TMC-1-Penta and Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 and 9.1.2

Today I revised the specification of the TMC-1-Penta to cope with 12 channel Stems. To increase the channel count from 10 to 12 it was necessary to remove one of the stereo cue outputs. The revised specification for the mixer is as follows.

Stem/Input Summing - 12
Four Stereo Cues  - 8
Mono/Stereo main mix - 2
7.1/5.1 Downmix - 8
Stereo Downmix - 2
Total = 32

Here is a revised block diagram of the monitor system

TMC-1-Penta Details

The TMC-1-Penta monitoring is based on a enhanced  TMC-1-Xmon, the changes have involved an increased channel count and removing some limitations of the Digidesign XMon hardware. The block diagram below shows the current design of the system. I expect that this will be modified to respond to users requirements.The main features at present are as follows

• Up to 64 channels on the main monitor path
• Alternate Output (8 Channel)
• Mini Output (8 Channel)
• Five 10 channel wide alternate inputs/stems
• Input and output trims
• Two Listen back Inputs
• Two Talkback Inputs
• Two Talkback output feeds
• Five Cue Outputs
• Three stereo cue inputs
• Stereo Downmix Output
• 8 Channel Downmix - 7.1, 5.1
• Meter Outputs

The complete Digital I/O and Monitoring Solution

CB Electronics (www.colinbroad.com) in cooperation with NTP Technology (www.ntp.dk) have developed a digital version of the TMC-1 monitor controller TMC-1-Penta which will be launched at NAB 2015. The TMC-1-Penta communicates with a Penta 720 or DAD AX32 over ethernet using its native protocol either directly or over a network. The software is based on the XMON version of the TMC-1 with a number of enhancements including the ability to control up to 48 channels on its main input/output and an 8 channel wide Stem Mixer. The flexibility of the NTP Digital interface allows the incorporation of extra features that are not available on Avid’s XMON.

The DAD AX32/NTP Penta combines direct connection to Pro  Tools HD/HDX/HD Native systems with superb A2D/D2A converters,  Madi, AES and SPI. The combination of the DAD AX32 / NTP Penta with the TMC-1-Penta provides a cost effective digital I/O and monitoring solution for any studio.

The block diagram below shows how to use the TMC-1 and NTP Penta 720 or DAD AX32 for digital monitoring and DAW I/O. The Penta 720/AX32 provides all the I/O routing with 16 AES I/O channels, Madi and direct connection with Pro tools as standard. Also available as optional cards are Analog I/O, Dante, SDI and other interfaces providing up to 976 input channels and 976 output channels.

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Visit NTP Technology on the Sanken/Plus 24 stand  at NAB - C4051 Hall C.

Mac Latency, TMC-1, TMC-2 Penta,TFT Remote Control

I had not realised that so much time has passed since my last post, good intentions does not get it done!

Mac OS X Mavericks and Yosemite Latency

Apple have added their own FTDI driver which has a 16milli-Second Latency, this must be disabled before the modified low latency FTDI driver can be used. See the USB422 product page for details.
http://www.colinbroad.com/cbsoft/usb422/usb422.html

TMC-1

We have now shipped over 10 TMC-1's and they have been received well. Almost every time I demonstrate it the clients give me new idea's. I have incorporated as many as possible in the latest TMC-1 software that I posted last week.  There is a prototype hardware for the TMC-1-S6 mounted in an S6 console at the BVE next week.

TMC-2-Penta

The TMC-2-Penta is a digital version of the TMC-1 that drives the NTP Penta 720 via ethernet. I am working on this at the moment and should have beta units at the end of March. The functionality will be similar to the XMon but more flexible with the main inputs and outputs up to 48 channels wide and where XMon has 2x 7.1 inputs and 4 stereo inputs the Penta version will have 1x 48 channel input and 5x 7.1 inputs.  The TMC-1 can be upgraded to the TMC-2 by adding the ethernet board.

TFT Remote Control

After testing on the prototype at Twickenham we supplied 7 TFT Remote controls (See the earlier post Tuesday, 9 September 2014). One for a DFC console(Twickenham), two for a Harrison MPC4 console (Lenfilm), four for Lawo consoles (ORF). 

TMT Cologne - TMC-1 Analog/Digital Monitoring

The TMC-1 controller for the XMon is now shipping. We will have a S6 version early next year.

Whilst at the Tonmeister Tagung we agreed with Digital Audio Denmark to produce a version of the TMC-1 which provided multi-channel digital monitoring using their Digital interfaces. One advantage of the digital version is that the number of channels is only limited by the DAW so that formats like 7.1+4, 10.2,, 22.1 or larger are all possible.

I still believe that the PD-1 provides the best stem monitoring control by keeping the stems within the DAW (Currently only on Protools or Pyramix but open to others).  One of the major advantages of this approach is that the track and stem names are read from the DAW and do not need to be entered again on the mixer.  We will include this function in the digital monitoring solution so that track and stem names are copied from the DAW to the DAD network.

The PD-1 is currently limited to 8 stems each with only 8 tracks. The next s/w update will increase this to 16 stems each with 16 tracks over two pages. Let me know if you need more!

Film Archive - TC-5, BS-1 Biphase Generator - Lock to Wordclock

It may be news that we still make the BS-1 bi-phase generator, however there is a small archive market that we still supply.

Archiving often requires the transfer of many small segments of audio, it is inefficient to transfer these individually.  Multiple segments can be spliced together using an editing table. The TC-5 can be connected to the bi-phase output of the editing table and be used to mark the timecode or feet and frames position of each join.

The BS-1 controls the film machine to transfer the film accurately to audio files with timecode. It is important that the film speed is locked to the audio wordclock or the join locations will not be accurate. In the past video syncs were used to lock wordclock, timecode, and film speed to video syncs.

Many audio transfer setups do not have a video sync reference, only wordclock.  We have modified the External reference input on the BS-1 to provide a 24/48Hz reference from 48/96KHz wordclock. This modification is available as an upgrade on existing BS-1's or MC-1's.

PD-1 and Protools 11.2.1

Bill Ritter from Electric Entertainment reported some problems when using the PD-1 with Protools !!.2.1which were not present on Protools 10 as follows

After going into record and then dropping out of record there is no output when switching to Input!

As I am in LA after the AES I went to investigate. The protools screen indicated that the PD-1 was switching the tracks to input but the only way to hear the input was to switch between playback and input on protools.

After some investigation I found that the following sequence of commands from the PD-1 will solve the problem

1) Switch to record
2) Switch to input monitor
3) Switch out of record
4) Switch back to playback monitor

A unexpected benifit of this command sequence was that  some monitor glitching on Protools was reduced.

I will add a option to the PD-1 software for this with a variable delay between steps 3) and 4), when available I will update both the PD-1 web page and this blog.

It has been over two years since the last PD-1 software update, if there are any other requests now would be a good time to make them as it will take some time to get back into thr software and test it.

I did get one request at the AES show - to switch any channel not in Record Safe to Input Monitor when stopped, I can implement this as a option at the same time.