Kattefjaes

Oh god. An academic project partner decided to give me hundreds of gigs of video in a multi-part zip recently. Who even does that? It's not the 1990s any more. Suffice it to say that the standard OOTB tooling for unpacking zips on MacOS failed a) miserably b) silently to extract all the files, and for ages it looked like key shots were missing. In a variety of ways, they managed to to choose the worst solutions to every aspect of the data moving problem and make it take several days of bodging to get the data out of their terrible HTTP file transfer system. A lot of view source/browser dev tools and wget abuse was needed, as it was clearly never designed to cope with this much data- hence the size limit that they were trying to sidestep with a multi-part zip. Doing that was less tiring than trying to get to do it properly, alarmingly. This was after I told them that there was a dedicated ftp server VM spun up for them on one of the public-facing network segments of our network. Sigh.

I'd probably not dive straight in with Swift development for the iPhone, the learning curve will be somewhat steep, if you've never programmed before. Better to explore the fundamental concepts somewhere more friendly first, an introductory Python book/course might be good, it's a popular teaching language. We are not born with an intuitive grasp of things like object polymorphism and inheritance after all

Honestly, ripping is not onerous, especially if you only have 600 or so. Get the software properly set up and working, so it doesn't need messing around with and the whole thing is a mindless exercise. Then you can just do a stack per evening, feeding a new one in when the computer sticks its tongue out. Generally, it's just a case of loading the disk in the drive, letting the software look up the disk and then confirming its conclusions with a click. A few minutes of whooshing and whirring later, it will stick its tongue out again- rinse and repeat. You don't have to do them all at once, but if you crack on and do a healthy stack per evening, you'll soon get through all of it. There will be a few outliers which tragically will no longer play/rip and will need replacing, sod's law will make sure they're the hardest ones to replace, but otherwise, it's fine. Rip them to FLAC, not a lossy format. Then if you need lossy (e.g. for carrying some emergency soothing music on a sanely-sized phone) you can transcode to lossy on demand. Incidentally, external USB optical drives are embarrassingly cheap these days and work well.

Another loud noise. It's an attempt to reconstruct some music from that hypnagogic netherworld before proper sleep. Makes a change from nearly dropping off and starting to dream before all the motor functions are locked out- then waking myself up with a mighty twitch The voice sample was a preacher with a backpack PA ranting in a shopping street and giving me a headache, recorded on my phone. Turnabout is fair play!

Another IEM alternative to the JH13 is the UERM - you need to get them custom moulded and they're a touch pricier than the JH13, but they are gloriously neutral. I can highly recommend getting the little limiter/impedance matching box to go with them, too- then you can plug them into anything without any nasty surprises.

This is legitimately the most cheerful and uplifting set I've heard in ages. It's sort of bhangramuffin, but straddles genres with a cheeky grin, there's house, two-step, jungle, borderline happy hardcore and goodness knows what else in there. Absolutely delightful.

Marvellous- I'm fairly sure that learning to hack tunes out of it in bizarre ways would have amused the thing's original designer too. That sort of thing is immensely flattering. Honestly, patch points are just an incitement, aren't they? I wonder if that seller experienced a pang of regret. Meanwhile, I am happy to report that I have come across one of the few Euro modules that I was consciously looking for- a Natural Gate. They're one of those modules in enough demand that they sell for more used than the normal retail price, often. Better yet- I got a brand new one for the "normal" price. It was completely out of the blue, from my favourite small synth shop, bless them. It's a very clever and good-sounding module, an LPG that doesn't use vactrols, but is incredibly controllable and has a much wider range. Really satisfying. Here's the result of taking it for a spin around the block- utterly gratuitous:

Looks like there is a very large day 1 patch for Cyberpunk, without which it's pretty buggy. I secretly don't mind because my preload won't be done until I have to go to sleep (due to the lamentable quality of my DSL connection, which is a rotting streak of corroded aluminium). I'm probably just going to go to bed after it's down. Edit: Oh, I have 24 hours more than I thought, I should have it in time. Hmm.

Thanks guys- it took me a certain amount of flailing around to get the modular sounding decent. Gain staging inside the instrument is more important than you first realise (feel free to point and laugh, as it's obvious in hindsight). Each module has its quirks and requires familiarity and obviously the permutations get complex quite quickly. I had a lot of misgivings that pursuing it was a mistake- but eventually it started to to sound the way I wanted. I've been enjoying weird non-linear workflows, which were what I was hoping for at the start- it's more like flying a steampunk zepplin than playing a piano. It's totally possible to build "normal" instruments with it, but where's the fun in that? (At least, for me, who isn't a proper musician, and mostly listens to things that aren't proper music..)

The track has a lot of forward momentum, I enjoyed it. I agree about the hard-panned perc, but sounds like you do too @acidbasement. The breakdown with the bloops lost me a tiny bit, but that might be a matter of taste. I like the way you got the wishy-washy middy synthwave sound nailed, that sounds lovely- though being unsubtle, I'd be wanting to punch various stuff up. It's a good job it's you at the controls of the mix, not me. Meanwhile, I continue to eschew all signs of melodic progression and make weird noise. I think there's something wrong with me. This is today's stereo-straight-from-the-modular single take. No editing barring some gentle mastering and fading ends. It was actually loads of fun to do.

That's a problem that I can identify with 😉

Oh dear, there may be drones ahead. Having fun with a complex oscillator that I've been waiting to get my hands on. Still haven't completely nailed the signal flow, because damn, this thing is complex.

No, Behringer are deeply dubious, as are most of their wares. However, I decided that I would throw any pretense of principles away for a cheap 303 clone and (slippery slopes being what they are) had to get the 606 clone to keep it company. It's actually reasonable- I don't think the hats are totally accurate, but I don't have a real 606 handy to compare with. I took it for a quick spin with the modular: (Used the RD-6's onboard distortion, but ran the kick through a wave folder and low pass filter)

It fucks your nose up less, however.