Kasina questions

[daz]

I have not been able to find some information on the Kasina, so I hope someone can answer them, I have a Proteus and am thinking of getting a Kasina.

How long does the battery last, and is it user replaceable in a few years for a tech savvy user?

does it feature the same or similar synthesis options in the editor that the proteus does, for example can I specify waveform and frequency etc?

What are the glasses like for using in bed without disturbing a partner, I find that the light coming out of the Proteus glasses can sometimes wake the Mrs (oops!)

Thats all for now but I might have some more questions, thanks in advance!

[neuroasis]

Andy has tested the Kasina battery. With a new Kasina the battery will run a session continuously for around 10 hours. In normal use a charge will last a long time. A week or more. The Kasina is very power efficient. For best battery maintenance the Kasina should be discharged and recharged every few months.

The battery is soldered to the board. If you have soldering skills then you can replace it. You would only want to do this beyond the warranty period however. If the battery were to fail while in warranty then we would replace it.

The main format of the sessions on the Kasina are audio based sessions with a new light encoding technology called SpectraStrobe. SpectraStrobe signals can be modulated by many types of waveforms. For creating custom waveforms Mind Workstation from Transparent Corp. is recommended. The free software program GNaural can also create SpectraStrobe or AudioStrobe signals with templates I have created. NeuroProgrammer 3 from Transparent is another popular and affordable option.

The Kasina also supports a mind machine format called KBS. The editor is for KBS files. It is very easy to use. At this time the only modulation option is sine waves. That will change.

We now sell the light strips for the Kasina and Procyon as standalone items. You can create whatever type of glasses/goggles/sleep mask etc easily with these light strips. A video on a sleep mask is on our YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/themindplace

I am happy to answer any more questions you have and thanks for posting.

Best,
Scott

[daz]

Thanks for the reply Scott

Soldering is not a problem for me so can you tell me is the battery just an off the shelf part? Of course I am thinking longterm here rather than inside the warranty period, but I am not a fan of throwing stuff away if something like a battery goes so it would be great to be able to replace in the future if needed I have had a few mp3 players in the past and when the batteries invariably give up have been unable to get new ones I think I'd much prefer if stuff just used standard AA batteries like my good old Proteus!

Very interesting on the lightstrips are they the same as the default LEDs or like the new DV ones? Are they available in the UK?

So there are plans for more waveshapes other than sine in the future? That is good to know if so! I very much enjoyed experimenting with this aspect on my trusty Proteus. I really like the look of the Kasina editor with musical notes and tap tempo, I looked at some of the software you mention a while back but did not gel with them, however I will certainly check out Gnaural and your templates. I think I saw that you did some audacity stuff too? Is that compatible with audiostrobe as well as spectrastrobe - BTW what is the difference between those 2 formats, I know AS uses a high frequency (19.2khz?) is SS based around a similar idea?

thanks
Daz

[neuroasis]

Hi Daz,
The battery is a 3.7V 1200mA Lithium Ion battery. So it is a standard part.

The lightstrips are exactly the same as the ones included in our factory frames. They come with a pre-soldered cable and mounting tape. This is a speciality part that won't go out to dealers or Amazon as we are keeping the cost as low as possible at $15USD. I imagine that for size weight and value, the VAT would be negligible.

Yes, there are plans for more waveforms. In fact, nearly implemented is what I understand from the engineers. Seems there will be sine, triangle. pulse, saw up, saw down, and noise. (that's preliminary but in the spec)

Gnaural does a pretty good job for free. Yes, I also have Audacity templates and some videos on the YT channel on using them. You can create SpectraStrobe and AudioStrobe with it. There is also the templates for MuLab which has a free DAW version that CraigT made a long time ago. The color organ type of potential with that software is excellent but quite a learning curve. I only work with it occasionally but really do need to make a tutorial.

Color Organ envelope trackers are the best way to make complex and interesting SpectraStrobe or AudioStrobe. I am an Ableton Live user and can share techniques on that. Again MuLab is capable, if a bit of a divergence from the norm UI wise.

SpectraStrobe is similar to AudioStrobe but all color channels (RGB) are addressed in both eyes for 6 total channels. SpectraStrobe green is the same frequency as AudioStrobe. There is also a reference track that identifies the SS signal and sets the dynamic levels.

Best,
Scott

[daz]

Excellent news on the waveforms, particularly noise - hoping that it can be continuously filtered as I find that works very well for me, but even if not then still handy. I do not actually use a DAW (other than audacity) but thanks for the offer, BTW I found your videos in between this thread, lots of interesting videos there that I will work my way through, great stuff!

Yes $15 seems reasonable, Do you have a link for that, I can't find it on the main page. I will also check put MuLab.

thanks again, off to do some reading up now, excellent

Daz

[neuroasis]

If you already have DAW experience then check out the LUX VST plugins. They work well but Windows only. http://www.lux-vst.com/ For Mac, I have a SpectraStrobe Envelope plugin here: https://github.com/scottosx/SpectraS...elope-Follower None of the mentioned plugins are 64bit.

Send a query to orders@mindplace.com for the light strips. At this time orders are handled directly to avoid fees and keep them priced low.

[xelirc]

If you already have DAW experience then check out the LUX VST plugins. They work well but Windows only. http://www.lux-vst.com/ For Mac, I have a SpectraStrobe Envelope plugin here: https://github.com/scottosx/SpectraS...elope-Follower None of the mentioned plugins are 64bit.

Send a query to orders@mindplace.com for the light strips. At this time orders are handled directly to avoid fees and keep them priced low.

Hi Scott,

As you already know, I'm new to this world of AVS and I'm very excited.
My first experience with Kasina was a very pleasant one, but I will talk about it later when I will have a better understanding of how my brain reacts to it.
I tried to listen to some mp3 from my phone (just randomly chosen from youtube) and I realized that the ColorOrgan is very poor since those songs don't have any SpectraStrobe or AudioStrobe editing, which I kinda expected.
Therefore, before I start looking into editing some songs, which I'm not familiar with it at this moment, I was wondering if on this website is there a place where "composers" can share there work with others? It might be a silly question, but it came into my mind and I wanna hear what you have to say about it.

I know that this kind of sharing can create troubles, based on the copyright policies agreements, but I'm not into legal so I have no idea how that works.

Thank you!

[neuroasis]

The ColorOrgan effect depends on the source material and the preset you select. It works especially well with music that has a beat. You can also play with the EQ settings on music to emphasize frequencies that the ColorOrgan can respond to.

These are the approximate frequency ranges for the colors:

Green starts around 12hz with blue overlapping
Green stops around 4300hz
Blue up to about 1500hz
Red starts around 2500hz

These are tested with a filter sweep. From this you can see that Blue and Green are the low to mids. Red is the high end.

On ambient type drone tracks the CO triggers but usually not as well unless you choose a track that has a range of frequencies across the spectrum. Still the CO is quite enjoyable, especially with the DeepVision glasses.

For websites, if you do 'dj' type mixes you could use MixCloud. Otherwise the best thing to do is to create your light show around a song that you like, then upload only the light tracks and tell people where they can buy the song. Being that these days most anything is available digitally for 99 cents or so, then there is no issue with that and no copyright hassles. People would then mix the light track back into the song they have purchased.

My Audacity plugins make it easy to extract and save the light tracks.

[RobIreland]

Hi Daz,
I'm in the UK. The lightstrips pass though customs with no cost/issues but the postage is $40. I ended up buying 4 sets to justify that and to hopefully use in a couple of projects that will no doubt break a couple. It's the same shipping cost for the DV glasses (highly recommended) so if you were intending to get those I'd suggest getting them at the same time.

[daz]

Thanks for the info RobIreland 40 bucks seems a bit steep for shipping, maybe just the lightstrips on their own might be less?

Anyway I took the plunge and got the Kasina, first impressions are that it is a very nice machine, I do feel that the built in sounds and synthesis is a fair way behind the Proteus at present, so I hope that the updates mentioned will take it beyond Having said this of course the whole audio file capability for most users will make this point moot, and in most cases for me too, but I do like to tinker with the Proteus so looking forward to when the Kasina has more powerful synthesis and editor.

I had a brief play with the Kasina editor and it seems pretty intuitive, nice to have the grid and graph views, whoever came up with that idea deserves a makes visualising a session a whole lot easier, I do miss things like the dual LFO's and start and finish frequencies of the Proteus editor, as well as the special features, but the tap tempo and note frequencies are very handy to have and absent on the Proteus editor. One thing that I assumed possible but does not appear to be, is inserting an audio file to run alongside or into the KBS session, I really hope that it is possible if not now then in a future update.

I have not tried too many of the included audio sessions yet, although those that I have tried were excellent, not all the music was to my taste but the sound quality and production was superb, please note though that I am more of an abstract fan than nature or traditional meditation sounds, and whilst there are plenty of these there are also plenty of "out there" stuff which I enjoyed. I was a little surprised that there were no (maybe I have not found them yet) spoken word guided meditation/hypnosis audio files included, personally I can live without them but I think it would make a great selling point maybe?

I tried out the color organ with some MP3s of my own, really good results both with beat driven music and drone and ambient, cool beans!

Am I right in thinking that the default LED mode should be saved/embedded into a session so that when you choose your session the LED mode most suited will be pre-set? If that is the case then maybe sometimes it did not work right for me, it might have been my error or it might be a bug, can you confirm either way Scott?

But overall very impressed with the Kasina, looking forward to delving deeper into it!