FYI,
There is an ebay auction for a mono nextstation complete system. It says it has a "Digital Ears" interface attached, whatever that is. The auction is currently over $100usd, which is out of my range, but someone else might find it interesting. Unfortunately the auction is ending in 2h or so (Sep-11-06 14:02:10 PDT), which does not leave much time.
NeXTStation with Digital Ears Ebay Item number: 120027977927
Chef
Went for $161usd not including shipping.
I had been watching that one. The 'digital ears' thing intrigued me.
Quote from: "helf"I had been watching that one. The 'digital ears' thing intrigued me.
Anybody know what the digital ears thing is? From the limited description and pic it appeared to be some sort of external audio I/O interface. Below is a link to a google cached next magazine article that mentions it.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:kuQfXr3rZooJ:www.ex.com/next.ex.com/nextworld/92.1/92.1.Spring.MediaStation.html+next+%22digital+ears%22+audio&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6&client=firefox-aChef
I was wondering the same thing myself.
I did see an old article just the other day (I think it was on the computer museum website) talking about NeXT machines saying that they had facilities for voice commands through the DSP...
Could the "digital ears" have anything to do with that?
QuoteAnybody know what the digital ears thing is?
AFAIK Digital Ears are working in conjunction with software like Soundworks and gives two cinch line-ins for digitizing something. (old music cassettes or vinyl records)
Shure that it can also be use to digitizing something from a micro.
I am the one that picked up the box, if you see my other post, the box has stopped working after running for 4 hours. ;( . The digital ears provide 44.8 sound input, I have tried to research it more but have not found any info via Google.. no manual or other info was included with the purchase. It is a rare item as far as DSP breakout boxes goes and still worth the buy if the box is hosed from a collectors point of view. The guy that I got the box from was in NC and used it to write his thesis on digital music creation. I was intending to cary the legacy on with the machine for soundz.
On another note, it is almost a home coming for the machine as I am in San Jose and about 7 miles (11Km) from the old Fremont, CA. NeXT assembly facility. If only I can get the machine back up and runninng and put it back to it's intended use.
I picked up the box to agument my G5 / w/Digidesign 002R for music production since there are some cool sound apps that I can not find to run on my SGI nor OS X.
If anyone wants to contribute to my need of a new power supply, let me know.
Cheers.
Andreas is right, it was part of Soundworks.
From NextWorld_Extra/91.10.Winter
Quote
Metaresearch has unbundled its popular SoundWorks program from its Digital Ears digitizer,
for people who want to edit sounds but are satisfied with the quality offered by analog microphones
and the NeXT microphone port.
The unbundled SoundWorks version 2.0 costs $395. Digital Ears alone lists for $595. A bundle of the two is $795.
SoundWorks allows users to cut, copy, and paste digitized sounds, as well as to control echo, reverb, and filtering.
Metaresearch can be reached at 503/238-5728.
From J. Laroche at the Center for Music Experiment at UCSD, San Diego California. December 1990
Intro.rtf (
http://cd.textfiles.com/knowledgemedia/MUSIC/NEXT/DRIVR_DC/01_INTRO.RTF) and Digital Ears.rtf (
http://cd.textfiles.com/knowledgemedia/MUSIC/NEXT/DRIVR_DC/05_DG_RS.RTF). The full set of his RTFs are at the same URL (
http://cd.textfiles.com/knowledgemedia/MUSIC/NEXT/DRIVR_DC/).
From the Record.app README (
http://ftp.nice.ch/pub/next/audio/editor/RecordApp.4.0.README)
by R Dunbar Poor, NeXT Technical Support September, 1989
Quote
Hardware and Software Requirements:
===================================
As written, here's what you need to run the RecorderApp:
* You must have a Digital Ears A/D converter from MetaResearch or
functional equivalent. Other input devices could be supported with
appropriate changes to the dsp code (see Other Directions below).
* You must have a hard disk. The optical disk has a three-pass write
cycle (erase/write/verify), and can't sustain the 176.4 Kb/sec data
rate coming out of the DSP.
* You must be running Release 1.0 of the operating system.
and
Quote
Other Directions:
=================
The RecordApp was written as a programming example; is intentionally
simplistic. There are many ways that an ambitious programmer might
want to modify or extend the program:
~
* Write .asm code for other devices. The .asm code provided with the
RecordApp was written to work with the MetaResearch Digital Ears.
Other external devices may require different logic for the serial IO
ports.
The postscript document Machine Tongues XVIII: A Children's Garden of Sound File Formats (
http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~stp/PostScript/SoundFiles.cmj.ps.Z),
by Stephen Travis Pope and Guido van Rossum, might also be of use.
Documentation from MusicKit might also contain additional information.
Happy digitising,
Tenzin
I'll be recording straight from an old MOOG w/effects running on the box and layering it in realtime back into my DIGI002R running ProTools, which is driven from a G5. Nice thing about the box is that it is quiet.. vs. the Octane next to it that sounds like a jet engine generating 200Db. That and its running UNIX!
Quote from: "matrix01"I'll be recording straight from an old MOOG w/effects running on the box and layering it in realtime back into my DIGI002R running ProTools, which is driven from a G5. Nice thing about the box is that it is quiet.. vs. the Octane next to it that sounds like a jet engine generating 200Db. That and its running UNIX!
You have fine taste, might I recommend an Oberheim Expander to go with that one day ? :)
Tenzin
Well while on the thread of dreaming.. One of these by Elektron would be nice, it is built around the Commodore 64 SID chip...
http://www.monomachine.com/monoinfo/and it sounds hot.
That reminds me of the Greengate DS3 that plugged into the BBC-B Micro, and how much I miss that and my old Yamaha MSX CX5-MII.
Tenzin