Some sound questions

Yay, my Kasina arrived and I'm impressed. Well done on a mature product - if only there was a way of falling asleep with it and not waking up entangled with 3 cables.

I'm trying to set the machine up so I can put my other machine to rest on ebay. I'm having a big issue on my mac. Using the Kasina as a USB sound device, all I get is what sounds like a high pitch modem whenever I play any music. It's playing the music but only with one very high pitch. I've selected the "Kasina MMS Audio" in sound preferences and the midi utility only has 48000 output for that device. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I've found my audiostrobe cds from my proteus days. I don't have a cd player of any sorts anymore so am going to rip them and put them on the SD card. What is the lowest recommended mp3 bitrate to ensure that the encoding frequencies are intact?

Thanks

Hi Rob;

That doesn't sound right. Are you selecting "USB" on the Kasina menu?
What version of Firmware is on that Kasina? Settings/Service menu.

Hi Andy,
You know what? I'm an idiot. I had the headphones plugged into the glasses jack! At least I know what light sounds like now.

Oops! :o
We've all done that at one time. Glad it was something simple.

Do check though that you have firmware 1.17 on your Kasina and update it if necessary.

Enjoy!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Andy

Oops! :o
We've all done that at one time. Glad it was something simple.

Do check though that you have firmware 1.17 on your Kasina and update it if necessary.

Enjoy!

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Just updated mine from 1.14 to 1.17 (did not know this was available, thanks). I notice that the pitch on my recordings seems a little higher now. Esp. noticeable with my hypno tracks. Any reason for this? Thanks.

Hi Tom,

Pitch playing off the card? I cannot imagine what would account for that. The only thing I could imagine is that the sample rate of your files is reading differently. Like the difference between 44.1khz and 48khz. That would make them sound higher. However, I cannot fathom how this would happen.

Is there a way that you could record the output from the headphone jack on your Kasina into your computer or other recorder. Then compare it to the original file playing in a media player. If different then would you please send us a sample copy of both of the files to investigate?

Scott

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Originally Posted by neuroasis

Hi Tom,

Pitch playing off the card? I cannot imagine what would account for that. The only thing I could imagine is that the sample rate of your files is reading differently. Like the difference between 44.1khz and 48khz. That would make them sound higher. However, I cannot fathom how this would happen.

Is there a way that you could record the output from the headphone jack on your Kasina into your computer or other recorder. Then compare it to the original file playing in a media player. If different then would you please send us a sample copy of both of the files to investigate?

Scott

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I think I may have incorrectly used the term Pitch. It is more like there is more treble than bass so voices and music sound a bit thinner, if that makes any sense? It really would be nice to have some control of bass/treble levels on the Kasina.

I can't confirm this. I rolled back and forth between firmware versions and with the pieces I was using could not discern a difference. Not saying that you are mistaken but I just don't know. Nothing has been changed that would affect the bass. If anything the high frequencies are filtered to eliminate PWM carriers (techie stuff warning).

So, could you possible do an A/B recording?

EQ is not going to happen per the engineers as the Kasina MCU is already taxed with all of the realtime filtering it is doing already, which is about 6-10 filters depending on the mode.

You can of course EQ your music (and do so in a batch) prior to copying to the Kasina.. or actually even on the Kasina card if you wanted. If you plan to keep those music tracks dedicated on the Kasina then this would make sense.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neuroasis

I can't confirm this. I rolled back and forth between firmware versions and with the pieces I was using could not discern a difference. Not saying that you are mistaken but I just don't know. Nothing has been changed that would affect the bass. If anything the high frequencies are filtered to eliminate PWM carriers (techie stuff warning).

So, could you possible do an A/B recording?

EQ is not going to happen per the engineers as the Kasina MCU is already taxed with all of the realtime filtering it is doing already, which is about 6-10 filters depending on the mode.

You can of course EQ your music (and do so in a batch) prior to copying to the Kasina.. or actually even on the Kasina card if you wanted. If you plan to keep those music tracks dedicated on the Kasina then this would make sense.

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Thanks for your response Scott.

I find it hard to believe that a +$300 l/s machine cannot have an equalizer, or at least a simple bass/treble control while a $50 credit card sized mp3 player can do all this. Guess I just need to velcro a mp3 player on it and run it though my Kasina aux. Sort of what I used to do with my old Sirius, lol!

Also, I have the pre-production open-eye goggles/glasses and they work great for open-eye, but they do not work as well for closed-eye. Mainly because the open-eyed glasses do not have strong enough red leds. This could have been solved by allowing higher = standard red light options (not just lowering others) Again, just another thing to pack around. Because most of my sessions are close-eyed, I hardly ever use the open-eyed goggles/glasses now.

Between these seemingly un-passable barriers, plus your useless (for me, anyway) session editor updates (NP3 has always worked fine for me) I think we just have to agree to disagree mate. Sorry about that btw.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TomC

Thanks for your response Scott. I find it hard to believe that a +$300 l/s machine cannot have an equalizer, or at least a simple bass/treble control while a $50 credit card sized mp3 player can do all this. Guess I just need to velcro a mp3 player on it and run it though my Kasina aux. Sort of what I used to do with my old Sirius, lol!

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As you know I believe in treating our valued customers as adults whether that be good news or bad.

Those $50 mp3 players have dedicated chips for that purpose as I have explained before. When you add an additional audio subsystem the primary task of delivering microsecond accurate light pulses from an onboard audio stream is complexified further. The very basis of engineering choices and bringing a product to market is a series of tradeoffs.

The best news is you have the option of an AUX jack, eye open experiences, the editor, NP3, etc.

Regards,
Scott

Well, it is primarily a $300 light machine and there is another recent thread where Scott explains the leds very well. Open eye goggles are just for that - they just need to accurately reproduce the colors in an even spread that you can see. Closed eye goggles, the leds are positioned in a way as to hit the cones through your eyelids. Coming from the laxman I'm looking forward to having 2 sets of glasses for different purposes. the open eyes are really only good for light shows. if you are using them for entrainment you'll end up closing your eyes regardless.

As for sound, I've just discovered that the safest way to ensure the **strobe data is intact is to encode mp3s with a 320 CBR. Now while that's still a lossy format, it's still pretty good high quality sound and worthy of some attention. I can't compare with an earlier firmware, but I played the same tracks with a few different headphones on different devices (colorfly c4 and sony zx1) and the Kasina definitely has a brighter sound - it loses a bit of warmth somewhere. I'm actually ok with the sound - I prefer my music crispier. I either raise the top end on the eq or listen with Grados - but I can totally get that it's not a flat response. Get some good Sennheisers would be my advice - they tend to warm things up - not to mention you can actually wear them with the glasses quite comfortably for longer periods.

...or yes, add a 5 band eq :rolleyes:

As for the session editor, I agree. The basic kasina session editor is, from what I can tell, an audiostrobe editor, not a spectrastrobe one...ergo not really a kasina editor.

It is however, the best machine of it's kind. It's a niche market and I'm happy MindPlace can produce these, stay in business and remain enthusiastic. I imagine it's a small development team and updates might take time.

Technically, the editor is exclusively for the onboard mind machine format KBS. It is the editor for that format. The KBS format is for strictly stimulation based sessions in a simplified style. Being that KBS also takes advantage of the ColorSets for real time color selection, this eases the learning curve. Basically to create a simple session there is no learning curve. But the possibility for complex sessions is still there.

Also, I'm not sure I've discussed it here before, but how many people use or know about disentrainment sessions? These are wide ranging 'brain buster' type sessions. These can help break up your habitual mental patterns, enhance creativity, encourage neuroplasticity etc... I run sessions of this type at least once a week.

The KBS format is super nice for these types of sessions.

The editor was never meant to compete with NP3 or MWS and why should it? Those software programs rule and Transparent is very supportive of MindPlace products. If you want something free then use GNaural which I have made templates for.

Best,
Scott

Hi Scott,
are you saying you can select ColorSets in the KBS itself? I have hunted for them but can't find anything. I've read about the ability to switch between them in realtime as the session plays, but decided that must mean you can press down on the Kasina itself while it's playing and I don't see that as being very practical while in a session.

Nope, I've never heard of disentrainment before. Would that be using some kind of chaotic session? I'm intrigued....

I think I'm going to get my hands dirty with audacity or gnaural and get to grips with it at it's basic level before I bust open my Mind Workstation trial. I've enjoyed your audacity lessons - they remind me of the CoolEditPro days and I put a lot of time into that many moons ago, so I should be more at home for a while.
That's also made me frustrated with NP3 - there seems to be no zoom on the timeline. For a 30min track it's nigh on impossible to manually move nodes around that are close together.

Not in the KBS itself... yet. The firmware engineers having been working on this ability. Playing around with the ColorSets in realtime is useful I think. I start off a session with a random ColorSet and the during the stimulation phase go to all lights on. It is easy with practice to know the order.

Yes, a disentrainment session presents a lot of frequency changes in fast ramps. It is a 'random' type session. The Editor can create new ones in seconds. That is a unique aspect of AVS. You can expose your brain to new frequencies to break up patterns.

Gnaural is pretty nice. Not too far away from the capabilities of NP3, although not quite as user friendly. With the tools I made and along with the Editor, Audacity can create simple sessions easily as well.

On Zoom, yeah it renders NP3 not very flexible, especially for the quick changes required for visuals. What most people don't realize is that NP3 is primarily a 'player' app for sessions. Thus the large session library. It has editing capabilities and you can do a lot within limits. Mind Workstation is the session creator app.