Jump to content

Kattefjaes

Returning Member
  • Posts

    153
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Kattefjaes

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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.
  4. 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!
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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:
  8. 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.
  9. 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..)
  10. 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.
  11. That's a problem that I can identify with 😉
  12. 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.
  13. 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)
  14. It fucks your nose up less, however.
  15. Ah, it took a while! I connected it to a Schiit Jotunheim, a fairly inexpensive but relatively clean headamp, via balanced. It was.. clean, unsparing. I didn't notice much stereotypical delta sigma harshness, but it certainly sounded somewhat surgical. That's exactly what I'd want it to sound like, honestly- I have a Gungir multibit for when I went things to sound a little more.. forgiving. I essentially, it sounds clean and pleasant. I don't think the built-in headamp is stellar, not enough grunt to really have "grip" on the drivers, especially on sluggards like old HD650s, but it's fine for casual monitoring. Via the various line outs, however, it gives an impression of precision. Whether that's to your taste for recreational listening would be an ecumenical matter 😉 Have you seen that new smol Dreadbox thing? It looks like fun: ..if you like modulation craziness, their Erebus V3 is a delight, I have one of those, and can't bear to part with it, even though I probably have too many synths. It sounds stunning, classic fat subtractive sound for such a small desktop synth. Very underrated and has a very nicely-appointed patch bay for all your weird modulation needs too. Also, if you like weirder, have you seen the Make Noise 0-Coast? Sorry for the massive video spam, but if you're in the mood for a fun smallish mono, those are potentially dangerous to your free time.
  16. I absolutely haven't been too lazy to dig out 1/4 inch or XLR cables and run them into one of my headamps, to compare to the Gungnir Multibit. No siree. Will report back when I have tried it- prediction is that it will be very clean and precise, very delta sigma flavoured.
  17. Oh duh, sorry- RME Fireface UCX in this case. RME make wonderfully boring soundcards and have for years. Effortlessly clean and clear, rock-solid clocks, great drivers and spec sheets that don't lie. Not cheap, but I should have remembered "buy cheap, buy twice", which was very true here.
  18. Apologies for the super-delayed response! Personally, I'd be inclined to ignore MOTU these days. I know they used to be go-to option once upon a time, but there's a bit of a stench of decay around their driver support and maintenance these days- I think that function could be the responsibility of an unhappy skeleton crew. They seem to take a lot time to track OS changes and bugfixes can be painfully slow. I don't use a lot of MIDI personally, I have MIDI I/O on my FH-2, my soundcard and on the main Euro sequencer if I need it. I think if I was after a lot of ports I'd probably be looking at this: https://www.iconnectivity.com/mioxl Lots of people seem to be happy with how solid they are- they seem to be sufficiently boring, which is what you want in such a device 😎 Oh, while we're at it, treated myself to a new non-budget soundcard, it has been years since I had anything decent quality at home. Suddenly, recordings aren't muddy any more, even when internally mixed on the modular and output via the little output module- clearly the bottleneck was the cheap soundcard. Behold a quick test recording: It sounds clean and clear without being harsh, praise be! Straight out of the modular, no post-processing. I am a happy bunny.
  19. It's a shame they use a wall wart. I suppose that goes with the territory when something is small/cheap. However, Kenton have always been a bit of a go-to for weird little MIDI problem solvers, saving many headaches.
  20. I just knew that of anywhere on Her Majesty's Interpipes, here would be where people were alert to the sight of a popped capacitor 😇 Also, thanks, having a lot of fun with my little modular, even if I'm barely scratching the surface of some of the more complex modules. Regarding your MIDI question, if you just want to turn a device with USB MIDI into old-style DIN MIDI, this is one of the more straightforward and bombproof solutions: https://kentonuk.com/product/midi-usb-host-mkii/ Kenton have been making MIDI problem solvers for years (their MIDI to CV converters are justly famous for their reliability). It ain't fancy-looking, but it will get the job done. That said, I would hate to make assumptions- if you want something more fancy that can tie ALL THE THINGS together, these are very well-regarded: https://www.bome.com/products/bomebox If you need to connect multiple USB-MIDI clients to the Bomebox, I believe that an MTT-compliant powered USB hub will work nicely. (I have one of these- https://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/fh2.html - but it's probably overkill for anyone who doesn't already have a rack to bolt it into. Lovely, if cryptic, bit of kit.)
  21. Thank you , I was happy with it too.. literally just a lunchtime patch and it all clicked into place. Old junglists never quite reform, it seems. Yep. That's a blown cap on a Eurorack power bus board. I had a cap pop on me, in an unpatched but powered rack. I pulled all the modules out, and nothing seems to have been damaged thank goodness (especially not my shiny new Disting EX module, which are hard to come by right now). It was a brand new case, too. I was a bit shaken by that. It's not like I was drawing much at all, either. That happened the day before. I transferred those modules to a spare skiff case I had kicking about, and felt like I should mark the lucky escape.
  22. I did, but had forgotten that he used to be PWEI, thank you for joining the dots! Also, I am reminded of this:
  23. That still stands up shockingly well, both musically and thematically, sadly.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.