Last year I inherited my Dads vintage 1928 Chev Roadster, and I also inherited his car trailer for transporting it. February I moved the Chev up to Wellington and I noticed the sounds the trailer makes. It has a light steel wind-shield at the front which rattles, while the deck is made of solid steel with plating, so it has a lot of interesting resonances. Being a trailer there is also minimal engine and exhaust noise.
The trailer was rigged with six mics and my Sony a6300 camera:
– Sennheiser MKH8040 LR, one close up on each wheel
– Sennheiser MKH8020 pair sheltered LR behind the wind shield
– Sennheiser MKH8050 sheltered centre behind the wind shield
– LOM Geofon on chassis, capturing rumble.
The surfaces driven on include:
– up & down my driveway, scraping plants & bushes
– suburban driving 0-50kmph (0-30mph)
– suburban arterial route driving 50-70kmph (30-45mph)
– highway driving 90kmph 55mph
– gravel road driving 0-50kmph(0-30mph)
– driving over multiple judder bars/speed bumps 0-10kmph (0-5mph)
Recorded 32bit 192kHz this new library is released multitrack 24bit 96kHz with full UCS metadata and photos..
Ages ago I bought two MOTU 828 interfaces to connect my modular synth to my main Mac, which uses the MOTU AVB interfaces – a 1248 and a 16A. While the AVB interfaces were easy to connect up, getting my head around the patching took some work… And by work I mean perseverance. In that case I ended up plugging a drum machine in and tracing it through the virtual routing until I had everything patched as I wanted. I then added a first 828, using it in free standing A/D mode as its sitting by modular synth and the easiest cabling to my other interfaces was to get some long ADAT/fibre cables. I got it connected and working but it took some perseverance, since the 828 also needs to follow the master clock. I did that a year or two ago… and promptly forgot what a fckng hassle it is…
Yesterday, after putting it off for ages, I decided I’d connect the second 828 via the same process. That way I can record 16 channels of modular direct to DAW. Four hours later I was beginning to lose the plot as I thought I had the two 828 interfaces set up exactly the same. I did not. I had forgotten that the first time I did this I followed the steps in an article, and this time I was just trying to logic it out…
About 11pm last night I finally used the right search term & found this article:
I had forgotten that it is a unique/non-standard use for these interfaces, and is not possible to enable just by using the front panel controls on the interface. First I tried connecting my ancient laptop to the 828 via USB but it would not recognise it at all, no matter what drivers I installed. Such was my frustration, at this point I tried connecting via firewire! Finding the cables & adaptors was a challenge but I got them, connected up & nothing…
Two bourbons later I thought I’d check if its supported to connect my little M2 laptop to this ancient interface via USB and I was surprised to discover it was!! Next I had to install new MOTU drivers etc to my M2 laptop which required jumping through some hoops… ie relogging into my laptop & setting it to ‘less secure’ mode to allow driver install. And of course my M2 laptop does not have old USB so I connected via a hub, hoping it would still see it. I rebooted & sucecss!
About midnight I had sixteen channels of modular rattling the walls & I zoned out for another few hours, enjoying the ad hoc patch I built for testing…
Success!!
All of this is simply to reshare that article.
I don’t think I would ever have worked out how to get the old 828 interfaces to do what I wanted without it, the process is very non-intuitive. So if someone finds this by googling ‘MOTU stand alone routing 828 interface’ or something, then please go read this article & follow the steps carefully:
Running 4 ADAT cables is much easier than audio cables, but ideally it would all be AVB and then its as easy as a typical basic Ethernet network… Of course there are limitations with the old 828 interfaces. They are DC coupled, so I can use them for CV although thats not the primary aim. But to get all sixteen channels across via ADAT the sample rate limit is 48k. If I use 96k then the number of channels across ADAT halves, so I’d still have 8 channels at 96kHz eg for higher rez sampling.
Next project to implement:
I bought a SOMA Illuminator last year, which basically enables using 8 channels of CV to control LED lights (or DC motors etc) so I am going to connect it up as an experiment ‘visualising’ some of my modular patches. I’m sure my first test will be a Ryoji Ikeda style stroboscopic overload, but I am intrigued to try with some smaller LED installs. For example imagine putting short sections of LED lights inside glass objects or some other kind of visual diffuser… Eight channels is enough to visualise a step sequencer or individual drums from a beat…. The idea of controlling (& sequencing!) DC motors or any other kinds of DC activated devices is deeply intriguing…
“Nobody in these type of reviews ever mentions the “Register” feature on the CR8000 which is its secret weapon. Also the real time swapping between shuffle mode. The greatest drum machine Roland ever made.”
The Roland CR-8000 CompuRhythm drum machine had a unique “Register” function that allowed users to program and store their own rhythmic patterns and fills. Specifically:
– It had 8 programmable “registers” that could each store a 2-bar rhythm pattern.
– It also had 4 programmable “fill” registers to store short fill-in patterns.
– Users could chain these registers together in any order to create longer rhythmic sequences and songs.
– This “Register and Arranger” section gave the CR-8000 more real-time pattern creation and arrangement capabilities compared to other drum machines of its era.”
I never heard the new AI voice thing, other than on The Daily Show where they rightly skewered it for what it was… But today I saw on twitter a copy of Scarlett Johanssons statement, and wow…
The old saying about begging for forgiveness rather than asking permission doesn’t apply when you did actually ask permission, were denied & proceeded regardless. Someone mentioned a relevant precedent of ‘Waits versus Frito-Lay’ so I did a quick search and now have even more respect for Tom Waits.
Basically he has always refused to work on ads, and was asked to voice an ad for some snack food. So they found a ‘sound-alike’ and proceeded regardless. Waits sued & was awarded US$2.6 million in compensatory damages, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees! Summary of events is here
