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Post by jayson on Dec 24, 2016 22:43:02 GMT -6
Spiced, spiked hot cider by the fire with RGO on the laptop while visions of gear float through my head...what could be more Christmasy? Everybody's asleep and I ain't far behind, but first here's a sip of grog to wish you all a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Qwanza...whatever you're into - and a healthy, happy and prosperous 2017. The quality of the dialog on this sight is, to me, outstanding both to read and participate in and I think the folks that frequent this board have made it a pretty special place. Thanks everybody. Thanks John Kennedy for having this little sanctuary for us "purple-screen refugees."
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Post by jayson on Dec 13, 2016 21:24:32 GMT -6
Yeah, but have you actually USED one? Kind of misses the point I was making to the OP: Try it yourself - why take anybody else's word for it? You can always return it if you don't like it. But the snobbery of your response has been duly noted and revered .
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Post by jayson on Dec 2, 2016 6:43:56 GMT -6
I wouldn't "stay away". You might want to actually TRY one first. Let YOUR ears decide, instead of anonymous voices from the interwebs.
I've always been kind of amazed at how subjective opinions on items like guitar amps can be. Some people see a price-tag like $299 and jump to the conclusion that it MUST suck if doesn't cost a grand or more.
I've had one for several years now that I primarily use with a Motion Sound SRV 212 rotary cabinet and I really like it; it had replaced a Marshall TSL100 that was a very expensive, boutique, hand-wired, all tube piece of junk - high or low price ain't everything. For $299 it's not really a huge gamble anyway; if you didn't like it you can always return it or just put it on ebay - you sure won't lose much on it.
Stylistically I'd say I shoot for tones in the Mark Knopfler, Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen and David Gilmour neighborhoods and it seems to do just fine with it - those styles require a fair amount of tonal flexibility. I don't think it's a fair characterization at all to say it's primarily for noobs or shredding. I can't speak for anybody else, but I've had no issues with noise - beyond what would be considered "normal" for a guitar amp - while recording regardless of whether I've been using the clean or OD channel; I'm wondering if that might be some inconsistency in manufacturing or just bad luck.
For me the bottom line is that it's a nice little inexpensive two channel amp - If you can't make it sound good, it's not the amp's fault.
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Post by jayson on Nov 27, 2016 9:36:46 GMT -6
There's a surprising amount of grip equipment originally intended for lighting instruments in photography, video and film production that can translate really well and much more cost effectively to the audio world. Typically they're really well balanced and designed to hold a lot of weight. Do an ebay search for something like Matthews or Avenger boom light stands. It'll probably require buying some adapters to get you to the standard 5/8" thread for microphones but those are pretty easy and cheap to find. Here's an ebay listing for one that has me somewhat intrigued for the 4038s I picked up recently. I like the option of using a sandbag counterweight. www.ebay.com/itm/Flashpoint-Pro-Air-Cushioned-Heavy-Duty-Boom-Light-Stand-13-FP-SB-13-/331919475791?hash=item4d47f1444f:g:2jwAAOSwImRYI47J
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Post by jayson on Nov 18, 2016 22:33:15 GMT -6
Yeah, I guess it's kind of a weird idea; sorta like like having hysteresis and compression controls for HVAC - I guess it takes an audio nut to come up with an idea like that. Seems like it'd be easy enough to do but I haven't actually found one.
You could even do the same thing in reverse for cooling in the summer; if you had the AC set to kick on at 80 and cool until it hit 75 and then wait until the temp warms back up to 80 before it kicks on again. I gotta think it would be a lot more efficient.
I wonder if Honeywell makes custom thermostats...
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Post by jayson on Nov 14, 2016 18:33:51 GMT -6
These were so hyped by Fletcher as the second coming of the KM84, well just like the Ginsu Knives they just never lived up to the hype! Ya know, I've still got a set of Ginsu Knives I picked up in the 80s - I've abused those things for years and they're still pretty sharp! One of those things you see somewhere cheap and you buy it on impulse - damned if they don't stick around forever. They slice tomatoes paper thin, and dice onions without shedding a tear! They can even saw through this PVC pipe and they're still sharp enough to slice paper!
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Post by jayson on Nov 14, 2016 7:17:44 GMT -6
Is AMI still producing products these days? I haven't been sure what the status has been there since Ollie Archut passed away.
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Post by jayson on Nov 14, 2016 6:41:08 GMT -6
So, Does anybody know if any of the smart thermostats currently available are capable of using a temperature range rather than a single arbitrary number as it's temperature setting?
Here's what I'm trying to describe: I want to be able to set a maximum and minimum temperature range on the thermostat. Let's say I'm heating my house and I want the heat to turn on at 63 degrees and heat the house until it's 70. When the the temperature hits 70 I want the heat to shut off and let the house cool back down to 63 before it turns on and heats to 70 again.
Does this characteristic seem like any of the smart thermostat solutions that are currently available any of you folks are aware of? Seems like every thermostat I've seen wants to just heat around a single temp setting and it makes the furnace constantly turn on and off trying to unrealistically maintain the temperature at that single number. All that pecking away at one arbitrary number ain't so good for HVAC solenoids and burns too much juice.
I don't particularly care if the damn thing knows when I get home from work or when I get up in the morning; I just want to keep the temperature in a specific RANGE not at one specific number.
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Post by jayson on Nov 6, 2016 7:12:30 GMT -6
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Post by jayson on Nov 3, 2016 6:38:41 GMT -6
Hmm... maybe the Behringer takeover has a silver lining.
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Post by jayson on Nov 3, 2016 5:48:34 GMT -6
I wouldn't say they fly "below the radar" but I just scored a pair of Coles 4038. In the immortal words of Ralph Kramden: Hamina-hamina-hamina!!! Why did I wait so long? It was like a reunion with an old friend; as soon as I tried it out the first comment I made was "Ahh...So THAT'S how they got that sound"!
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Post by jayson on Oct 29, 2016 14:03:58 GMT -6
Wouldn't an Intel PC with a selectable Win or mac OS solve all those differences in one machine? Already exists in the mac world: Boot Camp. You can run any OS you want.
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Post by jayson on Sept 28, 2016 5:56:02 GMT -6
A good friend of my parents had a Morgan. That thing was a freakin' BLAST to drive!
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Post by jayson on Aug 21, 2016 9:30:11 GMT -6
For me, an electronic drum kit is one of those things I was loathe to actually spend money on, but at the end of the day it wasn't such a bad investment. I took the scenic route in terms of going there though; I bought components for it on ebay and kind of assembled the kit as I went. I started out with a Roland TD-8 brain. Nothing to write home about as far as the sounds went, but it was more than adequate as a controller. I was primarily using it to control Slate Drums. When I was living in a townhouse it was really the only game in town: frowning policemen at at the door don't add much to the creative vibe of a composing session. Since I bought my house it hasn't had a lot of use - it's set up in the tracking room but I'd much rather just use the real kit now. I suppose it's still be possible to pick up some drum mounted triggers if I wanted to record midi performance data, but it doesn't seem to come up much anymore.
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Post by jayson on Jul 18, 2016 6:08:58 GMT -6
So I went on Vacation up in Maine and took my Radial Workhorse 5000 along to do a little recreational recording in paradise. In this situation I was using two CAPI VP 28 pres on an acoustic guitar. Slot one had a Josephson C42 and slot two had SM-57 on it. As I was jockeying the mics around looking for a nice placement I became aware of a squealing sound that would happen if the mics faced each other. "Odd", I thought, "I've heard of phase cancellation - but never a squeal." Turns out that the "Feed" switch on the back of the WH5K had somehow gotten thrown and the signal from the C42 was emerging from the diaphragm of the SM57...like it was a small speaker. The squealing I was hearing was feedback the 42 was picking up FROM the 57! Freaky. I guess it's good it was an SM57 - I don't know if anything else would've survived something like that.
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Post by jayson on Jun 26, 2016 8:48:26 GMT -6
The constant treadmill of these updates gets pretty aggravating. It's the cyber version of the Bataan Death March. All the big names do it constantly: Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, AVID etc. (I always love the Adobe CS updates - all they do is move the same functions from one menu to another - they haven't actually changed the functionality of the software in any fundamental way in years.) But I guess you can see why they do it - you have to keep the code writers busy in order to justify paying them. I just wish that MS and Apple could find something more constructive for them to focus on. Needless to say I was pretty PO'd when they casually destroyed my laptop's capability of using my Apogee Duet.
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Post by jayson on Jun 25, 2016 9:37:08 GMT -6
The "North Korea-ization" of the British economy isn't likely to make them stronger over the long term. There's no historical evidence that protectionist and isolationist policies have ever had any kind of a positive result for the people practicing them. Quite the opposite. This is a tremendous mistake on multiple, multiple levels. First of all the credit crunch that UK is going to experience will probably be pretty epic. None of the European banks are going to be providing commercial financing services - that going to make it a real PITA for UK based companies to buy materials or make their payrolls unless they have truckloads of their own cash to do it. I'm sure to some extent UK based institutions will up their game a bit to pick up the slack, but it's still going to be like bailing out the ocean with a thimble. Approvals will harder to get than frogs with beards and the interest rates are going to be absurd. This credit crunch is going hit the working class first and very much the hardest - Ironically they're the same people who supported leaving. Also, if the UK expects to do any business in the EU they're still going to have to abide by EU regulations. AND since they're no longer a member of the EU they will have virtually no voice in what those regulations may be. Oops! Doesn't sound like more freedom to me. And taxes? No joy in Mudville there either. Again, if the UK wants to participate in the EU's markets those taxes are still going to need to be paid and will likely increase significantly- but the UK won't have any voice into just what those tax rates should be. Bend over. Bend WAY over.
It's not really unfair to ask should we even refer to it as "The UK" anymore? There isn't much of a K left... and when Scotland & Ireland decide to stay in the EU and NOT the UK there will be even less.
I'm certainly not saying that the EU was a panacea for all of the problems the UK has to deal with, but leaving it makes about as much sense as treating athlete's foot by cutting your leg off.
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Post by jayson on Jun 24, 2016 20:34:26 GMT -6
Whatever you're going to buy you'd better buy soon. Once the credit markets in the UK start drying up so will the gear and the components to build it.
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Post by jayson on Jun 20, 2016 17:34:31 GMT -6
Is that a Canare 1/4" TRS? I really loathe the connectors that have the pos & neg poles less than a millimeter apart like that. It's almost like they want the connector to either short or break so they can sell you another one. They don't seem to me like the solder cups have anywhere near enough capacity to give you a durable connection - especially if the insulator on the cable your soldering tends to shrink away from the heat of the solder even the tiniest bit. I'll take a even a used Switchcraft 297 over that style connector any day - they actually have enough room to work on them.
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Post by jayson on May 29, 2016 13:13:52 GMT -6
Hi Jeff, Thanks for getting back to me here. Odd - but I think that helps. I'm wondering if Soundcraft might have been on a different page with their phantom ground scheme. I'm not showing any voltage at all between the 48 volt supply and the chassis ground: between the 500 edge connectors 1 & 15...or for that matter even if I test it inside the Soundcraft PS! I AM seeing 62 volts between the phantom supply and the 0 volt reference. For the record, pin 1 on the edge connector shows continuity with the chassis star-ground in the PS. Hmm...So maybe this is shedding a bit of light on things... I guess I'm ok with knowing it won't work as long as I understand WHY. I think I'll probably just clip the jumper that I installed to the +48v in the Soundcraft PS- I don't really need it anyway.
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Post by jayson on May 29, 2016 9:50:08 GMT -6
So here's an update on this. I finally modded the PSU and put together one of Jeff's racks and it works almost perfectly. I did wind up tweaking the output voltage for the +/- 17v down a taste - I'm not sure it was necessary, but the voltage still reads higher than 17v at it's lowest setting, so I'm not going to go too crazy there.
I tested it and everything is working as well as I could hope except for one very weird issue: phantom power seems to have some kind of glitch. I've made sure the +48v has perfect continuity from the power supply all the way out to pin 15 on the edge connectors. If I hook a dynamic mic up to a pre in the rack it works just fine. BUT - If I hook up a condenser up to it, the +48v indicator LED on the module activates making it look as if everything's happy, but I get no signal at all. I've had the same results with multiple modules in every slot. My first thought was that I must have bridged a 48v solder point to the ground or something - but if I had I don't think the indicator light for the phantom on the modules would even activate. So I checked every solder point that's remotely close to any other ones and I can't seem to locate anything that's been shorted. Seems like I've tried every diagnostic trick in the book without any luck. Any of you guys ever heard of an issue like this?
Truth be told; I took on this project to provide housing for compressors and EQs, so even if I never get to the bottom of it it's not much of a concern. For me this is just one of those things were it sure seems like I did everything right and it still ain't working and, frankly, that ITCHES!
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Post by jayson on May 14, 2016 6:03:10 GMT -6
Does this sample mean we've been Rick-rolled?
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Post by jayson on May 13, 2016 6:30:37 GMT -6
Serendipity, random chance - whatever you want to call it - does create some cool by-products sometimes. Whenever those moments happen I always seem to get one Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies axioms stuck in my head:
Honour thy error as a hidden intention
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Post by jayson on Apr 22, 2016 6:24:44 GMT -6
Are you guys able to source OC 703 locally? I got some through Home Depot at one point and they had to special order it by the case. It worked out OK, but for my needs it would be great if I didn't have to buy it by the case and could pick up a sheet or two on an "as needed" basis. It'd certainly make me feel a lot more receptive to experimenting with things like super-chunk corner traps. Roxul Safe 'n' Sound is pretty easy to find, but it just doesn't seem to have quite the same density. Ever tried office cubicle dividers? Is it worth bothering?
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Post by jayson on Apr 8, 2016 5:39:13 GMT -6
So I wonder if there's any advantage in striping together multiple SSD drives. I wouldn't be opposed to grouping a bunch of them together if it increased the long term reliability, the performance advantages seem obvious enough. Do you think distributing the load among multiple units adds any value? From a packaging perspective it seems like they'd be a nice means of archiving projects for the long term. In practice though I can't help but wonder how much retrievable data could be pulled from one of these things that's been stored in a file cabinet or a Banker's Box for 10 or 15 years. How do they stand up for archival data storage? I'm not sure I could give up spindle drives just yet, but it is getting more tempting.
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