Fri, 25 Jan 2008
Live at Alexandra Palace in 1995
What I can recognize:
- Roland Jupiter 6
- Oberheim Xpander
- Mackie Mixer (?)
- Roland TR-909
- Roland TR-808
- Alesis MMT8 (x3)
- Possibly a Yamaha DX100
[/Music/Orbital] permanent link
I've tried for a while now to get an appropriate soundcard for working on music at home on a laptop. The first thing I tried was an M-Audio Firewire 410. Latency issues, clicking and poping, poor mic preamp quality all led me to the conclusion that I'd never be buying from M-Audio again. A quick foray into the M-Audio Ozone 2 reminded me of why - the gear just feels cheap and uninspiring, and then when you plug it in you realize that your initial impulse was correct.
After some time, I thought I'd give Creative/E-mu a try with their new 0404 USB 2.0 Audio/MIDI interface. Although a step in the right directly, this time I was very unsatisfied with the sound quality on the output stage (which doesn't really make much sense considering the specs), as the outputs seemed to render the sound dynamically flat and loud, without depth. I recall being bothered by timing on something, the details are fuzzy. Suffice it to say, I gave up on this one as well.
Recently I dove into the tried-and-true PCMCIA territory with the Digigram VXPocket V2. I had read decent reviews and they had been very accommodating with Linux driver developers, a good sign. Turns out the Windows XP drivers still needed some work. I experience intermitant digital popping from within Cubase. When I tried to use the standalone Emulator X2, I was only able to record digitally for one pass until the driver decided to wig out and set itself back to analog recording, leaving me with a very irritated ear canal after numerous digital yelps. What a pity.
So now I realize after all the returns and all the time wasted trying to make crap work that I should have just gone with RME all along. They should be coming out with their new PCI-e PCMCIA cards for the Digiface and I will gladly buy one in order to move on with my life. RME, I can almost guarantee it, will not let me down.
[/Music/Studio] permanent link
I was driving home, switched over to KUCI. Heard a great song, went home to find out what it was, it was the Magic Bullets. The song was called 'Heatstroke'. I wanted to own this song because I'm sure I'll want to hear it again and again, on and off the internet. This song is one of those magically droning Stereolab-y 2 and 4 on the snare drum drive across the country songs that additionally seems to hold some of the zeitgeist of today in it. I bought it first on Snocap on their MySpace page. It was easy enough, just hooked my Paypal account into their engine and downloaded the track, at 192k. When I played it, I noticed it sounded like crap. So I found their album for sale on Amazon and downloaded the track again at 256k. Amazingly noticably different, thicker, more powerful and more real. I suspect that whatever Snocap uses to encode their tracks, besides the file being of lower quality, is of low quality itself. Avoid Snocap, use Amazon and listen to the Magic Bullets.
Thu, 26 Apr 2007
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/03/09/cmw-1/"Credible acts, ALBUM ACTS, are coming back. Oh, they won't be selling albums, but a continuous stream of songs, which people will want, because they BELIEVE IN THE ACT!"
[/Music/Business] permanent link
