mspinky.com

hello there,



i have been using ms pinky for a few weeks now and am very impressed by it, but i have a few little problems to iron out.



The first problem i noticed is, the track will play in reverse unless i click on the file reverse (but surely it should play regular then reverse when i click reverse?)



also, i am using pre-amps and maya 44 usb with a powerbook g4, 1200's and a vetax pmc 05 mk3., it seems to run fine, kinda sluggish sometimes, but i think i need to play with the input levels of the soundcard, but... the mp3 doesnt play at the begining of the vinyl, it plays about 3 revolutions in, is this normal?



1 more, sorry about this, when im playing a tune and then press stop on the turntable, i get this wiered kinda ghostly echo noise? any ideas?



thanks for your time



djreggie

www.swillfm.com plymouths premier internet radio station

swillfm.com wrote:The first problem i noticed is, the track will play in reverse unless i click on the file reverse (but surely it should play regular then reverse when i click reverse?)

All you need to do to solve that problem is reverse the left/right inputs from your turntable.

swillfm.com wrote:
also, i am using pre-amps and maya 44 usb with a powerbook g4, 1200's and a vetax pmc 05 mk3., it seems to run fine, kinda sluggish sometimes, but i think i need to play with the input levels of the soundcard, but... the mp3 doesnt play at the begining of the vinyl, it plays about 3 revolutions in, is this normal?

There is a lead-in period at the beginning of the record. That is normal.



And yes, you should definitely adjust the input levels on the Maya 44 to get optimal performance from Ms Pinky. Open the "Maya 44 Control Panel" and bring the input levels down until you see error metric levels of between 0.01 and 0.2 or 0.3. If error metrics are above 0.3 that means you've got signal degradation which in your case is probably due to having the input levels set too high on the Maya. Another useful test to see if you have signal degradation problems is to play a normal music record through your system. (You may also want to do this to seemlessly mix normal vinyl in with your Ms Pinky set...). In Maxi-Patch, select "audio thru" in the popup menu inside the audio file player region. In BinkyToy, under "Vinyl Demod" set the menus to "Group 1/2: Off", and adjust the input volume levels under "Group1/2 In". This will allow the signal coming in from your turntable to pass str8 thru to the outputs so you can hear it. The music on your vinyl should sound completely normal playing through the Ms Pinky system. If it's too loud, too soft, distorted, not EQ'd right, then you've got a signal problem somewhere that you need to fix.

swillfm.com wrote:
1 more, sorry about this, when im playing a tune and then press stop on the turntable, i get this wiered kinda ghostly echo noise? any ideas?

Not too sure about that one. Never heard of that problem. But I suspect if you solve the other two above, it will go away...

Thanks for the help,



the input reverse was spot on,



but i am still having a few problems with my input levels in the maya 44 controll panel, i have put the input level down to pretty much zero, but i still get an error metric of between 0.1 and 0.06 ish,



i am also concerned with the ammount of cpu the patch is using, my set up is:

667 MHz PowerPC G4

1MB L3 cache

768 MB SDRAM

in the audio settings of the maxi patch on the CPU Utilization section, it fluctuates between 14% and 30%, but in my system activity monitor it says that the patch is trying to use all of my remaining CPU(which can be up to 70%!), why is the patch not realising how much cpu its using??



one more thing, i understand that i shouldnt expand the patch with stuffit, but i dont seem to have any other unzipping software, i have looked in both my applications folder and utilities folder to no evail, can you recomend a free download unzip program?



thanks again for your fast and efficiant help



tommy

swillfm.com wrote:but i am still having a few problems with my input levels in the maya 44 controll panel, i have put the input level down to pretty much zero, but i still get an error metric of between 0.1 and 0.06 ish,

If the range of your error metric values is between 0.06 and 0.1, then you're doing just fine.... note the position of the decimal point. What I'm saying is that if error metric values range between 6 parts in a hundred to 10 parts in a hundred then you've got nothing to worry about. If your error metric values are much above 30-40 parts in a hundred then there's a problem in your signal path somewhere.

swillfm.com wrote:
i am also concerned with the ammount of cpu the patch is using, my set up is:

667 MHz PowerPC G4

1MB L3 cache

768 MB SDRAM

in the audio settings of the maxi patch on the CPU Utilization section, it fluctuates between 14% and 30%, but in my system activity monitor it says that the patch is trying to use all of my remaining CPU(which can be up to 70%!), why is the patch not realising how much cpu its using??

the CPU Utilization reading in Maxi-Patch only takes into account the audio portion of the program. It ignores the video processing completely (unfortunately). So there is a big difference between what the internal CPU Utilization reading is and the readings you get using Activity Monitor. It's completely normal for Maxi-Patch to consume lots of system resources, especially since it's constantly processing frames of video.

Since your machine is a bit on the slow end of what I recommend for use with Ms Pinky, I'd have to recommend you stick to using BinkyToy (or Maxi-Patch Audio-Only version).

swillfm.com wrote:
one more thing, i understand that i shouldnt expand the patch with stuffit, but i dont seem to have any other unzipping software, i have looked in both my applications folder and utilities folder to no evail, can you recomend a free download unzip program?

There are two ways you should be able to access the built-in OSX unzipping software (called BOMArchiveHelper).



1) Hold down the control key whilst selecting the .zip archive filename in the finder. A menu should pop up with an "Open with.." option. Under the "Open with.." menu item you should see BOMArchiveHelper as one of the choices.



2) You can also find BOMArchiveHelper in /System/Library/CoreServices/



regards,



DLP

thanks alot man, you sorted out all my troubles!!,



now i will have to get the hang of the externals in max/msp!!



thanks again,



djreggie



www.swillfm.com