Re: [NEO Makers] Digest for neo-makers@googlegroups.com - 3 Messages in 1 Topic

[Bob Sopko]

Ian,

Here is a reply from a friend who has been a professional sound designer for over 20 years.



While I have the general idea of what you need to accomplish, is it absolutely necessary to output to the hysteresis circuit via a sound card?

Many synth modules and breakout boxes for midi and audio production are designed to facilitate some fairly complex routing scenarios. If you don't absolutely have to route via an internal sound card, there are probably a hundred ways to get the discreet signals where they need to go. There are a ton of old rack synths that would do the job - even a Roland JV1080 or something similar. You jut hit the external synth via a couple of midi channels. Many break-out boxes from M-Audio, ProTools, and Mark of the Unicorn also permit the routing of audio signals via a number of discrete outputs.

Best of luck in your endeavors!

Steve Simmons 
steves...@rocketmail.com

Bob

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 10:20 PM, <neo-maker...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/neo-makers/topics

• Audio Challenge [3 Updates]

 Topic: Audio Challenge

Ian Charnas <ian.c...@gmail.com> Feb 14 03:20PM -0500 ^

 
Hey hackers, I'm running into a hurdle with the Tesla Orchestra and
was hoping one of you clever people might have a solution for us.
 
We are looking for an audio application that will let us record from a
MIDI keyboard, and play back using various drum and synth sounds.
There's LOTS of software that does that, but our particular challenge
is that the different tracks need to be output to different sound
cards.
 
Background: Basically in our main computer, we have one sound card for
outputting the synth and drum tracks, and then two more soundcards,
each outputting to a hysteresis circuit that converts everything to a
square wave and sends those signals over fiber optics to our two new
tesla coils.
 
any tips on how to get different audio tracks to play out of different
soundcards? Can Sibelius or AudioMulch or something do this?
 
any help would be greatly appreciated
Ian


 

Paul Tagliamonte <pau...@ubuntu.com> Feb 14 03:22PM -0500 ^

 
I feel kinda tacky for saying this, but I gotta plug F/OSS, such as
PulseAudio on something like Debian or Ubuntu.
 
Rosegarden will do you well :)
 
-Paul
 
 
--
#define sizeof(x) rand()
:wq


 

Paul Tagliamonte <pau...@ubuntu.com> Feb 14 03:22PM -0500 ^

 
Sorry, Jack! Not Pulse.
 
-Paul
 
 
--
#define sizeof(x) rand()
:wq


 

[Ian Charnas]

Bob thanks! Indeed we don't *need* hardware hysteresis, there are VST
plugins that can output a square wave, it's just a nice safeguard.
Even with software hysteresis, we still need a circuitboard to convert
the signal to fiber optic (you don't want anything conductive going
from you to a 2 million volt tesla coil!) ... so as long as we need a
circuitboard there, we might as well put in hysteresis and usb audio
modules to save space. The rack-mount unit would solve one of the
challenges (the multi-output), if it weren't for needing fiber optic
output and needing to fit all of this inside a shielded metallic
briefcase we found at HGR surplus.

anyways, thanks!
Ian