Topic: Sound Devices 7-Series Beta Firmware Badger Now Available

[Charlie Miller]

Just got this email from Sound Devices...is it old news??


Good Afternoon,

In April at NAB, Sound Devices previewed several new features for the
7-Series recorders. We are pleased to announce that these new features
are now available in a public beta version of firmware, version
"Badger". Additionally, we have made available a Windows software
utility, Wave Agent. This utility is used to convert 7-Series FLAC
files into Broadcast Wave files.

The link to the main download directory is:

  www.sounddevices.com/download/

Please note that Badger and Wave Agent are not production firmware and
software, respectively. They most likely contains bugs. We have
performed extensive testing, and we invite brave souls to apply Badger
and run Wave Agent. In general, these are very stable releases but,
again, they are considered beta and should not be used for
mission-critical applications.

Key new features in 7-Series firmware Badger:

 - MP2, MP3 compressed file recording
 - Lossless data-compressed FLAC file format recording
 - FLAC file playback
 - Sample-accurate record start/stop of multiple, linked recorders

Key features of the Wave Agent software utility (www.waveagent.com for
a shortcut URL):

 - FLAC to WAV file conversion
 - Monophonic to polyphonic file conversion
 - Polyphonic to monophonic file conversion
 - File Properties viewer

The present production release of firmware, version 2.15, is still
recommended for production applications. It is available, along with
the revision history, from the download page.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Sound Devices, LLC
support@sounddevices.com
+1 (608) 524-0625


______________________________________________________________________
If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this
message with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line or simply click on the
following link:
http://cts.vresp.com/u?f28407ee72/3d2bee8786/86db591

______________________________________________________________________
This message was sent by Sound Devices, LLC using VerticalResponse

Sound Devices, LLC
300 Wengel Drive
Reedsburg, Wisconsin  53959

Read the VerticalResponse marketing policy:
http://www.verticalresponse.com/content/pm_policy.html

[F0CKER]

can you track flac files directly in cdwave?  If so, this is pretty sweet to help save a step..not to mention almost doubling potential record time. 

Very nice!

[Charlie Miller]

can you track flac files directly in cdwave?  If so, this is pretty sweet to help save a step..not to mention almost doubling potential record time. 

Very nice!

Yes, you can track flac's in CDwave.

[BWolf]

can you track flac files directly in cdwave?  If so, this is pretty sweet to help save a step..not to mention almost doubling potential record time. 

Very nice!

Yes, you can track flac's in CDwave.

really?  thats awesome! 

edit to add:  now we are going to have this discussion again about dithering/resampling after tracking out a show and if it causes problems....  that is, if we record a show in flac at 24/96, and can track in CDWave, then after you track, how do you dither/resample to seed a 16 bit copy?  are you going to have to do the whole thing twice?

[sickrick43]

Sez it's BETA, use at your own risk.

The SD guys have a pretty consistant product out.  Then again, I wouldn't worry about flac'ing for masters unless I was concerned about running out of disk space on the road (festivals).

Methinks I'm gonna wait until this is an actual release...

Rick

[prof_peabody]

can you track flac files directly in cdwave?  If so, this is pretty sweet to help save a step..not to mention almost doubling potential record time. 

Very nice!

Yes, you can track flac's in CDwave.

really?  thats awesome! 

edit to add:  now we are going to have this discussion again about dithering/resampling after tracking out a show and if it causes problems....  that is, if we record a show in flac at 24/96, and can track in CDWave, then after you track, how do you dither/resample to seed a 16 bit copy?  are you going to have to do the whole thing twice?

It looks pretty handy for playing back high-res flacs.  These rarely escape my computer these days.

[boojum]

FWIW - CDWave editor is now in beta for the latest release of FLAC, 1.1.4.  Faster and slightly smaller files as output.  That can be the interim solution until SD gets this latest release stable with FLAC and the other changes.

[momule]

now we are going to have this discussion again about dithering/resampling after tracking out a show and if it causes problems....  that is, if we record a show in flac at 24/96, and can track in CDWave, then after you track, how do you dither/resample to seed a 16 bit copy?  are you going to have to do the whole thing twice?

yup..   
also gotta remember recording in flac also means much more room for error in your files and much more of a chance of corrupted files.  I doubt you will find too many pro's recording straight to flac  (at least not critical applications)   

[F.O.Bean]

AWESOME. with allgood coming up tho, im gonna stick with 2.15 BUT, after allgood, i will test this out if noone else does

And whats up with their ZFLAC>WAV editor? cant we just use flac frontend? I would trust frontend before anything

[boojum]

And whats up with their ZFLAC>WAV editor? cant we just use flac frontend? I would trust frontend before anything

Bean - I use both, but now that CD Wave Editor has the FLAC 1.1.4 built into it I will do the whole deal in it and skip the step of opening the FLAC frontend, building the job and all that goes with it.  FLAC frontend is just a menuing program to run the FLAC exe.  YMMV     

[F.O.Bean]

And whats up with their ZFLAC>WAV editor? cant we just use flac frontend? I would trust frontend before anything

Bean - I use both, but now that CD Wave Editor has the FLAC 1.1.4 built into it I will do the whole deal in it and skip the step of opening the FLAC frontend, building the job and all that goes with it.  FLAC frontend is just a menuing program to run the FLAC exe.  YMMV     

I know, but I use the 'Align On Sector Boundaries' function I know, I know, CDWave doesnt have SBE's, but I forget to put that extra track at the beg/end of each set, besides, that would mess up my cue sheets

[gratefulphish]

I know, but I use the 'Align On Sector Boundaries' function I know, I know, CDWave doesnt have SBE's, but I forget to put that extra track at the beg/end of each set, besides, that would mess up my cue sheets

I don't think that it would mess up your cue sheets.  If you reload your cue sheet, those tracks come up as well, even if you did not save them to .wavs.

[gratefulphish]

edit to add:  now we are going to have this discussion again about dithering/resampling after tracking out a show and if it causes problems....  that is, if we record a show in flac at 24/96, and can track in CDWave, then after you track, how do you dither/resample to seed a 16 bit copy?  are you going to have to do the whole thing twice?

You can save the cue sheet. Then resample and reopen it in CDWave and use the cue sheet from the 24/96 version.

[F.O.Bean]

edit to add:  now we are going to have this discussion again about dithering/resampling after tracking out a show and if it causes problems....  that is, if we record a show in flac at 24/96, and can track in CDWave, then after you track, how do you dither/resample to seed a 16 bit copy?  are you going to have to do the whole thing twice?

You can save the cue sheet. Then resample and reopen it in CDWave and use the cue sheet from the 24/96 version.

but youre still going to have to go from FLAC>WAV to do the resample/dither. I think thats what brad was asking, right brad? I am just going to use it to record longer on the cf card once it pans out Still very cool nonetheless

[BWolf]

edit to add:  now we are going to have this discussion again about dithering/resampling after tracking out a show and if it causes problems....  that is, if we record a show in flac at 24/96, and can track in CDWave, then after you track, how do you dither/resample to seed a 16 bit copy?  are you going to have to do the whole thing twice?

You can save the cue sheet. Then resample and reopen it in CDWave and use the cue sheet from the 24/96 version.

but youre still going to have to go from FLAC>WAV to do the resample/dither. I think thats what brad was asking, right brad?

exactly.  its not going to save me a step in the long run, so it doesn't have a purpose (in my book) yet.  i'm still going to have to go through the same steps along the way to get flac files to seed in 16 bit.  ultimately, because you need to dither/resample as a whole, its actually adding a step where errors could be introduced.  in the 722, it records wav, converts to flac.  then i'm going to take it on my computer and convert it back to wav before i can work on it (for 16 bit files).  so i've gone wav > flac > wav without ever doing anything but storing the file.

its going to save space, and will be great for festivals, but its not going to save any time for seeding 16 bit filesets.  now for 24 bit, its going to make things 10000000 times easier.