Blue Devil’s Moon
So, I finally caved and got myself an image for my … is it ‘still’ a ‘profile’ these days?
Dunno … don’t care … whatever it’s called, it seems all the cool kids are doing it, so I figured I’d better get down with you all.
Tinkerbell’s is a bit twee and I can’t decide whether it’s clever marketing, a gingerbread house style lure to entrap the unwary, or (disturbingly) a true reflection of who she is … and although the left hand of Darkness hasn’t bothered (because she’s a freak ¹), even Major Thompson has got himself a tastefully coloured … thing … whatever the thing is called that’s where my new image is … *sigh* … what’s it called? … header background? … that’s it … header background … and, well, I can’t be upstaged by the likes of him … (he’s adopted and nobody loves him!).
Also, I’m having a stressful time right now … in a first world kinda way.
As I was explaining to Mungo, what with Covid, the DJing was probably going to be scuppered in the foreseeable future anyway, but after the best part of a year of no parties … and no real end in sight … it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that things will never be the same … and, fun though things were, I just don’t fancy a return the gas-mask fashion of the early 1990s — I didn’t wear one when there was no reason not to take it off after a ten minutes, so I’m not gonna be comfortable dancing in one for 96 hours, am I?
So, I’ve been rebuilding the studio, with a view to pivoting from DJ-cum-occasional-collaborator/remixer to full-on producer.
I’m still waiting on a new MIDI keyboard/controller to arrive ², but I can still get o with stuff without it in the meantime.
I’m also waiting on a few cables to wire up two sets of hifi-speakers for comparison purposes and to route the signal from the audio interface/breakout box to the amp … and also to a separate hardware mixer — circumstances being what they currently are, I don’t have the room for the studio kit, DJ mixer, CDJ Decks, six games consoles, Blu-ray player amplifier, multiple speakers and whatever else I’ve forgotten all in the same room all wired up into one, seamless whole, but … I can always run a cable from the other room where the Blu-ray player and one of the games consoles are to be found, so the studio mixer might come in handy and, as it’s a small 4+4/2 unit, I’ve got the space for it, so might as well use it.
So, I’m waiting for the cables to arrive, so I can wire up the amp/speakers before I wire up the near-/mid-field monitors, because, once I’’ve done so, I won’t be able to get behind the desk/table to do any further wiring/connecting without moving one of them again … and once I’ve calibrated them for the room, I don’t want to have to do it again — no matter that, theoretically, recalibrating them will make it all good again, things just won’t sound the same again and it’ll be disorientating (note speling).
In the meantime, I’ve been doing what I can though, making sure everything works and all the connections are good and … so far … they are good.
Until yesterday, that is, when someone sent me something they are working on to listen to and I discovered a driver/routing problem.
In my DAW, I can send individual sources wherever I like, group them, submix them, send them, return them, route the returned signal to another submix going to another output group, you get the idea.
By default, the first two ADAT streams on my audio interface are also the Master channel … going via optical connection to my breakout box and then out via two TRS cables, which I’ve cabled up to a passive attenuator with rotary dial and mute button before forwarding it on to the near/mid-field speaker-monitors. I’ve tested it with my headphones and it’s all good.
I’ve then plugged my headphones into the third and fourth ports on the breakout box and use a SEND to route sources/(sub)mixes to the ADAT 3/4 stream routed to the corresponding ports on the breakout box, so that I can monitor things independently of the speaker-monitors.
So far so good.
ADAT 5/6 go to the amp.
ADAT 7/8 will go to whatever external device chain I want to use (currently a KAOSS PAD, but it could eventually contain any number of compressors, reverbs, delays, whathaveyou) and/or the hardware mixer.
So … all told, so far so pretty good.
Well, I didn’t want to fire up the DAW just to listen to wav bouncedown, so I quickly launched VLC Player.
I couldn’t hear a thing on the headphones though — and it wasn’t because I’d forgotten to power up the breakout box … nor because there was no signal (I could see the signal going to 1/2).
I couldn’t access the individual ADAT streams from the settings though, which was weird — I can in my DAW.
So, I tried a few other apps, including (in utter desperation) Windows Media Player.
And none of them, will let me route the signal anywhere but 1/2.
I can open the control panel for the audio interface and set the gain/panning for each independent ADAT channel/stream, but I can’t do so in Windows’ system settings — it’s 1/2 all or nothing, like I were using the audio interface in TOSLink mode, whereas I flashed the ADAT firmware to the audio interface the day before, changing it from the default TOSLink setup (since when, in my DAW at least, it has allowed me to use all eight ADAT streams/channels instead of the default two).
So, I can’t control things from any app that doesn’t play nicely with the driver (which, apparently, includes Windows itself!).
Which is pretty annoying … because I can’t audition stuff, or listen to anything on the Web unless I route it to my near-/mid-field monitors … so, I can’t listen to any music, synth demos, sample packs … anything … after 20:00 because I don’t want to upset the neighbours.
A friend may have found a solution in ASIO Link Pro (Jacky take note):
… which is preeeeeeeeeeetty sweet, but, in the meantime, I’ve been downloading a slew of freebies (some nice Waldorf plugins and synths, PoiZone, EZ Mix, T-RackS, AmpliTube, Samplitude, stuff like that) I got as the result of being worthy of a heavenly reward ³ … and have been templating my DAW, so that future projects are a matter of simply finding the sounds I want and writing the tracks without my workflow being constantly interrupted by having to figure out why I can’t hear something, or why it’s too loud or where the frequency clash is.
So … once I’d set it up with all my SENDs preconfigured to route stuff to the right output groups and the output groups preconfigured to use the right output ports for the sent ADAT streams … I created some default submix groups (one to contain others, each containing an audio track and a virtual instrument track), so that I can simply duplicate the default ones and copy all their settings with them, which is a lot quicker than simply creating them from scratch each time.
Which is when it dawned on me that I could save myself even more time in future by preloading each with a default set of plugins: EQ, reverbs, delays, filters, gates and specialFX on tracks, mastering tools (expanders, exciters, limiters, compressors, etc.) on submix groups. That way, in future, when I want to tweak things, instead of having to stop what I’m doing, open up the FX list, browse for the plugin, load it, open it, oh, God, what was I doing again? … I can simply open up the FX list, open the one I want and do what I need to without all the faff.
And that’s when I started finding myself in the position of thinking “Well, yeah, I might want to alter a specific track and make it sound like it’s being played on a Marshall amp and/or on the radio in the 1950s, so, yeah, I want it on the FX list of every track, but what if I want the whole thing (a submix or even the entire track) to sound like that? I might as well sling it across the entire mix then as on multiple tracks, saving the processing power and RAM, rather than having six or ten or twenty instances running simultaneously. But then, when I only want one or two sounds like that, I’ll have to go and dig it out for those tracks individually. So, I’m gonna have to put the amp simulators on each track and each submix as well, just in case and, sure, they won’t all be active, but they’ll still all be loaded and that’s gonna be a horrendous resource hog before I’ve even done anything … what else have I got that falls into the same class of could be one, the other or both … how many FX have I got anyway? A-hundred-and-four!? Not including the new ones I haven’t installed yet! Jesus! Where on Earth did I get them all and how come I didn’t know that!?”
Which is when I started discovering all sorts of weird and wonderful tools that have been at my disposal all this time but have never been used!
I spent a week recently, creating a mindmeltingly complex pattern across some pads so that the tails of the reverbs end after the delays are reset … resulting in the next tails containing some of the previous delay when they are next fed into the reset delay and so on, ad infinitum, whilst automating the panning to cross the speakers and back in two opposing patterns, each pattern itself varying in speed over the course of its cycle. The pads swirl around your head in ways that make you think your third eye has opened … either that or you’ve suddenly been taken ill with a legendary case of dysentery — whichever it is, things have turned very strange inside your head and you’re not sure whether Thursday is behind you or above you to your right. Only to discover, this afternoon, that I have a plugin that will do exactly that at the flip of a switch and the ratcheting of a knob.
So, as I’m sure you can imagine, j’suis dégoûté … and I’ve come out here to eat a tub of ice-cream and vent my spleen for a while instead of doing the thing(s) I’m supposed to be doing to make my own life easier.
And that’s when I discovered that I could procrastinate a bit longer (I can be a terrible procrastinator ⁵) by needlessly modifying my Medium profile (or whatever it’s called). Although that wasn’t altogether unfraught either: I had to edit the image over and over, repeatedly resizing it down — they say “at least 1500 pixels wide, but they don’t say how high.”
But I got it done eventually.
So, there you go … I have a new … er … thing.
You know … the thing that goes on my thing where the thing used to be before I had to hide it to make the thing easier to see.
The thing!
Look … I’m busy, okay? I’ve got a lot on my mind and important decisions to take.
So, just look at my thing — you can’t miss it … it’s huge ⁶.
—
¹ A freak, I tell you … a freak!
² One of these, as it happens
Just look at all those buttons and knobs and faders and pads and stuff.
Man … it does stuff …
And, once it gets here, I’mma ensconce myself with it in way that even herself would consider dubious
³ What can I say about T-RackS? Some of the FX all but brought me to tears! ⁴
⁴ We are way beyond twin sisters now … this is “I’ve died and gone to Heaven and been made one with the Lord and He is me and I am Him and All is Love” sublime.
⁵ See here:
⁶ Or it was until I had to chop it in half to fit it all in anyway.
Which reminds me:
Okay, so, that was a bit childish, yes … but at least it wasn’t a duckpick:
… for which, I imagine Rick will be both disappointed yet simultaneously grateful.
This is for him: the original pull toy that craves the taste of human flesh
