Re: Deva vs. Aaton?


G. John Garrett, C.A.S wrote:
Let me explain some of this. First, the advantage of having its own DOS is that
consumer PC/MAC OSes are busy doing a lot of things, and one of them might be
making your master recording, unless its busy doing something else at the time.

No offence, but you've got this quite wrong. I blame microsoft's loose
naming conventions. Sure, the MARF /operating system/ is dedicated to a
single task, recording audio. I've co-written or worked in embedded
system environments like this myself.

However, the operating system is not intimately tied to the disk
format. Managing the disk is just one task of the operating sytem, and
the disk format is just a set of specifications the define the layout
of the data. It's nothing more than a driver.

That's why a Linux system can read just about any disk you plug into
the computer; legions of hackers over the years have written drivers
for fat16, fat32 and various other formats. There is no special reason
that PCs and Macs can't read each other's disks out of the box except
for Microsoft and Apple refusing to add those features to the system. I
can read either on a machine with an up-to-date linux distro.

So there is no special reason why MARF could not read FAT32, Mac
format, or any other disk layout if Zaxom wanted to write a driver for
their embedded processor. Likewise, there is nothign tos top some
enterprising Linux hacker with time on their hands from
reverse-engineering the MARF disk format and making it readable on a
PC, unless Zaxcom went to the touble of encrypting all the data (a
simple multiply-add operation in the DSP using a unit serial number
burned on an EPROM and loaded into a spare register at boot time would
be a simple way to do this).

The disk format is entirely independent of the operating system.

Partition size is variable, depending on the size/number of files, and to keep NLEs
from choking on big files it automatically splits and timestamps files when they get to
2G in size, without losing a sample.

This is more to save NLE authors from having to write their own disk
access routines, and rely on the ones available int he operating system
instead, which as I said are limited to handling 65536 blocks in any
single file.

Now, if you want to think this is merely
exploiting my ignorance, you're free to invent your own wheel. Some of these OS
features were never in the original design spec, either. They came about from
the designers listening to the ignorant customers.

I didn't mean to offend you by saying 'ignorant'. But I have to tell
you that coming up with your own operating system is not the amazing
feat of engineering some people seem to think it is. Most commercial
microprocessors have several available, although Linux is gradually
becoming the standard for all but the most low-power systems.

Don't want all the multi-user, multi-tasking facilities in Linux or
RTEMS? Just take them out of your load queue at boot. Same with other
operating systems. They are just a bunch of programs stuck together
like lego bricks: it's quite easy to just strip an operating system
down to bare essentials, and using a microprocessor to manage a display
and a DSP is not a huge deal. You'd be surprised just how far even
Microsoft Windows can be stripped down if you are willing to limit it
to very basic functions (like audio).

I used to write code for this thing:
http://www.chameleon.synth.net/english/index.shtml and in fact there is
still one sitting on my desk (#5) but I don't have time to do it
anymore. That machine was brought from prototype to producition line by
3 guys in 2.5 years. Probably half that time was spent dealing with
manufacturing and fabrication issues rather than design engineering.

I'm not dismisisng Zaxcom's hard work in any way here, but writing an
operating system that interfaces with some audio inputs, handles disk
storage, manages a touch screen and takes input from a front panel
isn't such a massive engineering task. You could make a desktop
prototype with the same functionality with about $1000 worth of
off-the-shelf components and 6 months of work.

Hell, you can make a stereo effects processor out of a Motorola DSP
evaluation kit (~$200) in a few weeks if you don't mind learning DSP
assembly language. And the math involved in making a DSP mixer is
*trivial*. It's not like we are talking about fat EQ or lush reverb
processing here.

I have heard the same thing. I found the PD6 to be not very intuitive at all.

I don't really care about that. I only care about whether it's reliable
and sounds nice. But then, I'm a geek as you above :-)

Agree about computer fans not being a good thing. But I'd say we're
coming close to a revolution in portable computing over the next couple
of years. Military grade laptops are near silent as they're not
externally vented, and if all you are doing is audio the computing
requirements are reasonably low.

.

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