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The Marschall Acoustics Instruments Digital Audio Workstation Mk III (continued)


The Marschall Acoustics Instruments Digital Audio Workstations are serious audio content creation tools for use by full-time professionals: recording engineers, musicians, composers, and other audio media artists and researchers.  The majority of systems are used for the creation of audio soundtracks for video or in the teaching of music and recording arts.

The systems are fairly self-contained although they require hookup to an external (VESA standard) video monitor.  Common media network interfaces are included for fast connection to a back-end rendering farm (as in video rendering used for effects and digital colour grading) and external professional audio equipment.

As far as possible, the hardware employs industry standard high reliability parts and the software is open source.  This ensures customers will be able to
support and maintain their investment in the equipment, the skills developed operating the equipment, and most importantly the content created on that
equipment.

Unlike hobbyist equipment and software, there are no secret proprietary formats, keys, dongles, and other impediments to user creativity with our 'bit
of kit' - just plug it in and start creating.  Overall speed and performance are also considerably smoother and faster than retail store 'boxed set
solutions'.  Competent and 'skilled in the art' electronics engineers can modify the hardware.  Similarly, skilled programmers can modify and add to the
software.


The MAI DAW Mk III includes several professional recording packages.  The most powerful of these is Ardour, which is arguably the most powerful piece of recording software ever written (as of the year 2008) when mated to appropriate hardware.   Below is a screenshot of Ardour being used on a rather trivial (stereo) recording.

Ardour, the most powerful recording software ever developed.

Below is an example of the Sweep audio editor being used to edit a percussion sample.  Other audio editing tools on the MAI DAW Mk III include the well known and popular Audacity and Rezound packages.  Each has its advantages with somewhat of a tradeoff between power and ease of use.   A wide range of analysis tools are also supplied including the most excellent Sonic Visualizer.  Tools to restore old audio recordings include Gnome Wave Cleaner.
    
                                                                                      

Sweep was developed by CSIRO and PIxar for professional audio editing. 


The actual hardware of the Marschall Acoustics Instruments Digital Audio Workstation Mk III is quite small.  A customer's (Macquarie University) workstation is shown below (it is the small black box with the gold label to the left of the photo):

LMMS for Techno soundtrack creation.


As can be seen, the workstation is sufficiently small that it (together with a mini-keyboard and mouse) fit under an airline seat when carried in its optional carrying case.  Much more powerful and robust than a laptop, yet almost as portable for mobile recording.   The hardware specification (as of early 2008) can be downloaded from here.  Hardware and software are subject to continuous improvement.   Custom configurations are our speciality!

Free downloads of  musical selections produced with the Marschall Acoustics Instruments digital audio workstation are available here .

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