[rescue] Compaq Proliant 8000

[Joshua Boyd]

On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 12:20:13PM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 12:50:50PM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> > Do you know why he said that?  Does he think the V-AMP floor board (I
> > believe it is one board for all rack, table top, and amp modules) is
> > inferior?  I guess this means he thinks that the V-Amp2 is pretty much
> > equal in audio quality.  
> 
> "floor board" ?  I've got the lima-bean-shaped main unit, and a double-
> pedal pedal box.

They also sell a large floor board for them.  It has a lot of buttons
and one or two expression controllers.  I get the impression that it is
a must if you want to use the wah feature.  I might be inclined to go
with a two botton switch box and a seperate wah pedel.  The way I seem
to wear out wah pedels makes me thing I don't want it to be part of an
expensive system.
 
> > The V-Amp2 is certainly much cheaper on ebay than the V-Amp pro. On the
> > other hand, I really like the idea of having the AES out.  I can't
> > really afford either at the moment, and when I can, I'll consider if I
> > really want to spend the extra $100 for AES.
> 
> The V-Amp Pro is overkill for my needs.  I'm playing guitar, not mastering
> audio CDs.

Well, it's not like I'm mastering CDs here either.  I'm partially
concerned about if the quality is really the same.
 
> > Just out of curiosity, have you ever tried using a clean boost pedel
> > with the V-Amp?  Does it react the way one might hope it would (meaning
> > the way it reacts if you use a clean boost on a tube amp).
> 
> Nope, I just run it into the input of my small Marshall amp (MG15DFX).

Ah, see, I don't really want to bother with a guitar amp.  To much of a
pain to lug.  For live performance, I want guitar -> amp/fx simulator ->
DI -> mixing board.  For home I want guitar -> amp/fx simulator ->
whatever -> monitors, where whatever may sometimes be direct, but
sometimes may go through the Octane for accompaniment (either
pre-recorded tracks or CDs or drums/bass coming from a synth).  I have a
small apartment (little space for a decent amp) and I don't like playing
alone. 

Now, the whole bit about the AES switcher is rather overkill.  I still
want to do it, because I can, and out of interest.

The idea is to have a 2U rack box with x*4 (keep in mind that each AES
input/output is stereo) inputs and outputs, that can do switching,
routing, and simple mixing.  I plug the Octane's 8 chanel input and
output into this box (via a lightpipe adapters), I plug my linux
machine's SPDIF output into this box (SPDIF is, to my understanding, AES
with certain bits blanked/ignored), I plug my DVD players SPDIF output
into this box, I plug my video game switch box (with AD converter) in, I
plug a set of digital speakers (or regular speakers with a seperate
convert) into this box, and if I buy a guitar box with digital out, I
plug it in as well.  All told, I could potentially have 32 inputs and 32
outputs (though 8x8 is more realistic from a cost perspective).

I then have a control panel (or perhaps just a software program.  We
shall see) that has different buttons.  One might be silence everything
but the DVD player.  Another might be having the guitar and linux
machine set to run into the octane, then the octane's output set to go
to the speakers.  Or, perhaps have the linux box,  octane, and DVD player
all mixed together (say, listening to a CD, but wanting to here and
audio cues played by the machines, say for new email or whatever). And
so on and so for.  So, rather than have things wired one way, and have
to rewire (or make do) when I want to change tasks, and I can hit one
button and it reconfigures everything.

As I said, this is total overkill.  It also would be me using equipment
that I've written software for in my home (since this is one use for the
digital audio cards we've been creating at work). 

I'd love to be able to do the same with video, but that gets much more
expensive, and my needs/wants aren't as complex there anyway (at least
not at this time).  Running video devices into a switch box, then
running that switch box to an upconverter, then that upconverter into a
KVM is working fine, except that means having Deb hit two bottons more
buttons than she would have to if everything could be serially
controlled from one control panel (and of course, as one might guess,
this has me dreaming about serial controlled switch boxes and KVMs, and
how one might retrofit existing products with serial control).

Yes, I appear to be a particularly awful sort of A/V dork.  Working on
A/V gear professionally is just making me worse.