Topic: Portable Larvy AD10?

[rowjimmy]

Dan,
The folks here have more than covered my sentiments but I did want to add that I, too, appreciate your taking the time to hear out the needs of our community.

Thanks.
jmh

[Dan Lavry]

Dan,
The folks here have more than covered my sentiments but I did want to add that I, too, appreciate your taking the time to hear out the needs of our community.

Thanks.
jmh

Thanks for the kind words. I am pretty sure I will have more questions. For now, I have more then enough to look up. It all takes time, but I would like to make some real high performance real robust unit, stereo micpre (with very clean phantom), AD and some memory.

Regards
Dan Lavry

[carlbeck]

Dan,
The folks here have more than covered my sentiments but I did want to add that I, too, appreciate your taking the time to hear out the needs of our community.

Thanks.
jmh

Thanks for the kind words. I am pretty sure I will have more questions. For now, I have more then enough to look up. It all takes time, but I would like to make some real high performance real robust unit, stereo micpre (with very clean phantom), AD and some memory.

Regards
Dan Lavry

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Build it & they will come

[MattD]

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Build it & they will come

In that vein, I'm tagging this thread. Dan has always been helpful with answering my questions in other forums. It's nice to see him here and to see everyone welcome him with open arms.

P.S. Mods - can we get a "subscribe to thread" option?

[muj]

please add a analog saturation effect..to round of digital overs/ clipping

[Gutbucket]

...In my opinion, there is too much of a gap between "ear people" and "technical people". The ear people insist that the ear is all that matters. So very often I see someone listening to something and mistakingly expanding their conclusions with far overreaching generalizations. I see technical people look at specs, not realizing that one can have an inaudible 1% distortion and an irritating .01% distortion...

So now you know what I think :-)

Another subscribing to the thread and expressing gratitude and thanks for your expertice, quality grear, attention to the needs of your customers and reasonable design philosophy, Dan!

There has been a good summary of the features desired by our needs outlined so far.  I will only add that if this product does end up including memory to act as an all-in-one phantom>preamp>ADC>recorder (SDHC support of 32 gig cards would be welcome), the ability to link a second unit in a master/slave arrangement so that one machine controls the recording functions as well as providing clock would be ideal.  That would provide an easy and attractive upgrade path for users starting with two track recording and adding the capability to run either two seperate identical 2-track rigs or link them for use as a 4-track rig.  Just control and clock data need pass between the two machines, each could record to their own media card.  That sould also be attractive to the sound for video and film guys that are the usual target market for most of this type of gear.

...Yes, a lot of people use their ears, and I am all for it. I am a musician (I play piano and accordion), and I use my ears. After all, music is for the ears :-)

Hear the one about the accoridan player who left his instrument locked in the back seat of his car and to his horror, returned to find the back window broken and his worst fears confirmed?

Two accordians in the back seat.

Regards and welcome to the forum.

[Javier Cinakowski]

If he builds the device that is described here, I think it will sell very, very well.....

[lek]

Interesting
I use a lavry blue ad and da for my studio, and I was thinking about adding the mic pre module and then sending it spdif to an m audio microtrack - of course the lavry would have to be connected to a wall outlet (though it's for recording my own band so I could probably handle that). The lavry blue is amazing, my favorite so far compared to mytek, crane song, apogee, benchmark. If it could be done in a small portable package combined with a flash recorder that would be great - at least until I can afford to roll my ampex atr102 to a gig!

[Dan Lavry]

Hear the one about the accoridan player who left his instrument locked in the back seat of his car and to his horror, returned to find the back window broken and his worst fears confirmed?

Two accordians in the back seat.

Regards and welcome to the forum.

As an accordion player (and piano), here is my favorite:

"Welcome to hell, here is your accordion..."

Regards
Dan Lavry

[Dan Lavry]

I checked the possibility of puting audio data on "memory sticks", and sadly enough, those devices are too slow for recording data in. A few of them are fast enough for an uncompressed playback at CD speed... 
Flash ram is great, but it does have it's limitations. Writing in (recording) must be preceeded by a process of earsing, which slows the whole thing down a lot...

That leaves us with other memory types. Looking at CF memory, I wonder what are the most popular formats for "putting audio" such on CF memory for use in portable gear? Does ALL the gear that comes with CF require the use of specific software to be installed on the computer? Is there some "generic" software driver for downloading the audio from CF to the computer? Clearly, one needs to know the sample rate and the bit length of the data...

I would appreciate answers to the question.

Regards
Dan Lavry

[carlbeck]

You do not need a driver or software to pull the "data" off the CF card since the recorder creates the wav file. Windows will recognize it as a .wav file & allow you to drag it on to your desktop, then you use what editing software you prefer.

[Gutbucket]

Most flash based recorders use either Compact Flash or SDHC card media with a FAT32 file format and write standard linear PCM files to the card as WAV extension files or BWF extension files (a broadcast wave format popular with news organizations and I suppose film & video people).  The exception is Sony which rope people into using their proprietary Memory Stick flash card format.  The cards can be removed and the data transferred to a computer via flash card reader like you would use for a digital camera.  Most if not all of the recorders feature a USB port which allows the recorder to act as a simple USB storage device when connected to a computer - basically a simple card reader to transfer files only, they do not function as a 'recorder' in USB transfer mode.  A few also use that USB connection to act as a 'real time' audio interface to the computer, but that is the exception to the rule. 

In general, people like non-proprietary formats-

• Compact Flash or SDHC media (preference usually depends on what cards the user already has for previous gear, SDHC is physically smaller)
  
• FAT32 file format for the media, which allows it to be read by any computer
• If the unit includes battery power, standard AA size Alkaline or rechargeable NiMH batteries are popular over internal Li-ion packs because they can be swapped in the field and bought at the corner store if needed.  If more or longer term power is needed, the appropriate DC-in jack for an external battery pack(s) allows the user to roll their own power depending on run-time requirements.
  

[modmike]

If FAT32 -- gapless 2GB splits Please

[Dan Lavry]

Thanks for the replies.

Using WAV files is fine with me, and USB is great for data transfer.
I also like non proprietary formats.

With real time transfer, I was under the impression that unless one is clever enough, Windows defaults to 16 bits. This is not exactly my area of expertise... But here we are just copying files so I would want to provide up to 24 bits, at sample rates from 44.1 to 96KHz. Of course, the user would have to know the bit depth and sample rate. Where is that information stored? Is it in the WAV file itself? I would hope such is the case. Or does the user "just knows" how the recorder was set up?
There is much here for me to be learned...

Regards

Dan Lavry

[mblindsey]

I've often wondered how difficult it would be for a manufacturer of a pre/ad to add the "storage" component to an existing device.  I mean, there are already companies building very small embedded Linux devices.  Here is one:

http://gumstix.com/platforms.html

Slap on the screen, expansion board for storage and some buttons.  It's making the leap from the output of the internal AD to something like the gumstix is where I get lost. 

The Rockbox folks have probably already written the code to write all the important file types, as well as, handle most all the other functions we care about.  I haven't gone through it, but it's here: http://build.rockbox.org/. 

inside one small case => {nice pre's > Larvy AD > gumstix running modified rockbox > flash}

Does this sound far fetched? 

--Michael