TubularCorporation

Balanced inputs really aren't necessary with line level signals unless you're dealing with LONG cable runs, and unbalanced can potentially sound better (also if you have to connect an unbalanced signal to a balanced input you lose either 3db or 6db compared to an unbalanced input). Balanced OUTPUTS are pretty much mandatory on a mixer though, for sure. In theory, RCA is a better connector than 1/4" because the area of contact is bigger and the entire connector is shielded, but in practice none of that really matters much and they're a pain in the ass.

Like I posted earlier, all Kensington trackballs have lockable axes, so you just need one of those. The nice thing is the wired version (of the Pro Mouse at least) is cheaper AND better, apparently the wireless has some corners cut (plus it's wireless, which is just inherently worse). I'm really leaning toward getting one now, if it works well enough with the X axis locked for writing automation I could sell my old Alphatrack, make back the cost of the trackball and free up some desk space. Those mice with the little trackball on topseem like you'd just always be bumping the trackball when you were using it as a mouse...

To be fair, Milli Vanilli's material was written by the same guy who created Boney M and wrote Rasputin, and there's no was an AI will ever be able to touch that kind of pedigree. Even if he DOES look like Jimmy Savile and Donald Trump went through the teleporter together.

This was a fun read, thanks for bumping it! I used Reason 2.x a lot and have good memories of it, but once all the older pros started selling their hardware for next to nothing and moving ITB I started buying it up cheap, and at this point I'm just about ready to start sequencing in Notator on an Atari ST (picked up a maxed out 1040 STe for $40 in the box with half a dozen boxed games and 4 or 5 programing books from a retired developer years ago but I haven't sequenced on it in a long time, and back when I did I hardly had any hardware so it was kind of pointless), I just need to make a breakout box for it's weird MIDI in/thru port and start practicing.

At risk of sounding like an old man, it's probably ging to be at least as good as the average major label artist in the 21st century.

Re: trackballs with lockable motion, Kensington stuff has this. Assignable to a hotkey. https://www.kensington.com/software/kensingtonworks/ EDIT: now I've got my eyes on one of those Expert trackballs, I've been having all kinds of mouse-related wrist and shoulder trouble the past year and a half since I started working from home again and I think it might help.

I haven't heard any interesting music come out of Metallicathat isn't at least 30 years old now, but I'm halfway through watching Some Kind of Monster for at least the 4th time and it gets better every time.

Oh cool, the only optical trackballs I've used were a couple Logitechs. Maybe they had more than one sensor, but whatever they used was all behind one little IR filter so you couldn't see any of it or block individual sensors if there was more than one, so I thought they were all like that.

Gotcha, I thought portability was the main thing. The idea about disabling the X axis on an old, mechanical trackball is all I can think of, unless you can find a Mac equivalent to autohotkey, since apparently that will do it with some scripting: https://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/56025-how-to-temporarily-disable-mouse-x-axis/

I rememeber reading an old, old article that recommended getting a mechanical trackball and taking the roller for the X axis out so it only moved the cursor vertically, for writing fader automation. Wouldn't work with anything made in the last 20 years or so, though, since it's all optical now, so I've never tried it but it's probably cheaper to buy an old trackball than a Presonus Faderport or something. There's this, $9 each (but a minimum order of 2): https://www.alibaba.com/pla/Portable-Finger-Hand-Held-4D-Usb_60751020861.html and a lot of similar handheld trackballs aimed at Powerpoint users. EDIT: actually there's a mouse with a trackball on top on Aliexpress, so you can probably find something a little less ugly and better built if you look at brand name stuff. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-A5-rechargeable-2-4g-wireless_1600520432369.html

If you need low latency audio but don't need perfect sync, VDOninja will do that for sure, you'd just need something to route your audio (DAW output direct to webcam source for VDOninja, if you use your main system audo you'd end up with a feedback loop if you needed two-way communication), probably one of the Voicemeeter programs https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/index.htm if you'r ein Windows (or maybe Jack), and I think MacOS can do this natively. Worst case scenario you have to route it to OBS and use that as a virtual webcam. But you'd end up with really low latency compared to anything else I've tried, without paying for a commercial service. By the way, if you try the moe Ninjam has that's for collaborating remotely on multitrack projects live (instead of realtime playing) let me know how it works. I still haven't tried that and the instructions for doing it are kind of cryptic.

Ninjam. Works great, been doing it weekly for over two years. Free, open source, Reaper includes a really good client and they are maintaining the code now. For video, Zoom and similar are kind of high overhead and the latency isn't great. Use VDOninja. Peer to peer, overhead is almost zero (depends very much on the browser you use, though - Chrome is a big resource hog, for example), can get latency in the milliseconds. The tools you would normally use for regular livestreaming are mostly garbage for time critical stuff (except OBS, obviously). Any service that claims you can get low enough latency over the Internet for true real-time playing is lying. You need a gap system like Ninjam uses.

I've been crate digging most of my adult life and before this week I had never seen a Christian trombone record.

All those Baja Marimba Band LPs that have one guy peeing in the background. There are a handful that don't, but they released a lot of albums and most do.

I fucking love Canibal: The Musical. It was all downhill from there for them, really. Somewhere I've got the Troma VHS screener with the OG cover art from when they were trying to market it like a horror movie. Like this, but a screener:

Oh, that makes sense. They had a couple of those giant, 70s hard drives in a storage closet when I was in college. They're the kind you had to keep perfectly level because the platters actually floated on a cusion of air or something while they were spinning (or maybe it was the head that floated, I forget), so even a little tilt would make them self destruct. I bet they couldn't even handle hearing Tito Jackson.

I assume you just take the platter out and hang it from a string, but it would be a realyl high pitched gong. I've got a little stack of platters from older (late 90s/early 00s) hard drives, because the bearings in a single-platter 5.25" hard drive are really useful for repairing fretted instruments - the bearing is really high quality and the platter thickness is jsut slightly wider than the tang on standard fret wire, so all you have to do is stick it to a board with a couple nylon rollers on either side and you have a really nice fretwire bender for a LOT less than buying a commercial one. Bearing is so mooth you don't need a crank or anything, you can just feed the wire through easily with your hand. The nylon bushings are smooth enough that they don't need torotate, the wire gides roght over them and there's no danger of denting or scratching it. Total cost was around $3, not counting the clamp. The original plan was to eventually make a fancy aluminum backplate with adjustable bearing rollers like the commercial one, but it ended up being totally unnecessary. The first one I made didn't even have a board or anything, I just took the platter out of an old drive, drilled some holes in the sides and rounced them off so the wire would feed through the holes over the bearing and you could use different holes to get diferent radiuses, and even that worked fine. Never throw out a hard drive if you can avoid it!

I bought a 60s Dienes grinder for like $40 on eBay in 2013 and never looked back. Does everything from so fine it clogs an espresso machine up to coarse enough you don't need to filter it at all, doesn't burn the beans like an electric burr grinder, and you aren't going to find machined steel burrs on anything new under a few hundred dollars. It's all just caffienated sludge water so it doesn't really matter that much, but it's really satisfying to use and looks cool.

I have no idea, so don't ask. I guess it's important to have a hobby.

Maybe this is the real reason that laptop I had sounded like crap.

I do wish I'd bought an old Kyma Capybara 320 back in 2018-19 when I was seeing them on eBay for under $300 all the time.

This reminds me of a few years ago when they demonstrated a proof-of-concept virus that could jump between computers acoustically.

I assume the filtering they're talking about is doen acoustically, not on the software level (maybe in firmware?). It would be straightforward to change the case design so that the specific frequency in question was cancelled before it reached the hard drive. That's the same way ported speakers and directional microphones work. No reason something similar couldn't be done with the laptop case. There's already a lot of acoustic engineering that goes in to making laptop speakers even vaguely listenable, much less halfway pleasant. EDIT: on the other hand, the onboard interface on my last laptop was completely useless for headphone listening unless I used ASIO4ALL because the official driver left the EQ curve that it applied to make the built in speakers sound OK on even when the headphones were connected. If you switched from the official driver to ASIO4ALL there was a REALLY obvious mid scoop and highpass with the official one, and before I figured it out it used to make me nuts when I did headphone checks of my own mixes on it. So I wouldn't put it past them to jsut have an always-on notch filter at the driver level.

Well, if you're in the USA and want like half a dozen utility eurorack modules let me know. I was joking but only until it stops being a joke! EDIT: if you are willing to trade a Filterbank 1 for this box of stuff I am in no way going to judge your poor life decisions. I would even throw in a genuine BBE 422 Sonic Maximizer to maximize your sonics.

That said, if you don't like the Filterbank 1 you have then you're welcome to give it to me!