jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

A legend of sticking to his guns.

I can't claim to have known the man well, but he was a great guy once you understood how well meaning he was... and he really mellowed with age like a fine wine. The first time I talked to him, he was a lot more abrasive than the last time we were in contact. Steve had such a generous heart and I regret never booking time at Electrical because even when it felt like he was punching you he was actually hugging you.

The videos he started doing with the Electrical staff were pure gold.... they began with the most useful information ever, how to clean your mixing console (assuming you have one, but similar principles apply to cleaning all your hardware :-)

I'm shocked and genuinely sad. I'll miss his snarky wisdom even though I haven't spoken to the guy in a dog's age. I hope he made thorough provisions for Electrical Audio in his will, it became one of the last bastions of artist driven, independent music outside the basement and the bedroom.

Steve Albini shall be sorely missed by his friends and clients, but also everyone he ever mentored or even slagged off (other than the dirtbag label execs and stooges in A&R).

He was also really good at poker.

I would tend to agree with Kenneth. Your videos are very much like all demo videos. Why not go another route like the guys from That Pedal Show and do a very personal, branded video series where you tackle topics of interest to EB members rather than review single products? Like, "on this month's Equipboard show we're going to talk about delay." Then you go on to talk about the history of delay, demonstrate a few currebrly popular options, ome classics, demonstrate where it can go in various guitar chains and how that sounds, how to use it in a mix as both an insert and aux send, talk about plugin options for daw use and also how to patch hardware in and out if an interface;)

Ambitious? Yeah but it would be stand out.

Does anyone struggle with finding/browsing items on Artist profiles if any single category has more than a dozen items?

In a word, YES

Here here.

@dudewhomakesbeats

Pkennethk makes some good points that I'm going to expand on.

Serato Sample is hot right now. Some people like the simple workflow, but fundamentally, it doesn't do anything that isn't already built into FL.

FL is a giant sampler with a million interface options and layers of tools. There's a half dozen ways to peel every banana. This is because it began life as fruityloops, a sampling drum machine style loop generator meant to be used as a source of material for fully featured early DAWs. Functionality was added to every update, at first a single 303 type acid synth called tb404 and a mixer to compete with rebirth, but much much more as time moved on. Features have rarely been removed or replaced although a few sample window distortion and ambience features were removed about 20 years ago. Almost everything from version 1 is there and you can do a lot just with those front tab sampler controls.

People like buying things. People especially like buying things to feel like they've accomplished something that moves them forward, instead of putting in the work to get better at their craft. I was one of those people for years and years. Don't make the mistakes I made.

The best reason to invest in a new plugin or piece of gear for production or mixing is because you've encountered a problem you couldn't solve to your satisfaction. The next best reason is to spark creativity. The worst reason is because you think that just inserting that processor somewhere will take your work to the 'next level' in some ill defined way.

Understanding that most processing families were originally designed as tools with fairly specific use case scenarios is the key. Experimenting is fun, but it used to be a luxury. When we had to work budget-driven deadlines it forced a much more utilitarian approach that produced an in depth understanding of the tools available on any given project as well as the critical listening skills required to use them productively... or not at all... just because you gave an 1176 doesn't mean you have to crush something in your mix.

Keeping your tools limited to the extensive palette in your daw and setting artificial deadlines might be a great approach to learning how everything functions and when to use what... and when to fo nothing.

In a dense mix, the best effect in your DAW is fader automation. Automation is hands down the greatest development in recording technology since multitracking.

https://youtu.be/mQoWUtsVFV0?si=i6o9bakht1brk6-e

aww yeah

earn respect

Thank you so much. I live in the south of Spain, if you were around here I would invite you to try this wonderful guitar. All the best.

moderators don't visit the south of spain for guitars, we want high quality tapas and sherry

I'm usually a tape measure guy myself... if you want to have a gear measuring contest it's the right way... now take it off and show me your rack!

Nah, but I'm not talking about phones, but equipment in general. It's hard to have an actual size reference online. (And how can I install postmarketos on iPhone >:) )

I knew what you meant, I was just being a jerk and giving you a hard time. (forgive me).

I got it.

Help me understand why knowing relative size of music gear is so important to you?

It would be useful for mixers. Some consoles or even little tabletop jawns just don't fit in a cramped workspace. I have the mixer I have because it was the best balance between floor space, channel count, sound quality and price. Maybe size could be important for larger keyboards. Some are pretty damned big.

It's got sour cream and chives for the win.

Like swifty pop?

These are dark times indeed when roving bands of maritime ruffians can seize stompboxes from working musicians at will. Why, even those of us who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic strain in this particular period of history!

Oh man, Thrashin'! Radical!!!

Rockthefunkondudewhomakesbeats.

Just because one kind of computer is cheaper and more powerful, or one is used more in one kind of industry than another, that doesn't mean the people who choose that kind of computer are any less emotional or somehow more rational.

Except for me. I'm hyper-rational... and sober. Very sober. Yeah.

Can you find a picture with a white background, preferably not from reverb?

BK-560

DS-91

M8

https://images.app.goo.gl/cxVQdxgYCkmrtZf57

It's cool you're not straying too far from the original palette. Accent1 is considerably more saturated than McQueen's Le Mans colors and on my phone seems to be warmer as well, containing some yellow. As Pkennethk said, it's going to depend on layout and context. As your designer points out in her notes, orange can be hard to work with. The current layout uses the orange sparingly against a very cool and subdued blue and it does its job against that blue and all this darn white. I think the baby blue iyou currently have is awesome, like daphne blue :) don't ditch it outta hand... use more of it!

I'm getting excited to see how you repurpose the color scheme now.

• We've improved the Equipboard gear score. Our score was way too partial to items with a lot of professional artist usage. Now, it considers third-party ratings and reviews and gives items without any user-generated content a chance to get a good score while they accumulate professional artist usage and reviews on Equipboard. This should help surface new gear and give Equipboard reviewers more influence on the gear score.

very cool

I found a picture that was a little bigger:

https://equipboard.com/items/ctk-130

Always with the sq10 sequencer.

I thought no one else knew about this. Kenneth? I think we are unspoken soul brothers.. or soul 5th cousins.

Or nothing. Either way.

https://youtu.be/NxZwaqVBo-k?si=jSwvaTMimeir6ulL

stop making me feel old

If it turns on it's not in the power supply. Bummer. The 201 is one of my favorite reverbs, up there with lexicon and AMSunits if the era. The true stereo operation was way ahead of its time.

And so about the money, I'm French, and the government had decided to give 300€ to everyone who get 18yo, dedicated to be spend on culture. Since I'm not reading book nor going to concerts or movie theater, I'll use this money on music instruments.

I love that. Government ought to write more checks for gear. I think 300€ will get you a lit on the used market.

How much money are we talking? Novation's best low cost product to add to a setup that's already doing a lot if digital stuff is hands down the circuit monostation. Total sleeper. It's a bass station synth engine sequenced by a circuit/launchpad style 2 channel sequencer. If you set it up right you can sequence the internal synth and another piece of hardware. It also has a separate CV sequencer channel that's very handy. It might be out if your price range though. I can never bring myself to get rid of mine. Every time I think about selling it I wind up putting it back in one of my rigs. For full transparency I should confess that I am part of Novation's artist program.

From arturia I find keystep more useful than beatstep.

I see you've got a broken mu-r201? Is it turning on? There's often an issue with the power supply on these guys if they get banged around. Easy fix actually.

Interesting. I just mixed a track with a jolana iris on it fir equipboard user @thcraymer.

I can add the star x manually for you. Is this the right guitar?

https://images.app.goo.gl/6rPvfLjnGcwpTUe1A

Once you have enough gear iq points you'll be vetted to do manual gear submissions yourself. We had to set up some limits on new users to weed out people who were adding sex toys etc. It got really bad a few years ago. This system isn't perfect and I vocally resisted it at first but it works.

What make and model? Do you have a picture with a neutral background?

Radial tonebone ABY I guess. I don't always run 2 amps but its nice to know I can without losing volume or creating a ground loop and the boost/mute switch is handy.

In the 90s the spx90 symphonic patch was ubiquitous after Nevermind. It was pretty popular before then too, if you listen for it on early Creation and 4AD releases. Paul Neyrinck, the digidesign 3rd party driver guy, has ported it to a plugin. The blurb about the $89 plugin they created explains the history of this effect and supposedly the reason why it has defied software developers and even yamaha for years. The the spx90 1, 2 and fx500 do it right although you can kinda fake it if you have other pieces of 80s junk and set them up right. Their marketing propaganda is actually loaded with cool info for those who don't know much about the notorious symphonic algorithm.

I downloaded the demo last night when I was taking a break from checking spotify masters for one of our members and did some a/b listening with my spx90 and it's got the motion alright. It does the whole bass widening trick and is virtually indistinguishable in a dense ITB mix once you compensate for any additional latency from roundtrip conversion in and out of the black and green dinosaur.

The tale of Aja made me appreciate it more. As cool as it is it was never my favorite cut on that LP. I've reassessed that position and I really hear it differently after that interview. It's not just weird and different, its fulla choose I took for granted since I grew up with it. Imagine making that record with reel to reel and no automation or maybe primitive automation, but still. Those guys were just that good.

RTFM! I'm getting so old many of my manuals are print and the companies are defunct... I guess I should scan some of this stuff as a public service but that smacks of effort.

I'm okay with that. Either way it caters to my lifestyle choices.

I remember when it came out and Gilmour came on as an endorser. I have a lot of trouble believing that solid core cable will present an audible difference versus braided into bandwidth limited pedals, amplifiers and speakers with restricted dynamic range by design and tradition.

A guitar speaker for example is an enormous bottleneck electrically and acoustically as the resonant peak is at 75 or 55hz and the cutoff frequency is usually between 5 and 10k and there will be all mannot of peaks and valleys between based on cone rubbing, surround and doping... not to mention electronic damping caused by interaction with the power amp that causes compression of any additional dynamics passing your cables but what do I know? If you've got the money it's worth a shot.

That's solid core with a braided shield isn't it?

Can you solder? If not, patch cables are the easiest way to learn. You'll want some gauged wire strippers, a soldering iron (preferably 100 watts, temperature controlled in case you move on to bigger projects), rosin core electrical solder and maybe some electrical flux (not plumber's flux). Switchcraft jacks are the easiest to work on. Then you just need to select some bulk shielded cable with low capacitance to use.

The process is simple. You cut the wire to length (or not, you can solder 1 end and then cut the other) and strip a little jacket off exposing the braided shield. Then you unwrap a little shield and twist into a bare wire. Next you strip some insulation off the signal wire. You solder the shield to the sleeve aka ground terminal and the exposed signal wire to the tip terminal. Or do tip then sleeve, but I find it easier to do the sleeve first since the tip terminal is usually kinda above it. It'll be easier if you put a little flux on each terminal with a q-tip first. There's not a lot to it. You can get sone shrink wrap you can shrink wrap the terminals once soldered (if using L Jacks you need to get the shrink wrap around the cable before you solder the ends). Then you cut the other side to length if you didnt already and repeat the process. There are probably YouTube videos that walk you through it visually but I figured it out as a kid just by disassembling a broken cable and copying it. Building guitar leads and speaker cables is probably the easiest electronics chore. Once you cam throw together some cables you'll be ready to swap pickups and make basic repairs.

The great thing about making cables is there's nothing involved that can get burnt out if you run your iron high or heat a terminal too long.

Or you could go the solderless route. You'll sacrifice a little reliability and you won't learn anything but you won't need to buy anything but what's in the cable kit... a quality soldering station is a big investment if you're not going to use it on a fairly regular basis.