1st impressions , questions problems

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  • 25th May 2015 at 02:42 #26057
    Klaus Gstettner
    Participant

    Hi, I am living in Austria, working in the field of electroacoustics,contemporary and tape music as well as sound art.

    After looking for some time for an alternative to my trustworthy Tascam MX 24 I recently stumbled over this great machine. While it will certainly perform also as a recorder on some occasions the main reason for me getting it was as player for multitrack sound installations.

    1st of all, THANK YOU for not putting cooling fans on the box. It gives the possibility to hide it in the same room as the audio installation , an important factor since in art galleries or halls where quiet audio is playing , equipment with fans is always an issue.

    Another good thing is the small footprint and the ease of use , important since with installations that are exhibited over many days are started by (more or less unskilled) Gallery staff who basically only want to turn a switch instead of going through a complicated startup process every morning.

    I got the unit last week and since yesterday it is in use, however there have been a few issues and missing features i’d like to share here, maybe theres a something I have overlooked in the manual:

    1 Running in Multitrac Mode I have not been able to set the unit up to play one song in repeat. This will be crucial to the further use , since most galleries are open all day ant the audio material , however long it is, has to play as a loop during opening times.

    2. I have a drive attached that has a seperate “on” button , so the starup sequence is : switch on main power, and then switch on power amps and the drive(in whatever sequence). This means that the unit has already booted when the drive is still spinning up. In this special case the “play on boot” setting does not work – a better way to implement this feature is to automaticly start playing as son as the drive goes on line.

    3. A “lock” mode for the front panel buttons exept play and stop would be a really handy feature. This could be realized as a double press key combo , e.g. press menu and folder buttons at the same time for 5seconds to lock, then again to unlock.

    But at the moment, the most headace gives me the following issue:

    I have set up a so g with 28minutes audio material , after pressing play the piece is played back only for 25minutes. After that it stops and resets to the start point.
    The problem is that this is not always the case, on some occasions It plays the full 28 minutes and I have not been able to figure out why.
    I have scrolled around to start from different points during he setup, is tere a feature to set end points on the machine? (like markers or something like that that define a end point for playback?) Mybe I did something wrong?
    I exported wav tracks from nuendo, AFAIK no meta information about markers/locators are implemented in the .wav format so the tracks should be fine and sometimes they are played back for the full duration.
    Anyone had issues like that?

    The art gallery where the installation is shown opens up again end this week agIn
    Would be great to have feedback and solutions to these issues , it’s such a great product fo applications like these but at the moment only of limited use due to the above mentioned things…

    Thanks and all the Best

    Klaus

    PS, this is latest OS version , I updated on friday as soon as i took it out of the box.

    26th May 2015 at 19:48 #26066
    Chetan
    Participant

    Hi Klaus,

    Thanks for the feedback.

    1. To play a song repeatedly, all you have to do is create a playlist with this one song and set the start mode as “No delay”. Alternatively you can also create loops within a song on the fly. When a song is playing, if you press the Settings button you can choose your start and end point with the rotary encoder. When the end point is chosen the loop automatically starts and plays until you press stop or back.
    The playlist is definitely the way to go for galleries, because then it can be set as “autoplay playlist” to start playing it by just plugging in the device.

    2. Unfortunately we never tested with a hard-drive with an ON button. We will have a look into this problem.

    3. As point 2, we will look into this feature implementation too.

    4. This one is a very strange issue which we have never encountered. The song is played until the complete length. Unless a loop is set in which case it plays until the end point of the loop. The best way to look for the problem would be to get your files so that we can test it. Could you upload the song to dropbox and send a link to support@cymatic.com

    Thanks again for taking the time to write such a detailed query. Hope we can help you before the Gallery reopens.

    26th May 2015 at 23:58 #26070
    Klaus Gstettner
    Participant

    Thank’s for the quick reply.

    Since my dropbox is chronically over the limits I will upload the tracks to my FTP server, I will send you log/pass details ASAP.

    I wonder though, if I unwillingly have created a loop end point while the machine was in stop mode so the loop was never actually started, is this possible or is setting start/end points exclusively possible while in play mode? I have to admit being in a bit of a hurry with the whole project, (like exporting the tracks 4:30am the opening day…) so I have not spend too much time with the manual…

    BTW: whats the maximum output of the machine in dbV at 0dbFS? How much dbV is it expecting as input to be calibrated for 0dbVU sitting 12db below FS? I am using it without mixer and some sort of calibration would be great (specially since in the studio I am working also with two studer multitracks).

    thank’s again

    Klaus

    27th May 2015 at 10:20 #26072
    Laszlo
    Keymaster

    The maximum output level 17.8dBV
    If the signal -12dB below the FS that should be 5.8dBV

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