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

[Axeman098]

Oh.....my GAWWWWWWD!!!! I want this more than I EVER wanted to lose my virginity as a teenager.....INCREDIBLE!!!! I am just DYING to use this in my setup. I love everything I see about this(response looks amazing!!!), just one question......Am I correct in assuming that the EQ and fader flip implementation will be available to any DAW that recognizes the Mackie protocol (ie: Sonar X1/Pro Tools 9 etc.)???? Is this implementation good for just EQ or other plug ins? Or is this feature specific to Logic only???

Marc, your skill and hard work are outstanding sir. I would hug you if I could....I am beside myself now wanting to get my greedy, grubby hands on this for my studio. My fiance says to hurry up and sell it, cuz she's tired of hearing me talk about it! lol This has to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen to reinvigorate old hardware. Whatever the Bridge Mod costs it will be worth it for the THOUSANDS of dollars it will save me on a C24 or similar control surface. Just tell me where to send the Paypal information or write the check. I am SO onboard for this....

[Zorba the Geek]

Hello Marc,

(Here is a copy of the response I made to this awesome news in the Nuendo forums.)

Congratulations on bringing the d8b back from the dead. I am very glad I hung on to my unit. I have been checking in periodically on Peter's d8b forum site and it is very exciting to see what looks like a release build of the software.

In the past, I was very disappointed with my attempts at programming the d8b as a generic remote for Cubendo, and gave up on it as a serious controller due to the resolution mismatch issues and serious functional limitations. The bandwidth issues and lag were a concern when using basic midi ports, as was the fear of depending on the d8b CPU when thinking about studio reliability.

I for one, am glad that you have abandoned reliance on the d8b's CPU box and not bothered to resurrect its DSP and audio functions. I recognize that others want it all and have asked for this, however I think you have struck the right balance. The d8b has been plagued with ribbon-cable issues, and its converters and effects are a little outdated and no longer state of the art. Not that the d8b converters sound terrible, or that the effects are bad; however using it to pass audio would not be in keeping the the modern paradigm.

It seems like the trend is towards native processing power which keeps progressing at a rapid rate, linked to great external pres & outboard conversion. The controller should be just that, simply a controller. Trying to capture too many functions in the one device is where many products fall apart. This makes upgrading any one component problematic in the future.

(I think of many of the FW and USB interfaces that try to do too much; they want to have great pres, good ADC & DAC, onboard DSP with flexible routing, and achieve this at low latency with solid drivers. Most simply cannot manage these functions equally well. If one element falls apart, or does not work the way you need it to, you have to throw away everything else when you upgrade or move on. The last generation Mackie interfaces that relied on the OEM Dice firewire chips come to mind as an example of a good product, flawed by one horrible element. A set of Onyx 800R pres linked to an RME interface for example, would make much more sense. The RME UFX, Prism and Metric Halo units, however seem to do a great job as all rounders, so it is possible. Once again however, you may not like all the elements of these all-in-one solutions.)

Your software rewrite completely resolves all of the old d8b controller issues and greatly extends the functionality of the d8b in such an elegant and useful way. Thank you so much to both you and Frank. This was a fantastic idea, well implemented, and shows what people with real software know-how can do. The d8b is a great board, and its midi functionality was so close to being usable as a good basic controller, but some showstopper issues meant it got left behind in the era of the DAW. Your product is the perfect bridge between these two worlds. Even the name is just right. Congratulations again Marc and Frank. I will be one of the first in line to purchase the software on its official release.

Please let me know if there is anything I can help with as regards bug testing, however it seems like your soak tests are throwing pretty much everything at the old d8b and its standing up under the pressure. I haven't had a great deal of time in my studio lately (as I am in the middle of a house renovation) so I'm a little out of the loop, however I have a few questions. How does your MCU implementation work with the Quick control functionality of Cubendo? Could it be made to link up, using a 4th virtual MCU? This MCU bank could then be permanently mapped to your quick controls. In this way, you could set up templates within Cubendo, with all the Quick controls you need at different points in your project, and work this way rather than on a channel by channel basis. Just a thought bubble which you may already have thought of and rejected, or maybe it's not possible. I have not really dug into the midi-learn and quick control features of Nuendo 5.5 so I may be wrong about the possibilities. Anyway just a thought.

Keep us all posted on a release date and price for the new software.

PS How have you gone about the rewiring of the power supply cable and have you thought much about sourcing a new replacement cable and PSU for your package? Considering how busy you must have been on the software side, you may not have had a chance to think about this yet, but I'm curious how this will work. Hopefully it is a reasonably standard multi-pin connector that is readily available, or I guess we can simply cut the old cable and attach a new simpler PSU.

What you have achieved is spectacular and worthy of high praise. Great work!!

Kind regards,
George

[High C Double G]

Nice verbage George! However I am not willing to "cut the cord" on my d8b yet or maybe never. It is too useful as a mixer in my set up (yes even still).

I fortunately have not had any of the troubles with my d8b that plague these forums. I bought an additional CPU, a newer 300 MHz model, and that acted up on occasion but not often enough to cause any damage time wise. Yes, when it would not boot, it was frustrating... but it would always end up booting.

There are inherent problems with "old gear" and I will not go into any of them right now (but you know this). If you live long enough you realize you can't please everyone. Marc and Frank basically started doing this to revive Marc's d8b, that was sitting in a corner. He had a thought, he acted, he collaborated, he made it happen. Amazing YES!!! The beautiful thing is that he is sharing it with the public... not for the faint of heart.

There are many ways Marc could approach this from a business standpoint, but it is his baby. At this point, we have his ear and that is incredible on its own. Innovator guys like Leo Fender had musicians come by the shop often with their input on his product and I think he was better off for it. One thing is certain, Marc is very smart and he will know what is best.

At the end of the day, we are all going to benefit (I hope) when the product is introduced. I have a "I hope" in there because I do not count anything until it actually happens. This one looks a good wager though! There is more I want to say, but this thing is already long winded. Thanks Marc! Thanks Frank! I think we are all feeling that certain feeling you get in your tummy... you know the feeling I am talking about right? Very exciting stuff!

Happy,
Michael

[Dan Worley]

Uh ummm sooo ummm

I'm speechless.

Oh, here ya go:

Fucking Brilliant!!!

c-ya,

Dan Worley

[Dan Worley]

Now some questions:

Since the d8b doesn't have touch-sensitive faders, how is writing automation to the DAW going to work? By movement?

Are we somehow going to be able to select which automation mode we want to use in the DAW from the console (overwrite, touch, latch, etc.)?

I just can't see a way of using touch mode from the console, but maybe I'm just not thinking right.

Thanks,

Dan

[Zorba the Geek]

Hi again Marc,

Sorry but I missed your reference a few pages back to a possible 4th generic midi mapper for Control room or maybe even quick control functions, etc... "As discussed before, I might do a 4th Generic MIDI Mapper to map those in Nuendo (Control Room, etc) but as of now, I'm concentrating on making all of the MCU functions ready for prime time." I completely understand and see the logic in leaving this out for now. Like you say, get the basics up and running first, see how they perform and move on to the extra bells and whistles later. My apologies for pestering you about such features now, as you must be pretty sick of the constant feature requests. I was simply curious as it would extend the feature set considerably, and seems logical given that there is a 4th button waiting for a 'custom MCU' implementation.

I also have a question as regards the VFD display. Given that there are 4 v-pots immediately below the VFD screen (which you have thankfully made scrollable), is the idea that the viewable parameters match up directly with the 4 v-pots. In the you-tube clip, it seems as though there are sometimes more than 4 parameters listed in the VFD (ie pan position etc). I assume that it is only the first 4 parameters that are assigned to the v-pots and addressable by them at any one point in time. The extra parameters which are sometimes visible in the clip I assume are simply a preview of the next block of parameter values, and these would only actually be addressable by the v-pots after scrolling across to the next screen. If this is the case, would it possible from a text formatting point of view to have the text sit directly above the v-pots (therefore slightly limiting the number of viewable parameters) in order to keep the vertical relationships neat and obvious. I assume these formatting difficulties are a result of the differing character lengths of the particular parameters (ie 3 characters for pan values [R35], versus other lengths for other parameters [GAIN], [Level], [FxOn], [FxPre] etc... Could these parameter lengths be standardized so that the character length of each data block was made to remain consistent by padding out spaces etc... Just a comment, and not really sure if you are at an in-between stage, focusing on getting things mapped and not really worried about the VFD aesthetics just yet, or possibly this is too complex to program. Either way, take it as a minor aesthetic query.

Michael, I see what you mean about not wanting to 'cut the cord', however for those like myself, who no longer use the d8b as part of their primary audio path (but rather as a headphone mixer or digital patchbay etc), we would happily re-purpose or 'cut' the large power cable, in order to make available the extended DAW functions Marc's d8b bridge would provide. As I mentioned however, maybe the best idea would be to purchase a spare large male multi-pin power connector & connect it to an external PSU in order to provide power to the console. A separate custom-made data cable for the control data would also have to be made up to communicate with the DAW. I personally haven't had too many problems with my d8b to tell you the truth; it's just that it clumsily duplicates so many functions that are now handled much more elegantly within a modern DAW. Whether it is; higher sample rates, greater pre & conversion quality with newer interfaces, more advanced automation and audio editing, better plug-in choices, the ability to quickly change mixer views etc, these are all very powerful DAW functions that are not handled that well by the original d8b OS, unsurprising given its age. I also find it annoying to have these functions spread across multiple platforms. Keeping the d8b passing audio would involve two points of potential audio or digital clocking failure & add to signal path and file system confusion. It is often hard to remember which functions are taken care of by which part of the system, when both systems can fulfill overlapping tasks. For these reasons alone, I would like to take the d8b out of the loop of actually passing and processing audio data. I realize this is not the choice of many, but I believe Marc's software is about making the d8b fit into the new DAW landscape. I think trying to force a marriage between this software and the original d8b audio functions would severely limit it's potential, however maybe Marc can overcome these concerns given how much he has already achieved. I think a modern DAW 'control room' offers just as much if not more flexibility for basic monitoring functions, and the low-latency DSP mixers within modern audio interfaces can be utilized for individualized multiple headphone monitor mixes etc...

Keep up the great work Marc, and if this constant commentary and nitpicking is too much, just let us know. I believe so many of us are just so excited by the prospect of resurrecting our d8b's, that it is hard not to dream of all the functions we would like incorporated into our ideal controller. Of course our dreams are possibly becoming your nightmare, so please don't let our expectations dampen your enthusiasm or lessen your considerable achievements getting the project this far.

Kind regards,
George

[chucklesmcfarland]

I am sufficiently stoked about this to start looking for a d8b.

It might be helpful to know what one should look for when buying for this specific purpose, since most of it's original functionality would be unneeded.

Thanks to Marc for the work on this, I have been following enthusiastically since the project started.

[Axeman098]

Chuckles (love the name btw lol) Your primary concern when looking for a d8b for the purpose of a dedicated controller is that all the faders, buttons, vpots, etc. work properly. Someone chime in here if I miss something, but while the Bridge conversion software will bypass the main functions of the D8B mixer software (and in doing so bypasses the CPU/Motherboard/hard drive as well), there IS a fader calibration feature in the mixer software that you will want to run to check that all faders are moving properly. Get the person selling you the unit to do a fader calibration for you while you watch. It only takes a few minutes, and that will pretty much tell you immeadiately whether all is good, or the unit needs faders replaced. If the unit hasn't been turned on in a while, you may want to run the calibration more than once to be sure. Also check the condition of the multi-pin connector and cable going from the rack/cpu unit to the console. Look for stretched/stressed insulation around the connector that may be exposing the wires within. That's not a deal breaker unless you see exposed conductors where the inner wire insulation has been stretched or rubbed through. This issue is caused by the weight of the primary cable pulling down from the connector. I fixed mine in about 15 minutes by disassembling the connector and wrapping the inner wires with electrical tape. Works like a champ and protects the inner conductors.

Also, and this is just MY personal IT background quirk. Check the rack peice for dust/dirt. Make the seller open it if at all possible so you can see the inside of the CPU/power supply itself. If you see dustbunnies caked on the fan grill on the back, then you can bet it's gonna be caked on the inside as well. While this isn't really a deal breaker either, it WILL give you an indication of how well the board's been taken care of, and what kind of environment it's been used in. Lots of dust, dirt and grime in the rack peice will almost certainly translate to dirt and crud in the faders on the console. Something to think about when purchasing. While fader sets aren't impossible to find, they're usually not exactly cheap, so pay close attention to the overall condition of BOTH the rack peice AND console when buying. Also, listen closely when the unit is first powered up. If it makes a lot of noise at first, then either the CPU fan or power supply fan, or BOTH may need to be replaced. Over time the plastic in the housings of these will warp, and it takes a few minutes for them to expand back into shape when powered on. The CPU fan is an easy replacement, as any old Socket 7 style heatsink/fan will work. The power supply fan is a bit trickier, but not impossible. Also, the D8B is notorious for issues with loose ribbon cables, so keep that in mind if you get one and it starts acting weird for no reason. Check the Database on here for a welth of information regarding troubleshooting and known issues. The database helped me TREMENDOUSLY with learning the ins and outs of knowing what's going on with my D8B.

Anyone else feel free to chime in if I've missed or overlooked something.

[Marc Girard]

Hello everyone,

First, let me take one minute to say thanks for the tremendous response! Looks like this video generated quite a stir, I got 600 YouTube hits in less than a week. Thank you all for your support, it's really appreciated!

Now, I've got to answer my Mac friends. Right now, I'm writing the software on a cross-platform compiler. I can easily output an executable for Windows, Mac and Linux, this is no biggy. The complicated part lies within the Application Programming Interface (API for short). MIDI is a low-level function (a serial port really) and it is implemented differently in each Operating Systems. It took me quite a while to understand the Windows API for Multimedia/MIDI. There's not much documentation available on this subject. This week, I did try to have a look at the Mac OS X MIDI API, it's a whole other beast. So, as of now, I'll concentrate on finishing the software to work correctly on Windows, there's still many things left to polish. Worst comes to worst, we could have an old PC doing just the D8B Bridge functions. Windows XP is more than enough to run my software. We could even send the MIDI info thru the network, it'd be like have a new brain for your D8B. I'm still thinking about all of this, I'll be back with a solution.

Peter, The weird numbers you see on the channel display is debug info. It's actually a test for the master meter, showing the peak value. Recently I changed it to CPU Load instead, as it's the meter I'm always looking at but it's a little distractiing so, I'll change it for something else. I still don't know what. The Read/Write button do work, I just forgot about them, 10 minutes is a short time to show all of the Bridge's functions.

AnyHorizon & High C, Hehehe, you guys noticed the fader eh? Actually, I replaced my first fader but it didn't fix my problem... I started experimenting a bit and noticed that, out of 256 fader positions, it's the lower 20s that makes the fader stick. I added a condition that never sends values lower than 20 and my fader started the work OK. It's a temporary fix but it helps. Yesterday I spoke with a gentleman who fixes D8B (found him on YouTube) and he explained to me that the faders are a little weak on the mechanical side, hence all the sticking problems.

Axeman, The implementation should work for everything. The MCU has been designed for that. I haven't shown this because I don't have a full set of plugins on my laptop, it's more of a development PC so, I've got a minimal Nuendo installation. I'll try to show more on the next video.

Zorba, Thanks for the kind words, unfortunately, I haven't found the time to investigate on the power supply. So far, it works as it is, I still need the Mackie OS to do fader calibration. I'm gonna try to reverse engineer the fader calibration routine and implement it in d8b Bridge. That way, we'll have no use for the old CPU anymore.

I'll write more next time I'm around, I'm pressed for time these days!

-MG

[High C Double G]

Michael, I see what you mean about not wanting to 'cut the cord', however for those like myself, who no longer use the d8b as part of their primary audio path (but rather as a headphone mixer or digital patchbay etc), we would happily re-purpose ....

I get you George. For me, since the beginning of owning this d8b, I have mostly kept any AD out of the signal; just for the sake of flexibility I might run a analogue signal through it but this is very rare. So for me this is just how I set it up and run it. Is it a waste of "pretty good" resources? Yes, but it doesn't bother me. I bought this board not really for the convertors or pre amps or the plug-ins, I bought it for the automation. All the other stuff is gravy (I later found out). I send 1's and 0's through it. It works really good.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear in that I desire to toggle back and forth between "the bridge" and the mixer not use the functions together --- I am pretty sure running the programs together would not work and to make it work would nearly be impossible. But I thought a Mk II version of this board was impossible, but that was before Marc Girard... so what do I know?

I am sure you know that there are maybe 4 or 5 (don't remember) different voltages that make the d8b run and I am assuming (I know bad to assume) but I assume that Marc's bridge hardware (the d8b) needs all those voltages. Also the data port IS the way in and out of "The Bridge" - early on in this thread (I know it is a long one) there has been some discussion about the power supply. For me outside of a slightly bigger footprint with the d8b's CPU I do not see any advantage to spending the money on something I already have. There also has been some discussion on the dataport.

My thinking is this, why limit function if it serves any potential purpose? You mentioned this... "I think trying to force a marriage between this software and the original d8b audio functions would severely limit it's potential"
This I agree with, it would... but I look at this as two separate pieces of equipment, "The Bridge" is one unit, the v5.1 another unit, separate not married. It seems super easy as the only hardware item would be a "safe" switch on the dataport. I don't mean to come off harsh and mean no ill-intent and I think it is really cool that we have Marc's ear now. It is truly amazing what we are seeing so far, and I think only Marc (and Frank) really how much more work there is to be done to pull this off.

Michael