Theo Verelst Local Diary Page 92
I've ditched the usual header for the
moment, I think it doesn't help much anyhow.
This page is copyrighted by me, and may be read and transferred by any
means only as a whole and including the references to me. I
guess that's normal, the writer can chose that of course, maybe
I´ll make some creative commons stuff one day, of course I have
made Free and Open Source software and even hardware designs available!
This
page is under construction, so check back later, too.
Apr 4, 13:53, 2010
A frame from the latest Hitchcock movie I recorded in shining High
Definition from ITV-HD satellite:
Click it for full resolution. I have like .4 Gigabyte full of
recordings which make the new disc almost full... Nice hobby.
Houseowning goes with with plant arrangements I suppose.
Ikea helps good with furniture of very low prices in comparison: the
metal and glass I think cost like 30 euros. Nice quality.
Surround mixing reverb with good audio signal path
I had made reference to the subject last page (or two ago I don't
recall) where I'd want to connect the good BluRay player (a Sony S550,
of course with latest OS) to my high quality surround system, the main
with the prototype analog volume control (under digital control), the
rear not yet (I didn't finish the PCB with high grade chips for that
purpose yet..), and than to add to the liveliness of the sound or for
extra dramatics or simply to imitate the original concert sound I add
Lexicon surround (not stereo, not stereo in 4 out, but 4 channels in to
4 channels out with a dedicated Lexicon surround reverb) reverberation
effect. Mixed in with distortion free 'passive' mixers so the pristine
quality of the main surround sound is maintained, no resampling takes
place, and the Lexicon works natural from the analog domain at the
input generating analog outputs, which can be mixed in in the right
ratio, and also the inputs can be front / rear mixed in the correct
ratio with the Lexicon input controls:
Lots of invisible wires back there...
The result is completely worth the effort: I never had such a great
sound as from for instance "Legends" with Eric Clapton playing the
blues in what with the extra reverb sounds like a real concert
space/hall. Nothing I know thus far comes close, very convincing and
realistic like a real (good) concert. What are those slider and
circular pot in the lower right corner doing? Volume control for front
(slider only controls a DC control voltage, no audio) and effect send
for front to Lexicon ("post fader"). The second and third slider on the
4 channel stereo passive mixer do the same for the rear (in analog
audio domain, a bit more high impedance than would be preferable, but
the biamp-ed speakers at the rear have quite good preamplification). An
alternative would be to mix the front with reverb in the digital domain
(tos output of the bluray player, wetness control on the Lexicon), or
to have some machine which picks out the 4 channels from the HDMI
conntection and outputs them to tos or something else digital, but I
haven't got such machine. The "hybrid" front digital, rear analog mix
with reverb, using an analog output of the Sony to drive the analog
rear AD imput of the Lexicon I had tried before, which of course
gives a little delay difference between front and rear, but also works
great, and has the advantage that the Lexicon probably is quite a bit
better DA converter. A little harder to mix though, and it could be
certain sounds are a bit prepared for the analog output characteristics
of the Sony.
In fact I did a minor improvement/repair to the secondary (lower power)
stereo amp of my main amplifier, namely I replaces a potmeter which
either didn't properly survive rough transportation (something bumping
into it) or it was soldered a touch too long, or both, but anyhow it
had a loose contact unless pounded on a little bit:
It's all right now, which is nicer than every time having to switch on
the two amps (main and sub), switching the slow start switch, and then
hitting the potmeter slightly until is it behaves, and that it can be
used now to control the mid-high accurately without failures.
The picture shows the evil-doer in front of the new replacement (the
second knob from the right).
Some of my materials on Youtube-HD
I recorded is some years ago in HD (wih the Sony HC-3 1080i cam), and
nowadays one can upload the source material straight to Youtube!
This film was made by me at the latest Audio Engineering Society-nl
lecture, but it was made in to seperate, uncompressed (ppm, 8 bits per
rgb component, 1920x1080 pixels = 6 MegaByte per frame, 25 frames per
second) deinterlaced frames by VDPau on my fastest Linux computer
system, processed by a small but well done Gaussian filtering using
parallel processing of cuda (see here
so you could in principle do it yourself) , automatically on all the
frames, and then I made a h264 movie of it, where the frames are quite
film-like:
Of course Youtube doesn't very much do justice to the result, and I
converted to 720 first.
Also, I did some Cinelerra-based complicated compression on the audio
part of the lecture.
EMU proteus
That's free (!) but not open source software from EMU who were known
for their early samplers (I recorded one with some samples I made long
ago, but didn't own one) to sort of "play ROMpler" with a computer, in
this case the Hight Definition notebook I use running XPpro:
It actually sounds decent! I had some fun trying some of the quite
numerous sounds, and they sound less than a good ROM based sample based
synthesizer (like there are many and like I use a Yamaha S90 and a
Kurzweil PC3), but quite musical and better than like a soundcanvas or
so. And more than a few sable sounds.
Some forum issues
Hobbyskoop
I read this as a kid!
I leanred some electronics from the EE2003 if I recall correctly. Let
me make working FM radios when I was like 12. Marvellous, I think.
The speakers I used when I was a little older probably are somewhere in
those lists of parts.
Later ob when I was 16 or so I built the 2x70 watt amp from this book
to make my self made 2 way speakers work good:
Any good new Cameras ?
Well not on my budget (I don´t have any!). But like I was able to
use a HD cam since what 4 years ago (?) there are relatively low priced
great cams around, which is interesting.
I've playaed a number of example HD recordings fro the eos 500 and
recently the early ones from the 550D from the internet, I think even
in the format the camera can produce, on windows HD screen and on
aLinux powered HD screen:
The examples look interesting.
A big red (4k camera pretty expensive but not like the ral expensive
ones) recording, played on Linux:
thanks to VDpau the h264 decoding and rendering is up to speed.
New High Definition and quality audio materials I used
All these officially but cheaply bought CDs sound great on my systems,
and Thank God: they aren't "mastered to pieces": great !
Some not-really-hd but nicely made and mildy progressive-coded examples:
That´s disk III from the official (not rental) "UP" which I
copies to an external server disk, so when the HD notebook is on the
local network, it can be started from windows media player with
Purevideo rendering, but it´s probably a little less bandwidth
and resolution than the DVD.
Recently I could borrow (lend, no, rent is the right word) a BluRay
disc about southpole expeditions, with surround recordings from seals
imitating, well I suppose analog synthesizers!
An example frame from Werner Herzog's
"Encounters at the End of the World" from a small creature sliding in
and selecting cells it feeds with.
Bluray of course wins easily in quality of audio, even compared with
384kbps BBC-HD 6 channel surround: uncompressed 24 bit 48 or even more
is far superior! And also the about 12 or 16 Mbps video is great for
free (!) sat signals from space, but over 30 Mbps bluray gets a little
more lively and colorfull still.
