All very valid points.
It's a sd card playback capable unit like a RIYA or Etherdream, or any point streamer that doesn't really manipulate the output.
All very valid points.
It's a sd card playback capable unit like a RIYA or Etherdream, or any point streamer that doesn't really manipulate the output.
Four tapes converted last night at a friends house, and with a mouse. I cant disclose details as to whom, what, where, and how. But it works, and it works well. More would have been done , but he has a tired spouse.
And yes, he owns the rights to his work.
Steve
Qui habet Christos, habet Vitam!
I should have rented the space under my name for advertising.
When I still could have...
Steve,
I just ran across this thread and re-read your very first post. Interestingly enough, there was no specification in that post about the nature of the WAV files being converted i.e., would those WAV files already be the "sequenced analog voltages" that are direcly fed to laser modulators and scanners (i.e. the kind that would have gotten onto ADAT from a computerized source or analog abstract generator in the first place), or are the WAV files merely audio -- for example from ancient systems that encoded the "sequenced analog voltages" in the form of FM on audio tapes?
If the former, then what you described is EXACTLY what we have had in LC-ADAT for more than ten years, including the preview, etc. However, if the latter, then I can understand the motivation for taking digitized copies of the FM and then converting those to laser. This is a step beyond converting from ADAT, because converting from ADAT would require that you have sequenced analog voltages in the first place.
So if, for example, you had both the old FM-encoded tapes AND ALSO the FM-decoder boards (called "modems" back then), then those original FM tapes could be decoded using the "modems" and then THAT could be placed on ADAT, and then our conversion program could be used. But if you only have the FM tapes, then converting from the FM to sequenced analog voltage would need to be done first.
I too have FM-encoded reel-to-reel tapes sitting up in my attic that are 30 years old, of the shows that me and other colleagues made in Daytona Planetarium, and I thought about writing FM-to-analog conversion algorithm. This would not be terribly difficult. After that, turning those resulting sequenced analog voltages into frames would be trivial FOR US, since we have had that technology built into LC-ADAT for more than 10 years.
Nevertheless, I actually wonder how 30-year-old (or even more) show programming would "play" in today's market. At Daytona Planetarium we used really advanced show creation techniques which actually served as the basis of what we delivered later on in the form of Lasershow Designer software and even Turbo Track amplifiers. We were on the cutting edge, and the shows looked great thanks to an expert show programmer as well as the technology we had at our disposal. At least that was my memory... However, as I mentioned in another post, memories can be deceiving... (see http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_l...of_memory.html) It could very well be that old show material would look.... well.... old!
Incidentally, in the late '90s, I was called in to convert the FM tapes originally made for the LoveLight laser show. This may very well have been the first true laser show ever done. Memories of that show, and even pictures of it look impressive, and can be found on the Internet Archive here: http://web.archive.org/web/200804151....org/first.htm
However, as I converted those FM tapes to ADAT and looked at the old show programming material (material we were all very interested in, and enthusiastic about), it looked.... well.... old! So eventually the idea of resurrecting the original LoveLight show and using the original LoveLight show material was abandoned.
For that reason, I have left those old tapes from Daytona Planetarium in the attic. This way I can have my font memories about the shows we did (and even newspaper articles which showed some of the images). Pleasant memories of how great the old shows were may indeed be more satisfying than watching just how bad the shows really were since the technology was really "stone knives and bear skins" by today's standards
Bill
my shows vary from 45~50 mins, so even with 512mb ram it's a nogo...
but I work around it, I cut up the shows into individual songs in Audacity and then convert them one song at a time through LC-ADAT...
the only reason I wasn't a huge fan of doing that previously is playing them back in AutoPlay left long pauses between songs to load the frame file..
but now in Beyond I can just drag all the songs onto a timeline and play them without pauses and without worrying about running out of memory
Is there anything other than Laserboy that can do audio-to-ilda ?
I create analog laser shows with a modular synth, record to laptop via adat, playback from laptop into adat>ilda box.
i'm looking to convert my analog laser show recordings into ilda so i can launch them with quickshow or something, and just use my laptop and FB3 when i travel, instead of bringing all my adat/ilda boxes etc. a nice minimal streamlined setup for playback.
sorry for bringing this thread back from the dead.. i forgot that i made a new thread on this topic the other day..
Qui habet Christos, habet Vitam!
I should have rented the space under my name for advertising.
When I still could have...