Topic: ADAT Playback

[meandean]

If they aren't for playback then how do you play them back?

Simple... You open the box, assemble the parts with the provided tool, and voila! Now you have a useable piece
of furniture that wouldn't have otherwise fit in your car for the ride home from the Internet Cafe.

[James]

Exactly. 

James. 

[meandean]

 If your goal is to reduce an ADAT show into a more manageable size for download on the internet then here goes...

 Strip away the stereo music and package it as a separate mp3 (this will make the re-assembly a little more complex, but you can't beat the reduction). Take the remaining 6ch laser stuff and use the bit resolution reduction features of LaserBoy to clean up the noise on the channels, making the result MUCH more responsive to ordinary zip compression without destroying the quality. For example, reduce the X-Y to 12bit, and the color to 6bit for each ch, THEN zip it. I tried this on some ADAT material and was able to reduce the data down to 20-25% of normal size without wrecking it.

[BlinkenLights]

FYI my experimentation shows that RAR packaging is way more effective for laser signas..

[meandean]

FYI my experimentation shows that RAR packaging is way more effective for laser signas..

  How much more?

[BlinkenLights]

See for yourself.. same data (laserboy in.ild saved as wave at 1 frame per second)
both compressed using winrar
zip was at BEST compression
rar was at BEST compression

results are CLEAR !

[James]

This wave compression technology would only be necessary for waves NOT made with LaserBoy!

If you want to make a wave using LaserBoy, the most compact information by far would be the ILDA file and the WTF file in a zip or rar. That would transfer over the Internet well and when the recipient gets it all s-he needs to do is load the ILDA file and the WTF and save as wave.

James. 

[flecom]

I am still not seeing the problem with FLAC... its a widely accepted format, it supports 8 channels (I have many flac files that are a single file that have 6~8 individual channels of audio) and doesn't require extra steps of rar/unrar etc

[Fanny Pack]

I agree with you about FLAC.  Seems like it would work just fine.  However, I see a problem with it in that the person on the other end would most likely need to tweak the file (blanking, color shift, etc) to match his system characteristics.  I'm not sure how LaserBoy deals with that sort of thing.  In mine, the optimization settings are independent of the frames file and can be adjusted during playback.

[James]

LaserBoy has several parameters to tweak for best performance on a particular projector.

LaserBoy waves also have embedded information in them so that LaserBoy can convert them back into the original, framed vector art from whence they came; to be re-optimized and re-saved as wave.

Again, that is irrelevant with regard to waves made on an ADAT by recording the analog outputs of some other DAC.

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

Hmmm yea, I see that.  I guess that is why ILDA tuning was probably pretty important for that. 

[meandean]

I am still not seeing the problem with FLAC...

  Nothing against FLAC- I just haven't played with it yet (my first instinct is to explore options
that don't require a re-code first).

See for yourself.. same data (laserboy in.ild saved as wave at 1 frame per second)

  Waves of pure digital origin don't count (free of D/A - A/D noise artifacts that make things
less than responsive to compression), but even with that said, Winrar seems to be the winner here
(good find! ). Separating the audio to mp3, and using LB bit reduction mentioned earlier,
results are in the order of 15% of normal size with some ADAT material I've tested; approaching a 7:1 reduction.

  The only drag is to up-convert the mp3 audio back to wave and sew it back on in LB on the user end (some assembly required)...

[flecom]

well I converted a bunch of hour long ADAT shows I had into 8 channel (x,y,r,g,b,smpte,l,r) FLAC's using Audacity and successfully played them out of my sound card dac... was nice having one file... file size was just over 1gb for an hour+ long show

[James]

You can use LaserBoy to bit reduce the X & Y to something less than 16 bits, like 10 or 12, and the R, G, & B to 9 bits (8 bits plus the sign bit).

First use Audacity to normalize X & Y together and R, G, & B individually.

Then use LaserBoy to apply a bit resolution mask on the whole thing. If you do that, all you will be throwing away is noise.

It also bumps up the color saturation to max for the best and brightest output, regardless of the analog signal levels in the original ADAT recording.

I bet the FLAC file will be much smaller.

Someday, I want to write a whole bunch more wave stuff. I've got all the ideas, I just need to get a round tuit. It would be nice to have one step, pure digital ADAT-wave remastering.

James.