First attempt at SyncroMuse failed

[caleb]

Following the SynchroMuse tutorial I did not succeed to produce a SynchroMuse session.

All steps in the tutorial seemed to be successful at the time, but when I went to play through the Procyon I only got the recorded sound - no visuals which I had programmed in my SynchroMuse session.

Is there anyone who has had experience in programming SynchroMuse who can help me get my session to work?

Regards
Caleb

[Robert Austin]

Hi, Caleb--

I hope I can help since I wrote the tutorial!

First, when you upload the session associated with your audio to the Procyon, can you run it directly? That is, if it is appended to the factory sessions, i.e., = session 51, can you run session 51? This verifies that the session is working.

Next, which audio editor are you using to create it? If you can, open the finished file and zoom into the start of the file, to verify that the DAS header is there.

Also, be sure that you named the session before uploading and making the DAS file--this is this how the Procyon "knows" which session to associate with your audio.

Did you burn your file to a CD and is that what you are running? I know that some sound cards output audio at too high a level for the Procyon/Proteus/Sirius to properly decode AudioStrobe, so I assume the same would be true of SynchroMuse.

Check those things first, then we can delve deeper if they don't work.

--Robert

[caleb]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your reply.

I think it might have been session 52 - but no matter.
I have started session 52 to check that I'm getting the lights going and it seems to be working, so the session is probably OK.

I used Audacity mainly because I could already see from the tutorial that it was able to load files in a .raw format.

I checked the front to see the header information at the start before I exported to wav.

I definitely included a session ID in the Procyon editor before uploading the program. I also tried getting the session header when the program was already loaded just to make sure it was there.

I tested the session in 2 ways. I tested directly from the wav file in the computer which didn't work. This I would expect to work as I don't believe I've had trouble activating AudioStrobe sessions this way.

I've also tested by burning the wav to MiniDisc format. This is a compressed format, but I've used the highest setting which has worked fine for AudioStrobe sessions.

I'm definitely putting the machine into DAS mode before trying.

What I might do is perform all the steps again. I may also put a few seconds of silence before the header information just in case I'm missing part of it in playback for some reason.

But before all that, I'll perform the tutorial with the files provided. My session was 60 minutes so the whole process takes longer and I want to see it work as a proof of concept first.

I'll get back with my results.

Regards
Caleb

[Robert Austin]

The minidisc compression will most likely destroy the data--the situation isn't the same as AudioStrobe, since that is just an amplitude modulated signal for brightness control, while dAS is a precisely modulated digital signal--I would guess that if you converted the MD signal back to WAV you'd see some major distortion from the original. MP3 encoding would be similarly problematic, as it uses a somewhat similar (psychoacoustic) compression scheme. Burning the WAV file to CD would be an ideal solution.

-Robert

[caleb]

Robert - if that's the case, that would be a very disappointing outcome. Couldn't the fact that people tend to use compressed playback methods be considered when the design was formulated? Or was it just impossible to accommodate it? I understand that massive amounts of compression would be very difficult to allow for, but very high-quality compression settings should give enough room to work with I would have thought. Not judging as I don't know - just curious.

I don't have the means to burn a CD at the moment (long story), but I'll try to create the tutorial session and run it directly from my computer. I've been working on some other things which has prevented me from working on this so I'll try to do it over the weekend.

I won't be using the cheap onboard soundcard as the interference from that is terrible. I have a much higher-spec'd external USB audio interface used for semi-pro audio that should be sufficient in getting a clear signal.

Regards
Caleb

[caleb]

Robert - I quickly put together the tutorial file that comes with the Synchro tutorial on the website.

I just quickly plonked the .raw file in Audacity ahead of the mp3 file and exported the whole thing to wave. Then I loaded up the .PRw file into the Procyon editor and edited the session ID to include the info in the tutorial, then uploaded the session into my Procyon.

I loaded up the resulting wave file into one of my multi-trackers (Audacity doesn't seem to allow me to allocate which audio interface to use) and played it through my USB audio interface at full volume through the Procyon set to dAS. Nothing unfortunately.

I checked the session in standalone on the Procyon to make sure it works and it does, but the audio coming out from the wave file is not triggering it.

I did this a shortcut way, but with all the files created in the zip file, this should have been as simple as I described - yes?

I really want to get this bugger working because I have enough technical knowledge to generate various types of tones and modulate fequencies in any arbitrary way I choose using my music production software - I just can't encode AudioStrobe without access to specific software. So SynchroMuse could give me access to ways of producing sessions of amazing complexity using tools I already know quite well along with the Procyon editor. This combination could end up being more flexible for me even that NP2 or Brainwave Generator.

I really wish it would work with compression though - that's a real bummer. CD technology is actually quite frustrating in ways that MiniDisc/MP3 and other compression technologies are not.

Regards
Caleb

[Robert Austin]

Hi, Caleb--

Well, it is a bit baffling that this isn't working for you--maybe you can email me the test session you created and I'll have a look at it. BUT it was optimized for CD playback, so that content could be distributed in this way--cheap and reliable technology.

In order to make something like this work with MP3 or other compression technologies, the Procyon would have to be able to decode the MP3 file and extract the digital information. This would require an MP3 decoder chip or a DSP chip, and a deeper knowledge of how to embed non-audio information in MP3 signals than we have at present. In the present configuration, the Procyon CPU can directly 'see' the digital information and spools it in through a serial port. Anyway, it's entirely possible that a future model could include MP3 support--but unfortunately there is no way to add it to the present model!

Robert

[caleb]

Hi, Caleb--

Well, it is a bit baffling that this isn't working for you--maybe you can email me the test session you created and I'll have a look at it. BUT it was optimized for CD playback, so that content could be distributed in this way--cheap and reliable technology.

I understand this reasoning. It's just that now CD's have become awkward media from a portability point of view with the revolution of MP3 players etc...

But the advantage is that portable CD players are now VERY cheap as a consequence. I can find ways to burn to CD if I really need to - the pity is that you've only got one chance to get it right. If you want to burn a slight variation you have to burn a whole new CD.

In order to make something like this work with MP3 or other compression technologies, the Procyon would have to be able to decode the MP3 file and extract the digital information. This would require an MP3 decoder chip or a DSP chip, and a deeper knowledge of how to embed non-audio information in MP3 signals than we have at present. In the present configuration, the Procyon CPU can directly 'see' the digital information and spools it in through a serial port. Anyway, it's entirely possible that a future model could include MP3 support--but unfortunately there is no way to add it to the present model!

Robert

That's fair enough - I don't really know how you're doing what you're doing. It sounds like the signal actually isn't audio (in contrast to AudioStrobe), but some sort of meta data stored in the audio file that happens to be maintained when converting to CD format.

If that's the case, then you'd probably need to decide how many different formats you wanted to support as you'd probably have to support each format separately. MP3's definitely store tag data, I'm not sure about other compression formats like WMA and OGG etc...

To me it sounds like the next model in your range could be a really awesome device. I definitely would like to see SynchroMuse become a wider format which is freely available to other manufacturers - 1) because I don't like the licensing in AudioStrobe and 2) because I think the method of synchronisation means that you would not be limited to a particular featureset (like the two colors of AudioStrobe).

But I think to really get it out there it would be better to make it so that the compressed formats of today are as supported as possible. Otherwise, it might sound a bit dated right from the start. I mean people are using their mobile phones today as their portable media players - it's a different time.

Regards
Caleb

[Andy]

I can find ways to burn to CD if I really need to - the pity is that you've only got one chance to get it right. If you want to burn a slight variation you have to burn a whole new CD.

Hey Caleb;
You could just use a CD-RW disc which can be erases and recorded over and over again. All modern CD players (built in the last couple of years) can read CD-RW.

As far as the Procyon supporting a compressed format, that would be a big challenge. It would have to be a format something like the MP3/CDG format where there's 2 files, the 1st one being music, the 2nd one being the Procyon data. That would require the Procyon to read the files directly from a PC or have a storage mechanism inside it to read the files. That'd be a big challenge as you're talking then about something that is basically a PC to do all that work. MP3 decoder chips are easy to find, but a proprietary CDG-style decoder? I doubt there's any such thing.

MP3 came about because of the need to store more music in a smaller size. With synchromuse, people would not have gigabytes of synchromuse files, they'd only have a few. An uncompressed music file would be about 30-60megs each. Most MP3 players can play .WAV (uncompressed) files, so if the synchromuse files are just created as .WAV files and then stored on an iPod or other MP3 player, it will work the same as using a CD player. a couple of 50 or 60meg .WAV files on a 4gig or 30gig iPod is no big deal, IMHO.

[caleb]

Andy - an uncompressed wav session is about 10 Megs per minute.

As my sessions are usually 60 minutes we're talking about 600+ Megabytes - over half a Gigabyte.

A few of those and you'll need an mp3 player JUST for your SynchroMuse sessions.

If you had a miniDisc player you couldn't even fit 1 session on a miniDisc at that size.

Re-writeables is an interesting idea - I didn't realise they'd made portable CD players handle that format, a little searching around indicates that they do indeed. That is an option, but my point was really that portable CD players are not the future nor even the present anymore. So if you're going to introduce a new format it makes sense to take those sorts of things into consideration, especially given the obvious portability of the Procyon itself.

I'm not saying it's not a challenge. I still don't really understand what exactly it's doing in this case. But I doubt Procyon is going to be the last in the L&S product line for MindPlace, so I'm hoping that factors like preferred portable media players/formats are seriously considered for any future development of both the product line and the SynchroMuse format.

For me, I'll just have to buy a CD walkman of some description. Something I never thought I'd need to do - but at least the price of these are insanely cheap these days.

Regards
Caleb