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Video of my NAMM live act now online!


Anderton

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Clonk here to catch excerpts from my performance at the PreSonus booth at Winter NAMM. The act is based around Ableton live, with some vocals and guitar stuff too running through the PreSonus FireBox...check it out!

 

BTW not recommended for dial-up...it's over six minutes long.

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The guitar and vocal effects were plug-ins in Ableton Live. The guitar effect was just the freebie Audio Damage Fuzz included in the PreSonus Pro Pak, followed by a delay line. The vocal had some chorus on it.

 

The latency is next to nothing because Live has to do no work at all. All the loops were pre-stretched in other programs (Sonar, ReCycle) and imported into Live at the project tempo. So, I was running the computer at something like 4 ms of latency (the FireBox is FireWire, so latency is lower than using USB), which is no big deal.

 

The audio was capture from the camcorder mic! Took a lot of mastering work to make it sound decent :)

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Hi Craig,

 

What laptop did you use. The reason for asking is that I'm in the process of getting a PC laptop and a firewire i/f but all the laptops I see that have firewire have the small firewire connector. Any suggestion for a PC laptop with the large firewire connector?

 

Cheers,

 

Mats N

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Craig,

 

I really enjoyed the performance. Having done a one-man-band gig myself for many years, I know how tough it can be to stand naked (so to speak) in front of a crowd of people.

 

The only complaint I have is that the visual effects had me flashing back to the mid-60's. Talk about bad acid trips...

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>

 

Heh heh heh...well, that's so I wouldn't have to be "naked"...!

 

Actually I was trying to give a bit more of a "club" feel, which is the natural environment for this kind of thing as opposed to a NAMM show booth :) Now, where did I put that giant mirror ball?!?

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I Loved it!:thu:

 

I have a few questions about it:

1) Can you share with us some of what type of things you were modifying in real time. Like, are you swapping between loops, effects, modifying filters, etc?

2) Was the video effects done after the fact? If so, by who, and with what software?

3) If I'm not mistaken, it seems like it's more of an ad for Live than any of the hardware. Did your use of Live change the way you create? i.e., would you, could you have done this with any other software?

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Originally posted by amplayer

ICan you share with us some of what type of things you were modifying in real time. Like, are you swapping between loops, effects, modifying filters, etc?

I was kind of curious about that, too. Since Craig's an honest sort, he probably did have the knobs active, but in a stage performance, I'd probalby not risk anything but the vocal and guitar actually being live (or was there a turntable there, too? I wasn't sure).

If I'm not mistaken, it seems like it's more of an ad for Live than any of the hardware.

I suspect that more than an ad (the polite term is "demonstration") it was just a way to attract people to the Presonus booth where they might see some stuff they'd be interested in. I thought the FaderPort (1 channel DAW controller) was pretty neat. Now if Craig was slamming that around they'd have a real demo.

 

 

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Originally posted by MikeRivers

I suspect that more than an ad (the polite term is "demonstration") it was just a way to attract people to the Presonus booth where they might see some stuff they'd be interested in.

 

Oops. Yes you are correct. Actually "demo" is really what I should have said, and it is what I meant.

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All the laptops I've seen have the 4-pin connectors as well. The FirePort has an AC adaptor, so you can use that while running in a 4-pin setup (as I did). If you have the "full meal deal" 6-pin thingie, then you don't need the adapter (which is the case when I use it with my desktop computer).

 

I have a 6-pin FireWire PCMCIA card for my laptop, but -- dig this -- you need to power the CARD with an AC adapter! The card regulates the voltage and passes it through to the 6-pin port.

 

I asked a laptop manufacturer about this and he said something like "Centrinos blah blah current consumption blah blah out of spec blah blah" very technical stuff. Translation: If you're using a laptop, you're probably stuck with a 4-pin FireWire port and an external AC adapter for your FireWire accessory.

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Originally posted by Anderton

>


All the laptops I've seen have the 4-pin connectors as well. The FirePort has an AC adaptor, so you can use that while running in a 4-pin setup (as I did). If you have the "full meal deal" 6-pin thingie, then you don't need the adapter (which is the case when I use it with my desktop computer).


I have a 6-pin FireWire PCMCIA card for my laptop, but -- dig this -- you need to power the CARD with an AC adapter! The card regulates the voltage and passes it through to the 6-pin port.


I asked a laptop manufacturer about this and he said something like "Centrinos blah blah current consumption blah blah out of spec blah blah" very technical stuff. Translation: If you're using a laptop, you're probably stuck with a 4-pin FireWire port and an external AC adapter for your FireWire accessory.

 

Free powered 6 pin Firewire connector on every Mac laptop! :D I have never even heard, until now, of a PC Card that needed its own power supply... wow.

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Originally posted by Anderton

Translation: If you're using a laptop, you're probably stuck with a 4-pin FireWire port and an external AC adapter for your FireWire accessory.

Gee, and you used to be such a Mac guy. ;) Most if not all Mac laptops have a 6-pin Firewire connector. At least last month. :bor::thu:

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Originally posted by FunkyLaptop

I have never even heard, until now, of a PC Card that needed its own power supply... wow.

I have an Adaptec Firewire PCMCIA card that has a power jack on it, but for the $20 it cost me, they didn't even include the power adapter.

 

I can understand the concern about drawing extra power from the laptop, though. They're getting down to fleapower motherboards and are getting more battery time out of smaller batteries (users like lighter) but there isn't a lot of reserve there.

 

But speaking of bus powering of outboard stuff, switching on the phantom power on a TASCAM US-122 when connected to my laptop computer would cause the supply voltage to to the US-122 (through the USB port) to drop low enough so it would shut down, and I had to unplug and re-plug it to get it initialized again. If the phantom switch was on when the US-122 was plugged in, it would come up OK,, but I guess the initial inrush current for the DC-DC converter was too much for the little laptop. I didn't have the same problelm when plugging it into a desktop computer.

 

Out of curiosity, I opened up a USB cable, put a 0.1 ohm resistor in series with the power lead and connected an oscilloscope across it to measure the transient current. It peaked at over 3 amps for about 10 milliseconds. I belive the USB spec allows for 500 mA.

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BTW, Craig, all kidding aside, as someone who, some years ago, did a one man electronic improv/echo loop act, I thought your rig -- and you -- delivered a rich, polished pop sound. I liked the Enoesque vocal and I thought the use of harmony was a definite plus.

 

 

I wouldn't want to have to face you down at the Battle of the One Man Bands.

 

 

;)

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Originally posted by blue2blue

BTW, Craig, all kidding aside, as someone who, some years ago, did a one man electronic improv/echo loop act, I thought your rig -- and you -- delivered a rich, polished pop sound. I liked the Enoesque vocal and I thought the use of harmony was a definite plus.



I wouldn't want to have to face you down at the Battle of the One Man Bands.



;)

 

+1

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