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Posted by: news Fri 30 Jan 2004, 20:13

Comments about:

http://www.macmusic.org/news/view.php?lang=EN&id=1396

Posted by: djfera Fri 30 Jan 2004, 20:13

Bad link???

Posted by: Nels Fri 30 Jan 2004, 20:20

The link worked fine for me. .....You need Real One Player to view the clip.

Posted by: azusa Sat 31 Jan 2004, 02:12

Finally, Presonus wise up and stay away from mLan.
It looks really good. I'll check it out soon.

Posted by: Nels Sat 31 Jan 2004, 03:08

If you're saying that you think mLan looks pretty good, ..I agree. ....And I've always liked Yamaha quality.

I still use a Yamaha FX900 Mutieffects Processor that I've had for 16yrs. and it still sounds & works perfectly. ...I'm hoping that the O1X will be as good in quality.

How is Presonus staying away from mLan? ....Please forgive me, but I don't know what you mean.

I wasn't aware that Presonus had anything to do with mLan.

Take care,
Nelson

Posted by: macyu Sat 31 Jan 2004, 04:51

basically, the presonus firestation used mlan, but it caused no end of trouble for most people, even though most people loved the preamp and the A/D. the problems were usually it going out of sync, and the midi ports being non-functional etc. the problem was that mlan existed for a while, but yamaha didn't really push the tech, and the support was bad. for example, yamaha had a mlan virtual patchbay app, but that was only for os9.. in fact, yamaha themselves didn't really have any killer mlan hardware till this year...

Posted by: Nels Sat 31 Jan 2004, 04:57

So, overall, ...are you pro or con when it comes to mLan and / or the O1X?

Thanks for the input.

Posted by: Macca Mon 2 Feb 2004, 09:30

This would be really nice, but for now wishfull thinking for the Firepod has no tubes at all, although it's probably a very desirable device.

Posted by: macyu Mon 2 Feb 2004, 09:49

Nels:
Until I see the new and improved mlan protocol used by the newest of Yamaha gear, I'd have to say that mlan was only good in theory, and ended up very messy in implementation.


Macca:
The FirePOD does have tubes. In the specs, it says "Eight class A mic preamps." Class-A refers to the tube amplification design.

Posted by: dmrkh Wed 4 Feb 2004, 05:06

Okay, I need some clarification here.

It was my understanding that "mLan" was a synonym for Firewire, in the same vein as "
?V^kVk
m I bring this up is that I JUST read a post about how "VST" and "VSTi" were being interchanged a little too freeelly with "AU".
So when azusa made his comment, I daresay things got a little " things that make you think-hmm".

Yes?
No?
Maybe?

Posted by: macyu Wed 4 Feb 2004, 09:53

mLan is a protocol that you can run on top of Firewire (aka IEEE1394)

other protocols that can run on it are customized ones such as what the new FirePOD will use, and also TCP/IP (starting from OS X 10.3 and Windows XP)

Posted by: Nels Wed 4 Feb 2004, 17:18

But, is mLan something I want to stay away from?

At first, mLan seemed to be a cool thing, but lately I've been reading how Tascam, for example, has stopped incorporating mLan in their most recent products, due to unstable functionality.

And it has been suggested by some in this forum to stay away from mLan.

So, needless to say, I'm a bit bewildered.

I'm hoping to finally decide on the most stable/reliable of DAWS protocol. ...The Yamaha O1X along with DP4 looked to be the perfect colution, but now I'm incredibly suspicious.

Posted by: swilder Wed 4 Feb 2004, 18:19

I am by no means an expert on the subject. But I think the problem arises when a company like Yamaha tries to take something that's standardized, such as Firewire. And then tries to make it proprietary (mLan). Why would all the other companies out there want to write code that is proprietary when there's an open standard that works just fine?

Apple, and apple users tend to not like proprietary software. Which is why iTunes has continued to work with open standards such as mp4, and stay away from things like windows media.

All proprietary stuff does is create an us versus them mentality. And that's not good for anyone.

Just my 2 cents

Scott

Posted by: lepetitmartien Wed 4 Feb 2004, 20:27

For your information, the demo booth of Yamaha at NAMM was all mLAN wired. And it worked.

The problems with mLAN is that products and softwares are slow to come in but it's going faster now. The Firewire 800 will be the start factor I think.

Class A refers to the amplification design (A, B or AB)

A is small amplification, high fidelity, low distortion
B is high gain, low fidelity, distortion
AB is a mixup and sits in the middle.

You can make tube design in A, AB or B…
As you can make bad tube designs…

And there's no tubes in the Firepod…

Now swilder, mLAN is developped on top of FireWire because FW is only a "tubing" it move data, there's nothing "more" to it which is bot enough for the purpose of mLAN. MLAN provides support to efficiently move MIDI, DIgital Audio and Digital Video over FW, with timing under scrutiny as FW is not real time. It secures FW for these applications.

And it allows users to get rid of some cables too…

Now the slow rise come from many things… Apple used FW only 5 years afters creating it, Yamaha even if present from the begining took 8-9 years to start demoing something working and a couples years more to issue products. 14 years now after the start of FW at Apple other companies are catching up, and I believe it's important, controler chips for FW are less expensive (guess why there's more USB out there than FW? Even if USB is definetly NOT taylored for real time and audio streams.)

MLAN is coming from Yamaha but others have joined…

Posted by: macyu Thu 5 Feb 2004, 06:49

ah sorry for the mis-information. I'm no electrical engineer so I always thought that class-a amplifier designs had something to do with using vacuum tubes

Posted by: Nels Thu 5 Feb 2004, 07:30

swilder,

Your voice of conviction is admirable, but I don't understand how you can suggest that Yamaha is creating an us versus them mentality, when it's pretty clear that they're trying to iliminate all that. Or at least somewhat more than saaaaay, >>>>>>>>Digidesign.

I would venture to say that if any one company was to be blamed for that kind of protocol/mentality, I'm sure even the heartist of Pro Tools users would say that it was the good folks at Digidesign.

I don't know if mLan will ever be perfected and/or become the standard, but I for one, sure hope that it does. And it's getting better all the time.

Posted by: dmrkh Fri 6 Feb 2004, 07:46

Actually meant to type "iLink", as in the same Sony that now markets the very nice Vegas solution (give a pc devil its due).

How does mLan run in conjunction with FW800 vs. FW400?
Is this impractical? What seperates mLan being a "dongle" of another color?

Posted by: macyu Fri 6 Feb 2004, 09:02

ok, the thing about mlan is that it's just a language that devices with firewire can use to talk to other devices on firewire. it's not a dongle nor is it a special cable. anyways, the thing that is being viewed as being bad about mlan is that the support has been weak, and the licensing cost was expensive. ofcourse, if and when it works, it will be wonderful, as you can hook up all mlan compatible audio gear together just using firewire - forget about having tons of audio cables, each with different connectors as well as separate midi cables, and this connection doesn't even require a computer in the middle of it all