New improved microtrack (MT II)

[willndmb]

jtessier - if you don't work for them anymore, are you at liberty to talk about what they have changed/added/removed in the new MT 2.0?

Or the reasons given why some things wern't implemented in version 1, like the autosplit?

the autosplit couldn't be done
something to do with the buffer i want to say

[jtessier]

jtessier - if you don't work for them anymore, are you at liberty to talk about what they have changed/added/removed in the new MT 2.0?

Unfortunetaly I can't really say anything too specific. I'm still bound by a non disclosure agreement I signed when I was hired and M-Audio was nice enough to offer a fair severance package so I owe it even more to them not to pull back the curtain too far.

John

[illconditioned]

jtessier - if you don't work for them anymore, are you at liberty to talk about what they have changed/added/removed in the new MT 2.0?

Unfortunetaly I can't really say anything too specific. I'm still bound by a non disclosure agreement I signed when I was hired and M-Audio was nice enough to offer a fair severance package so I owe it even more to them not to pull back the curtain too far.

John

I'm really impressed that Maudio was following web forums like this.  That's great.  Companies could learn a lot from us tapers.  If nothing else, we're good at torturing gear and finding bugs, lol.  And it is free information, too  .

By the way, do you know anything about other Maudio gear?  Are you allowed to disclose?  In particular, I'm wondering which USB/Firewire interfaces have the INA series preamp chips in them.  I bought an Maudio Duo and was happy to see +-15V and INA163 inside.  How about the MobilePre or the Fast Track Pro or the Firewire interfaces?  Any of those have INA chips in them?

  Richard

[gratefulphish]

To improve? Lots!

1) Fix all the bugs of version 1
2) True 48v Phantom Power
3) User replaceable battery
4) XLR and/or neutrik combo inputs
5) Make it more rugged, ie metal
6) Better pre's that can handle higher SPL's and line level
7) And yes, seamless 2gb file splits

Here is your new Microtrack V2, with all of the requested fixes:

[dactylus]

To improve? Lots!

1) Fix all the bugs of version 1
2) True 48v Phantom Power
3) User replaceable battery
4) XLR and/or neutrik combo inputs
5) Make it more rugged, ie metal
6) Better pre's that can handle higher SPL's and line level
7) And yes, seamless 2gb file splits

Here is your new Microtrack V2, with all of the requested fixes:

[rodeen]

Here is your new Microtrack V2, with all of the requested fixes:

Wow!  All that for $300!  I hope they have a trade in option too! 

[Nick's Picks]

honestly .... whats the point of finding out the cause of a discontinued decks short comings?
can't fix them. 

[Roving Sign]

honestly .... whats the point of finding out the cause of a discontinued decks short comings?
can't fix them. 

huh?

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

honestly .... whats the point of finding out the cause of a discontinued decks short comings?

I think people like to have an understanding of the underlying design issues.

For instance, I would like to know why they claim that they can't support seamless 2G splits.   In my estimation, the only reason is that they don't know how to properly queue preallocated files.  It's non-trivial but it isn't rocket science.  FWIW, I'm currently involved with an embedded FS port, it's like my fifth FS port, and the current project the FS supports high rate media stream RW with split file objects near 30GB in size.  So I have a clear idea of how to use preallocation strategies to optimize file split operations with an extremely tight cycle and buffer budget.  However, I might be missing something in my analysis of the MT issue so I'd really like to know what their explanation is.

[jtessier]

jtessier - if you don't work for them anymore, are you at liberty to talk about what they have changed/added/removed in the new MT 2.0?

Or the reasons given why some things wern't implemented in version 1, like the autosplit?

Mostly horsepower of the processor compounded by the developmental firmware from the chip maker that the firmware was based on.  The original firmware that M-Audio was given to work with was never intended by the chip maker to do wav files. The chip was designed with MP3 players/recorders in mind.  M-Audio expanded that on their own because they saw it had the power to do so.  But it was late in the game that the issue was discovered and going back and re-architecting the entire firmware on the 'hope' that they could make it work wasn't justifiable from a business perspective given that it was no guarantee that it could be made to be seemless.

John

[jtessier]

jtessier - if you don't work for them anymore, are you at liberty to talk about what they have changed/added/removed in the new MT 2.0?

Unfortunetaly I can't really say anything too specific. I'm still bound by a non disclosure agreement I signed when I was hired and M-Audio was nice enough to offer a fair severance package so I owe it even more to them not to pull back the curtain too far.

John

I'm really impressed that Maudio was following web forums like this.  That's great.  Companies could learn a lot from us tapers.  If nothing else, we're good at torturing gear and finding bugs, lol.  And it is free information, too  .

By the way, do you know anything about other Maudio gear?  Are you allowed to disclose?  In particular, I'm wondering which USB/Firewire interfaces have the INA series preamp chips in them.  I bought an Maudio Duo and was happy to see +-15V and INA163 inside.  How about the MobilePre or the Fast Track Pro or the Firewire interfaces?  Any of those have INA chips in them?

  Richard

Boy, if I were still there I probably could find out but I never kept that kind of info in my head (too many other things rattling around in there already).

Sorry,

John

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

Mostly horsepower of the processor compounded by the developmental firmware from the chip maker that the firmware was based on.  The original firmware that M-Audio was given to work with was never intended by the chip maker to do wav files. The chip was designed with MP3 players/recorders in mind.  M-Audio expanded that on their own because they saw it had the power to do so.  But it was late in the game that the issue was discovered and going back and re-architecting the entire firmware on the 'hope' that they could make it work wasn't justifiable from a business perspective given that it was no guarantee that it could be made to be seemless.

John

This is the kind of explanation that puzzles me.  Raw WAV capture is less cycle intensive than MP3 encoding.  Seamless splits should not require any sort of work that would be considered rearchitecting.  It's simply a matter of preallocating a series of 2G cluster chains in anticipation of recording and then initializing the active wave header to indicate a 2G wave file.  Those cycles can be spent during power on media initialization so that record latency is not incurred.  When recording is stopped, the SW just clean ups the last active wave header to indicate proper length before preallocating a new chain.  The overhead of a few additional file descriptors in memory is pretty small.

The business issues I can understand.  They sold enough units with the flaw to not see a market justification for fixing it and I've debugged enough vendor code to understand that can be an expensive hassle.

Can you share what core the device uses?  Is it an ASIC or commodity processor?

[mlind]

If the people who wrote the rockbox program can get an mp3 player to record perfectly, I imagine they could do some great stuff with a mt 24/96. That could mean a second life for the original microtrack.

You can help that to happen:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/NewPort

Firstly: Take it apart and scan the PCBs.

Then go here:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?board=16.0

Do anybody here know anything about the inside of the MT yet?

[silentmark]

http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,50750.msg660192.html#msg660192

[timP]

not 100% sure, but Rockbox does not do 24 bit recording,

so what would it do that the Micro' currently doesn't do (assuming the m-tracker does 16 bit solidly?)