REW Update

[Brian Roth]

Thanks!

What would be the Nyquest frequency?

Bri

 

[Tubetec]

Works ok for me on Xp ,
M audio transit with external conversion ,
Tried Centrance axeport ,but cant prevent a portion of input signal appearing on the HP outputs , there is a slider in software to reduce how much direct signal reaches the outputs ,but that seems to have no effect . Tried Asio4all using the inputs from the axeport and the outs from the transit , didnt work right but might be the settings ,more testing required . Distortion of about 0.002% was as good as I have been able to get so far .

 

[alexc]

I've been using REW to test some win server installs   

It's so easy to install/un-install, as well as being  very stable and well-exercising of the available hardware  ..  tells mountains about the platform 'horse power'.

Looking forward to test with a modern interface ...  I'm leaning towards a Presonus box right now.

While testing Win platforms for stability and throughput, I've gotten to like the 'Presonus - Studio One DAW'  application.

I'm using the free version from Presonus right now, which is nothing on the Studio One 4 Pro  flagship.

Very impressed indeed with the 'Presonus  Studio One'    sound quality and  especially,  the speed and the lack of bloatware     

I'm sure I hear additional details on myself playing on 'takes'  from years ago

On my ancient Motu interface  (early 2000s pci-e card with asio)  and Win Server 2016 on  'yesterdays fast AMD hardware'

..the sound is      ..  brilliant 

Next stop  is an upgrade to some  AMD 'Ryzen 2700X'  action     

SSD storage all round with  the  Presonus  ' usb3 192' interface and  Studio One 4'  DAW  combo.

That should do me for the next 20yrs  8)

 

[alexc]

I also like (on paper) very much,  the Presonus Quantum interface, with the thunderbolt 2 ..  however, in the Win world, that's not so common.

thunderbolt 3 - sure thing - my fav Win mobo makers do proper 'tb3 add in boards' for the right price

So, my focus has sh*tfted upwards in price and once again Motu - I've been a user for decades 

Specifically, the Motu 828ES  series with Thunderbolt 3 / usb 2.0    ....    8) 

Very nice spec, a lot of improvements on this form factor which motu has occupied for ages.

Of interest is the 'ES'  designation, that 'ES Sabre' device family ... 

Reportedly to be handling some very impressive perf  ...  and hence as a 'REW Measurement System' , of great interest.

Prices are pretty good too ... 

---

For now,  I can get by while I look at platform related things ...  I have a new SSD in the mail, which I am setting up for a couple of different Win configs ...  some new data points  re    perf,  to look at.

Suffice to say, the baseline has shifted big time to the upside over the last 10 years 

Hopefully I can get the hardware and os  sorted out  while I decide the main event  ....  'daw application software' .
No to mention, time to 'fund the funds' ...  some selling to do post haste.

I've been''cubase' for ages ( at a relatively  primitive level )    but am really liking 'studio one'  for the slimline experience  ;D 

First impressions of Studio One (free)  are very favourable ..  fab sound, sensible interface, not too much 'overkill' and very snappy in use.  The basic efx plugs were really good .. even the super simple default ones.

My daw automation  'surface' is similarly ancient  -  being a nicely built german 'sac' unit - it's been a champ but very old now. 

Time to ditch it all, and go for a new platform, inteface, daw and surface.

I like the 'single fader' Presonus surface control  box - it's everywhere I want to be now!

Indeed the Presonus coverage of many 'bases'  in the PC world is impressive.

As far as proper digital mix console, I'm still a    Yamaha 03D guy ...  I think I bought it new in  '97 and it still goes strong.

If I was  (and I'm not!)  doing a 'do-over' again (for a second time), 

I would be looking more closely at the Presonus console series - they are easy to find even way down here (geographically speaking).

 

[alexc]

So, onwards and upwards, as they say!

Now looking at some 'VMWare' which is a real cracker!  Just seeing  how far 'virtualisation'  has progressed, over the last say 10years ..  is an eye opener.

So of course, now I'm running an instance of win server 2016 with some vmware  managed environments  ...    and its super impressive.

The progressive imaging (snapshot system backup)  capabilities are good enough to think about in the same way as one might use some of the popular system archiving tools ..  like Acronis  products for example, which again, are the business.

OK, I need to get that next increment of raw horsepower with  some current model spending  but  its compelling enough for me to get going in the 'software development environment'  sense  and just possibly in some audio work to  ..  REW and DAW virtualised, forever together in the matrix tonight.

I like to have several 'virtual machines' available, as well as several physical machines ..  to get thru the daily tasks of life 'out back'  on the farm.

So far the VMWare is doing very well

....

Win Server 2016 does have it's own virtualisation technology 'in-the-box'  and I'm just starting to have a try of it.

It looks to be a similar thing but I'm sure there is a lot of depth there.  I just remember VMWare back from 'the day'.

 

[alexc]

Not much progress with the virtualisation of some proper audio apps  ...  but not for any reason other than 'spring' weather has sprung somewhat early again this year ...  ie.  mid winter  (mid July) is like early spring (mid sept) 

I've been busy getting on top of  weeding my small orchard and even smaller vegetable patch(s).

The early great weather (winter)  is jim dandy right now, but I'm sure it portends for the summer.

....

Anyway, doing some more  'manual'  digging  ..  (vege beds),  while the weather is good ..  '10 days of hard labour then a rains a gonna f  ...'

On the up side, 'my place and me'  has been adopted by a family of large and healthy 'rosella'  birds    ... for the last 8 mths or so

They are all doing well and coming into their bright plumage for spring  (already!)    [green rosella sthrn tas aust}

I have been practicising my 'rosella calls'  [ whistling and carrying on]  ..  over the last few months ...  this crazy mob of birds (the largest of the rosella family - basically huge budgerigars)    ..  has taken 'this place' as their personal territory.

It's like I can't go anywhere without my own flock of incredibly colored crazy ass wild birds following me about.  [no joke]

They make the most incredible sounds .. like 'pings' and 'bells' overlaid with subtle melodic chattering of 'the crowd'    ..  It's very much like 'analog modem' kind of protocol for communicating - to them it's all 'mark-space' periods of bells  and whistles rising above the chatter  [like softly jangling keys and triangles]  ..  a bit like  'sonar modem speak for crazy parrots'    overlaid with the sounds of the 'rivulet'    [ creek or tiny river which roars to life 1 yr in 10]

Luckily, I spent years as a protocol droid in the field of telephony  ;D    And  it works - these guys go nuts around me ..  aerial displays of dazzling color  a metre or two  away ..  disappearing in a blur of pings and bells ...

Next moment .. gone  .,.  moments later  , right where  you are looking  [saying  lord pls show me]  ..  the whole family glides magestically into view and starts again with their lively biz  ..  chattering and grass-diving  ..  grazing for hours on end  [eating seeds in the low height grass fields] ..  under my window 

Even myself, I am amazed, I am.    But there it is.

...

Soon  I'll have my  little amp  with my bench Strat  ready  ...  bells and chimes is what the strat does   

Its all in the mark-space intervals and the pure notes ..  plus bouts of avian lunacy followed by steathy stationary 'disappearing'.

..

So, I've already been teaching them more than the two or three phrases that I hear them use.  When I hear them chirp same back  ...  it's some positive feedback  ... for all the years of music  ..  and my own protocol squawks. I strive to be like 'raffi (sic) of the birds' 

They come for the roses, they stay for the conversation  8)

 

[alexc]

The crazy thing is that the same thing was happening years and years ago, with the birds, and in particular  the 'rosella' birds

  ...  when I lived in the big city of Sydney  ..  in that case, it was 'blue-and-red rosella' birds, the same  of 'Arnotts Biscuit Company' fame 

There it got to 'hummingbirds'  duking it out in my garden (which I planted)  ...

So - if I know anything about anything, it's that hummingbirds are going to show up here pretty soon.

No doubt.  I mean, 'if you plant the trees, the birds  will come'.

-- pic credit at lower left hand side of image

 

[alexc]

This girl  here  ..

. pic Wikipedia

 

[alexc]

Of course, no discourse of rural birds would be complete without mentioning the 'gang'  ...  a large flock of 'currawong' birds that pass thru these parts at this time of year ... 

Amazing birds, like a fighter plane and a glider rolled into one  ..  they work together and  also compete with each other to secure an 'area' then get to work looking for their food, which is everything.  I've been learning their calls too.

They are quite different than those I was accustomed to ...  the Sydney 'Currawong' bird sounds much more  like the call of the  local Tas  'magpie' bird.  Same awesome 'Currawong' body plan, tho  ...  steath flight to the max.

They just 'turn up' and check everything out, turning over anything that is still and chomping anything that moves.

...

And there's at least a couple dozen other species that are happy to waste a few minutes each day to 'do my head in' with their biz.

Don't start me on the 'Red/Brown  Falcon'  ..  crikey that's a serious animal!  8) 

Around here they get  quite large and they have an endearing habit of flying alongside one's car ..  when the terrain is just right (high twisty forest road dropping steeply to wooded fields)  ....  they like to coast right up by your window (100kph) and look at you  for a bit before turning away      In a convertible, like my (t)rusty old 450sl, it's quite amazing.

At my home, they [the hungry falcon] do swoop in on the 'sparrow's  shrub'  and do their thing ... seeming to like my garden fence gate as a 'lunching spot',  and it does get a little 'grizzly'.    I used to take pics,  but now I just watch the spectacle and marvel.

Nature doing her thing, each day as since forever  (sans me, of course!)

 

[alexc]

The bird king of coastal forest, however is the large Black-and-Red Cockatoo  8)

Majestic, large and travelling in moderate sized family groupings, they have a beautiful, wistful call that just  hangs in the air ..

....

[nothing like the white cockatoo which is a 120dB screech-a-rama anywhere, anytime, always ..  particularly in captivity  ]
[Pure Furry Freak Bros. level lunacy]

...

The graceful Black Cockatoo families waft on by, with their wing motions curiously like their plaintive cries ...

Here, they do hole up for a while, maybe a day or two in the area before going off on their business. 

Whenever I hear their call, I drop everything to see if they are close.

 

[kambo]

this bird up here, has a smile

 

[kambo]

looks like, all posing to camera... 

 

[alexc]

The birds here are complete 'hams'  no doubt  ;D

One of the most theatrical is the 'Fairy Wren'  ..  female is forever enamoured by my old merc's chrome trim ...  the mirrors in particular  ...  at the right times of the year there is a 'mighty pile of poop' on the car just underneath the mirror surface.

They just love to make their call, which is a 'whole of body' affair, like a large rooster proclaiming defiance to everybody in earshot.

All their feathers stand on end, their tiny crests flaring as they do their high pitched, long and incredible loud  .. for such a tiny bird.    They are  a 'cotton ball with a pipe cleaner tail'  kind of size.

I'm lucky to have a good population of them here .. they're not that common  ..  a great, plucky, tiny little bird with amazing energy and smarts.

At least one fem is on duty outside my bedroom window at all times    ....    especially first thing in the morning to wake me up

 

[alexc]

And the totally superb male of the species ..  my ones are much more superb  ..ie deeper azure blue,  and more finely feathered ..  they are the 7cm tall blue-headed flying lion of their world! 

Completely fearless they are, and fully absorbed in their crazy 'dance-off'  protocols with their equally 'twitchy' fems, plural.

 

[alexc]

Whats funny about this location, is they (the birds) are not too 'fussed' by humans, responding with curiosity to the respectful observer.

Many of mine, although not all, seem to seek 'one' out. 

There are a couple of species which are very wary  ...  and one lot that always seems to know exactly when you are watching them -  no matter how still you stand etc'  -    then  quickly they slink away into the shadows  and fly away,  very low to the ground - these ones have  beautiful calls and are common here. I watched a family of these go from 'egg' to 'feisty ', one lazy spring.

..

Believe it or not, families of 'quail' birds live in my fields .. like ' the Partridge Family'  ....  they scare the hell out of you when they explode into the air flapping and with big sound if you get close!

...

My lot of 9 'green rosella'  [local wild parrot]  love to sit on the horse fence watching me 'pound earth'  [digging vege beds]  while they chatter excitedly amongst themselves, before effortlessly ascending to the top branches of the near 50m tall trees, all flouncy color and bells  .. for a nice sleep.

My rosella calls are fair in fidelity  but they laugh at me like I was just off the 'turnip truck'  ..  which in their terms, I surely am.

I do believe they see me as a big, dumb, flightless green parrot with poor manners    ..  kind of like that  recently discovered in New Zealand, from some 40M yrs ago ...  1m tall and 7kg in weight, estimated from the fossil record.

For sure, I know they see me as a 'gardener'  or 'grounds-keeper'    ..  and therefore 'OK'  ....    it must be  all the planting of trees and stuff, particularly 'roses' which they go bananas over.

My own private belief is that they are a fun part of that web of life that connects me to the divine  ...  sort of 'off duty angels' ..  doing  'a turn' in this physical plane  ...  for their own  personal reasons    ;D  mostly 'kicks' and 'nectar' I think. 

That, and the  'flyin' - how awesome would it be!


...

It does get a little 'weird' when a hundred or so 'Currawong' birds  blow into town! 

My place is 'on the circuit' for all the passing bird groupings around  these parts  ...  a legacy of hosting 'the horses' and the fine quality grains they are fed with      ...  everybody eats well when  fancy horses  and their people are aboot.

Stealth fighters they are  [Currawong birds]  - quite large, well 'beaked', superb fliers  very well organised in the 'flash mob' motif.  I stand there, watching them, watching me, watching them. When I make the 'call' they shuffle about uneasily  ..  not sure what I say in 'currawong'   

They [Currawong birds] have quite a number of characteristic sounds which also happen to be very musical  ..  I try them out but they're not at all convinced. Tough crowd for sure!

My parrots clear out  tripelle quick with bells and whistles when they see any of these guys. 

It's exactly like the old Hitchcock film  .. 'the Birds',  sadly without Tippi Hedren or Rod Taylor for that matter.

...

And co-incidently, my favourite band of all time, bar none  [except maybe mr sinatra, elvis, bobby d and the fab4]  are also named for them, the birds  ..  'The Byrds'    8) 

Roger or 'Jim'  McGuinn and much later, the late great Clarence White  ....  were    everywhere I dream of guitar wise  .. 

Of course, the also late great Gram Parsons' contributions were a fine addition too to the whole Byrds' thing.  His 'solo' legacy  knocks me out to this day.

..

The crazy part is that the birds' calls  is very much like  'air traffic control' or 'cb radio'    type protocols [in sound]  ..  pings, bells, doppler, check-ins,  blatt-outs, flapping wind sounds  etc.  It's quite amazing to be sure. 

So I guess you could say I see the world as much as I can from the view of the birds [as far as I can]

 

[alexc]

And for scale ...  currawong,  lovely tippi h.    and the NZ giant Sqawkzilla parrot.

 

[alexc]

Back to REW  ..  I am just trying out version  5.20  beta  18  for  64bit Win 10 pro  ....  amd 8-core with  ssd    storage

An interesting new feature is the  provision  of a 'Secondary Output'  for the 'test signal' . Quite interesting ..  I'll look at playing with this at the bench, for sure.

It looks like there is something new by way of 'Calibration' - the ability to use 'cal files' -  need to check some more on this - I think it's new but I could be mis-informed.  Looks very interesting  ;D

In the RTA window, the heads-up display panel of THD and Noise figures looks like it has some new fields ... damn fine.

Also the Signal Generator 'amplitude panel' has more info fields than I remember ..  pretty useful too.

The Scope window is similar to how I remember it.

And I think an installation issue with a missing file is sorted too.

.....

That's what I see so far ...  some good enhancements as always and some intriguing new functionality, re 'cal' and 'secondary output'.

Fabulous.

 

[trobbins]

Having some fun with REW over at diyaudio (https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/equipment-and-tools/341272-distortion-analysis-experiment.html) with the aim of making almost distortionless sinewave test signal by adding in harmonics to null out harmonics generated in the line output of a soundcard (or even an amplifier under test).

My EMU0404 USB provides about a raw 0.0009% THD at 2Vrms from its line output.  REW can be used to null the harmonics in that test signal to lower THD to around 0.00004% using a simple loopback test.

Although I haven't yet tried it, if the soundcard was used to drive an amp, then the amp's output THD may also be somewhat trimmable for lower THD.  Whilst not related to music reproduction, it is an interesting  topic for test instrumentation purposes.

 

[alexc]

Thats super interesting ... I'd like to try some of that myself.

 

[trobbins]

Just been progressing through a set of output transformer winding impedance tests using the Impedance measurement configuration of REW.  This measurement tool is as enjoyable and informative as its automated frequency and distortion sweep test tools for amps.  In one click the impedance magnitude and phase of a passive part (or electromagnetic part in the case of a speaker) can be plotted from 2Hz to 96kHz.  That includes showing up the detailed resonances within complex parts like valve amplifier output transformers.  REW also prepares an equivalent circuit of the part, and allows an appreciation of how aspects like incremental inductance change as the test frequency changes.

With the help of John on the REW forum I was even able to better understand the impedance of windings at very low frequency when trying to measure winding leakage inductance (ie. a half-primary winding of a push-pull primary when all undriven windings are shorted).  I initially had the view that the impedance should just fall to the winding DCR (which is what happens with simpler parts like chokes), but interestingly the large bulk inductance of a winding, and the distributed nature of the winding, can still show significant impedance magnitude and phase variations with frequency well below where the impedance levels off (as per a DCR in a choke).

I initially started the transformer tests using the contemporary method of using a boat-anchor oscillator to identify winding impedance dips or peaks (winding current through a series resistor), but that often misses the nuances of subtle resonances and shallow humps - and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words (or in this case it is a thousand spot measurements).