Looking to loose the ADAT FB3?

[Bradfo69]

Ye of little brain is going to chime in with one other issue I personally ran into with a soundcard DAC - and one that took DZ to resolve. The output from the DAC was full power, meaning the image was H.U.G.E. The only way make it smaller was to lower the volume on my laptop. What that did, in turn, was to lower the volume of the music and the brightness of the laser image. That meant needing to get a UGC from LSDI which was a $500 investment that I ended up making. That, along with a $150 Audiolase DAC ($185 with shipping) meant I was at more than Quickshow/FB3 money to play wav files.

Dragging around the UGC wasn't fun so between buffo and DZ, they built me a small box with gain and offset controls and an estop button. This was pre - DZ splitter days and, Layla modification project which have similar controls built in, rendering the UGC and box they built now kinda a part of "the pile".

Now.... most hobbyist laser geeks know far more about electronics and building this stuff than I do and if your building a soundcard DAC for yourself, you certainly can build a box to control gain and offset but, that just wasn't in my wheelhouse.
The Audiolase works great and I have three of them (2 are backups) and I also have a soundcard DAC built by James I've never used. So, yes, they do work ok. I just suffered some additional expenses.

[james]

Really? James, I was excited that asked me to help with the new correction amp layout a while back. It was unfortunate that you had no interest in any of my ideas to help improve the product....

flecom, swamidog, thank you for the kind comments, it's very much appreciated!

Yes. Really Dave!

I asked you to lay it up for me in circuit CAD for fabrication and you didn't want to do it on a single sided copper board.

I don't want a double sided board and I don't want the extra parts and complexity of differential outputs.

It's a kit! It's supposed to be easy to assemble and use.

So I worked it out by learning a lot from Chris Favreau.

That turned out for the best, because now I know how to do it.

I have NEVER had anything negative to say about your design work.

But when I suggest that some of your devices might be supplemented with some of the features found in my application or by the use of my kit, that is not met with any enthusiasm at all.

@Bradfo69 All you needed to do was turn down the gain on X and Y in the correction amp. Gain and offset is what the correction amp does.

James.

[flecom]

Yes. Really Dave!

I asked you to lay it up for me in circuit CAD for fabrication and you didn't want to do it on a single sided copper board.

I don't want a double sided board and I don't want the extra parts and complexity of differential outputs.

It's a kit! It's supposed to be easy to assemble and use.

So I worked it out by learning a lot from Chris Favreau.

That turned out for the best, because now I know how to do it.

I have NEVER had anything negative to say about your design work.

But when I suggest that some of your devices might be supplemented with some of the features found in my application or by the use of my kit, that is not met with any enthusiasm at all.

@Bradfo69 All you needed to do was turn down the gain on X and Y in the correction amp. Gain and offset is what the correction amp does.

James.

if you need any help with board design I kind of do it for a living now

I use EAGLE mostly

I can design for simplicity (etching etc), size, or ease of manufacture

[james]

I used Eagle.

It's one of those amazing free software applications.

It knows how to read and write standard file formats used in the industry.

James.

[mixedgas]

Yes, there is a defacto ILDA standard for ADAT modification. It uses the differential outputs on the XT. There is also a ILDA standard for the track assignments. Since James has refused to join, he does not have access to it.
ISP standard covers the ADAT. Holding a copy in my hands.

Since IDN is coming, the Data layer can go right to the Phy layer. Ie come right off the hard drive with the correct application. Rendering waves useless once IDN becomes common and inexpensive.

Ilda Digital Network.

Hardware is already available. Software will come. Chipsets are available for license. Will probably be a full standard within a year.

In fact there is a sponsored academic project working on measuring and dialing out the computer side latency. Read the academic paper on it today.

Steve

[DZ]

But when I suggest that some of your devices might be supplemented with some of the features found in my application or by the use of my kit, that is not met with any enthusiasm at all.

I *might* have a grand total of 10 minutes messing around with Laserboy... I've never had the time to sit down and understand Laserboy, so I really am not sure how I can comment much on it. Audacity, Foobar and N-Track currently do everything I need.

Since IDN is coming, the Data layer can go right to the Phy layer. Ie come right off the hard drive with the correct application. Rendering waves useless once IDN becomes common and inexpensive.

I'd bet that in 10 years wave will still be alive and well.

[flecom]

I'd bet that in 10 years wave will still be alive and well.

Considering you can find black face adat decks that are old enough to legally drink I agree!

Wave (or flac) is a great archival format since it's pretty much platform independent

[masterpj]

As in "professional" the sound card dac will not do off course.. but honestly it does the job so then again it has its uses...it's accessible which is why I think the approach of using a sound card is rather cool and neat still and I love the whole idea of using accessible parts for experimenting.. Which is why I actually do love the sound card dac approach from that aspect... like or instance in an experiment where you want to go as DIY as you possibly can.. It's fun and educational.

But if you have the budget to go for an easylase or riya or something.. that would be the thing I would rather recommend.

[james]

Yes, there is a defacto ILDA standard for ADAT modification. It uses the differential outputs on the XT. There is also a ILDA standard for the track assignments. Since James has refused to join, he does not have access to it.
ISP standard covers the ADAT. Holding a copy in my hands.

Steve

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

"refused to join"

Am I supposed to feel compelled to join ILDA?

You've got to be kidding.

I think we both know that the ILDA specs USED TO BE in the public area of the ILDA web site. Not anymore since the "Format Wars".

http://laserboy.org/formatt/

You might also remember that I owned two black face ADATs and I modified one of them to record and play back the First Night Akron 2004 laser show that I designed. We used the quarter inch SINGLE-ENDED outputs of the ADAT machine fed through an op-amp booster that I also made to get the signals to the right peak voltages. Not much point in worrying about the color signals, since you failed to build a proper projector with the Argon and Krypton lasers and the PCAOM you had to work with for two months prior to that date. (That was my introduction to the art of laser display.)

Dave, we talked about using LaserBoy to convert wave to vector art. You said you had some problems with it. You sent me an example wave you made and it opens perfectly in LB. I posted in your thread. That didn't go too well.

Steve offered up to $2000 for a program that could convert waves to ILDA. LaserBoy has been doing that since well before it was released as open source in 2008. I'll take that $2000 any day Steve.

MasterPJ, LaserBoy DACs that I made myself and sent to people are being used to do "professional" laser display by legally licensed laserists.

I have been programming since about 1980 and my focus has always been art. I have a lot of experience with graphics and digital audio. Laser display is where they come together to become one.

I am not at all hard to contact. I try to answer most questions that come my way.

Maybe I should be careful. I might get banned ... AGAIN.

James.

[james]

Since the title of this thread includes the word ADAT I went on about that matter.

Perhaps if anyone wants to comment further on my comments here it should be done in the new "The LaserBoy Thread"

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...aserBoy-Thread.

James.