Shane_B.
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Posts posted by Shane_B.
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5 hours ago, craigb said:
Nice band name! 😁
We had a short-term bassist who came up with "Random Precision" as a proposed band name. Maybe he was just trying to be honest? 🤔
I was quite a bit younger than the other guys in my band. I was in my teens back in the 1980s and they were all in their late 30s early 40s.
We decided to change the name of the band as our music got newer over the years and we weren't really an oldies band anymore.
I suggested Midlife Crisis. I thought it was great but my idea got out voted.
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3 hours ago, craigb said:
"This video is private"
Apparently is only meant for Kenny! 😆
Oh! Whew! My bad. I thought it said it was a video of his privates!
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17 hours ago, Grem said:
There are songs that I hear on XM that just don't have the sound/impact of the songs I remember. Example: "The Ocean" Led Zep, album "Houses Of The Holy". The drum lick that John puts in that song, made that song!! It was the highlight of it. Today when I hear it on XM or even the local radio station, that triplet kick is almost unheard now. So younger people that hear it today for the first time will not get the very important 'feel' of the song.
Seems that radio today has computerized all music to eliminate the "loudness difference" with algorithms that have effectively drained the dynamics and altering the mixes of once great recordings!!
ZZ Top "LaGrange" is another example, when it was released on CD it had way too much reverb on it. Did not have the same sound as the original. Kansas "Leftoverture" release on CD was the same way. Way too much reverb. ZZ Top corrected this when they released their "Studio Albums" box set. Thanks Billy! (However, some radio stations still use that over-reverbed versions)
I could go on... but I will stop this rant from getting out of hand!!
Blame it on @craigb, he got me started!!!
The website with all those dB readings is great. https://dr.loudness-war.info/
I got a lot of CDs as they first came out back in the day. Before the loudness wars began. I have the original CD of Brothers In Arms.
Mobile Fidelity by far wins the dynamic range war for the good side. If you are Moody Blues fan, without doubt the best version of Days Of Future Passed is the Mobile Fidelity version. It's like you're sitting right there live. A Night At The Opera, Dark Side Of The Moon. Absolutely beautiful to listen to from Mobile Fidelity CD.
I'm a little torn on this topic though. For example, I hear things in the background in all the current Beatles releases I never heard before. I don't know if that's a result of the compression or remix.
The trick at home is to tame spikes so you don't over trigger compression while still maintaining some kind of dynamic range. It's taken me many years on a DAW to fully get an understanding of that and get a grasp on it. It just seemed to be a lot easier and almost a non-issue with analog.
I have YouTube Music. Some albums are significantly softer than others. I listened to The Wall yesterday and I was constantly raising and lowering the level. So I'm assuming they do not compress the music for streaming, but I don't know. Another thing I like about YTM is there are no gaps between songs if you are streaming a full album, but you can skip around tracks. IOW it appears they don't just rip the albums to mp3s with gaps. I also have it set to stream in high quality. It sounds really good to me. I haven't picked up on any compression artifacts, but I haven't listened to anything on a good home system yet. Just in the truck and TV. I can hear compression artifacts sometimes when I listen to XM in the truck. My truck has a really good Bose system with a sub and it sounds almost as good as my home system.
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Soooo ... how 'bout those Cheif's this year. Go Pattie! I think they're gonna go all the way to the Superbowl. I wonder who is doing the halftime show this year. (SWIDT?)
😁🙄😜
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3 hours ago, craigb said:
I don't know why, but I also heard he was going to build a giant state of the art aircraft carrier for the Navy and load it with a bunch of ... no ... no, I can't. (My inner voice, "Shane! Back away from the keyboard!)
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https://on.soundcloud.com/yJxgt
Might as well throw my hat in to orbit too.
It was just a chord progression I was tinkering with one night and it turned in to this.
Edit: Duh. Posted wrong song. I ficksed it. Don't know why it won't embed. Sometimes it works sometimes it don't.
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18 hours ago, John Vere said:
So now let’s see how hard it is to learn Band in a box l. I see it’s now using samples instead of the terrible GM synth it used last time I tried it.
There's a few people here that are really in to BiaB and their forum is great.
There's a lot of really good tutorials on youtube to help get started and do more advanced stuff too.
I had it for a while and plan on getting it again once I get a little studio set up.
You can buy a high quality .wav version of it that comes on a hard drive. That's the version I had.
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1 hour ago, hockeyjx said:
if I had a copy of it in a DAW, I could have played with it until I was happy.
I did this recently. I transferred some very old recordings I made on 4 track from back in the mid 80s.
I added instruments, fixed a lot of vocals with Melodyne, remixed, and remastered everything.
I was even able to separate out some instruments that were bounced down on to one track using O9A.
It was a lot of fun and the end product was amazing compared to what I started with.
I also did that with some old 8 track band demos from the 90s. We played to a click track and I was able to completely remove the poorly mic'd drums and replace them with samples. I also sped the track up without artifacts using software. We originally recorded it too slow but didn't pick up on it at the time.
If Joe Schmoe sitting in his bedroom/home recording room can do that, imagine what the professionals in real studios with access to a lot more equipment and software than I have can do. Not to mention a lot more talent and skill than I have.
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51 minutes ago, pwal³ said:
why so?
They went public with their non-business related views a few years back and let millions of their users know exactly how they felt about them. So, I choose to use other software providers who are more focused on the product they are offering.
Plus, FF was not all that great to begin with on any of my PC's I had it on. It may be different now, but even back before they alienated millions of people I stopped using their browser because I couldn't get it to work with the forums here and other sites.
I use Brave and the AdBlock Plus browser and Gmail to manage my Oulook stuff, but like I said, Gmail doesnt work well as a multi email account manager, especially on my cell which is all I have access to right now. I just pop back and forth between it and the Outlook app now. I never use my Hotmail accounts anyway. I used to years ago and have a lot of software registration under those email accounts. I'm too lazy to go in and change account emails with all the vendors. Plus there's some nostalgia involved too. I've had those addresses for decades.
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I used Gmail to manage my old Hotmail (now known as Outlook) accounts. It will randomly lose sync though so I gave up.
I'll never use anything by Mozilla again, but to each their own.
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Youtube Music.
So far out of the hundreds of albums and random songs I've asked it to play, only one was partially blocked.
Long Road Out Of Eden by The Eagles.
I'm not missing much, I really didn't care for the album and I have it on CD. You have the option to upload music you own and stream it, but I've never tried it. The 2 songs I do like on that album are blocked though, plus a few others on that album.
I like how you can download everything. I don't know if the other streaming services allow that. I have terrible cell coverage where I live and its nice to have what I want to hear downloaded for when I have no cell service.
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4 hours ago, craigb said:
My neighbor said that to me one time to try and embarrass me in front of a group of friends.
I replied to her ... "Huh. If you could see me doing that through my bedroom window on the second floor I'm surprised you didn't call me for a date".
True story.
Oh to be 16 again.
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Lou Reed
There's a vid on youtube by a person who makes and sells fx pedals. Reed expected some for free because he was a "star". Edited because I remembered the story wrong, but I was close.
I found the vid from 10 years ago.
https://youtu.be/3ZFjVfR9_XQ?si=IBLMPCdYc6M9VVdB
There's other reasons too, but that story didn't surprise me in the least.
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Oh! You said "depricating". I thought you said "defica ...", NM.
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7 hours ago, Bapu said:
Brian's composing means nothing in that scenario? 😉
I guess he was the George Martin of the group.
Those two albums are so vastly different. I never understood the comparison. I guess you had to be there to get it. It was all a bit before my time. 🙂
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5 hours ago, Rain said:
Wow. Major flashback. I had that Complete Beatles book too!
I also had a paperback book called The Pocket Beatles but I can't find a pic of the exact one I had.
Side note: I never understood the comparison between The Beach Boys Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper. There is no comparison. I've been listening to both recently and I just don't get that debate I read about from time to time. I can only handle a couple of songs on Pet Sounds. It's not for me. Especially when you consider it was the Wrecking Crew playing on Pet Sounds. All they did was sing.
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6 hours ago, craigb said:
I've got Brave up with AdBlock Plus going right now. Just sayin'...
Chrome bookmarks are in a file called Bookmarks in this directory: C:\Users\ \AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
I believe ya. We talked about this before in another thread. I'm on cell only right now so that is probably why I couldn't get it installed. Dat or thuh facked dat I arr swoe'w. 😁
Their browser version I use works really well. I haven't seen a single ad in youtube or any other video site I've tested it with.
Maybe Google Play has it blocked? Hah! I saw a news blurb recently that they got sued and lost over blocking apps on Android. That whole world of blocked apps may open up soon.
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On 1/17/2024 at 6:58 PM, craigb said:
Since I already was using Chrome, I had all my favorites there and Brave used that. It should import your other favorites, but maybe you need to do that from Chrome first? Not sure since I didn't have any issues...
Isn't the favorite list a simple csv file that could be manually copied from one folder to another? Maybe they don't do it that way any more, or I'm remembering wrong and it never was that way, but I seem to remember it was a simple csv file. I'd look, but I'm stuck on a cell online for the time being.
I recently got YouTube Premium. I love it. It comes with YouTube Music and I'm canceling my XM subscription. I listen to really obscure and very old music and so far nother I searched for has been missing. I really like how I can download what I want to listen to over wifi to save cell data while I'm driving.
I use Brave and you can't use Adblock Plus with it that I can tell. But they have their own secure browser and so far it's blocked everything with ads that I threw at it including YouTube.
I saw a video title the other day that said YouTube is now able to detect ad blockers and slow the video down. I didn't check out the video though.
Prime video through Amazon is showing ads in movies now. Prime is really going downhill and almost not worth paying for anymore. Nothing shows up when it says it's supposed to anymore.
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I had one Gibson. It was a Custom Black Beauty. It had tuners with built in winding arms that popped out of the middle of tuner knobs. Flat frets. I never could warm up to it. It was a beautiful guitar but I never could get the sound I wanted out of it. It was an 83. Dave, from my other thread, called me when he got it in and said you have to come see this. Hah. I had it authenticated and everything was 100% original.
It's funny how every guitar feels different even within the same model run.
I played a very nice US Strat with a maple neck/fretboard. It was horrible. I couldn't even form an open chord on it comfortably. But I've played others with that neck and spec and they felt great.
My Sheraton II is MIK and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I've always wanted to do a kit but currently don't have a workshop. That will be changing soon so maybe I'll dive in to that eventually.
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1 hour ago, craigb said:
Epiphone's seem to need a lot done and every Schecter I've seen, for some reason, needed the input jack replaced! However, the rest of the guitar (Schecter) was very playable. Like mettelus said, the frets usually need some TLC as some can be very sharp on the edges (heck, I've tried many flippin' Gibson's that had that issue too!).
I bought a used Epiphone Sheraton II many years ago, so I have no idea how old it is. Ive had it about 13 years. It looked like nobody ever touched it. It was in mint condition and came with an Epi logo'd hardshell case. I think I paid $275 iirc at GC?
I went to their website and downloaded their setup instructions. I did a setup on it and it plays like a dream. Not so much when I got it. The thing never ever goes out of tune.
Same with my 83 strat. I followed every spec to a T, including tremolo height which didn't look right to me. It never goes out of tune and it has a generic replacement bridge I bought 30+ years ago. The original rusted beyond recognition from playing out all the time and sweat.
The ad for the Gibson clone at Rondo's site says it has hand filed frets and comes set up.
According to Gibson, all their guitars are factory Plek'd now. But yeah, I've seen new ones too that leave a lot to be desired. Kind of makes me loose faith in the Plek technelogy.
I see guys, especially over on that popular Tele forum, talk about all their custom setup techniques, but I swear by the factory recommendations.
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32 minutes ago, craigb said:
Here's the website:
They have the (almost) exact replica of a Gibson I always wanted. I saw a right handed one in person and I loved it just for the color. I played it the best I could and it felt great. They actually have lefty versions of both guitars I've been looking at. Thanks for the info!
Here's a Rondo version of the Gibson one I saw in a shop. Double tap coils and all. They didnt cut anything back on this. Its on sale at Rondo's site right now ...
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I've been looking for a new guitar and have extremely limited choices of lefty versions.
I stumbled on the world of cheap Chibson and other brand guitars.
Most reviews I'm reading say these are as good of quality than the name brand higher end guitars, and in some cases they actually are the originals that sort of fell off the assembly line, or were rejected because of a blemish in the finish and were meant to be destroyed.
I found this on Amazon and have been thinking of grabbing one. It comes in a right handed version as well.
Gstyle Left-handed Electric Guitar Spalted maple top Okoume Body https://a.co/d/9xDYPAP
I know a metal player who has played for a long time. IOW he's not some guy who is just learning to play and likes this guitar because it looks pretty. He said it's the best playing guitar he's ever owned. He said he paid $399.
EART GW2L Headless Electric Guitar - Lefty.
Has anyone ever tried one of these inexpensive guitars? I'm sure I'd replace the pups and electronics. I'm a huge fan of EMG noiseless replacements. And since it's Amazon, I can return it hassle free.
I have to say, the best LP style guitar I ever played was an Epi Studio, and I had a Gibson LP Custom Black Beauty for years. The Epi was stripped down, looked like it was rattle can painted, but played like a dream and sounded better than my Custom. It was $499 iirc. I didn't buy it because it was so inexpensive. In hindsight I should have snagged it seeing how left handed guitars are so hard to find in a store.
I saw the exact lefty Gretch I've been wanting for $450 a few weeks ago but it was beat to hell and one of the pickups were broken. I just sat it back down and walked away.
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10 hours ago, bitflipper said:
My company used to sell hardware to the military and the 3-letter agencies.
Your post reminds me of when I worked in Des Moines IA. I had to service machines at the Federal building there as well as a bank, and an insurance company. The bank had an entire floor at the top of the business area of the tallest building in the city. The 2 topper most top floors were reserved and private.
You had a shadow with you from the ground floor, till you were done, and back out. I'm not sure what they did there but it was a cubicle farm with huge monitors around the entire room.
But, the place with the highest security was the insurance company.
I couldn't get a security pass there. Most vendors didn't. They had extremely tight rules. Tighter than the feds and the banks which I thought was very odd.
Years later W.F. built an enormous new campus there in DSM. They locked that down tighter than Bap's bass strings. You had to be escorted from your car until you were done and back to the car.
When hard drives started becoming a thing in multifunction copiers, I had to install a lot of data encryption boards that would encrypt and wipe the drives because everything goes to the HDD on bigger machines. Copies, faxes, scans, prints. I really don't know how effective it was if someone really wanted to get the data though. I think once it's there, there's probably always a way to get it off no matter what you do.
The safest way to communicate used to be by fax until everything went to VoIP. There are no true land lines anymore. At some point, somewhere, VoIP is involved and anyone with the knowhow can intercept. Kinda like a party line from back in the old days.
Posthumorous Shane_B
in The Coffee House
Posted
I greatly enjoy watching the most gory, true to life accurate, violent, and disturbing scenes ever put on film by Tom Savini ...
... but the thought of hummus makes me gag.