The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

The AW does not record midi nor can it send midi data from its (music) tracks. If you are listening to it on AW you are listening to WAV files. No midi sounds at all able to be generated by the AW.

The Aw is able transmit via midi >>Transport controls.

Music going from the Kronos will be going via a cable to the AW in digital WAV format. The cable could be an analog patch or it might be patch from a digital out on the Kronos ( if it has one) to the digital in on the AW (rca plugs i think on the AW). The digtal in, gets "cascaded" I believe is the term, or " assigned to an input on the AW and is directed to the Stereo bus for mixing. check the manual if you go that route but ask away too if need be.

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Byron

Thanks so much Byron. It looks like I'm stuck with wav files, being sent to the Kronos which is a problem because I can't seem to get all the wave tracks together into one song so that I can work on them as a 4 or 5 track song on the Kronos. Frustrating, to say the least.

No need to get frustrated. as we said before they can be transfered in several other ways. The simplest being play them back from the aw and plug the stereo out from the aw to an audio in on a computer. preferably with a decent audio interface. (A stereo need not be expensiv) If you have no other software use audacity for recording. Mute tracks and play back one at the time. Do the same with the tracks from the Kronos. Add tracks to the audacity project for each track. don’t worry about synching. We’ll do that later. Just collect the tracks. We can synch visually later on. Make sure your level for each track is strong enough so you do not build up noise. Any way we will cut out silent parts later. If needed you can send me your tracks over wetransfer or so and i’ll help you get them in synch. Just don’t give up and we’ll get it done.

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In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

Thank you Dirk. This is all great info. I guess my "frustration" goes beyond getting the tracks recorded, as I really want to have the knowledge and grasp of the technology you and Byron and others on this site display. As much as I am much obliged for the assistance here, I have to trouble when it comes to someone else going out their way to assist, although, I am like yourself and Byron in wanting to offer help when I can.

Last year, Byron suggested using Audacity in another context, so, I have do it on my computer but again, very basic understanding of it. The "audio input" you mention is something I don't believe is on the computer as I think I used USB before and is that what you are referring to as audio input?

Also, as I mentioned prior, these and other tracks on my Aw1600 originally were recorded on my Yamaha Motif ES synth to my Aw 2816. If I can find those tracks on my Motif ES would you know if they would be in perhaps an MP3 or MP4 format or would they sill be considered WAV files?

If they in fact are not WAV files, could I then connect my Motif ES to my Kronos and transfer the files?

Thank you once again.

Hi again Brs.

The tracks recorded on the Motif are most likely midi tracks although i can’t be sure without hands on. I any case if you can play them back you should be able to connect audio out of,the Motif to audio in on the Kronos. Optical cable would be ideal but audio can also give you good enough results. The trick is to get the signal right, which means as strong as posible on the loudest passages without any clipping ocuring. If you also connect midi out from Motif to Kronos Midi in thecan synch but you need to set the Motif as master and the Kronos as midi slave.

_________________
In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

As for audio in on the computer, most have some input for a microphone, where you plug in a he&dset but the quality is very different. A simple usb audio interface may do a lot better. There a lot to choose from. I think Roland has some simple stereo in out that is nit expensive. If you should buy an interface you best get a decent one though.

_________________
In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

Dirk, GREAT and very welcome info!! If I can buy you a brew, please send me the tab. I also owe Byron. I wasn't expecting to hear that it's possible using the Motif ES any more than the AW but maybe because I sometimes come up with a valid question, there's hope I can learn some of this stuff?? Now if I can only find the old files for the ES. I appreciate it and, if I may, get back if further questions arise, thank you.

Any time B, i’m curious to hear what you come up with.

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In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

Dirk, believe me, I'm "curious" to find what I come up with as well. However, will take some time as I'm literally a one man band since my ex and I split after 30 years; a woman's work is never done they say and I'm finding it out the hard way. Also, gig 3 nights per week.

What I am having trouble understanding is: although I know the AW1600 or AW2816, I own both machines, are not tone generating machines, they're capable of recording song data digitally yet they produce no digital footprint so to speak. How can that be?
MIDI incorporates the word "digital" (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). Logically, there must be a "digital" representation of the music I recorded, existing somewhere on to both AW machines; be it WAV file or any other file type, there has to be a digital component. When I simply listen to the recorded tracks, I am in fact listening to a digital representation am I not? Again, logically, shouldn't that digital note data be visible and transferable via MIDI?

Sorry to hear about the divorce. Never easy.

About the digital recording. Digital can be seen as a medium on which to write, like the pages of a book. You can use different languages to write down what you hear or see. You could use words to describe what you see or you can make a drawing on the same piece of paper.

On digital devices like harddisks or usb sticks you can store anything describable in various ways. I allready said something about midi recording what note is ‘on’ at what volume at which moment, different channels keeping track of what synth and program changes keep track of the chosen instrument. The same midi can also be used to say what light burns how bright at which moment in a lightshow and it can select colors and movement of these lights too.

With a different language, not midi but wav file encoding you sample sound. Sound is nothing more than a wave, like when you throw a stone in a perfectly still pond. The movement on the surface looks exactly like a soundwave, going out in all directions. The sound waves we can hear actually move faster than these visible waves on the water. If you keep your finger on a bear speaker that makes a sound you can feel that wave. The higher the frequency, the faster it waves.

To record that onto a harddrive the system uses a microphone to transform the movement of an airwave into an electric signal that looks exactly the same. Next comes the AD-convertor that samples this electricity 44100 times per second or even faster. In wave format the system writes down how high the voltage was at any given sample, 44100 times per second describing exactly how high the wave was at any given moment.

When we read this back we pass this info back to a DA-convertor that uses the info to reconstruct the wave an thus telling the Amplifier how much the speaker should move to recreate the sound. The amplifier allows you to decide what the maximum height of the wave is gona be but the image of the wave stays the same although it is enlarged like a picture on a billboard. The same but bigger and therefore louder.

Does that paint you a picture?

_________________
In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

Does it ever!! Incredible!
Dirk, this is the best explanation I've ever seen. Even though, I was aware of the way in which sound "vibrates speakers" etc., however, the way in which you tied it all together made it much clearer; (I liked you "bear" speaker analogy, knowing you meant bare though).
This is something that should become part of all instruction on this subject and I appreciate you taking the time to verbally illustrate it. Well done and I now see why my "logic" wouldn't work with wav files.

a bear speaker is one if the bare necesities of life...

_________________
In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

Someone will come out now with a new speaker line called "Bear" and become a millionaire.

Dirk, below, is a good review of the AW1600 by a "tweakhead" website reviewer.

If I may get your input on what he says specifically where I have indicated double asterisks (**) in two locations in the review.

The reason being, the reviewer mentions "dragging audio" (I'm assuming wav files) from the AW1600 to his computer DAW and I'm curious if this is something I could also do but, also curious how this fits within the context of what you explained in your analogy from yesterday.

The 2nd (**), he mentions "AD Converters" and I'd like to know if he means AD Converters on the AW1600? Thanks again.




http://tweakheadz.com/review-of-the-yamaha-aw1600/


Transferring to DAW:

Connecting by USB was easy. Driver installation on my G5 was easy. A new hard drive appeared

in the Finder about two seconds after connection. Exporting the files was simple. But then they

wouldn't play! Uh oh. Logic and Peak both complained they were 32 bit files. What!? I should have

read the manual. I had missed a point about "exporting" them first to the "transport" directory, where

they are apparently made into bonafide 24 bit files. Once I did that, the transfer was smooth.


**(I was even able to drag audio files straight into onto logic's audio tracks where they played from the AW1600's internal hard drive).


Faultless. Not a hiccup, stutter, crack or crinkle. When I heard the tracks through my HR824s I was very pleased. They sounded great in the quiet confines of my DAW room.

**(The AD converters in the AW1600 had done a great job).

I feel confident that if I do use the same preamps I use on my DAW the AW1600 will be on a level playing field with the rest of my system and be able to do critical sessions anywhere I want. Its good to know I can make good recordings straight out of the box though. Ah, the joy of a 24 bit recorder. You can also choose 16 bit if you want, but in my tests so far, the sound is not as good.

Choosing 24 bit, as is typical, halves the number of playback tracks to 8. However, the number

of tracks you can simultaneously record is 8 whether you choose 24 bit or 16 bit.

The reviewer does mean the AD convertors of the AW. Your Motifs output is electrical, also called analog. The AD here stands for Analog to Digital convertor.

The Daw software he uses at that point can only use 24 bit wav files. The number of bits says how precise you can describe the height of the wave. With 8 bit you only get 256 different values and you can actually hear the difference between 200 and 201 for example. We notice that as being bad quality because the sound is missing detail and smoothness. Since we are talking about a wave, the middle value 127 is what we conceive as silence. Anything below or above is a sound pressure. This means only half of the 256, which is 127 can be used at either side of the sound wave. The speaker can move forward and backward, it revolves arround zero. So the actual resolution is even less. With 24 bith you get more than 16.000.000 values. Talk about a smooth wave description.

Can you drag and drop files from the AW into a daw software? Yes, the condition being you export them to the transport folder (as 24 bit wav files or higher bit rates, todays computers and software will convert different bit rates.)

After you exported to the transport folder you need connect your AW via usb to your computer and watch the finder or explorer as you connect. A new drive should show up. There are some pittfalls on Windows however. If the AW shows with a drive letter allready in use you may not see it so try to do this without other usb sticks etc. connected.

Hope this helps.

_________________
In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble

As i said earlier in the thread ---it is all about the Transport Folder. The Aw creates Wav files. They need not be 24 bit, you can use 16 bit too. but ultimately bit rates must match within a project. So if you create 16 bit files on the AW and then try to use them in a 24 bit Protools ( or Audacity )environment that wont fly. They can be converted but that is an extra step. You can also utilize 16 bit projects in Audacity.

I work mostly in 16 bit to preserve AW track count.

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Byron

Believe me, it ALL helps Dirk and Byron, thank you as well for your input. I did recall your mentioning the Transport Folder earlier. However, something I forgot until now regarding the Transport Folder is that it requires a USB-Midi driver that I have not had any success getting installed on my Windows computer.
I get an "Error 25001, No Device connected."

If I can get the USB driver installed, I would prefer to try using the Audio wav files first, with Audacity; then the Motif ES, if for some reason the Transport folder method doesn't work. The reason being I have all the files on the AW and would have to locate the files on old Smart media cards for the Motif which would take much more time.


A couple of questions regarding the AD Converter in the AW: the "extra step" you mention Byron, is that in the manual and how do I find out what "bit" size my files are? Thanks guys.

Tell us again. You are a PC user or Mac? What OS are you using? Windows 7 ? 8?

there has not been a history of users needing to locate a USB driver, in my limited knowledge. It seems to be resident upon,or found by, any computer to which I have linked my

I will have opportunity to try my AW wit a Windows machine that has never seen it. My mom is moving and not taking her laptop, so I will hook to it and see the result.

Stand by to stand by.

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Byron

I just reviewed the start of this thread and see you are Windows 8.1 user.

I also noted in that message that you were, at that time, connected via USB midi cable. Then began the whole discussion of AW midi capacity.

I need to ask - Have you linked your window's machine to you PC with a USB cable, which is not actually the (round plug) midi cable that relays Transport control messages (start stop etc.)

You need to link AW via a USB cable that has a squarish plug on one end ( into the AW) and a flat USB connector (as has a Thumb drive) into the PC.

It is my experience that when so connected, the AW shows up as a storage device in the Computer's display of connected devices . the Transport folder is in the second of these partitions.

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Byron

Thanks Byron. I may need to wait until Sunday to try to do it as I work today, Friday and Sat. However, Just so I'm clear on what you're saying, you mention in one paragraph: "Have you linked your window's machine to you PC with a USB cable" ? I think you meant the AW to PC via USB, as you then state that in your following paragraph. Honestly, I don't believe I have because I've never gotten beyond trying to load the AW Midi Driver to my Windows 8.1 PC without getting the Error prompt I mentioned previously. So, are you saying I need to first "link" the AW to the PC before I try to install the Midi Driver?

I think he is saying you don’t need the midi driver. You need to transfer wav files. Not midi.

_________________
In a minute it might be gone. Life is a bear in a bubble.

http://www.soundclick.com/bearinabubble