NTT’s Core Dump 2.0….

Last week, I got a chance to do something I have been wanting to do since the 1st time I stepped inside the Esplanade; stand behind their audio consoles! (warning! nerdy post ahead…)

Background

Thanks to references from by some family friends, I got a chance to “consult” the Esplanade sounds engineers during a concert last week. It was a North Indian (Hindustani) Classical Musical concert organized by Engage: Consumer Interfaces, an events organization founded by two (I believe) IIM alumni. Engage has been bringing many great artists from India to Singapore for concerts for the past few years.

This year, they invited Pt. Sanjeev Abhyankar and Dr. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande for 2 separate concerts on two evenings, 1st and 2nd May as a part of the “Young Masters in Concert“.

Esplanade

I went a few hours before the concert for sounds checks. Now, if you have ever been backstage at Esplanade, you’d know that place is a freaking maze. There is no way anyone can figure out the place without a map. I did get lost.. a few times. Luckily, thanks to this pass, I had free access to the backstage for two days!

Sound Checks

The concert was held at the Recital Studio of Esplanade. The stage was just being miced up as I arrived. They were using a Sennheiser EW series wireless mic for the main vocals. A Sennheiser 441 for the Tabla, a Shure SM58 for the Harmonium and Shure SM57s for everything else form the electronic Tanpuras to the Manjiras. The Sound Engineer knew his Indian instruments and told me that he had chosen those mics on purpose, considering the sound of the instruments, the room and the atmosphere that was needed.

Leveling

Next, we did the leveling on the console. The console was a Soundcraft Vi6. Here are some pictures of it.

The console totally blew me away. The I/O capabilities are totally unheard of, and the control surface itself had 40 motorized fades, 5 Vistonics II touch screens, and loads of stuff I did not even know about. I was just too fascinated by the flying faders for the 1st few minutes to look at any other details.

The Vistonics II screens allowed the selection of any part of the signal chain, which then showed up on faders for detailed control. The Vistonics II touch screens also had knobs and buttons to do more settings. The configuration options were unbelievable and totally confusing. And finally it had an awesome glow in the darkly lit Recital Studio.

The levels for Pt. Sanjeev Abhyankar’s concert were set too hot IMO. But he insisted on them. The classic sound engineer’s dilemma; Artist Expression or Audiences’ Ears? The levels for Dr. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande concert were set nicely. Though she tended to move away from the mic, causing issues later during the concert.

After the sound check I went out for a break, and came back just before the concert itself.

Concert

All through out the concert, the Sound Engineer kept adjusting the levels and the gains for the various instruments by himself, and according my suggestion (which as my “job”). However, around 30mins in, he pulled up a screen using the Vistonics II touch screens for a effects processor module which he had placed in the signal chain. It was a reverb module from one of Lexicon’s effect processors.

Here are some shots of the screen.

The amazing thing about this module was the fact that it could use the current BPM information, which had to be fed in either using a know or tapping a button on the beat, to improve the reverb processing. It also had parameters like room size, room type and more to control the reverb effect. While the Recital Studio itself had been deadened using curtains and all, the reverb processor was being used to bring warmth to the sound..

Conclusion

Both the concerts totally rocked. Though I personally preferred Dr. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande’s recital. Her voice, the music and the atmosphere was totally mesmerizing.

It was a great experience for me both from musical and technical perspective. Oh and I also got to share a car ride home  with Pt. Sanjeev Abhyankar :D.

I am hoping to do such stints again, and hopefully one day learn to professionally handle such consoles and mic such concerts…. It’s when great technology meets great music, the magic happens..

This was published here because the Tech65 website was is down. These were the stories we covered during the live recording of episode 65 of 65Bits. The original post is here.

We expect all students to be badly behaved, and participate in the discussions impolitely and rant about things… You will be graded on your performance.

1. April Fools Panks on the Interweb.

Engadget

Engadget vs T-Mobile (Apparently not a joke. More on that tomorrow.)

Blizzard

Tauren Marine

Pinata Loot

Bard Class Hero in WoW

Ping.sg’s “Whose pong is it anyway” game

iPhoneDev team

iPhone Dev Team quits.

2. Unlimited Tunes from Apple? Not So Fast

Rumors of a new music service appear to be just that

3. Vista Issues

Early adopter’s issues.

Nvidia driver issues.

4. Creative to sell company HQ for $180m

Creative will sell HQ building and rent it back to save $$

5. Creative Goes After Driver Modder

Creative stops distribution of home grown vista driver.

Driver author responds.

6. Eeee PC Updates: New models and SDK

New 9″ Eee PC wth touchscreen?

Eee PC SDK out soon.

7. Fari and Jerrick’s Experience at M$’s Xbox 360 Event.

Check out that Riff!!!

8. Byte of the Week : Adobe Photoshop Express

Photoshop on the Web!

___________________________________________________________________

For those who missed the other posts, the details of the live recording are follows.

65th Episode of 65Bits Podcast.

Date: Saturday, April 5, 2008

Time: 10:00am - 12:00pm

Location: Geek Terminal

Street: 55, Market Street (Near Raffles Place MRT, opp. Golden Shoe Complex)

City/Town: Singapore, Singapore.

OK. So this year AGAIN, I pulled a lame April Fool’s prank. And I am proud to say, I fooled 1 person again.. Fortunately, not the same one as last year… Ah hah!!…

Google’s prank this year was kinda lame too, with their Virgile Mars program.

Blizzard rocked!! With new units like Tauren Marines, Bards in WoW which make people play guitar hero, and  Piñata’s in Diablo2.

Ping.sg had an amazing “prank”. The “Whose ping is it” game.. Simple and yet addictive. And the pingsters made it into a competition.. Now these guys really have loads of free time. Their respective bosses should give them some extra work.. :p

And Systm.. did an amazing episode with April fools pranks. Mountain Dew as a light source!!.. Perpetual Light Machine?

So did you get fooled today?? 

This WordPress Blog has been taken down after we received the following Takedown Notice for the infringement of DMCA. Please contact Automattic lawyers at legal{at}wordpress.com for more details.

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(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.

http://nttup.wordpress.com

Within this blog is content, hosted through WordPress.com:

Thus, it is my contention that my rights under the DMCA are being violated by the continued presence of this content, and although the content itself is not hosted on your server, it is linked to in such a fashion that it is represented to be part of your client’s website.

(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above a
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(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is not
accurate in that I am the copyright owner, in that the image, though belonging to
another source is of me, thereby giving me certain copyright rights, and I kinda believe that this matter is actionable under the provisions of the DMCA.

The DMCA further provides that the OSP shall fall within the safe harbor provisions of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Act only if it complies with this notification procedure. Specifically, the Act states that upon obtaining knowledge or awareness of the copyright infringement, the OSP must act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material. See §§ 512(c)(1)(A)(2), (c)(1)(C).

Having now received such knowledge or awareness by way of this notice, such expeditious action is hereby requested.

I may be reached regarding this matter at dmca@4Pr1l.com.

April Goldsmith.

After my 6 months exchange stint in Copenhagen, Denmark, I was am completely in love with Europe. The charming cities, breathtking landscapes and lovely people are absolutely unique and just never enough.

While I have travelled around Europe many times, I was too young and too “blur” too remember and understand anything, except the last two trips which were during my under-grad years as Exchange. And that was when I found out about the best way to travel and explore any new land. Bagpacking.. A roadtrip up to Norway and bagpacking adventure down in Italy sold me to this idea..

There is something about getting lost in a new city. Wandering through the small little alleys, walking into the quaint corner cafes, enjoying a cup while watching an old man, a regular, come in, and stand silently by the bar and get his personalised cup, and leave without a word being said.

And now Europe beckons me again. Paris, Wien, Warsaw, Strasbourg, Zaragosa, Copenhagen, Florence, Belfast, Munich, Prague, Milan, Moscow, Edinburgh…

OH and not to forget Amsterdam for live Diggnation on the 3rd April..

Europe beckons.. and I will go..

I saw this video from Geekbrief.tv, a podcast which I watch.

CommonCraft Productions by Lee and Sachi LeFever is doing a series of Video explaining many of the Web2.0/New Media/Web Technology ideas and concepts like Wikis, Twitter and Blogs “in plain English“, with the help of stop motion video made using cardboard cutouts.

There are two things that make it great. The really simple and back to basics way of explaining the concepts, in plain english. And the amazing stop motion video that accompanies the explaination.

This is the perfect tool to explain to the unenlightened about our “subculture“. I tried it with my mom. She understood it well.

As you might know, I have never been fond of the iPhone. Crazy as the geek community might be about this device from Apple, it never appealed to me. Even with all the fanbois saying that you have to touch it to feel how wonderful it is, which I did, I was never attracted to it. It was just too much for the simple funtionality which I require from my cellphones, and required too many bananas to own one..

But after listening to a recent episode of TWiT, and the constant argument by Dan from Tech65 that iPhone’s best feature is it’s full fledged browser, I realised that maybe it did have a place in my world..

It all begins with RSS. Dave Winer, the guy who pioneered RSS was on episode 134 of TWiT (yes, yes, the infamous one) mentioning how iTunes’ use of RSS, for podcasts, is nowhere near the potential that RSS provides. One of Dave’s envisioned use of RSS for podcasts would be to have a mobile device that would allow the aggregation of Podcasts wirelessly (~ 40mins from the start).

That led me thinking, why do we have to tether the iPhone to a PC/Mac to load content onto it? While it is of course a better solution from Apple’s perspective, as they have more control over what gets into the iPhone, “valid” content should be download able over the air. And podcasts are surely one of the best example of “valid” content. Not only that, the mechanism of getting those, RSS, is also something that’s already supported on the iPhone. So why can’t we have an iTunes or a podcast aggregator on the iPhone itself?

Moving on, podcasts might not be everyone’s cup of tea (Though I would like to argue otherwise, we will leave it for some other time), but news is. And RSS and feeds are surely the best way of getting news. And more specifically getting news you are on the go. But RSS isn’t so much a content delivery mechanism as a notification mechanism, at least the way it is uses in these days. So what is the use of having an RSS feed without a browser to actually surf the content which you were notified of by the RSS?

So now, with the iPhone SDK released, adding these functionality to the iPhone would be a matter of making the right app. A podcast aggregator or podcatcher which lives on the iPhone and is able to download the podcasts as the come out directly to your iPhone, using Wifi or cellular data whichever is available. And an RSS aggregator which is able to work with Safari, which is a full fledged browser (albeit no flash support) to give you the complete experience of news over RSS. And furthermore, if you are able to integrate these apps even more, you could hyper link the “show notes” delivered with your podcasts, something that’s already doable with enhanced podcasts, and surf them up, in the browser, while you listen to the podcasts in the background. There you go, your complete podcast experience. Place shifting along with the rest of the experience.

So maybe, the iPhone could be the key to podcasts becoming bigger. Anyone interested in developing these iPhone apps?

Going to India is always a bitter-sweet struggle for me.. While I love the place for some reasons, other things get on my nerves. But I always manage to get caught in an “Adventure” every time I am there.. With crazy car rides, weird cops, scary weather, riots, closures.. you name it, you can get it there.. And every time, there is a guarantee that your adrenaline will get pumping by the time it’s over.

And hence I prefer to go on short vacations, too much adrenaline has never been good for anyone. And then also, by the time it starts getting on my nerves I am out of there…

But I have managed to come up with a list of “Must Do” things for each of my trips to India, and specifically to Pune.

So here is the checklist for my recent trip.

1. Have an Adventure - Check (Crazy neighbor quarreling about the fence. :S )
2. Eat great Marathi Food - Check (2 great meals, at my Aunts and Sis-in-Laws)
3. Eat great roadside Food - Check (On the way from Mumbai to Pune)
4. Drink Neera-
5. Eat Paan - Check (Twice )
6. Shop for Clothes - Kinda Check (”Stole” from Bro.. :p)
7. Restock Music from Planet M - Check (Got around 20+ CDs/DVDs )
8. Hang out with cousins - Kinda Check (Only 1cousin was around )
9. Get a haircut - Check (Just made it on the last day..)
10. Go on a road trip - Kinda Check (Traveled from Mumbai to Pune in Bro’s Car )
11. Ride motorbikes - Check (Rode just a bit.. but was fun… )
12. Attend a concert - Check (Though had to rush off halfway through it )
13. Climb the Tekdi (hill) -

So I managed to get almost of my points.. except Neera.. Damn I crave for it now.. oh and the Tekdi..

Anyway.. here are some pictures I took on the way from Mumbai to Pune..

The Road…

The vehicles…

The roadside food… Pav Bhaji and Wada Pav

During the last Apple keynote at MacWorld.. Among the many other things, Steve Jobs announced “Apple TV take 2“..

Everyone was of course looking at the wonderfully thin MacBook air to actually notice the amazing improvements done to AppleTV.

Let’s go from basics, AppleTV was basically a DVR /Set-top box kinda device that Apple started selling since last year. Something that you attach to your TV, and watch Media content off. It was like an extension of your Mac into your living room. But it’s major weakness was that you had to have another Mac (or PC) with iTunes, and the AppleTV would stream stuff from it.. In the Take 2.. all this changed.

The Take 2 is a software upgrade which makes the Apple TV your Mac in your living room. It doesn’t need a Mac, and can directly download stuff from directly to the iTunes on itself.

Further more, it supports Movie rentals, Flickr, Youtube and other services. The part I am most excited about is that it supports Podcasts. So you can subscribe to your favorite Video/Audio podcast on the iTunes on AppleTV, and watch it on your TV. And, since AppleTV supports 720p HD, you can watch HD podcasts in HD!!

With this and movie/TV rentals, I am really thinking this would be my perfect living room entertainment device.. Especially with people like revision3 coming up with Podcasts on all themes, and that too with high production value, and even in HD, I don’t think I need normal TV anymore.

Maybe it is time to get an HD TV, and trash that Starhub Cable Vision Box..

Oh, but the movie/TV rental doesn’t work in Singapore yet… ARGH APPLE!!!!

This title really warrants my 10days bag-packing adventure in Italy, but for now I shall talk about my recent indulgence in really great Italian food here in Singapore…

I have always loved Italian food, and for that matter, the Italian culture, there is something very homely about it.. and somehow I draw a lot of parallels between Italian culture and Indian culture.. esp when it comes to food..

During the past week I ended up (not by design) eating at 3 great Italian places.. so here they are…

1. Pizza Da Donato
Since cartcart was here, we decided to have a Pingster’s mini-gathering, with the agenda of checking with cartcart how authentic the Pizza was..

You can check Daphne’s post for the details.. but here are my thoughts about the food..

The Pizza is awesome.. at $7 per slice, it’s on the expensive side, but is worth it.
Try not to have the very freshly baked slice, as it tends to “sweat” and get soggy.
Do try their unusual flavors like those with Ricotta, eggplant, Feta.
The Calzone, looks great, but is pretty bland.

Pizza Da Donato is at 8 Sixth Avenue, Singapore 276473

2. Ricciotti

After our recording on Saturday, Jerrick and I decided to look for this Italian restaurant for lunch, which his friend has recommended. We were stupid enough to start walking before checking the map, and we got lost… Finally with the help of a small map posted on a lamp post, and Google Maps on Jerrick’s phone and a bit of luck, we managed to find the place, Ricciotti by Garibaldi

It’s quite a classy place.. And we were hoping they have a Set Lunch which would be cheap enough.. Well they did have a Set Lunch, but it was no where near cheap. For ~S$27, we had a main course, a dessert and a choice of tea/coffee..

I had a Parmagiana and Tiramisu with Coffee, while Jerrick went with the Spaghetti Bologniese and some Choclate Cake with Tea.

The Parmagiana was absolutely delicious. The Eggplants were well done. A tad too tough though, but better than overdone, when you can’t differentiate between eggplant and the sauce. The sauce was nice and rich. And the Parmegianno was real..

Jerrick was really happy with his Spaghetti as well. He reckoned the pasta was “homemade”, as in, made freshly using a pasta maker rather than bought from the supermarket.

The desserts were good, but lackluster in comparison to the main courses. The coffee of course was too long…

Ricciotti is at 3 Pickering Street #01-36/37, Nankin Row, China Square Central, Singapore 048660

3. Finalmente Gastronomia

After tstar’s post about this place, the pingsters decided to raid it. And did we raid it or what!!.. Again.. I am sure Daphne’s and Claudia’s posts did better justice to the place… but here are my thoughts about the food.

The Pizza’s are great. I would say even better than Da Donato. Maybe because they are fresh here.. My favorites were the 5 Cheese, and the Bosco (eggplant, mushroom, white-truffle oil).. The bases were nice and thin, the toppings were fresh and generous.

The 5 Cheese pizza, had a delicious helping of various cheeses which you could taste. If you like strong cheese, you will love this pizza.

For the Bosco, the white-truffle oil added an interesting dimension to it..

The place is simple but feels very Italian, though somehow lacks the charm that’s present in Da Donato’s. Oh and it’s in the middle of nowhere, and you have to take a bus to go there.. Though, it’s right behind a bus-stop… But well, who cares.. it does have the best Pizza’s I have had in Singapore.. And I am going there again…. to try their desserts.. and Anti-pasti… and ofcourse more Pizza!!!

Finalmente Gastronomia is at 443 MacPherson Road, Singapore 368154

P.S. Thanks Jerrick, Daph and Claudia for the photos…