Ghost with MMC question. Texroadkill?

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Michael Jones

Michael Jones

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The "MMC" of the Ghost is Midi Machine Control right?
Does the Ghost have motorized faders?
Can I use the Ghost to control the virtual faders in Nuendo?
 
I'm not Tex, but I do have a Ghost with MMC. Yes, MMC is Midi Machine Control: the Ghost can send out MMC tailored to a lot of different machines. The Ghost does not have motorized faders, but the automation that it has (which is _very_ useful, BTW) is mute automation only. The faders stay put, but you can mute and unmute channels slaved to timecode. And the MMC-equipped Ghost has 4 faders (4 of the Group faders) that can be used to drive MIDI continuous controllers, so you should be able to set up Nuendo to listen to those guys. I use SX, and haven't tried it yet- but someday I will...

I use the Ghost as the controller for my Fostex D1624. I use Sony 9-pin protocol to do the machine control, rather than MMC (although that works as well). I feed SMPTE timecode back into the board from the Fostex, so the mute automation slaves very nicely to the timecode (the MTC that comes back from the Fostex over the Sony 9-pin link isn't accurate enough to use with the automation). I also have Cubase chase the Fostex's timecode, so I can easily use the mute automation at the board with the DAW as well as the multitrack.

I didn't think I'd use the automation as much as I do. It is a _lifesaver_ for complex mixes. Folks who are used to DAWs are used to having all that automation built in, but I'm not... The Ghost is a nice excellent-bang-for-the-buck analog board with a few very tasteful digital features added. It is not, and never will be, a complete DAW control surface like the Houston or some of these other boxes.

I understand that there was a company (now defunct) that made some kind of an aftermarket moving fader control package that could be cobbled onto the Ghost. I don't know how well that would work, because there's not a lot of room in there for the stepper motors, and keeping the EMI from the motors out of the Ghosts's nice, clean audio paths would be a complete cast-iron _bitch_. I hate digital-sounding noise. Flying faders need to be designed in, not baindaided on, IMNSHO...
 
Actually skippy, that fader automation package that was designed for the Ghost is not moving fader. It was a VCA fader automation package that of course stored the info in a computer via midi commands as I recall.

Anyway, that "company" was a single guy (as I recall) who used to work for Opcode. Opcode decided not to back the product for whatever reason. You can I think still get information via Opcode on how to contact the guy about that product. The email I got from Opcode a couple years ago suggested that this guy might know how you can obtain a package from users who don't need it anymore. It might be worthwhile to check it out. The original package went for about $3000 for 32 channles. I suppose it could be got for far less now.

Ed
 
Thanks skippy.
Mute automation is one thing, I can control that with my O1V. But I can also control fader movements with my O1V, and set up the "stop", "ff", "rew" on the transport of the O1V to control those as well.
The problem with the O1V is that it really only has 14 faders, plus a stereo master.
I want to be able to control at least 24 channels, and possibly 32.
I am not about to consider the Houston for this task. In my limited use, my opinion of the Houston is that its a POS.

Maybe I'll just link 2 O1V's together.

I know mackie has a new controller out, but I'm really looking for something along the lines of the pro tools controller.
 
Ahhh. Thanks, Ed- that makes more sense.

VCAs notwithstanding, there's still a digitally-controlled gain element in there- which leads to all manner of opportunity for coupling, noise, and general mischief to occur in the signal path. That package is certainly not for me, used, new, or otherwise....

Besides, I think that there's something sick and wrong about faders that move themselves (;-).

Yhe Ghost is remarkably quiet and very usable, considering its low price point. If I want more digital stuff around, I'll opt for a higher-end board from the used market, and leave the Ghost unmunged.
 
Gosh Scott, I don't know. I mixed The Heavy Brothers CD on a DDA console with Uptown moving fader automation! Freakin' amazing stuff there!

But yeah, VCA automation of old was not considered to be the good stuff. Rumor has it that the newer VCA non moving fader automation is supposed to have improved in the noise department by a long shot. If I would have had the cash to afford it when I had my Ghost, I was quite willing to chance it to have SOMEKIND of fader automation!

But I don't blame you for wanting to keep it all clean on the Ghost.

Ed
 
Sure! I'm not saying it can't be done: clearly it can, given the number of successful efforts in the marketplace. I'm just saying that it is much more likely to succeed if it is a ground-up design, done in close concert with the original designers. I've participated in some pretty high end design efforts, and it is *brutally* difficult to achieve >100dB S/N in mixed analog/digital circuits, starting from scratch. To do it as a band-aid for an existing product is certainly possible, but it would equally certainly be unpleasant as hell... Not on my watch, and not with my board.

One of the best things about buying the Ghost was to sit down with my instrumentation and confirm all the S/N and distortion numbers. The Ghost actually meets (in fact, comfotably exceeds!) its published specs. I'm used to hardware thet you have to hack on to get to _meet_ its "marketing specs": something that was actually designed to beat them is quite a pleasure.

No more noise for me: depopped on/off mute is far easier to achieve than de-artifacted realtime VCA control, and I ain't made of money anyway! I _like_ laying hands on, and these days I pass on all that overcomplex stuff anyway. It's odd, but the older I get, the fewer tracks I want...
 
skippy said:
and these days I pass on all that overcomplex stuff anyway. It's odd, but the older I get, the fewer tracks I want...
Click to expand...

I'll second that one.

Michael it looks like they got you covered on the answers. All my stuff is still in boxes until my damn landlord figures out when they are going to finish painting. Bastards.

Skippy and Ed I'll probably be bugging you over the next couple weeks when I get my board up and running. How easy was it for you guys to setup the sync and mute automation? Do you have to drive the mutes from a sequencer or does the Ghost have internal scene memory with step advance?
 
Thanks for the reply Tex.
I called you out because I knew you had one.
Thanks to skippy and Ed too!
 
It's completely trivial to set up the mute automation- you do it all right there on the board with the mute buttons, scrub wheel, and store/recall buttons. It is completely independent of any external machine or software. Internal scene memory with both step advance and random access.

Basically, you set up "snapshots" of the mute states, and associate each snapshot with a timecode value. When that timecode arrives, the board sets up the mutes accordingly, stepping through each snapshot in sequence at the appropriate time. Very sweet, very straightforward, and not a single damned mouse-click required...

I scrub to the edit point with the jog wheel, set up the mute state, and two punches of "store" has that state archived. Then you just punch go and let the board do its thing. You can also dump the mute stes via MIDI sysex so that all your work with the board can be saved with the tune, offline.

Some folks who are experienced DAW users probably would find this cumbersome, but not me. One other wonderful thing, if you repatch a lot in a hurry, or have less-experienced "help" from the talent: setup Snapshot 1 as mute-all, and keep it that way forever. That way, when someone does something dumb and the monitors are smoking from some feedback loop, a quick twirl of the scrub wheel back to the left and a stab of the recall key gets blessed silence.

Ahhh. Like I said, I use it a lot more than I ever thought I would...
 
Sync setup was a bit more of a problem, but that was because of an odd behavior on the part of the Fostex, *not* anything to do with the Ghost.

I use Sony 9-pin to control the Fostex (because I wanted to be able to scrub with it), and set up the Ghost to chase the timecode from the Fostex, because the Fostex is not happy unless it is the master. There's a timecode path in the 9-pin protocol and connection scheme. Unfortunately, timecode in the Fostex's 9-pin implementation is broken (accurate in ff/rew, but wrong in play- only updated every 40-50 frames), so the timecode coming up the 9-pin cable wasn't usable. And the Ghost wanted it to be. So instead of 9-pin/MTC I chose 9-pin/SMPTE, and use an external JLCooper box to convert the MTC that comes out of the Fostex's MIDI out into stuff to shove into the Ghost's separate SMPTE input- and it is solid as a rock.

You shouldn't have to do this. If you are using one of the other MMC protocols, or different hardware, I'll bet that it'll be easy to set up. In any case, if you have trouble, a call to Soundcraft US will get you a guy who knows how to set up your gear. They were even familiar with this odd Fostex behavior (where it _nearly_ works, but not quite)...
 
Hey Tex, skippy covered the on-board mute scene automation for you. Yes, it can chase to time code which is cool.

The only drawback is that the on-board mute scene automation can only store 100 mute scenes to time code. This is okay if you just need to mute some general stuff, like all the drums in a break, etc...But let's say you want to mute the vocals in between every line, well, you would blow through those 100 storable scenes in a hurry! In addition, it would be very time consuming to set up.

What is nice about the Ghost is that it can work with a midi sequencer! :) Then you can use "dynamic mute automation", which means that you can mute channels at any point at will and have it store to the sequencer. You can still set up mute scenes, and while "recording" the mutes/unmutes to the sequencer, you can mute/unmute the vocal at will, and it will get recorded. If that is the type of mute automation you want/need, then the Ghost can do it just fine, you just need a midi sequencer (hardware or software....) If you use software, then you can of course do direct editing to the midi, which could of course save you a lot of time editing the start/stop times of the mutes. On some stuff, I like very tight mutes. On other things, I don't need it too tight.

I would suggest doing dynamic mute automation. If you have a computer with midi sequencing software and the proper I/O on a sound card, this is well worth it! Not only do you have more mute automation you can do, but it will wind up allowing you to work more efficiently in the end, once you get your "system" down.

USE YOUR MUTE AUTOMATION!!! DON'T be lazy about using it! Mute ANY channel that is not currently in use and unmute it when audio is present on that channel. I have found that this cleans up recordings quite a bit! It doesn't matter that there is not noise on the recorder, it is about quieting the channels on the console when no audio is present on them. The accumalitive noise of say 8 channels being unmuted with no audio present can be surprising!

Have fun.

Ed
 
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