Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

That didn’t take too long, did it? If you were visiting while I was playing around, you might have seen a couple different players, one which ran in a bar across the bottom that I liked, except for the fact I couldn’t change it’s appearance to match the theme.

I was browsing the website of Brad Sucks when I discovered his recording gear list on his About page. Of the actual recording equipment (not including his guitar effects processor or any of his instruments), the only parts of his setup that cost more than two hundred dollars are his monitors (which appear to have run about $800 for the pair) and his computer and software. Everything else, from the interface, to his preamp, to his microphones, are all fairly inexpensive. In fact, if you don’t count the computer, I wouldn’t hesitate to guess that his entire setup cost him less than $2000.

Moral of the story?

It’s not your equipment that’s holding you back.

I got finally got tired of the idiosyncrasies of the Firestudio, and ordered a new interface. After searching high and low, I settled on an Echo Layla 3G, and ordered it a little over a week ago. And now, it’s in my rack!

I didn’t really need all of the preamps that were on the Firestudio, which is something I didn’t understand until after I’d already purchased it. The Layla 3G has two preamps, and six straight line inputs, and this suits my needs just perfectly. It also supports ASIO Direct Monitoring, which the Firestudio never did (to be fair, I don’t think I checked it on the last driver update), and the really low latency of the PCI card makes the whole Control Room functionality of Cubase 4 work really well. It means I don’t have to buy a separate device to handle talkback for those few occasions I need it – I can just plug a mic into the first mic input on the Layla and use the talkback functionality in Cubase for it.

The only thing I miss, and it can be worked around with ease, is the lack of routing in the DSP mixer that the newer interfaces have. It’s a minor quibble, and like I said, I worked around it. How? The Cubase Control Room. The only thing I wanted to route was the main mix to all of the stereo pair outputs.

As far as sound quality, it’s at least as good as the Firestudio, if not better. Hard to really A/B it in my current setup, but it sure seemed I was hearing a bit more detail. Not that converters are going to make or break my music, but at least I don’t feel like I’m going backwards.

One other quibble, and this is purely (well, mostly) cosmetic. The rack ears. They could have rounded them a bit so they matched the profile of the box. Couldn’t they? The ears also don’t screw onto the box. There are two tabs on each ear that slide into slots on the bottom of the box. Nice and easy, but there’s a bit of movement when plugging things in. It’s in a rack. It isn’t supposed to move.

Anyway, I’m pretty ecstatic. $500 for great quality hardware and software (that last part, the software, is key). I plugged it in, installed the drivers, rebooted, and it worked. And there’s no funky shit going on.

Here it is in the rack:

I just uploaded a remixed version of confusion. I think it’s an improvement. Hope you like it.

So I gave up on LD48 #13, and instead, turned a nice combo amplifier (amp with speakers attached) into a head (amp with no speakers attached). Here’s the original.

Here’s the result.

Wow, I got really caught up with work, shipping Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile (check it out on a cellular phone near you), and got NOTHING done on any of my other projects. I’m excited to get back to having some time to do anything other than coding.

First up, I’ve decided it’s time to give up on my Presonus Firestudio ever working correctly. The drivers while better, still have issues that annoy me greatly, and it’s no fun being annoyed while trying to make music. I’ve done quite a bit of searching, and I think the replacement that fits the bill is the Echo Layla 3G. It’s PCI, and not firewire, and is about $500. It’ll cost me some extra cash to buy a glorified volume knob to sit on my desk, but it’s really the cheapest option out there that fits my requirements.

The next thing on the agenda is the purchase of an SSL Duende PCIe card. It should be here tomorrow or the next day. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a card that plugs into your computer and has a processor on it that runs plugins for your audio software, saving your computer CPU from other tasks. This one only runs SSL plugins designed for the card, and they’re supposed to be top quality plugins.

I’m hoping I can get back into the shop soon, too, though with it being the holiday season, I expect I may not get quality time there until January. I need to finish the workbench so I can get on with the guitar building.

Anyone have some free time they can share?