yes I did use the template. not much help. if I can find remove dc offset and normalize in ntrack it would help. I just found soundforge can't handle large multichannel waves! You can save. Still need to figure the color shift issue too
You can place a cursor in Audacity and paste a copy of however many samples you want at the beginning of a track to shift the whole thing ahead (having the effect of delaying that track some number of samples behind the scanner tracks). But if your source is an ADAT recording of some laser DAC, the colors should already be delayed properly.
I'm not sure why you are having problems getting this to work. I have quite a few 8 channel ADAT shows and they play just fine in Spider Player.
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got it figured. add 5 samples of silence to xy tracks. done.
one last weird on where the image changes sizes at random just a little. looks like a stutter but it ins't a drop out. doesn't happen from protools but does from some other software.
I'm not exactly sure what you are dealing with but in general you want the signals for xy to arrive at the scanner amps 5 samples (at 48KHz) before the color signals. It takes a little time for the scanner mirrors to follow their control signals. But the color modulation is instantaneous.
So if for some reason you have a set of wave channels that are all time aligned (no delay) then you want to add the silence to the beginning of the color channels to push them 5 samples behind the xy.
But, like I said, if you have ADAT recordings of a laser DAC, the scanners and colors should already be aligned properly in time for the projector (with a 5 sample delay on the colors).
BTW There is a wonderful app called GoldWAVE that has an expression evaluator! You can write arithmetic functions to populate waves with sample data. You can also write functions that take samples from a wave that already has data and do math on that. So adding or subtracting DC offsets is just one very simple thing you can do.
Last edited by james; 09-28-2019 at 19:19.
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All software has a learning curve usually proportional to its capabilities and unique features. Pointing with a mouse is in no way easier than tapping a key.
adat hardware is the best solution
🤣
I did buy n-track but it’s totally unstable and you have to do weird panning
Which version are you using? I know they released version 8 but I haven’t had the chance to try it out. I’ve used version 7 for a couple years now and find that it works perfectly. Once the device is properly configured, open the template and hit record. Save the file, open the template again and it’s ready to record.
For editing, I’m pretty sure the tools are there but I’m so accustomed to using Audacity that I still stick with that for editing. Removing dc offset or even adding dc offset in audacity is a breeze.
there was a time when audacity supported recording and playback of multichannel wave files but due to a licensing issue with Steinberg it was dropped.
really just about any software that supports ASIO will work great for laser show stuff. N-Track certainly isn’t the only one. When recording with my iPhone I use an app call MultiTrack DAW, which works amazingly well. Though it will only support up to 48KHz sample rate.
i used Spider player years ago but switch to Foobar2000 and been happy ever since. I don’t recall if spider supports ASIO or not. I did get Winamp to playback laser shows though.
regarding the changing of color timing. This is easy in audacity as it has already been pointed out. This is an important editing feature for older shows that were programmed on gas systems.
Which ever version is the new version. If I could dc and normalize directly in ntrack it would be fine but since I have to do it in soundforge anyway I just export the wave from there. I’m just converting no recording. I have Matt’s transcoder so that gets feed by the usbstreamer. It works fine out of foobar. Will be nice to not have to pull that hd24 out anymore.
The time one delay was just on some content that’s like 25 years old converted from fm. I have something like your colorboard in my good projector Ie the iris system so much of this will vanish when o get my projector back with fresh saturns and Mach drivers.
still big thank you for the webpage. I didn’t know multichannel wave was even a thing. That’s very handy.
that image size stutter I still don’t know what’s up. It’s like the data stream gets clogged. The timing test is perfect so the computer should handle it. Why it only happens with some software I do not know. Maybe it’s how the clock is handled. It happens on adat or system clock so? Anyway the only remaining issue is that my wave size is to big on export so sf complains but then it does export. Ntrack doesn’t complain. Whatever. I convert only once.
thanks again
If your content is on a HD24, just load up hd24tools https://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/hd24tools/ take an image of your drive then right from it you can export as multichannel wav's and playback just as they did from the hd24.
The streamers come in handy, but in my rack the HD24 is easier for me in my permanent (non mobile) setup than a PC monitor etc.
leading in trailing technology
wow that would have been much easier. I will give it a try. It took 3 week to download the two drives to my computer via ftp. Kept blowing up so I had to reset each day and hope I got a few files while at work.
I saw that years back but it required a special isa card. This works straight off ethernet I hope. FTFM and all yea.
I think I am nuts because this data is digital but it seems the data off the hd24 looks more solid to me than the data from the computer via the usbstreamer. Can't put my exact finger on it. Sort of like a photocopy vs the original but this is digital so that can't happen. I think the timing is slightly altered.
Truly I am wonder the wisdom of even trying this and just using the hd24. Thanks for the post I will check it out.
Hmm, I’m that case I suspect it’s the difference in DACs.
Portability, longevity, flexibility.Truly I am wonder the wisdom of even trying this and just using the hd24. Thanks for the post I will check it out.
if I want a backup I just drag and drop shows to another drive, flash drive, usb, phone, google drive, etc. For playback, even on my phone it’s easy to create and modify a playlist “on the fly”.