D8Bridge & Logic

[Marc Girard]

Hello guys,

Here's a new video of an experiment I did with the new D8Bridge v1.1 and Apple Logic. More on this will be posted soon, but I might have a surprise down the road for my Mac friends!

[m33]

+1

[Marc Girard]

Here's another video of this experiment. This time, there's no laptops/PCs running D8Bridge. It runs straight from the D8B CPU. It has the advantage to be completely independent of the DAW. It's been improved even more since I made this video...

[Badbass780]

Marc, You are the M****r F*****g Man! Genius like yours comes around once in every few decades. We appreciate ALL of your hard work and sticking with this project for us Macheads. This other joker (kaume) is running Logic Platinum 5.5 on Windows XP and trying to pass it off as authentic Apple Logic Pro. YOU Marc are the genuine article, Thank you for making dreams come true, my money is ready for your bank account as soon as you get things ready. I'm SUPER amped and so are all my my studio owner friends. It's payday, brother!

Salut!

[Petersueco]

Here's another video of this experiment. This time, there's no laptops/PCs running D8Bridge. It runs straight from the D8B CPU. It has the advantage to be completely independent of the DAW. It's been improved even more since I made this video...

Nice work Marc!

One question: Would it be possible to have a dual boot-up program to choose between D8Bridge mode and Mackie OS mode at start up?

[Marc Girard]

Yes, probably! That's part my TO-DO list for D8Bridge Version 2.0! But if everything goes as planned, you won't have to Dual-Boot anymore...

[Petersueco]

Yes, probably! That's part my TO-DO list for D8Bridge Version 2.0! But if everything goes as planned, you won't have to Dual-Boot anymore...

Are you planning to bring the audio capabilities of the board into the D8Bridge app?
Or are you making the d8bridge to run parallel to the original software?
I can't see myself giving up the audio part of my console.

[NigelC]

Hello Marc,

Firstly I must congratulate your genius on your achievements so far and my comments elsewhere are not criticisms but observations. I have found flaws in both the D8B and Mackie MCU as far as ergonomics.

One comment I wanted to follow up on is where elsewhere you mentioned the fader resolution being 256 steps. As you have emulated MCU I am puzzled why its not 1024 steps as the MCU fader protocol is I believe using pitchbend I think for fader messages and somehow they managed to squeeze extra fader resolution as even though its via MIDI the actual data is not?

I think the real challenge would be to somehow create the MCU 'layer' within the existing structure. I.E. keep the 1-24, 25-48 and Masters layers as is and somehow hack the HUI layer to function across all 24 faders. I kind of like the way the HUI layer works (I especially like the fact in Logic at least Rec, Channel Select, Assign, Mute, Solo, Pan and Fader all work as expected).

Do you think you will ever achieve something like this? Its a shame to lose the audio capabilities.

[Marc Girard]

Are you planning to bring the audio capabilities of the board into the D8Bridge app?

Yes. I've got big plans for version 2.0. I'm still designing and testing out stuff but here's my main goals:

- Write a dedicated "D8Bridge Server" that runs on the D8B Computer. That "server" would handle all the surface and DSP data over Ethernet, so no damn serial cables would be needed between your DAW and the console anymore. My original design had it working (see my first videos, when I had only one fader moving). It would be some sort of an embedded Linux system... (That step is almost complete!)

- Write a D8Bridge client that could run on PCs & Macs (running the data over Ethernet/TCP/IP greatly simplifies the porting, the MIDI handling etc.). That client would look a bit like D8Bridge v1.x but with an "IP Address to D8B" field instead of a "Serial Port".

- If I succeed at the first two steps, nothing keeps me from reverse engineering the DSP side (the audio portion of the board). Since it'll be included in the Ethernet line. I'd try to at least include some basic routing, mixing and main monitoring. I'm talking over my head now as I didn't even started to look at the DSP protocol.

- Finally, in my wildest dream, I could use your nice D8B graphics and use it as a "new D8B OS" scheme. I mean, I'm dreaming of a "DAW / MIX" switch that would toggle between the two modes so we could have the best of both worlds. Something like double-clicking on a special D8B button would shift modes... That'd be fantastic. And since I got complete control over DSP & Surface, nothing could keep us from mixing in our DAWs (in DAW mode) and have a window on screen with the "MIX mode" we can edit with our mouse (for quick changes) and if you want to get down to business, switch to "MIX" on the board, and voila... You're routing your audio...

So that's the plan Stan!

[Marc Girard]

One comment I wanted to follow up on is where elsewhere you mentioned the fader resolution being 256 steps. As you have emulated MCU I am puzzled why its not 1024 steps as the MCU fader protocol is I believe using pitchbend I think for fader messages and somehow they managed to squeeze extra fader resolution as even though its via MIDI the actual data is not?

Yes, the D8B has a physical limit of 256 steps. The MCU protocol works with 1024 steps indeed. So, D8Bridge "upscales" the D8B fader position/value to MCU's specs. In dev language, it's an 8bit value which gets converted to a 14bit value. So, in the end, we still double our fader resolution. Why? Because if you use standard MIDI messages from your D8B, you get down-scaled to 128 steps (normal MIDI control messages are limited to 128 positions).

I think the real challenge would be to somehow create the MCU 'layer' within the existing structure. I.E. keep the 1-24, 25-48 and Masters layers as is and somehow hack the HUI layer to function across all 24 faders. I kind of like the way the HUI layer works (I especially like the fact in Logic at least Rec, Channel Select, Assign, Mute, Solo, Pan and Fader all work as expected).

Do you think you will ever achieve something like this? Its a shame to lose the audio capabilities.

Please read my previous post (the reply to Peter) you'll see what I have in mind for the future!