TL;DR From my initial testing, macOS Big Sur works great with the S3L and S6L.
When I first started testing, I was doing so through the PreSonus SW5E, which resulted in the clicky AVB audio problems I’d experienced with macOS High Sierra (see my previous blog post on the topic.) After upgrading the firmware on the SW5E, everything worked great.
TL;DR I wanted great sound from Apple Music, and I wanted to add an EQ for better video conferencing sound. I didn’t want to change the EQ all the time. Configuring my Mac to use separate outputs of my MOTU 828mk3 was the solution.
I’m the manager of a globally distributed team, and I work with many other teams who are also globally distributed. For me, this means I practically live in video conferences – especially now as I’ve been stuck in home office for the last 9 months! Some of the VCs I connect to sound horrible due to low quality laptop microphones or reverberant rooms, which I find annoying as someone who enjoys good audio.
I use a MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid (connected via USB) as the primary audio interface on my work computer. The default L/R channels route out the Main Outs to a Mackie 802VLZ4, which drive my M-Audio BX5 D2 studio monitors and SBX10 sub. I also have a microphone conned to Mic 1. Despite being 9.5y+ old, the MOTU works flawless for me, even under macOS Big Sur!
My MOTU 16A (for personal) and MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid (for work) audio interfaces.
Lately, I became annoyed enough with having the EQ / de-EQ / EQ / de-EQ process as I would go back-and-forth between music and VCs that I decided to do something about it. I had a “duh” moment, and decided to route additional outputs from the MOTU to the Mackie so I could have a dedicated channel for VC.
Steps to achieve my setup
Create an aggregate audio device. macOS has the wonderful feature of Aggregate audio devices, which I normally use to combine multiple audio interfaces into a single audio device. I started by creating a “MOTU for VC” aggregate audio device using only the MOTU 828mk3 as the subdevice. As I’ll be sending the VC audio out Analog 3-4 (output channels 5-6 on this device), I named them L and R so I’d have those names for references in the future.
By default, the device uses channels 1-2 for signal output, which route to the Main Outs. To change that, click “Configure Speakers…” to bring up the speaker configuration window. Select the “Analog” stream which supports the desired channels 5-6, and then choose the correct channels for the Left and Right speakers at the bottom.
NOTE: As I named channels 5-6 as L and R earlier, those channel names showed up here as well.
The final software step is configure Google Meet to use the “MOTU for VC (Aggregate)” device for Microphone and Speakers. This step also works for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Skype too.
For the hardware step, I now routed cables from Analog 3-4 to channel 3-4 on the Mackie. (Channels 5-6 are the Main Outs from the MOTU 828mk3, and 7-8 are from the MOTU 16A.)
With everything wired, I can now set custom EQ and level values on 3-4 for VC meetings, and still have a clean signal on 5-6 for music. Problem solved!
TL;DR The display resolution on macOS can also impact Lightroom performance. For best results, leave it to the “Default” resolution (especially on 4K monitors), or change it to Scaled / More Space to use the maximum resolution of the screen. Any scaled resolution between the default and max can impact performance.
[Update 2020-08-25] In my testing, Lightroom Classic 9.4 appears to fix the issues described in this post.
[Update 2020-11-10] The newest release of Lightroom Classic 10.0 seems to be even worse than 9.3, despite its many “performance improvements”. Sigh.
[Update 2021-01-17] Lightroom Classic 10.1 is back to the performance levels like 9.4, but overall I still consider it meh.
I’m an avid user of Adobe Lightroom since version 1.0, and have used it on tens of thousands of photos. I’ve tried other software in the meantime, but always came back to Lightroom.
Starting a few years ago, the newest versions of Lightroom felt slower than previous versions, a complaint that many people on the internets have had. I too have had slowness, especially on my 2013 Mac Pro, and this became especially true once I upgraded to a 4K monitor. After a recent Fstoppers article entitled Dramatically Speed up Lightroom Performance, I decided to dig into the problem.
Unfortunately in my case, I’d already tried all of the tricks in the Fstoppers article, as well as those from the linked Adobe article on how to Optimize performance of Lightroom. No matter what I tried, nothing worked. I’ve found one trick though that I’ve never seen mentioned, so I’m sharing it in hopes that it helps somebody else.
Make sure your display resolution is set at “Default for display” or “Scaled / More Space”. Anything else can cause performance problems.
On retina and 4K screens, macOS doubles the screen resolution chosen behind the scenes, and then scales it down by 50% so that text appears extremely clear. The only exception is Scaled / More Space which uses the native screen resolution.
In my case, I normally run my screen at the non-default resolution of 3008 x 1692, which means Lightroom is rendering to an actual display resolution of 6016 x 3384. If I change back to the Default or Scaled / More Space resolution, the actual resolution drops to 3840 x 2160, which is 64% smaller. That difference enables Lightroom to render the UI elements much faster, probably because my graphics cards can handle that better.
TL;DR The MOTU M64 works great with the Avid VENUE S3L. The tested setup was sending 32ch of audio from an Avid VENUE S3L via AVB to a MOTU M64, converting the signal to optical MADI, and sending it over fiber into an Avid VENUE Profile.
Background
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of working with Patrick Müller and Luca Bruegger of Tonkultur.ch GmbH / Remote Recording Services to connect their Avid S3L system to their Avid Profile system via optical MADI using the the MOTU M64 as a converter.
Patrick and Luca were looking to use a spare Avid S3L console as additional inputs for an Avid Venue Profile console. They normally get a MADI feed from the FoH for their recording, but sometimes have the need for their own on-stage preamps. They wanted the ability to place two Avid Stage 16 stage boxes on the stage, acting as as mic preamps, and send the signals into their existing setup via optical MADI. Unfortunately the S3L doesn’t support MADI.
In their search for a solution, they were pointed at my Avid S3L and 3rd-party AVB Devices article. Seeing that I’ve connected MOTU devices already, they purchased the MOTU M64, and reached out for some help getting it going. Luckily Luca and I have known each other for several years now which made it easy to connect.
Getting it going
Working through the documentation I’ve written, we were able to get the setup working in a couple of hours. This was my first chance to test the documentation on a second S3L system, and I was able to fix some minor mistakes along the way, which should make future configurations go much faster.
A future desire they have is to leave the E3 Engine out of the mix completely, using only the Stage 16 and M64 devices. I’ve started digging into the Stage 16 to see whether that might be possible, and both Luca and I are reading more into the AVB standard, as well as Milan, which is the follow-up standard to AVB. Stay tuned!
[Update 2020-01-14] I’m now able to announce the Stage 16 via AVB so that I can record directly from it with macOS, and I can also manually control the signal settings (gain, pad, and phantom) as well as the LEDs on the front. See what all I have working on my Projects page.
TL;DR I recently purchased and installed a Starlane WID-B data logger in my 2012 BMW S100RR so that I could improve my lap times at the track. I created two videos to share my experiences with others.
I’m an avid motorcycle rider, and enjoy improving my performance and lap times while riding at the track. I also work as an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) in a large production computing environment. I’m primarily focused on backend systems, where performance (i.e. latency) is critical. To improve performance of computing systems, or just about anything for that matter, it must be measured.
For the last couple of years, I’ve looked for a reasonably priced data logger for my 2012 BMW S1000RR. BMW provides one, but I wasn’t keen on giving out USD 1000+ for the HP Parts Race Datalogger. I am only a track day rider, and no professional.
After quite a bit of research I learned that Starlane, the maker of my CORSRO-R GPS, produces WID (Wireless Input Device) device modules that collect signals from the bike. Searching for real-life experience information for these devices was basically impossible though. In the end, I chose to buy the WID-B from Starlane Germany.
In order to share some real-life experience with the Starlane WID-B, I filmed my first YouTube videos and shared them with the world. Perhaps this will encourage other track riders out there to install one of their own to improve their own lap times.
This post describes using a TC Electronic DBMax to enhance the audio of a live stream.
In a live streaming situation, control of audio levels is critical to providing listeners and viewers with a great auditory experience. Inconsistent levels, or levels that are too loud or too soft result in a suboptimal experience, which degrades the performance.
The TC Electronic DBMax (Digital Broadcast Maximizer) is an ideal device for stabilizing and enhancing audio for live streaming and live recording situations. It supports up to three pre-dynamic inserts (AGC, Parametric EQ, 90 deg. mono, Dynamic Equalizer, Stereo Enhance, Normalizer, MS Decoding and MS Encoding), an expander, compressor and limiter, and a single post-dynamic insert (Transmission Limiter or Production Limiter). The EQ, compressors, and limiters are all 5-band, and provide broadcast quality results. It is basically a Finalizer 96K on steroids.
In my role as recording lead at ICF, I use two separate DBMax devices to solve two separate problems. 1) stabilize the FoH signal for video, and 2) boost the stabilized signal for streaming. Once I put these two devices in, the video team I work with thanked me multiple times as they have a stable audio level they can rely on for single every event, no matter what kind of event, and they love the audio quality.
The first DBMax balances audio levels between a live worship session, where audio levels during worship are 10–15dB louder than the normal speaking volumes, and speaking sessions. The goal is to provide a signal that roughly meets the -23 LUFS broadcast standard in Europe, which means the audio recorded for video needs no additional post-processing for release to public TV (which we do for special events).
The feed coming from the FoH board is limited (with the Waves L2 Ultramaximizer), which provides a known maximum audio level.
The first insert is the Normalizer, which gives a small 3dB boost to the the overall audio level. The focus is to bring speaking parts into a better working range for later processing.
The second insert is the AGC (Automatic Gain Controller), which automatically raises the volume by up to 3dB (for soft speaking), or reduces it by up to -20dB (for loud band numbers).
The third insert is Stereo Enhance. The FoH provides signal for the main audience, but the stereo image in a live situation is typically reduced so that audience members on the far left/right sides don’t hear only a mono left or right signal. This insert provides a wider and more natural signal for TV viewing.
The 5-band expander is not used.
The 5-band compressor does a decent amount of compression, typically several DB. The advantage of a 5-band compressor is that kick and tom hits will not result in the overall signal being compressed, giving a more transparent sound.
The 5-band limiter catches loud peaks that might have made it past the compressor and AGC.
The last insert is the Production Limiter, which limits the overall sound signal. It is rarely triggered, and is mostly there to catch anything left.
The second DBMax takes the audio from the first DBMax, and boosts it to roughly -14 LUFS for live streaming on internet, and for streaming to TVs throughout the building (e.g. for parents in the children’s area). The -14 LUFS level was chosen as both YouTube and Apple both use this standard, and signals recorded from this DBMax require no additional post-processing for release to those streaming platforms (for video or podcasts).
The first insert is the Parametric EQ, which boots the signal 9dB, and applies a shallow high-pass and low-pass filter to strip off extra energy that laptop speakers and most headphones cannot reproduce.
The second insert the Spectral Stereo Image, which widens signals above 50 Hz, making for a better experience on headphones or laptops.
The third insert is the AGC, which makes minor signal adjustments of ±3dB to produce more consistent results.
The 5-band expander is not used.
The 5-band compressor provides fast and light 2.0:1 compression, and a 3.9 dB boost.
The 5-band limiter catches loud peaks that might have made it past the compressor.
The last insert is the Production Limiter, which limits the overall sound signal. It is rarely triggered, and is mostly there to catch anything left.
For those who are curious, the DBMax introduces roughly a 5ms delay into the audio signal chain, which must be compensated for when aligning the audio and video signals together. The video signals I’m working with have an 80ms latency delay, so I apply an additional 75ms delay using a Behringer X32 console, which was a console already available to me.
If you are interested in buying a used DBMax, they can frequently be found on eBay in the $700–1500 price range. New they are $4000+, so the used price is quite good. With patience, I’ve purchased three in the $700-$800 range. Try to purchase a device with the v2.60 or v2.90 firmware as the v2.02 firmware has a several minor issues that were fixed in the v2.60 release.
If you’d like to know more, let me know in the comments. For the actual settings, see this Google spreadsheet.
For years, I have wanted to connect my MOTU AVB audio interfaces to my Avid S3L console, but have had no luck. After recently finding some information on the internets, I’ve found a way to reconfigure the S3L to talk using 8-channel AVB streams, which my MOTU devices require, and with some effort I now have bi-directional audio working!!
I’ve written up a document, and shared it as a public Google doc. I’ll eventually write it up here, but don’t feel like messing with WordPress right now.
I don’t know what Apple is doing with audio timing in macOS High Sierra, but they have serious quality control issues in this area. See my post on Avid S3L-X, AVB, and macOS High Sierra for other troubles I’m having.
When Apple released 10.13.2, my Audioquest DragonFly Red started having strange issues. Similar to the clicking issue with AVB, I was having strange timing issues that sounded like phasing, almost like the individual waveform samples were being triggered at a different clock rate than the audio device. It wasn’t constant, but frequent and annoying enough that I gave up using the device. I wasn’t the only one having the issue.
In any case, 10.13.4 fixed my Dragonfly issues, so I’m again happy.
I decided to take the plunge into OS X Lion. Based on previous experience with .0 releases of OS X, you’d think I’d know better than to install another one, but alas I simply couldn’t wait. 🙂 This article will chronicle surprises and workarounds I’ve dealt with along the way.
I have a few different machines at home:
– Late 2007 13″ MacBook
– Late 2009 27″ iMac
– Early 2010 13″ MacBook Pro
The MacBook Pro is provided by my employer, so it won’t be touched.
the iMac
I started with the iMac. Download of Lion was smooth with decent bandwidth. It took a few hours, but I figured it would. Keeping the non-technical user in mind, I figured that Apple would take the approach of removing the installer once it was installed, so I backed up the disk image (http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/08/create-burn-bootable-mac-os-x-lion-install-disc/) to my NAS before installing. Good thing I did as the installer was removed. Install was smooth. No issues.
SSL Issues
The only major issue I ran into was that SSL wasn’t working in Chrome or Safari, which also caused problems for iTunes and the App Store. I run a Squid proxy at home, and even though I don’t have SSL going through the proxy (it goes DIRECT instead), I still had issues. Turns out I needed to check the “Automatic Proxy Configuration” box as well (https://discussions.apple.com/message/15663396#15663396) in the Network Settings, something not previously needed.
Multiple Desktop Screens
The one minor issue I had was that I previously had four desktops, configured through spaces, but I couldn’t figure out how to do the same in Lion. Completely by accident, I figured out that when I was in the Mission Control environment, placing my mouse pointer on the right edge of the screen near the top, caused a plus (+) icon thingy to pop out. Clicking it allowed me to create more desktops. I later found in the Keyboard section of the System Preferences that I could change the keyboard shortcuts to flip between screens. My old settings were carried over from Snow Leopard, so no changes were necessary.
the MacBook
Last night, I stayed up until 03.00 working on the MacBook. Ha!
Knowing that Lion was coming out soon, I figured this would be a good time to also add some RAM and upgrade the HDD in the machine. I planned to go from 2G to 4G of memory, but unfortunately one of the memory sticks I bought seems to be bad as the Mac beeps in a very upset manner, and Google tells me that the particular beep sequence means the memory isn’t passing checks. So, I’m only at 3G instead of 4G.
For the HDD, I choose the Seagate Momentus XT 320G as it has 4G of MLC cache added on, and the drive will cache frequently used things on its own. I
I’ve been fighting for weeks now trying to get my home wireless network to work smoothly. I’m living in an apartment in Ireland, built in the 1970’s, that has concrete walls for every single wall in the house. It does wonders for my wireless signal, and to date the only thing that has provided a decent (albeit not strong) signal in all rooms was a Linksys WAP54G.
I recently purchased my first Mac desktop (the wonderful Apple 27″ iMac with the quad-core i7 chip). It is a brilliant machine, the fastest I’ve ever owned, and I didn’t want to limit it with a slow wireless connection. My partner and I both have Mac laptops as well, and I wanted to see a speed improvement there too. Finally, we both have Wifi enabled phones, I have an iPod, there are a couple of AirPort Express for broadcasting iTunes music and sharing a printer, an AppleTV for renting movies, and a Popcorn Hour A-110 that we stream movies to (using one of the AirPort Express as a bridge).
To improve my network, I went with the latest Apple AirPort Extreme (Simultaneous Dual-Band II). My hope was that I could 802.11n at 5GHz for the Macs, and 802.11n and 802.11g at 2.4GHz for the rest. Unfortunately though, despite MUCH fiddling (trying lots of channels, fiddling with this that and the other, etc.), I kept running into problems. First off, the only place in the apartment where I could get a usable 5GHz signal (decent as defined by sustaining more than 3MiB/s transfers) was at the kitchen table about 5m away from the AirPort (through one wall). In my bedroom (about 10m away from the AirPort and through three walls) where the 27″ iMac is, I usually could get between 24-144Mbps signal (never constant) and could usually sustain around 1.7MiB/s transfers. And, I could not for the life of me get a good streaming signal – one that always worked without pauses – to stream movies to the Popcorn Hour in the living room (about 10m away and two walls). Sometimes, yes, but not always. This situation is actually worse than it was before!
I must say that I love the AirPort Express for its ease of configuration, and its IPv6 support, but it just isn’t working for me with the vast amount of concrete I have.
To try to solve my problems with my iMac, I decided to configure an old Linksys WRT54GS I have in a client-bridge configuration. The Linksys has two spiffy antennas with potentially better gain than the built-in antenna of the iMac. I chose the WRT54GS as it has a built-in switch – which would be nice to have in the bedroom – whereas the WAP54G I used in the past has only a single port.
As it turns out, after spending literally hours trying to get such a configuration working, the solution was incredibly simple. I found lots of interesting but conflicting information on the web about how to do this, but was unable to get any of it to work. I must be honest and state that I did not want to use the nvram command to do the configuration. I just find that such by-hand configurations are hard to reproduce should I need to someday, and prefer to have a documented, easy-to-understand, and repeatable solution instead.
I finally decided to forge ahead without docs to see what I could get going.
The solution
This section assumes a cleanly installed OpenWrt firmware on the router. (See below on how to reflash with TFTP if you need.) It also assumes you are logged into the more advanced Administration mode (not the default Essentials mode) of the OpenWrt interface.
Configure the WAN interface (Network > Interfaces > WAN)
I changed nothing here.
wan
Protocol: DHCP
Bridge interfaces: unchecked
Interface: eth0.1
Zone: wan
Configure the LAN interface (Network > Interfaces > LAN)
My local network subnet is 172.18.0/24 so I placed the LAN interface within that subnet. By doing this, I can telnet into the router without needing to specially configure a machine to talk to it.
lan
Protocol: static
Bridge interfaces: checked
Enable STP: unchecked
Interface: eth0.0
Zone: lan
IPv4-Address: 172.18.0.11
IPv4-Netmask: 255.255.255.0
IPv4-Gateway: 172.18.0.1
DNS-Server (added): 172.18.0.1
Click Save.
Configure the wireless to join my existing network (Network > Wifi > WL0)
Device wl0
enable: checked
Channel: auto
Transmit Power (dBm): 70
802.11h (added): checked
WMM Mode (added): checked
Interfaces
ESSID: KWAB
Network: lan
Mode: Client
Encryption: WPA2-PSK
Key: ******* (I’m not giving that up!! 😉 )
Click Save.
Switch (Network > Switch)
The Linksys WRT54GS v.4 uses slightly different VLAN ports than other routers. Basically, the WAN port is #0, whereas most other routers it is #4. I updated accordingly.
ETH0
ethX.0: 0 1 2 3 5*
ethX.1: 4 5
Click Save.
DHCP (Network > DHCP)
DHCP is enabled by default. It must be disabled. Uncheck the Dynamic DHCP option.
Click Save.
Apply all the changes (Changes > Save and Apply)
Once the settings are applied, the router should be pingable at 172.18.0.11 and the normal network should also be accessible using normal means (in my case DHCP). I have noticed that the router sometimes gets confused at this point, and a simple reboot [by pulling the plug] fixes that.
Enable multicasting
By default, the network interfaces do not support the full set of multicasting required for Bonjour and mDNS to work (two things I can’t live without with my Macs). To get them going, we need a quick shell script.
Edit the /etc/firewall.user script, and add these lines to it:
# enable full multicasting for iface in br-lan eth0 eth0.0 eth0.1 wl0; do ifconfig ${iface} allmulti done
Run the script to setup the multicasting. In case you were wondering, Tte script will be executed automatically by the firewall script on subsequents boots.
We’re done!
The Result
After all was said and done… I still wasn’t happy 🙁
The iMac talking directly to the AirPort Extreme (jumping between 24-144Mbit/s as reported by the AirPort) was usually able to sustain 1.7MiB/s transfers, while the Linksys (jumping between 18-54Mbit/s as reported by the AirPort) could usually sustain only around 400KiB/s, more than 4x slower. Grumble.
I also use IPv6 on my network, but the Linksys isn’t bridging it through. It means when I do lookups for addresses like freenas.local (my NAS) I get the IPv6 address which I cannot talk to. There is probably a solution to that, but I haven’t looked into it yet.
More than once, I locked myself out of the router during my fiddling. Luckily, OpenWrt has a default boot mode one can go into by holding down the reset button during power-on, releasing it once the DMZ LED lights. In this mode, the IP of the router returns [temporarily until reboot] to 192.186.1.1, and it allows telnet access without a password. Using telnet, I was able to manually erase the firmware, then reflash new firmware with TFTP.
To reset the router, I followed these steps:
Placed a copy of OpenWrt in my ~/Downloads folder
Changed to my ~/Downloads folder $ cd ~/Downloads
Set a static IP on my laptop to 192.168.1.2
Added a manual ARP entry (needed later for TFTP) to 192.168.1.2 (valid for OS X 10.5/10.6) $ sudo arp -s 192.168.1.1 00:16:b6:1e:a2:3f
Telnetted into the router. For this to work, you must be plugged into the LAN portion of the router (the switch section) and not the WAN port (the Internet port). $ telnet 192.168.1.1
Erased the flash on the router # mtd erase linux
Pulled the power out of the router
Started TFTP on my laptop
$ tftp 192.168.1.1 tftp> mode binary tftp> rexmt 1 tftp> timeout 90 tftp> trace Packet tracing on. tftp> put openwrt-wrt54gs_v4-squashfs.bin
Plugged the router back in
Waited for the firmware to flash. You should see something similar to this if the upload works:
sent DATA received ACK sent DATA received ACK ... sent DATA received ACK Sent 2166816 bytes in 61.9 seconds
The number of blocks will of course be different for the release of OpenWrt you use.
The router will reboot on its own, and become available on the IP 192.168.1.1.
