Converting a D8B to a full fledged DAW Controller (w/o MIDI)

[siraltus]

Peter, I'm well aware that in controller mode DSP will not function - that's why I'm silently hoping that mayhaps after completing the control surface phase of the project and having it nice and stable, Marc would embark on phase two and get limited DSP functionality going (control room, clock card - that's all we really need). I like the sound of the Apogee clock card (call me deaf...) and don't have a thousand or so bucks to get an external clock...

[m33]

My damn hard drive just crashed on me. So needless to say, I'm ready to move this bad boy to a glorified DAW controller and ditch the audio portion completely. I have great converters anyway so I'm cool on that.

@Marc I'd definitely pay a couple hundred dollars -as long as it's Mac compatible (lots of audio guys usem). In fact, I'd even pay a little more and be willing to pay up-front to help with dev costs. All I would ask is to be on the list of first delivery.

Hit me up if you're interested.

M33

[Timbre Lodge]

OMG! I just ran across this thread from the old forum and have read the entire thing. This is so amazing we currently run dual d8bs and have been discussing our options for upgrading to the whole ITB thing with a DAW. I am old school analog, love my rotory potentiometers and my d8bs. You can count me in on the conversion/upgrade X2. Thank you Marc! You have our support.

[jumbodingo]

@Marc- Put me on the list too. Daw controller is my goal as well. Most of the mic pre style firewire interfaces are $600.00 or more. I had the Tascam FW 1884 + 2 FE 8 expanders to control my DAW and that was $1300.00 used. I'd gladly drop $500 to convert my D8b into a controller with you're "Genius Box" and cable. That's it !! G8B ... get it !! Baha

[Marc Girard]

Hello all,

Just wanted to say hello, we're kinda busy on our sides... Frank was struggling with what he thought was a serial cable problem, or a d8b bug. That held us back from making progress. Frank finally squashed the bug, looks like the d8b board can't accept serial commands faster than 50ms on each transmits. Back in the Pentium 133mhz days, I presume it was "normal", but now days the computers are so powerful and so fast that the d8b seemed unhappy about us talking to it a little too fast.

Awesome news: Frank found out how to make the jog wheel work! It's the only thing I couldn't find when I was reverse-engineering the protocol. I'd love to implement the "channel scrolling" feature like the SSL Nucleus, it's simply awesome! But, let's not get carried away, still got to do the basic stuff. Frank will probably have a video ready soon.

Take care and thanks guys for the support, means a lot to us.

Marc

[BJG]

Hi Frank. Thanks for keeping us updated guys. Amazing work!

[fishtail]

Count me in on the upgrade as well. This could be the answer many of us have been looking for: except the d8bmk2 which we all really wanted :
Thanks to all who have the skill and determination to make this happen, this is legendary stuff.
Marco

[neto117]

I've been following this thread from day one and religiously checking for updates on a daily basis, I'm eager to see the end result of all the hard work that Marc and company are putting into this project. Can't wait to be able to contol SONAR which I've been upgrading practically since it came out and haven't really used much because I din't want to give up the feel of a real mixing console. I just got finished building a dedicated audio DAW to use with sonar and hopefully be able to incorporate it to my D8B rig with the help of Marc & CO. creation... Needless to say I'm in this bandwagon from the day it started rolling...Keep up the good work.

Ernesto

[bitSync]

@Marc,

1. Is there anything about the DAW DLL interface looking like MCU MIDI that would constrict the speed limit of MIDI messages translated to d8b serial? Or does the DLL not using any MIDI device drivers overcome that bandwidth restriction?

2. Apart from the meters bouncing to the channel levels, is there anything that your approach accomplishes that a d8b MIDI mapping would not? Greater MIDI value resolutions?

Thanks

[Marc Girard]

1. Is there anything about the DAW DLL interface looking like MCU MIDI that would constrict the speed limit of MIDI messages translated to d8b serial? Or does the DLL not using any MIDI device drivers overcome that bandwidth restriction?

Well, we're still writing the code for MIDI (virtual ports and all) but in theory, the limit would be the speed of the d8b itself, 115200 bauds (around 11k/sec) which is about 3.5 times faster than your normal MIDI speed. We should be fine.

2. Apart from the meters bouncing to the channel levels, is there anything that your approach accomplishes that a d8b MIDI mapping would not? Greater MIDI value resolutions?

Yes, we'll have greater fader resolution. Actually, twice the resolution. The d8b transmits steps between 0 to 127, standard for MIDI volume control. Since our software talks directly to the board, it'll push it to 256 steps, without the infamous 0db/normaling error.

Other planned features would include:

- Full time display/location of DAW (without the need of SMPTE or anything else)
- Pan pots without rounding errors (Center will no be 1L or 1R)
- Audio scrubing with Jog Wheel
- Channel Scrolling with Jog Wheel
- VFD Display that shows selected channel name, few surprises too coming in that dept.
- Transport and locator buttons support

Got some ideas for the "channel leds" too as they will have no use... Might light up green and go red when overload happens... Still looking what to do with the "Assign" button. Might be converterted into a "read" button since it's right on top of "write". Anyway, as you can see, there's still a lot of stuff to think about!

Any ideas are welcome,

Marc