CYGN-B

[Greg]

Brian can correct me, but I believe that our ADATs were modified so they could pass DC signals. This was necessary for the imagery and color channels, but not the audio channels (though I believe all 8 channels of the deck were thusly modified.) We did not use optical output. I have no documentation on the ADAT modification, unfortunately. Hopefully your recorder inputs are also DC coupled!

Thank you, Ron. Yes that would be great if you would zip and send the PDFs, then I'd know nothing is missing.

I think what is supposed to happen is ADAT tape optically transfers to ADAT HD24 so no loss, then transfer to PC through ethernet, so no loss, and then all the original lossless digital data is available for output or further decoding (of the 352) and finally output of signals including DC using MULTABELA. Therefore DC coupling on any of the ADAT machines is irrelevant.

[laserist]

This thread:
https://www.photonlexicon.com/forums...Guide-Expanded
May help...

[laserist]

I could be wong but I think only the inputs were modified on the 8 channel ADATs to eliminate the capacitor coupling and the outputs were dc coupled by default. Since you're just playing back it doesn't matter. But I could be wrong...

[laserist]

Well... There's your problem... A Zeiss flash drive (Sorry Brian... but you work for a subsidiary. They must be keeping the GOOD drives in Germany!)

Let me know what's missing and I'll send it along to you. Or maybe I just zip up all the 6b documentation in one file?

Ron

Technically, I work for an exclusive distributor of the Zeiss Planetarium Division. (USA & Canada) Seiler's founder apprenticed at Zeiss and after WWI, studied in Jena, and earned his Master's in Fine Optics. He immigrated to the US in 1925 and started Seiler Instruments in 1945. And yes, you can call me a Zeiss "fanboy". It's a very cool company, with an amazing history...

[Greg]

Sorry to follow with something so mundane. I can't get the win10 or win7 PC to connect to the HD24. I have installed an FTP client called filezilla. I enter the ip address, username and password and click quick connect. I have read that a crossover cable isn't necessary. The output says can't connect to server. There may be someone working in a local music store who I will try to reach tomorrow who may have had experience with this.

[laserist]

It was almost 10 years ago, so accuracy??? I think I just put the IP Address into a browser or the file explorer. What sticks out in my memory was how slow the transfers were.

[Greg]

The FTP connect problem has been solved. It appears there are two 24 track shows on one of the DS bays. Shown is an overview of the 11 tracks that have so far been downloaded. It takes about 15 minutes for each 46 minute track. There are two audio tracks. Some of the other tracks are almost certainly XY vector content, and track 6 sounds like it might be 352 data. After sleep I'll pull the rest of the tracks and put a scope on to see what is there.

[Greg]

One piece of java code to read two mono 24 bit wav files, discard each sample's LSB, and make a 16 bit stereo wav file later, we have a look inside what I think is the show seen in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LWSr90eQPY

I am surmising the following:

Tracks 1 to 5 are for an XYRGB projector that only comes on in certain parts of the show to play cartoons.

Track 6 and 23 are probably SMPTE and MIDI. There is no 352 data on any tracks.

There are four groups of three tracks each that are X, Y, and a third track which sounds like it is mostly DC offsets. Perhaps this third track of each group is intensity, though I'm not sure how the bipolar signal would be interpreted for intensity. All four of these channels have similar content that includes what appear to be both animations and spiral graphics. There is distortion, I guess due to the signal being pre processed for accurate playback on some type of scanner configuration. It would be nice to know how to correct for this distortion so the the content on these four channels could be used.

Well, all this isn't all that interesting, except for tracks 15 and 16. These tracks present a bit of a mystery. They look like an XY signal from a 6B including at least one passage which probably is a live performance by a laserist, and which involves a CYGN-B. It is going to be interesting to view this pair of tracks when synched to the audio.

[james]

Perhaps the bipolar intensity signals are supposed to go through a bridge rectifier with a little bit of capacitor smoothing?

[Greg]

Perhaps the bipolar intensity signals are supposed to go through a bridge rectifier with a little bit of capacitor smoothing?

Perhaps. Perhaps they are meant to frollick in fields of asparagus with a bit of banana oil on their calipers. Sorry, I don't know why I said that. You are probably right actually.