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Post by Johnkenn on Apr 22, 2015 15:30:40 GMT -6
Where everything that could go wrong in the studio...goes wrong. That happened to me today. Somehow my routing got wacky right before some people showed up and you would have thought it was my first day to ever see a studio. Headphones messed up - get that working the. Playback wouldn't work. Then could not for the life of me figure out how the hell to get the verb out of one channel and into another. I'm totally preoccupied the whole time with why shit isn't working not paying attention to the song. Then mics start sounding effed up. I change mics to find out that for some reason the vocal is coming through two channels and phasing. Ugh. Terrible day. Embarrassing.
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Post by Ward on Apr 22, 2015 15:33:13 GMT -6
I have those kinds of days all the time... the only work-around is redundancy and to keep everything working all the time. The minute you turn your back, the gremlins creep in and start messing about with everything. And of course, this only happens when you are going to have clients in.... otherwise everything works fine.
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Post by Johnkenn on Apr 22, 2015 15:35:52 GMT -6
Plus my freaking room is 136 degrees...in April. Got to get a return put in there. It's just ridiculous.
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Post by wiz on Apr 22, 2015 15:45:42 GMT -6
I know how that feels ......  ? Empathy brother Cheers Wiz |
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Post by wiz on Apr 22, 2015 15:46:40 GMT -6
I had one day...where the next door neighbour decided to hold the " world angle grinding championships" I had to cancel the session.
Cheers
Wiz
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Post by Johnkenn on Apr 22, 2015 15:57:34 GMT -6
I can't - for the life of me - figure out how the routing is messed up to my headphone cue...How the hell does it just "change" one day? Also, the problem is, when patching in new pres and there are long paths in the chain including analog out to headphones, there are a ton of things that could be going wrong. And figuring it out while people are waiting to record in a sauna is not the most fun thing in the world. Plus, I noticed a couple of times - I think since I upgraded to UAD 8.0 - that the AUX send in Console would all of a sudden not respond to the mutes. WTF? So I'm wondering if something is screwy with the software.
You know, all this started when I started considering this V76. I was floating around all nice and everything was working and then, bam...I start letting myself think I want to spend the money on this thing. I think this is God's way of telling me to stick with what I've got.
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Post by wiz on Apr 22, 2015 16:04:35 GMT -6
If you haven't unplugged or changed anything... It's gotta be software... Can you do some sort of recall...tho as I type this I realised you are probably reading this and thinking f$/;caking wiz!!! Of course I have tried that. 8)
Take a quick walk or shower or something, just leave the room for 15 mins....
I used to fix multi million dollar computer systems... Sometimes the pressure was unbelievable!! And getting out of the pressure cooker even for 10 min often provided the solution.
Cheers
Wiz
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Post by jdc on Apr 22, 2015 16:12:33 GMT -6
Hmm maybe you just need to part with some of your gear? I'd be happy to help you lighten the load!
In all honesty, this happens at work from time to time and it's always a software issue. Super annoying and sometimes there's not a lot you can do to prevent it.
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Post by Johnkenn on Apr 22, 2015 16:13:48 GMT -6
I finally got everything recorded - sans reverb. I've got another bunch of stems to bounce down and then I'm gonna dive into it.
It started this morning - I was gonna start the session in Cubase - opened it up and immediately experienced a cubase bug that I've had since the SX days: Record enable can't be turned off on the first track of the session. I have fixed it in the past by trashing prefs, but I'll be damned if I have to do that again. So, I spend the two hours before the session not recording, but dealing with that shit. Then I give up and open in PT's...and all the other stuff starts happening. Ugh.
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Post by swurveman on Apr 22, 2015 16:27:35 GMT -6
I've had this happen and it is difficult to go through. Separate interface mixers take time to know all the ins and out. You can inadvertently hit the wrong button and your usual template/routing can change. It took me about 6 months to figure out RME's Totalmix and know what could go wrong and then how to fix it. Keep at it. You'll get it figured out. Sorry you had troubles.
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kcatthedog
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Post by kcatthedog on Apr 22, 2015 16:33:26 GMT -6
shit happens: always at the worst time ! when you have a sec post a console screenshot !  |
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Post by carymiller on Apr 22, 2015 16:44:34 GMT -6
Where everything that could go wrong in the studio...goes wrong. That happened to me today. Somehow my routing got wacky right before some people showed up and you would have thought it was my first day to ever see a studio. Headphones messed up - get that working the. Playback wouldn't work. Then could not for the life of me figure out how the hell to get the verb out of one channel and into another. I'm totally preoccupied the whole time with why shit isn't working not paying attention to the song. Then mics start sounding effed up. I change mics to find out that for some reason the vocal is coming through two channels and phasing. Ugh. Terrible day. Embarrassing. "Picture yourself...at the MGM grand.... Murphy's fightin' Hokem-You're in the stands...." - Matthew Good When Murphy's Law is in full effect in the studio, I always think of this song by Mathew Good (back from his Matthew Good Band days.) In fact I usually put on a playlist I've made featuring music I can zone out to for troubleshooting...and I do whatever I have to do to get things banged back into shape as fast as possible. "Load Me Up" by Matthew Good is the first track on that playlist for the obvious narrative comfort-food factor.  90% of engineering professionally in my experience has been troubleshooting anyway. From helping bands get organized, or fixing poorly recorded home recordings...working for people who are generally clueless, or dealing with gear that isn't really up to par and still having to get a competitive sound. Sometimes you space and have a bad day as one thing after another goes wrong...but what's best generally is to take a break, go out and get something to eat (I have rule NOT to eat lunch or dinner around the studio when I need to troubleshoot.) Take a notebook with you...write out where the possible problems might stem from...and go back a refreshed and ready to tackle things. Always remember that giving your mind a well deserved breather here and there will help you get to the bottom of what's wrong all the faster; if anything because it helps you avoid getting flustered or too frustrated to think critically. We've all been there man...I just spent four days working on computers, I hear you. Also...remember that Hokem's Razor is usually the best rule of thumb to follow. One problem at a time, the simplest solution is USUALLY (though not always) the best course of action. |
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Apr 22, 2015 16:57:37 GMT -6
We call it Monday!
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Post by mrholmes on Apr 22, 2015 17:53:44 GMT -6
Shit can happen, everybody can have a bad day - and we are humans - not roborters….
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Post by peteje on Apr 22, 2015 21:53:03 GMT -6
A common phrase in my room... "I f'ing hate computers"
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Post by ragan on Apr 22, 2015 23:04:33 GMT -6
Plus my freaking room is 136 degrees...in April. Got to get a return put in there. It's just ridiculous. Wait, is it really136 degrees? Cause that's pretty freakin hot. I practiced in a no-air-can-move-anywhere space for years and finally brought a thermometer up there one summer night. It only got up to about 114 but I think we'd had hotter nights than that one. Drank a LOT of cold beer in that room... Good luck with the gremlins. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Apr 22, 2015 23:36:04 GMT -6
Somehow, "Mirror To Monitor" got checked on my spdif channels in the console. So no matter where I routed it, it was still coming through the 1-2...Really drove me batshit for about 2 hours.
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Post by mrholmes on Apr 23, 2015 0:43:11 GMT -6
Somehow, "Mirror To Monitor" got checked on my spdif channels in the console. So no matter where I routed it, it was still coming through the 1-2...Really drove me batshit for about 2 hours. I remember having no sound and there was no reason why........ It was one single plug in that caused trouble in the stream......guess how long it took me to figure that out, checked a million other things before this came to my mind..... |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2015 2:32:22 GMT -6
I had quite a few days of that kind building midi studio stuff once...
Debugging fun....not.
I expect everything now, when it comes to digital stuff, except perhaps....
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Post by gouge on Apr 23, 2015 2:50:07 GMT -6
I love the Spanish inquisition
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Post by jcoutu1 on Apr 23, 2015 4:30:18 GMT -6
I love it when your hearing noise in your tune and can't track it down, only to find a half hour later that you forgot to turn off the noise on a Waves plugin. Why isn't that "analog" noise off by default?!?!
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Post by levon on Apr 23, 2015 7:16:37 GMT -6
I love the Spanish inquisition New band? |
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Post by Ward on Apr 23, 2015 7:43:31 GMT -6
I love the Spanish inquisition It probably wasn't great at the time, though. |
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Post by matt on Apr 23, 2015 7:47:23 GMT -6
start the session in Cubase - opened it up and immediately experienced a cubase bug that I've had since the SX days: Record enable can't be turned off on the first track of the session Should have stayed on Pro Tools |
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Post by svart on Apr 23, 2015 8:12:10 GMT -6
I can't say I've had too many issues like this, being mostly OTB and on PC, but I've had a strange issue happen twice over the last 2 years that I can't explain.
I use reaper as my DAW, but I don't use any of it's routing options. I set up the streams for each channel and then that's it. My SSL MX4 DSP card runs a software mixer that allows the SSL routing and plug-ins to run on DSP chips rather than on the CPU. Extremely low latency and system usage!
Anyway, I have a full digital routing system built in SSL Mixer so that I can route my streams and split out headphone mixes to be sent to the headphone pods.
The problem I had was that the inputs for the first 8 channels to the SSL Alphalink seemed to get feedback from the outputs and it would go full scale digital noise on just those first 8 channels. It would not show this on the SSL Mixer channel strips at all. The other channels were fine.
So, this being in the middle of a session, I tell the band to go get something to eat while I figure it out.
1. Close softwares and restart.. Same problem.
2. Reboot computer.. Same problem.
3. Reboot Alphalink AND computer.. Same problem.
4. Check connections to Alphalink and computer.. Same problem.
5. Load in fresh SSL Mixer profile.. Same problem.
6. Start new Reaper project.. Same problem.
7. Turn whole studio off for 5 minutes, let everything power down and reboot.. Same problem.
So I'm sitting there with all this noise going, the band walks in from dinner. I'm like "well, I have no idea what's going on, I guess my converter box went bad" and no sooner do I say this and the noise stops and doesn't come back.
And it hasn't come back in 4 months. It did this last year when I first got everything together and was working out the workflow bugs, but it went away after a few minutes and hadn't happened again until this last time.
I have no idea what caused it. I took my alphalink apart, checked all the connections, solder joints, opamps, etc. Everything looks A-OK with it. I suspect some kind of firmware/software bug that happens with some specific combination of things happening.
That's about it for anything within the last 6 years or so.
Before that I had my previous computer get a little iffy once, it turned out the power supply was starting to go bad, and the power was dirty/low. It finally refused to boot one day and a new supply was installed and all the strange problems I had prior went away.
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