Did I miss something...

[anyhorizon]

I guess the dude must have partially had his way since V5 allows you to switch from the great meter to the silly LED impression. Maybe that's different.

Great story.

Peter

[anyhorizon]

I keep popping back over there to see if anything's improved. Yeah, right!!!

What about the quote thing??? Outta control.

Peter

[FrankH]

I guess the dude must have partially had his way since V5 allows you to switch from the great meter to the silly LED impression.

Actually, no. There is no "Mackie" logo on that meter...only the D8B logo...whose shape was what determined the design.

As to silly....that "digital' meter was Keith Olsen's idea as an alternative "look" while we were developing V5. Blame him.

Interestingly, there is a cute idea going on there that most people miss, because it is fairly subtle. Every "LED" is actually made up of 5 individual drawings, increasing the "lit" state intensity (1 unlit and 4 lit states from dimmest to completely lit). I did this to fill in the dB gaps between the steps. Technically, it was a way to match the number of analog meter drawings for the "tweeners" between the dB values, so the programmers didn't have to write separate ballistics code for the two versions.

This was a clever way to mimic the way Mackie's signal presence indicators behaved on actual hardware units. Persistence of vision and all that. Next time you click that view on, check it out. You'll see why they behave a little more "real" than what you see implemented on most software meters these days. One of those small details that made the D8B's Comp/Exp LED meters a kind of innovation at the time.

[anyhorizon]

OK. My apologies, Frank. I just prefer the analog meter style and chose it from the outset of V5. Old school tried and trusted ways and all that jazz. I'll check out the LED form again. Great anecdotes.

Peter

[csp]

Just a thought.

The new design looks very much like a typical "whirlpool" (? spelling) type of forum. I just wonder if they are actually passing it off/over to some other forum hosting organisation, so that they (Mackie) do not have to run and maintain it, thus possibly saving themselves money ---- money that they can invest in designing (???) products that have already been designed (and often much better) by others.

Just a thought!!!!!

David

[FrankH]

My apologies

For what? No worries.

I just prefer the analog meter style and chose it from the outset of V5

Most people do (as do I) and of course, it is the default V5 view when you first fire up the D8B.

Most everyone involved felt the LED look was a waste of resource time....and it was all we could do to shut Olsen up

But ya know...over the years I have come to appreciate that view when the REDuction mode is invoked.

Then, it sort of looks the way the old DBX OverEasy line of boxes did.....except for the curve. There was no way around that because we needed to label each step value...and a straight line took up too much real estate. Initially, we did try a straight line... but it was so short that I could only fit in and label about 5 or 6 steps. And that was unacceptable. Additionally, that element had to fit over the analog meter without intruding into the space allotted for the rest of the controls surrounding the meter itself.

Classic example of form following function.

[anyhorizon]

A D. Lee sent me a very nice message explaining the other forum's status (he's been charged with working on it). Seems he has a considerable learning curve that he's attempting to navigate. It also seems that much is lost if I'm to read it correctly. Shame. Oh well, there's only a few things missing from the DB here.

Peter

[High C Double G]

It's a brand new year!!! yippie I A... Been a while, lots going on, hardly any money, glad everybody is fired up!!!

verification R2X333

JK...

Michael

[anyhorizon]

RHETORICAL POLL:

The Star Wars rating system over there is:

1. Infantile
2. Silly
3. Of No Use
4. Disconcerting
5. Something that I would rather have never seen
6. All of the above and a few other things.

BTW, nearly all of us are Jedi Masters. WooooHoooo!

You Padawans better get your post counts up.

Mike is a Yoda.

Peter

[High C Double G]

I don't know but there are a lot of trekkies and they are goo goo over that stuff. I don't know enough about it to know what any of it means. I got dragged out to Mann's Chinese theater in '77 or something like that to see the original and over time I have seen bits and pieces on cable TV and that is about my story on that. I did like the space warp acceleration thing though!
Michael

EDIT: I am showing that I really don't have a clue, a trekkie is Star Trek; and Jedi, Luke and the gang is Star Wars.

Carry on