Gear Innovation or Gear Madness?

Already be history story. Welcome, Hi the Pro Audio Suite. Thanks you guys are professional and motivated with text. The video stars George Wisam, founder of Source Element, Robert Marshall, International audio Engineer Darren, Robbo Roberts and Global Voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to try Booth, Austrian Audio Making Passion, Her Source Elements, George the Tech Wisdom and Robbo and AP's international demo. To find out more about us, check the Pro AudioSuite dot com. And welcome to another pro audio suite thanks to Austrian Audio Making, Passion heard and try booth dot get the code t rip AP two one hundred to get two hundred dollars off your try booth. Now, something quite intriguing has emerged that George found on the Sweetwater website. And I think we're guessing that it's going to be launched at NAM, but they've preempted the launch. Would that be correct? Certainly seems though because the timing of the release. So we were just chatting, like we'd love to talk about NAM and what's what we might see at NAM. So I spent a little time on the ePK flipping through the thing, and of course it's ninety nine percent guitars and performance stuff. Not much in pro audio. But there was one little box that you know, kind of peeked out in the Universal Audio. ePK section. Not universal audio. They just make a they make. A module for it. Yeah. It was kind of confusing because you see the picture of the box and there's no frame of reference for its size and the picture, so you think it's a I don't know what do they say the brick is they always did. They use the bread box as a reference of size. Talk about dated. Yeah, like in the it's bigger than a break box. No, I mean you see the things sitting there, and you're like, it looks like like a desktop mic preamp, or a power supply to enjoyment or some kind of a tube mic. Right, Yep, that's what it looks like. Even even a break for you pounce supply for your bring amps. It looks about that kind of size. Yeah. Yeah, but at first I thought it was much larger. But then when we started digging into it, we found the website for Carno is the company k A r n O dot com. The product line is called CPA and imagine a five hundred series rack concept where you have a single power supply rack mount unit that has a large a variety of modular units. Check out, check out my screen. Yeah, here's the here's the API module. Oh nice, there you go. Basically that these what are we going to cool them? Well, it's a faceless it's a faceless system. There's no physical knob controls of any kind. Correct, It's all digitally controlled through a web interface that Robert's playing around with right now. And then you're controlling analog circuitry. And all of those modules are in a rack mount. And then the rack mount apparently has redundant power supplies. So if you're doing it, and it has routing, so look at the route routing. You pick each module and you decide what its input is and what its output is. So this, this rat can do some level of mixing. I would assume like I can, I can assign this one to output one. I can go here and I can say also you go to output one, yeah, and you get input too. So this is like acting like a mixer. It would appear so cleverly. If you want to play with it right now, you can go to Carno dot com, slash CPIA. You can download, or it's not even a download, right, it's just a web page. It's just a web page that shows the interface so you can get a feel for the interface. Obviously I can't run any audio through it, but you can see all the different modules that people make, like whatever this is. Lavasonics makes a compressor, equalizer, a mic pre right apparently. And you'd presume that everything you're looking at here exists in a physical analog. Well, I think that's I think it's one of these modules that you can buy to slide into your your space, right, right. But I mean, is that an emulation of another piece of gear that we've never heard of in our entire lives? Or did? It's hard to say this. This drammer doesn't so look up the drummer DS one oh one? Is that a It's not a real piece of gear, is it not. I think what they're claiming is because I saw the eleven seventy six, the UA one of these, and it said basically, it was saying that inside the boxes all the original circuitry, or the circuitry from an eleven seventy six, right, but without any of the buttons and controls that all comes up on the screen digitally. But the thing is like, is it really all the same? I guess maybe it is like all the same stuff, but at some point. It's all the same stuff without the dirty contacts. Yeah, you know, noisy pots bad basically digitally controlled. Like they're providing the digitally controlled platform, right, and the power supply platform in a similar way. It's like five hundred series, but the control is computerized. Yeah, that's right, and you can fit a lot more in a smaller space because they don't have to have all the knobs on the front. Pretty ingenious, I will say, like a five a really new modernized concept on the five hundred series. Concept is what it seems to be. And we wouldn't I wouldn't have known about it. Well, we're going to Nam next week, so probably would have stumbled on it, but I wouldn't have known about it. But Sweetwater scooped it because they already had a skew for some of that stuff on their site. Yeah, some of the stuff doesn't look totally useful. I can't I can't click on these gain reduction. But you will be ATNAM when this goes out, so well, you can go and check one out we'll get that. I definitely will, you know, get get in line and poke around with them and see, you know something. I mean, they must make a plug in for these so that you can then put it in your dawn automate the thing right from the plug in. That's the that's their whole shtick is that it's from anywhere to anywhere, so you can route audio in and out, you know. So they must have their own internal routing setup or it just acts as a plug in. Well, they have their own internal routing within and out right, which is fine, but so so the questions I have is number one, fine, it's analog, but do they have a digital in and out like USB or at least Dante if they were really smart Dante or who knows, you know, Maddy or ad ad optical maybe, but some way of getting it in and out of your computer, you know, the smart one would also would be some sort of USB thing or to get it, you know. To and from. What you'd really like to do is drop these as. Inserts as like a u v S t art, you know, a u v S t AAX plug ins. So this module here even though it presents itself here in their interface really you want this to be in your daw so that you can automate it. Yeah, right, So it's you know, it's fun. Here's a fun exercise in sweetwater type in eleven seventy six, you know, just in the search, right, and it's got to be one of the most popularly emulated, copied or you know digitally uh emulated. Compressors of all time. Right, and there's tons of them. And the price range starts at twenty nine dollars for a plug in for AAX. Plug in, like four thousand dollars right. From you A to the real thing, you know, from Universal themselves, yep, for roughly three Yeah, what is it? Three grand? Three grand for the real deal? But go get yourself an original one, Yeah, for five thousand dollars. So I guess the question I would have does this sound like the original one? Or does it sound like the eleven seventy six l N, which is, you know, the. Modern version of the original. Yeah, I'd say like probably like the LN. Yeah, is it going to have the mode where you can smash all the but down at the same time? Well, that's what I was trying to tell here, And you can't even get to any of the buttons, right, Like, I'm like, I can't get to any of the. Oh yeah, guys did that? Yeah, because some. Of the plugins have an all button, others let you shift select these. So this thing, the module itself, just the module. So you still have to get the Carno Sepia rack nout, which I don't know if that costs the module's two grand geez Okay, so you can tell who this is for, yeah. Yeah, but if it's the real deal and you're paying what three, three or four thousands for a. Need with the faceplate knobs, the whole thing, you know, physical to two rack. Space accept except this gives you. All the benefits and all the frailties of digital, which is, this company goes out of business, some computer operating system updates and you can't use it, and all of a sudden you lost the entire front end to your two thousand dollars compressor. Yeah, it is concerning. And on the other hand, you never have to clean up another pot in your entire life. That's right, there's no more scratchy pots in contacts to clean. And I can control your preamp from here. That's kind of fun, I know. I shouldn't say this, and I'm going to regret it as soon as I saw it. But of old gear I've got here, I've never had a scratchy put. I would say that's right the same, But I smoke. I smoke a lot in the presence of my gear. Yeah, okay, Well that's part of the problem. That doesn't help. Your environment is part of it. If you're not too terribly close to seawater, it's not too salty. I am very close to sea. Well that's pretty amazing that you haven't had that issue. But it is also the quality of the gear, like you know, silver contacts. Or just the sealed pots versus the nuts. Salaled pots, right, sealed pots. Like your typical Makie mixer that a lot of people, I mean, how many people have not touched maki that's like their number one Achilles heel. Yeah, if you don't use them, they will start getting scratchy just from not being used. Because usually the way you make it not scratches go like this, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I call it exercising or jokingly exorcising. Yes, you can contact cleaner in there while. You're doing it, just twisting and exercising the knob back and forth, plugging the codeer inches in and out, you know, just burnishing all the contacts. Sorry, like like side thing. But these transient designers, isn't this just like expander compressor. Yeah, it's new, it's a transient designer. No it's not. Yeah, I'm curious with you to actually do get to check it out at them and just to have a look and see what it looks like in the flesh. I'll poke and prod at it and I'll put on headphones and I go, yeah, sounds pretty good. Yeah. I would imagine I'll have like, you know, the real one, then this one, then a DSP one you know, and you could come player. Because that was UA did that several years ago. They had this really universal audio really splashes out at right, Robert. Yes they do. I mean they have like people line up for their shows. Because they build a set, yeah, a set normal sometimes with multiple sets, multiple you know rooms. They have actors, people in models, people in costume. They have like it goes on and on. It is insane what they what they put at their shows. But they did have the rig one year where you could compare a real LA two A or real eleven seventy six with the UA D stuff, you know, and then you at the end of this four unit test, they would quiz you and the better you score, the better the prize you got. I think I got three out of four. You could tell the difference I. Guess, so three out of four. I mean that's like or I just was a good guesser. Yeah. Well, each time you had a fifty to fifty chance, right right, Yeah, you should go. To Vegas Probability exactly. Yeah, you were in front. Yeah, so there's something to look at, plus the usual finding some new microphone we hadn't seen before. Yeah. I just saw that Palusos releasing a what's twenty four? A C twenty four I see twenty twenty four, Yeah, which is a stereo that's really cool, the original. It's a very cool, very very very expensiveness. Yeah. I don't think I'll be getting more. So that's a big swing for Peluso. Small company in Virginia, not too far from where I went to Virginia Tech. And actually yeah so yeah, so it'd be some fun things to programund with. But that one is that one came out of left field right there. I had no idea. This is something actually new. Yeah, yeah, that truly is something new. So it is, but it is another compressor. It really is. How much has audio tech not changed. It's like, I don't know, the forties or the sixties. This is for a. Very well heeled touring show who has the budget to build out, you know, a rack, you know, and have. This level of gear on the road. This is for producers that want to have an analog set up and they don't want to deal. With producers touring, yeah, touring acts, you know, where the lead singers like, this is my rig. I won't go anywhere without it, And the engineers are rolling their eyes because now they have to have a road rack full of crap just for the lead singer. Now they can have it all in a single rack. Space, digitally controlled. Yeah. But I can also see it just for the producers that you know, like I'm not going to use a digital emulation of something. I'm going to use an analog emulation of it. Truth be told, I think it's freaking ridiculous. Yeah, because DSP is pretty good, but you know, I mean, this is a whole nother level of production where the money is there and the do you do. You know who needs to get into audio? Who's that company that made a brick and made it worth like ten thousand dollars because Supreme? You know Supreme, Oh, the designer Supreme. Yeah, yeah, they just need to get into audio. I mean they could make au. Did they have a brick branded Supreme and they sold it for ten grand I. Forget how much, but it was ridiculous. It was literally just a brick with their name on it, and they sold a crapload of them. I mean, you go, you can just have a brick from my backyard. Like I go begging in my garden and there's more of them than I want. And yeah, they made bricks like I don't know if it was ten thousand dollars, but it was whatever it was, it was astronomical for what a brick is. And it was just a social experiment. Can we take something that's worth utterly nothing and make it work, brand it with our branding and make. It worth Let me tell you. I don't know if anyone's old enough here, but they used to be a thing called pit rocks. Yes, I rest my case. People bought them by the truckload. Yeah, I mean, do you need it Beanie babies, like like it's happened so many times. But I think if Supreme Media Compressor and we're all we're going to make ten of them, all right, and it's the best and like twenty. That's right On that note. The Pro Audio Suite and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues just ask robo dot com. Text from George don't forget. 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