How to control analog gear REMOTELY

[mixanalogcloud]

Hello, KVR!

Hopefully it's alright to post this here, we'll try and get an "official company forum" here eventually.

We'd like to introduce you to the most revolutionary online service there is today.

mixanalog.com

MIX:ANALOG is a web application that let's you control real analog gear over the internet, through your browser (doesn't work in Safari, since it does not support FLAC ), using a graphical user interface.

While you're tweaking the settings, the playback is streamed to you in up to 24-bit/192khz lossless format. When you're satisfied with the sound, you can bounce and download the results.

There are still a few bugs though and some missing features. If you want to help us get stuff done faster, help us by providing us with user feedback. We'll be super-happy and will reward you with free use-credits (whatever the pricing system we'll be testing at the moment).

How to use the app:

• UPLOAD a file you want to process
• press PLAY and TURN THE KNOBS
• TWEAK the settings
• switch to the DOWNLOAD tab and get the file

List of available gear:

• BURL B80 with BDA8 and BAD4 units
• Distopik FC670 (hi-grade reincarnation of the Fairchild)
• Distopik EQP-1A (hi-grade 2U reincarnation of the Pultec)
• Distopik Precision MEQ (sontec/gml inspired 5-band eq)
• soon Telefunken M15 (automated!, in about 1-2 weeks))
• soon Bettermaker Mastering Limiter (in about 2-3 weeks)
• about 8 more pieces to be added this year (including Elysia and Gyratec products)

Roadmap with votable features: https://bit.ly/2xQ5ckq

Mini FAQ:

• we modded the gear mostly with our "in-house" custom electronics, a few digipots and lots of relays
• until we get the booking feature working, remote control access will be give out on the first come, first served basis
• internet speed of 5Mbit/s is recommended, but customer support reports successful sessions at 2Mbit/s
• you can download your processed tracks in .WAV or .MP3 formats, .OGG and .FLAC will be added to the list later
• we provide full support for Firefox and Chrome browsers
• MIX:ANALOG is developed by Distopik d.o.o., an audio technology R&D company based in Slovenia, European Union

ALL THE QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED in the comments below!

Some HQ images of our gear:







Today we checked out this plate reverb a local studio wants to get rid of:



Some angry dude wanted a timestamp photo in an email yesterday, so here it is:

[Delta Sign]

This is a very cool idea! Nice!

[mixanalogcloud]

Almost forgot...we're redesigning our website to make it look better, provide more/better information and in 2019 we're going to release a standalone version of the app and provide a DAW integration!

An update of the app, featuring a booking system (actual gear can only be occupied by 1 person at a time ) should launch today, if not today then tomorrow

[Sailor16]

Wow, this is really cool stuff!

Hope this project will become a success for you guys, what a great initiative!

[mixanalogcloud]

Booking/file/profile management system is online!



The Pathfinder was placed into the rack casing today and is almost ready to be plugged in!

[VariKusBrainZ]

Whats the Pathfinder?
A routing/patchbay system?

[mixanalogcloud]

Yes, it's a digitally controllable analog patchbay/routing matrix. It will allow you to make changes to the signal chain on the go, bypass every piece of hardware in our system and do A/B/C... comparisons of compressors, EQs...when we get enough of them to do that.

[mixanalogcloud]

It's alive!

The Distopik VCA Precision Compressor is the well-known british console bus compressor design revamped and pimped up until we ran out of ideas. At its default settings, it will sound familiar to anyone used to the ubiquitous unit and exceptionally transparent to those used to plugin emulations.

The latter might discover that the hardware unit starts to show its true beauty when pushed hard, holding its own and not "falling apart" even at 10dB+ gain reduction(!) – there’s a reason why the original "Gold can" DBX 202 discrete VCA units are so sought-after!

Then the fun begins with extra features:

• Bass-heavy material that needs to stay this way and just gain some additional thickness and glue? Use the tilt filters or low-cut filters for the sidechain to avoid pumping and only bring out low level details and 3D space.
• A hard-panned element in your mix causing the whole mix to duck in an awkward way? Un-link the left and right sidechains completely, or only for a few dB to find the sweetspot between center stability and desired gain reduction transparency.
• But if the side-chains can be variably linked... yes, this calls for Mid-Side! MS processing was in fact the inspiration in the first place to do the variable SC-link. Imagine having completely separate controls for mid and side channels - augmenting the kick and snare attack in the centre with slower attack and medium release (there are more timing constants available then on the vintage unit, so you can fine-tune it to source material) and just gently touching the side with low ratio and fast timing constants, to bring out details and reverbs. That alone is powerful, but a link between the two channels of just a couple dBs would provide a combination of uniform stereo "vibe-generating" compression and MS image-shaping ability. How about that?!

All in all, this unit speaks "class" in no uncertain terms and can be operated simply as a normal, well-known bus compressor, or tweaked in an unprecedented detail to achieve results not possible with any other unit. We love it.

The Distopik VCA Precision Compressor is 100% digitally controllable and available for you to take it for a test ride at mixanalog.com completely fore free during the app's beta!

The compressor was built exclusively to serve the mixanalog platform, but can be easily expanded into a "retail" model with knobs and a VST control plug-in. The price of the unit would be around 4000$. :tu:

About mix:analog beta:
As you might already know, we're running the world-first online service that offers full, real-time control and monitoring of audio hardware over the internet.

Our mission is to harness the best audio processing hardware, hook it up to the internet and make it affordable for everyone by distributing the costs of purchase and maintenance between the users.

It's the one in the middle:



Use the dropdown menu to book it in the mix:analog app:



This is how it looks in the app:



A close-up:

[mixanalogcloud]

At Distopik Ltd., we've been researching transparent solutions to make analog gear digitally controllable for years and now we're running this startup project:

MIX:ANALOG | Real-time Online ANALOG Audio Processing.

This is how we do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymK71LwNxWw

Do you think this is the future of analog audio and why?

Have you had a chance to play around with any piece of gear that was digitally controllable? What did you like/dislike with that specific piece?

[mixanalogcloud]

It's alive!

We digitalized the controls of a Telefunken M15 and released it into the internet.

Into the internet? But, that's impossible!



We replaced the buttons with transistor gates and wired the lights outputs to microcontroller logic inputs, to get the status feedback from the machine’s transport control circuitry.

To read the tape position/end of tape, we took a photo sensor signal from one of the circuit boards and installed transparent leading tape on the beginning and the end of the reel.

The whole thing is piloted by a microcomputer, connected to our internal control network via USB.

The legendary 2-track stereo master recorder up and running, available for everyone to connect to it and try it for free.

If you'd like to know more you can read it here:
https://blog.mixanalog.com/telefunken-m15-in-the-cloud

...or ask me about it in this thread!

You can take the the M15 for a free test drive here: https://mixanalog.com/

[Tj Shredder]

This is hilarious,
You should post it in production techniques as well...
I learned splicing tapes on one of them in the Studio of the Technical University Berlin...

[mixanalogcloud]

This is hilarious,
You should post it in production techniques as well...
I learned splicing tapes on one of them in the Studio of the Technical University Berlin...

Our threads got merged and I don't want to anger the KVR gods more. Maybe sometime later

-----------------

It's time to take you on a short office/server room tour and answer the number one question we're being asked on other forums:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99xs7o5IAqk

Thanks you for the support everyone!

[vurt]

i shout across the room to my underpaid (ie unpaid) lacky i mean assistant
"oil! igor! turn the threshold down on that compressor!"

it doesn't work as well as it should because he's an idiot. and like my pet lobster, is also imaginary.


nice gear, good luck

[mixanalogcloud]

i shout across the room to my underpaid (ie unpaid) lacky i mean assistant
"oil! igor! turn the threshold down on that compressor!"

it doesn't work as well as it should because he's an idiot. and like my pet lobster, is also imaginary.


nice gear, good luck

Hahaha, when we design an A.I. assistant we might just create 'a fool' profile (for the 1st of April or something) and name it like that.

--------------------

By the way everyone, we just plugged a new piece of gear into the system. This time it's a brickwall limiter!

The Distopik Precision Series Brickwall Limiter is one of the fastest analog limiters in the world.

Inspired by one of the Tony Maserati's favourite limiters, it retains dynamic information at the tops of the peaks, uses no time-delay or phase-shift-delay tricks and keeps the distortion for all levels below the limiting threshold as low as possible.

It features a JFET and a MOSFET mode:

• the MOSFET is a stiff/hard limiting mode
• the JFET is a silky/soft mode

Both modes are capable of brickwall limiting and have their own characteristic sounds.

You can read more about our digitally controllable brickwall limiter at https://mixanalog.com/gear/distopik-ps-bwl.html.

The physical unit:



The graphical user interface:



How it looks in action:

[mixanalogcloud]

We moved the Limiter into the Rack1 Mastering signal chain:



And the AVC in front of the Telefunken M15 for you to be able to drive it hotter: