1 Topic by Wildt (edited by Wildt 2010-03-01 13:39:46)

  • Wildt
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Topic: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Hi!

First of - sorry for writing in english, but my german is simply not good enough smile

I've read the thread and basically I think/hope you guys could help me achieve my goal.

I have a FF400 which I use for my HTPC. I've tried to tackle some of my rooms acoustical problems with Room Eq Wizard which I use to send filters via MIDI to a Behringer FBQ 2496 (parametric equalizer).

It is my understanding that I should be able to somehow achieve the same by using loopback on my FF along with Console and Convolver, but I'm REALLY new to all this, so I was hoping I could get some basic step by step help on setting the whole thing up.

Oh and, I guess I should mention I'm using Windows 7 64 bit.

If your english is as bad as my german, just reply in german, I'll deal with it.

Hope you can help!

regards
Brian

EDIT: I saw this one post appear as a seperate thread under a new topic. How did that happen? I wanted to address the posters of THIS thread, so I deleted it and reposted in here.

  • From: Germany
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Wildt wrote:

EDIT: I saw this one post appear as a seperate thread under a new topic. How did that happen? I wanted to address the posters of THIS thread, so I deleted it and reposted in here.

The posting is OT in the other (german) thread and will likely attract more attention as a new topic. That's why I moved it.


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

3 Reply by viper (edited by viper 2010-03-02 20:18:35)

  • viper
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Wildt wrote:

It is my understanding that I should be able to somehow achieve the same by using loopback on my FF along with Console and Convolver, but I'm REALLY new to all this, so I was hoping I could get some basic step by step help on setting the whole thing up.

Hi Brian,

just a fast post, because its quite late here in Germany right now...

Yes, you can do the same and even more using a convolver plugin (with VST capable programs) or a VST host (console) + convolver plugin + loopback (to feed the VST host with whatever audio signals you want).

The setup would be as follows:
You route all your playback signals that you want to get filtered to a FF physical output -> Use the loopback function and route the corresponding inputs to the VST host with a convolver plugin loaded -> then route the signal to another physical output with monitors attached.

The convolver plugin will need an Impulse response (IR) to work with. As far as I know you can create these using your Room Eq Wizard. Another straight forward way creating IRs is: Create an Impulse (single 0dBFS sample) in the middle of a silent track of sufficient length and desired sampling rate. Then use the filter(s) of your choice and render the file (use only linear timeinvarant filters - which is almost anything but [s]reverb[/s], compressors, ...).
Afterwards cut off all leading zeros and you're done.
But to fight your room you will need some more mathematics or tools to calculate an "inverse" IR of a Room IR measurement.
Here is some reading that I found, but it might be a bit too technical http://drc-fir.sourceforge.net/doc/drc.html. Start at section 4.1.

regards,
viper

Edit: Of course you can also use reverb to get an IR - it has been late yesterday and I don't even know right now what else I wanted to write...

  • Wildt
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Hi viper!

Thanks a lot for replying. Before I go ahead and attempt to get the Console/Convolver/loopback to work, I'd like to make sure my operating system is compatible, as the seemingly dead Console homepage has old forum posts regarding problems with 64bit versions of windows. Do you know the setup would work on win7 64bit?

regards
Brian

  • viper
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Sorry, I never used console or any other standalone VST Host, but I'm quite sure that you will be able to find a VST Host running on 64bit Win7.

  • Registered: 2010-02-13
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Hello,

my english is bad...

I testet console with win7home 32Bit. It works good. You can load a trial from console...

You can take Ableton...


Stefan

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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Finally found the time to start working on this setup and got pretty much nowhere - I can't figure out how to get the loopback working.

I've routed

playback channels 1-2 -> output 3-4 with loopback.
then input 3-4 -> output 1-2

But I get no output on 1-2!

Should the totalmix VU meters on input 3-4 reflect the playback? Well they aren't in any case.

What am i doing wrong?

  • Wildt
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Screenshot:

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/2794/totalmix.jpg

9 Reply by laex (edited by laex 2010-03-26 14:48:26)

  • laex
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Wildt wrote:

Should the totalmix VU meters on input 3-4 reflect the playback? Well they aren't in any case.
What am i doing wrong?

hi!

it doesn't really work exactly like that...

first:
- you don't need the routing from input 3-4 to output 1-2, so remove it...

then:
- you won't see the "loopback input level" on your channels 3-4 in totalmix, but
- if you start any audio software, the input signal will still be there on input channels 3-4!

- in the vst host (you obviously need to run the plugins!) use input 3-4 and playback channels 3-4
- route playback channels 3-4 to hardware outs 1-2 in totalmix
- done!

but you are close already... just add the vst host into the chain and it should work!

best,
laex

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  • Wildt
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Thank alot for the quick reply - I was planning on inserting the vst host like you suggest, I just thought I'd run a quick loopback test first without it, but as I understand from what you're telling me, that's just not possible.

I'll try it right away....

  • Wildt
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

Got the loop working - thanks a lot!

So I can confirm console works on win7 64bit :-)

  • laex
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

perfect!

DC rules!

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  • Wildt
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Re: FF 400, HTPC and Room Eq Wizard

I just bought the DRC application Acourate, which I wanted to use for my 5.1 setup, but I've run into problems with popping sounds. At first I got the popping even at stereo setup, but someone at the Acourate forum said that increasing the buffer size in the Fireface settings might help. And it did! Going from 256 to 512 samples cured it. But after I've gone to 6 channels, I can't cure the problem that way (tried 1024 samples) My setup is as follows:

Internal loopback on the ff400, Console VST host running ConvolverVST plugin.
Signal is 16bit/48khz - the 6 filters from acourate are double float presion (524288 bytes each)

What can I do to cure the popping sounds?