Shane_B.

I was in a band with one of the best guitar players I've ever heard back in the 90s. He was completely and totally tone deaf but he was dead on with his lead covers. He argued with me about whether Smoke On The Water was in a major or minor for 20 minutes one night and he could not hear the difference that one of us was playing a major and the other a minor. Tried to get the bass player to back me up on the spot but that didn't help. 😉 The next week at practice he leaned over to me before we started the song and he whispered to me, "I checked my sheet music. You were right.". And his singing ... it was tragic. He was a talented guitar player. A walking encyclopedia of music. But the guy could not hear the difference between notes. It was purely technical playing. The guys in that band had been together a long time. I had just joined. It made me wonder how many years they were playing the most basic song in the universe wrong and why nobody ever called them out on it.

I may have got the names reversed. It's been almost a year since I turned on my DAW. I do remember that I always had one little thing I needed an update for that they would never put out. But I admit I may have reversed the brands. Side note ... 2 days ago I had to connect a large color MFP to a new laptop that was running Windows 11 ... I Am not a fan of Windows 11 and Am not looking forward to the day I have to "upgrade" to it.

Yeah. That big spaghetti monster can be a vengeful one. 😁😁

I always liked Intel boards too. I was very disappointed when I discovered I could no longer get them. Always had bios issues with Asus. It always needed some update they would never put out. I use Gigabyte now. My last build is stuck on Windows 10. It says I am one generation too old for Windows 11 even though lesser CPUs than mine are deemed acceptable. Frustrating.

I love the process and just tinkering in general. I used to build them for work and I built every PC I've ever owned except for my very first one. That said, when the time comes for my next upgrade (when Fallout 5 lands and the current hardware is finally capable of running Fallout 4 at an acceptable framerate) I'll be getting a pre-built from Jim. I trust him and he's helped me so much here over the years it's the least I can do. The other thing about getting a system from a builder like Jim is you don't get overloaded and bogged down with bloatware. That is huge. Anything off the shelf from a "name brand" is going to take a ton of time just to clean the crapware out. And yeah they may be slightly cheaper but there is always a reason why. PSU lacking, RAM speed and amount lacking. Cooling inadequate. There's always something in the fine print that screws you when you need quiet, cool, low latency and/or consistent reasonable framerates.

That would require life insurance for my loved ones.

A gift card?

To answer the OQ, slide. (Paints quite the picture if ya think about it.)

Last try to reply. Lol. Something is messed up on my cell and keeps adding blank lines and crashes the forum since the last update my carrier did. Hence my recent silence. (Your welcome). I bought the uncompressed version of Real Tracks on HDD. Long story short I returned it to Sweetwater because there was a major bug with one specific function that apparently only I ever ran in to that was the main functionI wanted it for. Tech support was non existent but the guys on the forum were very helpful once they understood the problem and were able to repeat it on their end. Even though tech support stopped responding to me I kept looking for an update and low and behold they issued a fix for it in the next version upgrade. Too late though, I already returned it plus I felt wronged that I had to pay for that upgrade. I really liked BiaB. Some day I'll try a demo and see if the bug is truly fixed. If it is I'll buy it again. I remember now. It kept throwing in 7ths in songs with no 7th added but it only did it wit some of the Real Tracks, not all. Of course it was mostly the ones I bought for. Lol It didn't do it with Midi only real tracks. That has supposedly been fixed. I could really use BiaB now because I'm thinking of doing a duo gig with one of my old bandmates. If I knew that was truly fixed I'd probably jump back in soon. But I highly recommend BiaB. It is a little tricky to learn but there are great guys on the forum and lots of help there and here.

I can answer. No. I gave up.

Happy birthday. P.S. Thanks for tolerating my dumb ***** here all these years.

#1 ~ #10 .... "it sucks" Closing statement, "It's excellent." They're kinda sending mixed signals there. Lol.

I so regret getting rid of my DAT. I should have kept it and tried to get it repaired. It was a high end Sony. I have a bunch of tapes I can't listen to now. Fwiw working ones are going for around $600 on ebay. The drummer and I in my last band got tired of unreliable bandmates so we decide to record our basic rhythm tracks and some backing vocals. We used my 8 track analog Tascam and transferred it to my DAT. Back then we were the only band in our area to do that. Now it's the norm. I still have all our tracks/sets plus a ton of lp rips. It was probably a simple fix. It just didn't recognize there was a tape in it anymore. When it did work it worked perfectly. But yeah, like aidan said, I'd be worried about putting the tapes made on one machine in a different one.

My mom always used to tell me, "Cheer up Shane. Things could get a lot worse.". And ya know, she was right. I cheered up and they did get worse. Speaking of guitars and money ... I just saw a used Martin at my local music store here in NJ. Lefty, perfectly set up, played better than any other acoustic I've ever touched. Sounded beautiful. $2500, which is a great price for a Nazareth made Martin. Had to walk away. I knew the previous owner/ founder of the company since I was a little kid but he just recently sold the business and retired. Back in the day he would have told me to take it and just pay on it what I could until it was paid off by a certain date. I get the impression the new owner isn't quite as 'trusting'. But I get it. Times have changed. We used to walk out of there with thousands of dollars of equipment to try out on gigs to see if we wanted to eventually buy it on a handshake. Those days are long gone.

Being the tallest by far in the bands I was in (6'3") I always got stuck with speaker hauling and setup duty. And amp hauling duty. It's amazing how all the guys I played with had bad backs. Hah. To be fair though I started at 13 and played till I was 29 and all the guys I played with were hugging 40 when I started. I didn't mind and I'm lucky I never got hurt. Hope you heal up soon. Glad you didn't miss the gig.