John Petrucelli wrote on Sun, 28 June 2009 22:13 |
LABsters, Although some of you already know of his involvement, I wanted to give a public -THANK YOU- to JR for his contribution to the ProDesk-4 console. I think most everyone on the LAB (at least) suspects that JR is a pretty smart guy. We first met during the Peavey/Crest "Strategic Alliance" and have kept in touch after we both left the PV family. When I was planning the PD-4 meters, I asked him for some advice on micro-controllers (he uses one in his Resotune drum tuner). After talking a bit, he said that he always wanted to resurrect a meter design he first implemented (and patented) in the 70s. It was able to display Ave and Peak simultaneously; he could now do it "easily" with a micro. How could I say no? We worked together to produce the meter sub-assembly below; JR wrote the code and came up with the basic HW design, we did the layout & packaging.
JR was even able to incorporate some later suggestions Bennett made at a trade show (hey, it's only software... ) The ProDesk has been very well received and everyone LOVES the metering. So once again, Thank You, JR! Couldn't have done it without you.
JP
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While Peavey/Crest was indeed my first face to face meeting with JP, IIRC he bought some stuff from my kit company decades earlier so this is truly a small world. Chuck is well known to anyone in the console business, and I met Taz on my several working visits up to Crest in NJ. I used to escape into JPs office to talk circuits and other fun stuff to take a break from the BS I was working on. I wasn't up there in a strictly engineering capacity and that's enough about that.
Indeed this meter project was a labor of love for me. My old patent is now expired so even I can use it now.
I am an old analog dog who has been turned to the dark (digital) side... I have been trying to drag the APB guys into the digital world and consider this a limited victory. If you think about it even analog LED meters are digital output, so this just pushed the A/D conversion further upstream.
This meter project worked because it does everything the old analog approach did, better, for the same price or less, in less real estate, and provided the flexibility to add new features and tricks. We came very close to being able to release the first cut PCBs to production but extra features were added to the design, so we could ignore any mistakes I made.
For those not familiar with my greatest hits song book, this meter invention displays peak and VU (ave) simultaneously as a single LED for Peak, and bar graph for VU. This is easy to read because peak with even a modest hold duration will always be higher than VU. Many people associate this approach with Dorrough but his is pretty much a curved version of mine which was patented before his.
link to video of meter working
http://www.johnhroberts.com/Candy.wmvThe notorious "Bennet" LED was something I was thinking about but it was crystallized by an exchange with him. In effect, when the meter is in VU only mode, the top LED is still responsive to Peak level with some extra hold, so even when mixing in VU mode you still get visibility into headroom status. This is similar to the practice of adding a peak LED to a mechanical VU meter.
It is the true benefit of digital, that you can do all kinds of related manipulations on the data in parallel just by writing code. I won't bore you with the other tricks which are designed to be transparent to the end user, just providing information they can use when they need it (Ignore the man behind the curtain).
It was a pleasure working with JP who is no slouch. His rigor in the hardware effort made it a better product. I love (almost) all of my old inventions, so it is rewarding to see my meter back in the game. When it was new in the '70s this may have been too much complexity for old school mixers to embrace, but in this modern day of so much clutter on computer screens and TV tubes, this display is relative simplicity for the information it contains. Of course I may be a little biased..
JR