currently have all first gen ones, 10 in all - but I'm going to get FM 2 and Sample Next Gen when I get the chance).

I've been patching up the Volcas to the MX-1 in various ways: directly w/ 3.5 mm TRS to double 6.3 mm TS and plugging in only one to a mono channel; via Bastl Dude using 3.5 mm TRS to 3.5 mm TRS, and from Dude to MX-1 w/ 3.5 mm TRS to double 6.3 mm TS and plugging oly one to a mono channel - and I've noticed that the Volcas generate varying amounts of ground loop noise depending on the way they're powered (directly with a wall wart, daisy chained w/ myVolts 5-way splitter, w/ myVolts ripcord USB power from wall warts and an Anker multi-port charger...), and produce some themselves.

There is also quite a bit of variance in the output levels of the Volcas, e.g. Beats has a very low volume compared to the others. The Volcas are predominantly mono (Sample and Drum have part panning, FM has chorus as stereo features, so they output true stereo), but with stereo out and the same mono signal sent to both channels, so that has to taken into account in gain staging and connections (if mono Volcas are plugged in to a balanced input in stereo, the signal cancels itself out). I'm going to try strategically placed isolators to combat the ground loop problem, but I've also been reading on DI boxes and ground lifts - some recommend using them with Volcas to get clean(er) signals, but as my main mixer is the MX-1 w/ unbalanced inputs, I don't think I would benefit from a DI in-between, isolators should do the trick if there's something to be done. I know my problem is how I'm powering the Volcas, because if I use battery power, the noise floor drops a lot. Maybe a good-sized USB power bank with no mains connected is a good option, if nothing else helps. I would really want to measure how much the Volcas suck power, just to really know what kind of power options I can use.

How do you approach gain staging and noise reduction with analog gear?

I've been fudging around with the Sonicware XFM, it has an interesting feature where no pre-defined FM algorithm is used, and you can string up the four operators whichever way you want, Chris Lody gives a good example with a pad. There are 16 pre-defined algorithms available, but the user definable routing of operators is really powerful and fun when you get the hang of it; the biggest miss is that LFO key trigger/sync can't be turned off. I also poked the Polyend Tracker w/ a MIDI stick, and made it control a handful of Volcas in addition to internal sample tracks; Polyend's main problem w/ MIDI is that the tracks are monophonic, so controlling a drum machine or a polyphonic synth takes up precious channels; it's more conducive to use Polyend as a clock for looping ready-made Volca patterns instead, but then the problem is that the Volcas don't have MIDI Program Change, so you'd have to manage changing patterns by hand.

Edited June 20, 2022 by dcom

[TubularCorporation]

21 hours ago, thawkins said:

Also we might be at a point where an increasing amount of old gear will a) be copycatted and released by behringer (with newest tech additions) or b) virtualized/modeled entirely from the circuit board up, so it's more and more possible just to have your things talk in whatever way necessary, and MIDI and CV is just the barest fallback that you have using physical cables.

I didn't think of it earlier, but I bet the improved bandwidth and timestamping will make wireless MIDI a lot more pactical than it is right now. 

 

Imagine something like the CME WIDI line, except instead of only being a Bluetooth device it could just connect to any wifi network, transmitted sample accurate MIDI with insignificant latency and sample accurate, with the ability to route MIDI between any other dongle or computer on the same network.  Maybe a deluxe version that also offered MIDI event processing.  USB dongles for instruments with a host port. Maybe a multi-port entry point with a few DIN and USB connectors, so if you have a home studio and a smaller live rig, for example, you could use physical cables to connect all of your studio hardware to one entry point and all your live hardware to a second entry point, so you could have your live rig set up in a case ready to take out when you had a show, but you could also have it fully integrated into your studio and it would automatically connect as soon as it was in range.

All of the configuration could be done over wifi or bluetooth from whatever phone or computer or tablet you wanted to use.  Asignable device numbers so you could use is completely standalone. Assign each dongle you owned had a pair of device numbers (one for input, one for output), and all devices with matching IDs will automatically directly connect over Bluetooth so you could just power up all your gear and it would all automatically connect however you had its IDs set. 

So it would be like having a full hardware MIDI patchbay except all happening on a little Bluetooth mesh network instead of a separate hub device, and as many nodes as the network could handle (which would be a LOT since MIDI isn't exactly a bandwidth hog). Basically the sort of stuff CME is already doing but with a featureset more like audio-over-network protocols like AVB and Dante (except for MIDI).

 

If something like that, with the bandwidth and timing of MIDI 2.0 (or at least not intruducing any additional jutter or latency when using it with MIDI 1.0 hardware) came to market and worked well I would definitely start buying them and converting my whole studio over to wireless MIDI.  With MIDI 1.0 I don't want to add any more variables since it's shaky enough as it is (and I also wouldnt' want to invest that kind of money in 1.0).

 

But if nothing else, I've just convinced myself I should get a pair of those current CME WIDI Master dongles onto my MPC and a free pair of ports on one of the old MOTUs I use as MIDI patchbays, so I can use the MPC for sequencing from anywhere in the room without having to worry about any cables except power.  If that works well I'll do the same with the Octatrack. 

[thawkins]

23 hours ago, xox said:

Yall mad

5000 words about power conditioners and obscure midi shit

Who do you think will be spared from execution in the coming water wars - the guy who knows how to make a techno sound on a Monomachine using param locks or the guy who can sync two Akai Timberwolves over TRS MIDI? Choose wisely!

[thawkins]

1 hour ago, TubularCorporation said:

I didn't think of it earlier, but I bet the improved bandwidth and timestamping will make wireless MIDI a lot more pactical than it is right now. 

 

Imagine something like the CME WIDI line, except instead of only being a Bluetooth device it could just connect to any wifi network, transmitted sample accurate MIDI with insignificant latency and sample accurate, with the ability to route MIDI between any other dongle or computer on the same network.  Maybe a deluxe version that also offered MIDI event processing.  USB dongles for instruments with a host port. Maybe a multi-port entry point with a few DIN and USB connectors, so if you have a home studio and a smaller live rig, for example, you could use physical cables to connect all of your studio hardware to one entry point and all your live hardware to a second entry point, so you could have your live rig set up in a case ready to take out when you had a show, but you could also have it fully integrated into your studio and it would automatically connect as soon as it was in range.

All of the configuration could be done over wifi or bluetooth from whatever phone or computer or tablet you wanted to use.  Asignable device numbers so you could use is completely standalone. Assign each dongle you owned had a pair of device numbers (one for input, one for output), and all devices with matching IDs will automatically directly connect over Bluetooth so you could just power up all your gear and it would all automatically connect however you had its IDs set. 

So it would be like having a full hardware MIDI patchbay except all happening on a little Bluetooth mesh network instead of a separate hub device, and as many nodes as the network could handle (which would be a LOT since MIDI isn't exactly a bandwidth hog). Basically the sort of stuff CME is already doing but with a featureset more like audio-over-network protocols like AVB and Dante (except for MIDI).

 

If something like that, with the bandwidth and timing of MIDI 2.0 (or at least not intruducing any additional jutter or latency when using it with MIDI 1.0 hardware) came to market and worked well I would definitely start buying them and converting my whole studio over to wireless MIDI.  With MIDI 1.0 I don't want to add any more variables since it's shaky enough as it is (and I also wouldnt' want to invest that kind of money in 1.0).

 

But if nothing else, I've just convinced myself I should get a pair of those current CME WIDI Master dongles onto my MPC and a free pair of ports on one of the old MOTUs I use as MIDI patchbays, so I can use the MPC for sequencing from anywhere in the room without having to worry about any cables except power.  If that works well I'll do the same with the Octatrack. 

I think current WiFi technology can handle the latency and throughput, but bluetooth definitely is a standard that has mostly a bad rep when it comes to reliable implementations and connection quality and pairing. I think that CME WIDI will work, but probably the latency won't be comparable to a physical cable.

 

This 2 years old video is proving me wrong badly though...

And here am I with my wireless Apple Magic mouse that can't keep a connection over 1 meter.

Edited June 20, 2022 by thawkins

[xox]

24 minutes ago, thawkins said:

Who do you think will be spared from execution in the coming water wars - the guy who knows how to make a techno sound on a Monomachine using param locks or the guy who can sync two Akai Timberwolves over TRS MIDI? Choose wisely!

dunno… in which category is Akai Dan?

[thawkins]

2 minutes ago, xox said:

dunno… in which category is Akai Dan?

[TubularCorporation]

2 hours ago, thawkins said:

I think current WiFi technology can handle the latency and throughput, but bluetooth definitely is a standard that has mostly a bad rep when it comes to reliable implementations and connection quality and pairing. I think that CME WIDI will work, but probably the latency won't be comparable to a physical cable.

 

This 2 years old video is proving me wrong badly though...

And here am I with my wireless Apple Magic mouse that can't keep a connection over 1 meter.

Yeah, I it definitely can but the current version of the CME stuff has a 6 device maximum (blutooth bandwidth limit I assume) and even if it had wifi I wouldn't want to run much MIDI 1.0 on a LAN because of potential timing issues (and the only MIDI timestamp implementations out there right now are proprietary and I think only supported by a few MOTU interfaces AFAIK.  Timestamping would mean a really busy network or dodgy wifi connection would be a lot less likely to cause problems.

 

I'd love to see a future where your MIDI interface could connect to your router or NIC with ethernet, your controllers and synths connected to the interface either through built-in Wifi or dongles for MIDI 1.0 stuff, and you could create an arbitrary number of virtual ports that were available to any device connected to the same network as the interface (or tothe interface's own wifi if it was connected straight to a NIC), and it was all an open standard.  So AVB/Dante but for MIDI.

Better yet I'd like to see all of that rolled into the AVB standard and adopted widely enough that affordable AVB entry points hit the market (the cheapest one right now is over $500 and most of them are multi-thousand dollar commercial routers with a paid, first-party firmware upgrade, so not really worth it for a home studio), or better yet audio/video/MIDI interfaces started to include AVB entry points on board so you could completely skip the standalone entry point unless your setup was demanding enough to need one. If that happens then audio, video and MIDI connections could all be unified into a single standard and you'd only need to use physical cables for analog signals or to save money by not buying dongles for legacy hardware (but I'd also hope that the dongles themselves would come down to where they would cost about the same as a decent quality 15-20 foot MIDI cable today).  

[baph]

Would you:

1. dreadbox typhon, or
2. dreadbox nymphes?

I have next to no room but I’m looking to get a small non-digital module to complement my modest hardware setup (Volca FM and Model:Samples, and Keystep37) and Reaktor/ableton/softube stuff. 

Any other suggestions in the $1000 and below range? Just want something thicc tbqh (shut up). 

Edited June 21, 2022 by baph

[dcom]

1 hour ago, baph said:

Would you:

1. dreadbox typhon, or
2. dreadbox nymphes?

I have next to no room but I’m looking to get a small non-digital module to complement my modest hardware setup (Volca FM and Model:Samples, and Keystep37) and Reaktor/ableton/softube stuff. 

Any other suggestions in the $1000 and below range? Just want something thicc tbqh (shut up). 

I would go for Typhon (I like the display better than special key combinations), but it's a really hard choice, Nymphes is great, too - the chord building is a nifty feature for a monosynth. As for the suggestions, I posted earlier about the Cre8audio East Beast and West Pest, they're quite comparable to Typhon as monophonic.

 

Edited June 21, 2022 by dcom

[Taupe Beats]

Nymphes is polyphonic, btw

I'd go for the Nymphes. True analog poly 6-voice is pretty nice. Good MIDI control and modulation.

Edited June 21, 2022 by Taupe Beats