My 'Peeps'

I was recording some scratch tracks yesterday up in my office and I have come to sing the praises of inexpensive gear, because the things you can do with inexpensive gear nowadays are pretty impressive.

Now, you need to have a computer and a DAW to run on it. You can get free DAWs, like Audacity. You can get cheap DAWs like Reaper ($60 for the personal license). Personally, I use Cubase and if I'm recommending a version of Cubase, I recommend Cubase Artist, because the must-have feature is lanes (or comping), which makes it easy to assemble a clean take from multiple takes that all contain flaws, but where you managed to do the right thing at least *once* for every note that you recorded. Other sufficiently good DAWs will have a similar feature (and I note that Reaper seems to have added this in version 7, so good for them!), but this is such a time saver that I wouldn't use a DAW without it. (I also note that the commercial Reaper license is $225, while Cubase Artist is $329 when not discounted, so...)

You need a microphone to record with. I recorded my scratch tracks using an old AKG C1000s, which is my favorite Swiss Army Knife of a mic, because it does a lot of things well enough and it isn't very expensive. Well, the brand-new version is apparently $324. When I bought mine, it was $100. And you can still buy a used one for less than $100 if you shop around.

Then you need to get that microphone's signal into your computer, which means you want an audio interface. My current favorite inexpensive interface is the Universal Audio Volt 2, which is selling for $179. This gets you *two* microphone or line inputs, which is a lot more flexible than one, even if I only used one for my scratch tracks. And the second microphone input only costs you $40, because the Volt 1 is $139. And it comes with a stack of very nice plugins from Universal Audio plus a copy of their Luna recording software. Unfortunately, the comping feature in Luna is not nearly as nice as the one in Cubase.

There are a lot of other nice audio interfaces available with similar capabilities at similar prices, but this is *my* lecture and I like my Volt, so I'll just continue.

I have become very, very fond of the Universal Audio plugin library. Happily, you can *rent* access to it, which is much cheaper than buying it -- although you can also buy huge bundles of plugins for cheap now for much less than I paid for them. And so I recorded one track with both guitar and voice through that AKG C1000s and the Volt 2 into Cubase, then massaged it with nothing except the Universal Audio plugins, plus the Maximizer that comes with Cubase, and got my scratch tracks done and sounding pretty good in short order.

One of my hobby horses is the "Democratization of Technology", where things that were ungodly expensive and hard to do get easier and cheaper to do as advanced tech gets pushed down to prices that lower-end users can afford. And this is a fine example of that, because recording technology is remarkably cheap nowadays.

Figuring out how to use it? That's the hard part. :)

And if you want to see what one of these scratch tracks sounds like, here's one that I posted last year that used the same setup. Wind and Water

Things I learned today, some of which I should have already known.

1) Before buying a new power strip, check to see if the GFCI that it is plugged into needs to be reset. If you bought the new power strip anyway, do this before unboxing and unwrapping it. (I will find a use for the new power strip some time.)

2) It appears that a Universal Audio Apollo unit with a Thunderbolt 2 interface card in it will not work on a Windows 11 system equipped with Thunderbolt 4, no matter what the very nice Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter thinks. This can be fixed by buying and installing a Thunderbolt 3 interface card in the Apollo system.

3) If you move the Monitor plugs back from the new Apollo unit to the old one, but don't move the ones that are attached to Line 1 and Line 2 *and* you have managed to set up your old Apollo system so that you are actually monitoring through Line 1 and Line 2 no matter what Cubase thinks is happening, you will not get any sound out through the speakers. This is fixed by getting back down underneath the console and moving the other pair of wires.

Things that I already knew:

1) I hate getting up off the ground after rewiring underneath the console.

Ah, well. Another learning experience. I'll be back on the ground installing the new interface card when it arrives. And then we'll see how everything works. :)

Today is garbage day, so the trash cans needed to be removed from the side of the garage where I park. Also, the weather didn't suck, which meant that this was a splendid time to unload the van and get all of the Dodeka boxes back onto their shelf. Accordingly, I parked in the driveway after lunch.

I moved the brooms that sit in front of the bookshelf where the gridwall sits and looked at the bottom shelf. There were two boxes of ancient peel-and-stick vinyl tile that had come to the house with us. It struck me that no one in the world really wanted that tile. So I tossed it in the trash, which is now *much* heavier. Then I started looking at other things on the shelf to see what I could dispose of.

Do I *really* need a large box full of Chicon V reimbursement forms? I think not! Or credit card slips for a imprinter? Heck, no!

I did find some things that might be useful that we had forgotten that we had, like some craft boxes designed to be painted that Gretchen had purchased at one time or another and that I am sure that the kids will want to get their hands on. And things that were less useful, but still interesting, like a World War II bayonet.

And finally, there was the bag that contained the rest of my coin collection, removed from the albums that it had once occupied and placed into rolls -- if it wasn't in coin sleeves. The odd coins were mostly in sleeves. A two cent piece, three cent nickel and silver pieces, a half dime, various other very old coins -- although I didn't find the Flying Eagle cent that I thought that I had bought at one time or another. But it's possible that had lurked just out of my price range, much like the St. Gaudens $20 gold piece that I could have purchased for $45 way back when.

It's nice to have found it. Some time, I need to show the kids what Dad used to do for fun.

Coin collecting was a lot *more* fun when you could collect coins from circulation. Sadly, that's pretty much an obsolete practice unless you want to collect a lot of clad coins.

Which I suppose is a valid hobby.

Still. :)

I had expected to be tired after Windycon, so I arranged to take Monday off. This was clearly the case, because both Gretchen and I managed to keep falling asleep during the second half of Tracker last night as we were watching it on the DVR. Well, the good news is that it was recorded, so we were able to watch it tonight and understand who the heck this character was who had popped up by the end of the episode.

The other reason for taking Monday off was that I *also* had Tuesday off for Veterans' Day and connecting everything together for one long session of getting things done seemed like a good idea. I have many things to get done.

The first was catching up on the convention laundry. I popped that into the washer before heading out for lunch and a couple of stops to grab stuff for dinner. When I finally got home, it was nearly time for Gretchen to go pick up Julie from school, so the right order of business was to put the load of wash in the dryer, fire up the studio computer, and install the new version of Cubase and the various plugins that I had picked up from Universal Audio with the latest upgrade.

This is easier when the computer fires up. After a bit of messing around, I realized that it wasn't just the computer being stubborn. It was everything plugged into the particular power strip I was poking at, which was apparently dead, dead, dead.

(Now thinking about it, it's just possible that the GFCI had triggered on that outlet, but thinking about it some more, there are two power strips plugged into that outlet and I'm pretty sure the other was still delivering power, based on what lights I saw on the assorted bits of equipment. These power strips / surge protectors are about as old as the studio, so having one fail isn't a great surprise.)

Anyway, I ordered a new power strip / surge protector that should be here tomorrow and will then start trying to figure out which plug needs to come out of the wall, because all of the cords are running under the console. In the meantime, I figured that I would unplug and remove the old Focusrite Octopre unit that's going to be replaced by the used Apollo 8 unit that I bought from Jeff Bohnhoff. Unplugging was easy, getting back up off the floor less so, getting the unit to slide *up* and out of the rackmount was simply not happening without a second person there.

Before dinner, Julie was down in the basement and was good enough to push the unit up so I could extract it. Then it was finally time to *open* Jeff's unit, which had been sitting in its package for weeks. That was easy enough. The unit looks to be in excellent condition and has now been installed into the rack. Assuming that the new surge protector arrives tomorrow, I'll get it plugged in and wired up.

And maybe I'll install Cubase 15...

Day two of Windycon is in the books. So far, so good, although sales could be better. But we had fun, especially at the art auction.

Things have gone well so far. Opening Ceremonies were fun and Tim did a great job as Toastmaster.

Time to go to bed now. :)

The committee and guest banquet was tonight, so I headed down to the Windycon hotel. We sorted out a few small things and now I'm at home, the minivan is mostly packed, and tomorrow I will head back to the hotel.

Gretchen will follow as soon as school lets out.

Go team!

I assembled the racks for the additional bit of grid for our dealer table at Windycon, because I am busily figuring out how to get 18 feet worth of merchandise onto 12 linear feet of table. The answer is to go up! And to bring the CD tower from home too, although that's not a great way to display much of anything.

Meanwhile, I have finished the draft of the Opening Ceremonies script and am off to do Closing Ceremonies now. Happily, Closing Ceremonies is much simpler. :)