bitflipper

Sounds great. A bit too much overlap with the OTS Rickenbacker I already have, though, not counting the 5th string.

Just bear in mind that the DropoutMSec variable won't stop dropouts, but only raise the engine's tolerance toward them. it sets how long a dropout must last before the engine gives up, says "something's very wrong" and stops playback. If you experience a dropout longer than 250ms, then there is definitely something wrong. If you can live with it, that's fine - it won't affect your exports, you'll just have interruptions during playback.

I've done a duo, too. Twice, a total of 10 years total. When I did this as a full-time job it was with a trio. And yes, small groups are way more stable and convenient and conducive to impromptu improvisation and a large repertoire. My current band has been together for 17 years, and I've been with them for the past 8. I am their second keyboardist. Just since me joining we've had 3 bass players and two guitarists. The drummer can't leave because he's married to the singer.

Yeh. Driving home from last Saturday's gig with my bassist, I was trying to assuage his skepticism about the coming changes. At the end of my pitch, he turned and said "it also means you're gonna have a volume control for ME." Oops, cat's out of the bag.

Always reassuring when Mr. Roseberry and I are on the same page! Yeh, over the coming month the next step is going direct to the PA for guitar, bass and drums - no amps other than monitors. And because I'm re-purposing our old mains speakers (QSC K10.2s) as stage monitors, we're going to have really good monitoring. I use a QSC K8.2 on a stand at ear level as my own monitor, and it handles the added load of the keys with ease. Next year we'll likely transition to in-ears and have no onstage amplification at all. You're right on about the lights. All I have is a single tree with 4 Chauvet LED floods and a DMX controller that the bass player operates, plus a couple up-lights for the back of the stage. It's enough to keep us from playing in the dark, and give us some light for packing up. I'd like to add a second stand and maybe a strobe to see if I can make anybody puke. Exactly. My goal has always been to just play in a good band, period. But this year I've started thinking that making some money might not be a bad thing. Part of the plan is to land more corporate gigs, weddings and festivals, all of which pay better than bars. But they also expect a higher standard of look and sound. We've got the latter covered but still need to work on the former. I do wear a nice shirt on stage. That's a start.

Feeling more positive today. We have a candidate for our new guitarist coming over next Tuesday. Fingers crossed. Plus the new PA arrived today. I set it up all by myself despite my bum foot. Of course, I had to have a little sit-down afterward. And this is cool...those speaker poles have pneumatic lifts in them, strong enough to raise the speakers by themselves. However, I haven't yet figured out how to get them back down. In a couple weeks I'll start playing keyboards through the PA instead of separate amplifiers, so I had to set them up today to test that configuration. And yes, Bapu, that means I have instruments here (at least until Friday) and can now add a part to the new Citizen Regen project.

Despite the best efforts of the federal witness protection program, the Quebec mafia has detected Rain's presence in Las Vegas. Turns out, tall guys playing guitar loudly aren't that easy to hide. Consequently, he has gone underground and assumed a new identity. I will leave it to you to figure out his new forum handle.

I played keyboard bass for five years a la Manzerek, because the money was better that way and it was my sole source of income at the time. To this day I have to consciously avoid playing bass lines with my left hand, it had become so ingrained. Then for another five years I played in a duo with an acoustic 12-string guitarist. Again, for the money. But when I stopped playing as a job, money ceased to be a motivator and I vowed never to compromise again. I'd have a percussionist and a horn section if the stages we play were big enough to accommodate them. The irony is that although I now just play for the joy of it and don't care about money anymore, lack of money is the reason we're losing our current guitarist. He's 30 years old and desperately needs the money. It's sad not only because he's very good, he also has the strongest back among us and I've just upsized the PA.

Yes. He intends to pay me back once he's settled out in Minnesota. He's a stand-up guy, always been true to his word. I could demand it back, but wtf am I going to do with an overpowered guitar amplifier? I thought about that, but it'd be a major paradigm shift and a lot of work. Anyway, I'm looking forward to a break. We've been playing out every weekend since April, as is normal for us during the summer months, after which we've historically taken time off to woodshed and work up new material. All that stage time has made us very tight, but even with our extensive song list it still gets a little tedious playing the same stuff over and over. We're also in the process of a big gear change. I've been gradually working toward an amp-less stage, using amp sims and running everything through the PA. The current PA will be repurposed as stage monitors, and eventually those will be replaced by IEMs. That means we'll have a consistent mix volume onstage regardless of the venue, and it'll always sound the same to us as it does when we're rehearsing in my garage. One master fader makes the whole band louder or quieter as needed. After the transition to IEMs we'll be able to practice silently, even right before a gig. The final pieces of the new PA are supposed to arrive over the next 5 days, starting with a sub scheduled for delivery today. Via FedEx, though, so who knows.

Sadly, the Music Bank is no more. Back during the grunge era it spawned several bands, e.g. Alice in Chains probably being the most successful. (Sorry for the multiple posts. Took me a minute to find where they'd hidden the Edit button.)

Oh gawd, the ultimate sacrifice. Respect, man. For having the courage to do the unthinkable.

Never mind. He's a Brit. We have logistics challenges as it is.

A bit young, but he's got chops. Yah, we'd take him on.

I'm always the optimist. The pattern I extrapolate is it can only get better from here on out. Summer will end and we'll be back to loudouts in the rain and clapping hands to get the circulation going. It'll be great.

Our guitarist called me last night to say he'll be moving out of state in six weeks. Says he can't afford to live here anymore, which I get. This is an expensive area. The rest of us do OK because we all own our own homes, but he's renting and paying more for a small apartment than I do for my mortgage. He's agreed to stay through September 9th, which covers most of the dates currently on the books. So that's how long I have to find a replacement and get him up to speed. It'd be tight even if I found somebody today and they're a fast learner. I'm afraid we'll have to cancel some gigs and take at least a month off to get it done. So...know any guitarists in the Seattle area who'd like to play classic rock one or two days a week, and can sing both lead and harmony? And do it primarily for the love of music because the money's not good enough to be the prime motivator. And who doesn't have drug/alcohol/ego problems. I know, a guitarist without an oversized ego is a big ask.

Henrizzle's said he's already got buffers at max, and has already experimented with 64-bit option off and on. I doubt he's going to be able to configure his way out of this. I'm confused about the assumption that this is a thread synchronization issue. I know how semaphores and mutexes work, and they exist to negotiate resource contention, race problems, memory and I/O bandwidth restrictions - basically real-time issues. They should not be a factor in normal rendering, especially in a project that's almost entirely audio. Perhaps a more telling symptom is the dropouts in the exported audio. This shouldn't happen. In 20 years using Sonar/CbB, I have experienced dropouts while recording, dropouts while playing back, but never in an exported file. I agree that this is data corruption, but it's happening at a lower level than the application. Henrizzle, have you tried a real-time render?

Yah, I'm just trying to garner sympathy. Truth is, it looks much better today. After they scraped away the dead flesh and dried blood, it now looks like a skinless chicken breast, exposed raw meat but with a fresh sheen of oozing blood. A much healthier-looking color than the black hue from Sunday. I've got pics if you want... And it feels fine. That may be the oxycodone talking, but it feels fine. My painkillers are leftovers from my back surgery 10 years ago. That stuff apparently has a long shelf-life. As long as that supply holds out, I'll do fine at the gig. I have played on strong pain killers before. As long it's a slow blues in a minor key, it's all good. The trick will be convincing my bandmates that Piece of My Heart will go over as a slow blues.

I went to the doc yesterday, got an x-ray to make sure no infection had made it into my bones (it hadn't) and was prescribed some heavy-duty antibiotics. I have to take the industrial-strength antibiotics because I've had a MRSA infection in the past. Main side effect is diarrhea. But I'm also taking opiated painkillers, whose side effect is constipation. I'm hoping they'll cancel each other out. Today I was able to put on socks and sandals. I'd been going barefoot, but sheesh, the concrete floor here in my garage is cold. Plus they frown on going barefoot into the drugstore. The real fun will come on Saturday, when I'll have to stand for 4 hours. Because I'm working pedals with my right foot (the one that's still working), that means 4 hours standing on one foot (the bad one). I'm considering adjusting my stand down and taking my folding piano bench, but I've never used my current stand that way and don't even know if it's doable. The alternative is taking along a stool and just have a little sit-down between songs. At least this gig's indoors. Always look at the bright side, to quote Monty Python.

By "disappeared" I suspect the OP means they're not listed in the browser. A rescan should fix that.

Melda's not forcing you to activate, they're just pestering you to upgrade to the paid version. Plugin Alliance doesn't force periodic activation, either. It's possible it lost a license file or something.

Hey, but in cheerier news, we're playing the Evergreen State Fair again this year. But we had to give up the coveted 11:00 AM on Friday slot. This time we're the last band on Saturday night. Moving up! Well, we'll probably still be next to the goat exhibit, but still. I'm calling that headliner billing.

We can't afford roadies.

Well, that's the real irony here. I do this for the joy of playing music and usually don't even ask nor care about how much a gig pays. But take away the joy and what's left? Manual labor for minimum wage. I think my take from that gig will be $100. Enough to cover the cost of some mugwort, I suppose.

The week prior I had suffered heatstroke and probably should have been carried out on a stretcher with an IV drip. But I was optimistic for last Saturday's outdoor gig. They, at least, had a canopy over the stage. But it was a new heat record, even beating out the previous Saturday's temperatures that nearly killed me. I spent the whole set desperately trying to wipe sweat from my eyes. On the way home, I commented that my shoes felt like they were too small. My feet hurt badly. (Note to self: most piano players do it sitting down. But no, you gotta be Keith frickin' Emerson.) Sunday morning I could barely walk. Looking down at my feet in horror, the left one was grossly swollen, discolored and - ick - bleeding. If it's still like this tomorrow I'll make an appointment to have it looked at in a month or so. (Yeh, laugh it up, you Europeans. Our health care system is spelled f-r-e-e-d-o-m, you commies.) I'd like to say that other than the physical discomfort it was a pretty good gig. I'd like to say that. But unfortunately we had a horrid sound system (some scuffed-up Mackies that looked like garage sale refugees) and a FoH "engineer" who didn't seem to know what any of the knobs and cables were for. All he could do for the insistent feedback was shift to different frequencies, ultimately settling on an EQ curve I'd describe as "60's-era ghetto blaster". He also cussed a lot. Although I admit that sometimes works for me, it didn't seem to be much help for him. Two other bands were on before us, so you'd think he'd have worked out the kinks after two hours. But it was just as bad for the band that followed us. I could hear the feedback squeals blocks away as I drove off.

This boat's getting crowded. Just don't eat the fat guy first is all I'm sayin'.