Dark Thoughts

There is a splinter theme of freezing in my life right at the moment. It's not all encompassing, but there are a few things that have frozen, or will freeze in the near future.

Firstly lets examine the past.

In my last post I talked of my new toy. The KSP8. Well it sounds fantastic. The effects are crystal clear and there is soooooo much power in it. I never thought I could get to the point with effects where I've put enough on and have capacity to spare, but the KSP8 has proven me wrong. What I've noticed with quality units like this, is that you actually end up using less effects because the quality is so high that you don't need to add more effects to it to clean up artefacts of a previous effect.

Reverbs are a good example. With cheaper units, there is a certain shine to the top end that is missing, requiring some enhancement to bring back that spacious presence, but on units such as Lexicons and the KSP8, the top end is so beautifully defined that further processing is often unnecessary.

Anyway, while the unit does sound beautiful, the configuration of mLAN is still proving to be a bit of an enigma, and has caused freezes on my computer as I'm attempting to get it properly configured (the start of the theme).

As a bit of history for the unitiated, mLAN is a new protocol developed largely by Yamaha that aims to replace the spaghetti of cables currently used to connect studio gear. A single mLAN cable can carry both audio and MIDI bidirectionally as well as allowing networking and data transfers at speeds of up to 800 MB/s. The mLAN protocol layer sits on top of the IEEE 1394 Firewire layer and communicates with a dedicated chip in the hardware unit. One of the beauty's of firewire is that once you have configured the connections on your computer you can unplug the computer, and everything will remember what it was connected to, both MIDI and Audio. You can also change your configuration completely and save those settings.

The patching capabilities are impressive as are the flexibility of the entire protocol. Hardware can be daisy chained in a similar way to computer networks, and each unit could theoretically be fully connected bidirectionally for control and data with a single cable.

The technology itself is still quite young with only a handful of devices having been developed to date. The driver software still chews up quite a bit of processor overhead on my system, though apparently that has improved, and will continue to improve as it becomes more integrated into computer systems.

Anyway, it looks very promising and will be a nice standard if more people start to integrate it into their systems, but there are some teething problems with it at the moment, which I am fumbling my way through.

The theme of freezing continues with my impending trip to Mongolia. Temperatures as low as -30C will necessitate some serious cloting. I'm going shopping this afternoon with my workmate, who is travelling with me to Mongolia.

The suggested list of clothes reads as follows.

• Down Jacket (not pertex)
  
• Boffin Island Fleece Jacket
  
• Windstopper Gloves
  
• Fleece Beanie
  
• Fleace Scarf or Fleece Neck Windstopper
  
• 2 Pairs Super Fleece Socks
  
• 2 thermal core/polypro thermal tops
  
• 2 thermal core/polypro termal bottoms
  
• 1 pair radial fleece pants or trail fleece pants
  
• Polypropylene Balaclava
  

Hopefully that will keep me warm.

I'm going to miss Jodie tho while I'm there. I think it would be much easier to stay warm if I could snuggle.

Anyway, I've got a paper that needs writing for a conference at the end of november and some shares to sell, so until next time...

I finally made it back to Australia in one piece. The trip home was arduous and seriously tiring. These long flights really do take a lot out of you. Things are pretty good back here at home. At work I've been following up a bunch of stuff that I started while I was overseas, and one new project to get stuck into.

On the music front, I've just ordered myself a Kurzweil KSP8 with the mLAN Option and RSP8 Remote Control. It's a pretty formidable Effects unit, and will replace my burnt out Ensoniq DP4+.

Speaking of the DP4+, I'm going to replace the current burnt out board with the previous one I had. The previous one still has 3 good channels, whereas the one I've got now, has none. It will still be enough to get the reverbs and the phasers happening, and I might even try a bit of surface mount soldering to get the defunct channel happening again. It looks like it's just a few of the tracers that need to be rewired. I think I'll be able to fix it with a bit of thin enamelled copper wire and some fine soldering. I can't do any more damage anyway.

I sent an email off to a guy in the US to try to find out if it could be fixed, but got no response. I might try to send him another email, because the DP4+ is a really nice effects unit. I still haven't found the cause of the problem with the DP4+. I suspect that it's either the mixer (a Mackie 1202 VLZ) or the Jupiter 8. I can measure a DC current from ground to the mixer chassis of about 0.12 V when the Jupiter is plugged in, but can't get a current otherwise, and the current is some tiny amount. I can't imagine how a groundloop that small could fry all of the input buffers on the DP4, but it happened anyway.

I'm a bit frightened of plugging the Jupiter into the KSP8 in case I fry that as well. I might go and by myself a nice transformer staged stereo channel strip to run the Jupiter through. Something that is robust enough to stand up to the output level, while being electrically isolated from the inputs, and providing me with lots of options for nice juicy tube distortion and warmth. Will probably need to save up some bikkies, coz the nice ones like Neve Channel strips and the like are pretty damn expensive, though I could always hire them out to mates who are doing recording. Probably bring in $50 to $100 a day for hiring them out.

Anyway, onto other stuff. I had a bit of a hard time with Jodie the other day. She was upset that I hadn't talked to her for a while, and had missed a few messages on my phone (which I didn't hear come in coz my phone was in another room) and she took this as me avoiding her, or ignoring her. It's kinda tricky being in situations like this because I try to explain myself, but the very answers are treated with suspicion themselves, which makes the whole explanation, trying to find out what was wrong and trying to resolve the disagreement, kind of difficult. Anyway, we've since resoved this issue, and I think we both got a few things out of the whole exercise. On my part, I'm going to make time to stay "connected" with Jodie when I'm away.

Speaking of which, I've got to ring my phone company today, because my mobile didn't work in Mongolia, when it should have. I've got to get this resolved, or keeping in touch with Jodie while I'm there is going to be extremely difficult.

I played hockey last night, and we had a win. I got a goal, which was cool, and the guy who's pretty new to hockey got a goal as well, which was awsome. It's his first goal ever. He's still learning the basic skills of the game, but he's picking it up really quickly. He's playing left wing, and his reverse stick stops and tackles are really getting pretty good. He just needs to learn to defend a bit better, and he'll be a pretty good player, but there's plenty of time for that.

They've got new umpires for the game. One guy was new last night, and they didn't blow their whistles very hard, which was a bit annoying. They missed a few decisions in the D's and the play got a bit scrappy, so I hope they crack down on that a bit in the future. All in all, it was a good game. Apparently we also lost the grand final 3-2, but the other guys said that it was a really good game, so I don't mind much. As long as it was a pretty even and good game, I never mind losing. The enjoyment is in actually playing and having a good fun tustle with the other team. It's supposed to be a social competition so that's cool.

Anyway, it's the weekend tomorrow. My list of tasks for this weekend is

1) Finish transferring all my files onto one computer and organize them all together.
2) Write some tunes
3) Do a bit of accounting stuff
4) Have beer with Shawn at the Inglewood
5) Chill Out
6) Clean up the house.

Pretty cruisy weekend all up.

Anyway, time to get some work done.

Till Next Time...