Program Details

Here are a few technical details you may or might not want to know:

On Myxyr Cast

Myxyr can handle max 200 tracks/channels and max 200 Myxyr Ear connections

Myxyr Cast has been compiled as both 32-bit i386 and 64-bit plugin, so it is usable in 64bit and 32bit DAW programs.

Instances: only one Myxyr Cast can be working at a time. It opens TCP port 37875 for connections from clients. If you activate a second Myxyr in a second DAW project, the second one may not work, and it will see the channels or could hamper functionality of the first one. Better close them both and only restart one. In this case, you could choose to deny the permissions window to stop the Myxyr network. Myxyr will see when starting, that it is already (still) active, so you won't have to activate it again.  

At the very first start: if your Ears cannot connect, it might be needed to do a setting in Internet Connection Sharing', this is a manual action described in the Install Guidelines in the download zip. 

Some (old) Wi-Fi drivers cannot switch to Host mode. A driver is allright if you have a Virtual Wi-Fi Miniport next to your real Wi-Fi device. How to check:  go to Network Centre, then in the left tasks menu click 'adapters' or 'connections' to get your list of network devices. Two of them should have the Wi-Fi icon (5 bars from low to high), one is the real Wi-Fi card, one is the virtual Wi-Fi miniport.  If the virtual miniport is missing, check if you can find an updated driver, or get support. 

In case you have stopped the DAW with Myxyr Cast, and have not deactivated the Myxyr network, here is a way to do this manually: 
- Start a Command Prompt in administrator mode
- To stop the Myxyr network (hosted network in Windows) enter command > netsh wlan stop host
- To activate normal Wi-Fi networking and connectivity, enter command > netsh wlan set auto yes *

Myxyr Cast has been developed in JUCE (see www.juce.com), so we will a.s.a.p. make an AU version available. 

On Myxyr Ear

In the Myx screen there is a bottom line with signal information.
• The first number is a counter per 100 blocks, followed by the average block size in bytes. 
• The 3 numbers after the i are counters of missed data blocks. The second is cumulative, so may grow over a period of time. 
• The 3 numbers after the colon (:) are sample latency information, average over the last second. The first indicates the incoming Wi-Fi buffer, second the audio buffer, third the estimated total latency. These figures count approximately at 2200 :: 25 msec. 

Myxyr Ear finds Myxyr Cast by connecting to its 'gateway', to TCP port 37875, using a local 'any' free TCP port. After connecting it gets 'its' number and will open a UDP port 37876 for receiving audio. The TCP port stays connected and is used for control info like volume changes etc.

Myxyr Ear can handle 200 channels.

Myxyr Ear has been developed in JUCE (see www.juce.com), so an Android version will follow a.s.a.p. We still have some problems with Android audio driver latency. (who doesn't ?) 

Usage Tips

A few usage tips:

On Myxyr Cast

To open the Myxyr Cast main window, use the Myxyr icon in the system tray at the bottom right. If it is not visible, click to customize your tray icon, set it to 'show icon and notifications'.

An important feedback from our users was that it is better to set incoming audio framesize ( in ASIO) to 256 or 128 instead of 512 that might be default. There difference in latency is not audible but still there is a bit less friction when playing. 

To de-select a channel or output Ear, click the (left or right) list header.

The order of the channels cannot be modified in Myxyr, but the track order can be modified in your DAW. After saving, closing and re-opening the project, Myxyr will have the channels in the same order as the tracks in the DAW. 

At the first start, the dedicated Myxyr Wi-Fi network is validated by Windows, which may take over 20 seconds at times. If Windows asks you to define whether this is a Public or Home or Work network, always choose Home or Work, never Public. 

On Myxyr Ear

Myxyr Ear shows IP and connection info on the intro screen. If there is a connection lost or Myxyr Cast (or the whole DAW) has been restarted: the green button on the intro screen will try to reconnect.

The order of the channels cannot be modified, but Myxyr Cast will follow the track order of your DAW, after saving, closing and re-opening the project, Myxyr will have the channels in the same order as the tracks in the DAW. 

Scroll through the channel list by either the little scroll bar at the right, or by touch-dragging the screen from the channel names. The other elements on the screen do respond to touch for modifying parameters. 

Myxyr Ear will show a different Myx screen in rotated horizontal mode. If your screen is big enough, that might be useful too.

Myxyr Ear does save its channel volumes etc., by channel name in combination with the Myxyr Cast network id, the DAW project name and your id-name on the intro screen. Either of these matching is sufficient to retrieve your channel info the next time. In case you play in two bands with the same Myxyr Cast, better let your engineer set up a different DAW project for the other band. 

    more technical details here..

Live Mixing Checklist

Checklist to configure your DAW for proper live mixing or for a live recording:

• The audio channels coming in directly from the USB
• Either from the USB plug of your mixing table, or from a device like the Alesis MultiMix 8 USB 2.0.
• Create a track for each incoming channel, and assign input to the proper incoming [ASIO] channel.
• Activate recording/stand-by on each track. 
• Leave incoming mono as mono, and incoming stereo as stereo tracks, 
• Test and adjust all incoming volumes so that your DAW can produce a reasonable Live mix or recording. 
• If the incoming signal is post-filter, adjust the low-high-mid on the mixing table to your choice.
• Leave all other sound improvements out, like Reverb, Delay, Chorus, Vocoder. They can be used, but be aware.
• If the incoming signal is pre-filter, you can add any filtering VST on tracks that absolutely require this.

The Myxyr VST Plugin can now be assigned to the tracks your band needs to hear.

Tech info - performance

While performing for a live audience it is really important to have a good quality sound feedback.  This counts for the sound that you are producing yourself, as well as what the other musicians are playing.  

Of course the sound quality in itself is digital. Myxyr will most probably give a better sound quality than is possible through regular stage monitors. The Myxyr stream is stereo, which is in itself far better than any one-ear in-ear monitor. However to stay aware of sounds in the immediate surroundings, it is best to not use padding earphones or leave them a tiny bit loose, which in turn reduces the quality of the bass in the sound. 

An other aspect of the sound quality lies in the continuity.  Smartphones pose a fair problem here, as it can in practice not be controlled to keep your whole device dedicated to the Myxyr Ear app, plus Wi-Fi driver plus Audio driver. A lot of other apps do regular status checks, which cannot be managed. Our experience is that iPhones perform pretty OK. Most contemporary Android phones too, however some devices may still suffer from audio driver latency.  

There is always a risk in WLAN signal interference by some other Access Point or by some unexpected other source, maybe old DECT telephones or microwaves. To minimize influence on your sound, do watch the signal strength in the Wi-Fi icon, better keep the DAW station nearby, certainly don't place it further than 10m away from the stage. Most Wireless laptop drivers have an option to adjust the signal strength, better doublecheck that it is not on half power or economy mode. 

Tech info - audio timing

For Live audio, it is important to have no latency.  This means, Myxyr does not do any buffering, any millisecond of audio is passed as quick as possible to your ears. To accomplish this, Myxyr uses a dedicated WLAN connection and transmits the audio signal over UDP.  TCP is only used in the data connection for controlling your mix.

A view on average latency timings:

• Analogue Audio comes in over a cable. this is electrical signal with practically no latency even with long cables. However some guitar effects deliver audio with a bit of latency.  
• The AD conversion in most professional PA mixers produces less than 10ms latency. Fortunately most of the less professional equipment also stays far below 20ms. E.g. a popular device like the Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0 manages to stay below 12ms. 
• The USB transmission from mixer to PC takes a few ms, the Windows ASIO driver may add some 2-3 ms more. 
• The DAW program will buffer the digital audio input again, may pass it through some compression filtering again, may need to convert the signal rate. Depending on the number of channels, timers and message loops introduce some more, so until Myxyr 'finally' receives its input signal, some 5ms have passed.  

So in total, Myxyr has to live with an input delay of approximately 20ms. 

• Myxyr Cast processes the incoming audio in real-time and moves it into Wi-Fi buffers with 3ms of audio. 
• Wi-Fi transmission takes practically no time, merely 1-2 ms, before Myxyr Ear gets the data
• Myxyr Live Ear converts the WLAN buffers to 6ms buffers and passes the audio to the audio driver.
• The device audio driver plays this audio as sound.

It makes for the total Myxyr processing a sound latency of approximately 10-12ms.

Significant timing setting

• Set your ASIO frame rate lower than the default 512, e.g. 128 samples. That is 3ms of audio. 

Result on proper settings:

A total latency of 30ms is comparable to a speaker distance of 10m.