bitflipper

Encouraging that the top 10 things a guitarist should know does not include knowing how to play a guitar. Encouraging because it implies that the engineer will make any garbage you play sound good. "We'll fix it in the shrinkwrap" - Frank Zappa Couldn't agree more about learning to wrap cables properly, though. I don't know why guitarists are so resistant to learning the "roadie wrap". My drummer can do it. Heck, even the bassist can do it. Maybe even the singer could do it, but that would fall under "manual labor" so we'll never find out.

That setting should be automatically saved with the project, along with all the other export options. I just checked that here to make sure, and it does. However, I am running a newer version of Sonar so it's possible your version isn't saving it for some reason. But don't worry about it. It won't affect the quality of your export if you have dither enabled when it's unneeded. But your thread title mentions "extra encoding options", so I'm assuming you're talking about the dialog that pops up after clicking the Export button that lists different wav file formats. Which of those you choose depends on the purpose for exporting a wav file. For example, if you're sending a track to a collaborator for inclusion in a shared project, use "signed 32-bit PCM". If you're exporting for inclusion in a CD compilation, use "signed 16-bit PCM". For most other purposes, including sending out for mastering, use "signed 24-bit PCM". But if in doubt, don't sweat it. 24-bit will almost always be OK. As a footnote, I only export to wav if I'm sending the file to someone who has explicitly requested a particular format. Most of the time I export FLAC, which works for almost all scenarios. The exception would be if I plan on attaching the file to an email or uploading to a hosting site with a file size limit, in which case MP3 is preferred.

I just think about the musicians in that band. They were pretty young, as I recall. For most of them, they must have thought this was their Big Break. Performing live on Saturday Night Live! They must have been absolutely pumped. Only to become a perennial punch line. I wonder if they still list that gig on their resumés.

To be fair, she does not use backing tracks or autotune and does not lip-sync anything. I saw proof of that in a video where she'd positioned her capo on the wrong fret and had to sing the whole song in the wrong key. Even more impressive, the band quickly picked up on it and followed suit. I'm sure 99% of the audience had no idea there'd been a screwup. That's professionalism of the highest level.

My ears perk up whenever somebody tells me they've had their gall bladder removed and it worked out fine. Given its function as a regulating buffer, it's hard to imagine that you can do OK without it. Seems it would be analogous to setting your audio buffers to 16 and expecting no dropouts. Maybe a better analogy is getting buffer overruns in your network adapter. My granddaughter had her gall bladder removed about 8 years ago and says it's no big deal, although she cannot eat what most people would consider a reasonably-sized meal. If she eats too much, she pukes. But I'm getting used to small meals, so it'll be manageable. Certainly better than that indescribable pain when those big ol' spikey rocks get stuck in the output tube. On a more pleasant note, last night's gig was only mostly awful. I am always nervous when relying on strangers to manage sound. Sometimes it works out great, but it's less than 50%. I played the whole set with no keys or drums in my monitor (it's an electronic kit, so without amplification they sound like practice pads). I could only hear what bounced back from the mains off a distant wall (about 50-60 feet, based on the echo delay of ~100ms). Fortunately the stage was well-lit, so I could at least see what notes I was hitting even if I couldn't hear them. I was timing myself based on the little clickity-click sounds of the drum kit's trigger pads. But for some reason the kick drum had a 5-second sustain on every hit. Not helpful. Despite handing the stage manager my cables, he only actually plugged in one of my two keyboards, so we had to scratch a couple songs from the setlist on the fly. It was beyond the ability of any number of mochas to make the experience enjoyable. On the plus side, the vocals were up in the mix. Way up. Ear-splittingly loud, in fact. Apparently, the FoH guy thought instruments are just for show, like well-behaved children who are to be seen but not heard. And to their credit they did provide cold water for us, that was nice. I was half-expecting them to say "that'll be $5", after buying an 8" pizza with 4 pepperonis on it for $18. But the water was free. So I took two. Screw their budget.

The problem with the OMAD diet is you have to meet your daily caloric needs in a single meal. Because I avoid carbs, that means high-fat and high-protein foods. It's that high intake of fat in a short period that exacerbates the gallstones by stressing the gall bladder. It may not have caused the gallstones, but it definitely turned them into a problem. The pain feels like an ice pick through the heart and out the back. First two times I thought it was a cardiac event and spent the night in the hospital. CAT scans and stress tests could not identify any heart problems, though. It took 8 years of periodic attacks before a young doctor thought to order an ultrasound and discovered the gallstones. Since then I've avoided attacks by moderating fat intake. No more sausage McMuffins for me.

Thanks, Craig. I totally agree about eating before a gig. For five years I was on the OMAD (one meal a day) regimen and played many gigs with my stomach growling. After a couple years it felt normal, and I've gone as long as four days without eating with no loss of energy. I had to give that up, though, as it eventually caused severe problems with gallstones. Next month I consult a surgeon about the possibility and advisability of removing my gall bladder. Gallstones are extremely painful, worse even than kidney stones. And, as I was informed by the surgeon, potentially even lethal. So now my diet's a compromise - multiple small meals with a 4:00 PM cutoff. I'll give HMB a try. Reading up on it, I see that studies have been inconclusive about its ability to build and repair muscle, whether the test subjects were young body builders or sedentary geezers like me. But I'm willing to give it a shot. Anything to shorten the recovery time for my post-gig back pain would be welcome.

I've mentioned before that I normally drink decaffeinated coffee to keep my blood pressure in check. I also limit my sugar intake for the sake of my A1C. Both rules are ignored on gig nights, when my performance-enhancing drug of choice is a Starbucks Iced Mocha. When you normally don't drink caffeine, those things are like meth. Last night I drank two. Yep, it was a two-mocha night. That, plus the positive feedback loop of an enthusiastic crowd, spun my brain up into overdrive. I'm talking about being in The Zone, that elusive, transcendent state of mind where you watch your own fingers as if they belonged to someone else. Even better, everybody in the band seemed to be operating on a similar plane last night. It was grand. Of course, this morning is another story. My back aches. I'm tired despite sleeping late. More in the mood for vegging out with some YouTube videos than running laps. A little voice is reminding me that I turn 72 in a month, and wtf do I think I'm doing, acting like I'm 27 again. The question now is: can I find that zone again tonight? Geez, I hope so. It's just a one-hour festival set, so no PA setup. But it's also outdoors and the forecast is for the mid-80's. Despite some initial misgivings, I now think that shaving my head was a good move. So if you're in the area, come on down to the goat exhibit next to the gyro food truck at the Evergreen State Fair. We go on at 8:30. I'll be the one with the crazed googly eyes and no hair, like that character from The Hills Have Eyes.

Words I never thought I'd hear out of anybody's mouth: "Dee Snyder, thank you for being a role model".

Here's another interesting take on the economics of live performance vs. record sales. Once upon a time, it was not unusual to see an album sell millions in a week. Today, you can make it into the Top 10 by selling 25,000 copies. Live music is where the money is. But this is at a level most musicians will never experience even peripherally (Swift puts on a 3-hour show with no opening act). I wonder how this translates to smaller acts trying to fill a theater. Will fans have already blown their life savings going to a TS concert? I have to believe that as big as TS's numbers are, most people can't afford such luxuries and there are still going to be healthy second- and third-tier economies. Of course, none of this affects my world. As long as people want to get laid for the price of a beer, there will always be a place for the lowly bar band.

This obscure YouTube channel is dedicated to logistics and trucking, but they did a good job of putting Taylor Swift's Eras tour in perspective. With tickets going for up to $100,000, this one pop diva's road trip represents a major transfer of wealth from those who can afford that to those who make your bed in a hotel. "If Taylor Swift's tour was a country, it would have a GDP higher than 50 actual countries." That's based on an estimated $5 billion economic impact in the US alone, and they haven't even taken it outside the US yet. The presenter then goes on to explore the logistics of such a huge show. 80-90 trucks. $30 million in transportation alone. And, of course, he's excited about the now-famous $100k bonuses paid to the drivers ($55 million in total staff bonuses). A truck driver's dream. And a shot in the arm for struggling trucking businesses. I couldn't name a single Taylor Swift song, much less sing along with one. I would definitely not clean out my bank account for a ticket or even cough up $45 for a t-shirt. But I can appreciate the boost to the live music industry. Taylor Swift tribute tribute bands may supersede Elvis impersonators at your local casino.

In the meantime, I'd suggest switching to the WASAPI driver.

Les Paul recorded three Top 10 hits in hotel rooms. Physical space need not be a limitation. I have a 3,000 sq ft house, but I only shower and sleep there. Most of my days are spent in a 400 sq ft garage with the windows permanently nailed shut. It's not even a proper studio, just a garage cloaked in a Home Depot's worth of rigid fiberglass. I'm guessing your frustration has other reasons beyond a downsized living space.

Here's a longtime PT user who doesn't mince words...

Unless you're a ProTools user, in which case this is likely to be an ongoing frustration. It never bodes well when a company is taken over by a private equity firm, which only cares about profits - not product quality, staffing or customer support. They will slowly drive consumers away (mostly to Logic) while milking existing products for the last drips of profit until they eventually auction off the office furniture. But for those of us happy to live in a Cakewalk world exclusively, then yeh, mostly meh.

I have experienced this error in the past, and fixed it via the installer (\program files\spitfire audio\spitfire audio.exe) as the video above shows. iirc, I found the solution at the Spitfire website. The issue can arise when you install LABS while logged in to Windows under a different user name than you normally use when running your DAW. In your case, it looks like you were logged into Windows as Admin2 when the libraries were originally installed. Then, when you subsequently logged in as "Just Be", LABS went looking for the content in Admin2's user data and couldn't find it. (As a side note, this isn't a problem you're likely to run into with other virtual instruments because most are either not user-specific or they prompt you at install. You've probably seen other installers ask if you want the program to be accessible to Everyone or Just You. Which makes sense for things such as system utilities but not for virtual instruments. If Spitfire assumes a specific user rather than Everyone, that, imo, is a mistake on their part.)

Once we complete the transition to everything through the PA, that will be trivial to do. Because the mixer is also a 16-channel USB interface, I'm looking forward to making band demos going straight from the mixer into Sonar. But we're not there yet. Bass and guitar were separately amplified yesterday. The previous week we'd had all but the bass in the PA, but the packed room was so frickin' loud that I suspect a mic in the audience would have been drowned out. There was also a second purpose for making this recording. We have no FoH operator so I mix from the stage. That's challenging until you figure out where everything's subjectively supposed to be and can get the monitoring sorted. For example, I learned from the recording that the keyboards were consistently too quiet, suggesting that my monitor volume is too high. It's a process. I've tried to get the singer to give me some feedback, as she routinely wanders the room with a wireless mic and likes to dance with audience members. But she's pretty useless when it comes to anything remotely technical, being perfectly content as long as her vocals are on top of everything. So if you're ever in Seattle, mettelus, please come help. Beer and burgers will be on me.

I liked the music just fine, but why is the second example so distorted? It sounds like something that was recorded in 1985 but badly remastered in 2015. YouTube says the content loudness is +2.6dB, way hotter than anything recorded in the 80's. Maybe the uploader thought he could improve the recording with aggressive "saturation" and a clipper after learning the art of mastering on KVR.

Can't say it's ever even occurred to me. Sounds like microphone abuse Yeh, I'm definitely going to highpass the recording. My intention is to load the file into Sonar, split it into individual song files and trim the "silence" (and bad jokes) so that I can give the new guy a folder on a thumb drive that also has links to YouTube videos of the original recordings plus lyrics and chord charts. That's a lot of work, but we have only 4 weeks to work in the new guitarist before we have to start cancelling gigs. I refuse to play the 20-minute version of Johnny B. Goode just because we don't have enough material for three 45-minute sets.

Last night we played one of our favorite venues, a winery in the Cascade foothills. The stage is right in the vineyard, surrounded by grapes. Even better, a stage you can drive right up to. I got to use my fancy new crank-up speaker stands for the first time, as there was room to place the subs properly - in front, side-by-side. We left the covers on them. These covers let you do that, with a zippered flap in front that can be folded back and velcroed in place. Putting those covers on is a PIA, as you have to lower the subs into them, *****-end first. We gotta start making enough money to hire a roadie. I am still blown away by how good those RCFs sound. Better than a hack band like us deserves. I set up my TASCAM DR-07 mini recorder on a mic stand out front. The idea is to record our arrangements for the new guitarist, when we find one. Unfortunately, our current guitarist happens to be pretty good. Good enough to set our expectations high, so the search goes on. It was the first time I'd used the DR-07, which I'd bought just for this purpose. I didn't even know if it was working correctly. I set levels and let it run for the entire 2-hour show, hoping for the best. Ended up with a 1.4GB MP3. Never seen a 1.4GB MP3 file before. Turned out what I got was 2 hours of wind noise with some music under it. Enough for our future guitarist to learn the arrangements, though.

It's true. The reason you don't see much spam here is because it's usually gone within minutes of its posting. It is not an automated process. It's because we really hate spam. I am delighted when I get to stomp one, although that only happens when those in time zones to my East have gone to bed for the day. Fortunately for me, even wookies sleep sometimes.

I assumed kittens are implied, along with baby seals and human infants.

No. Kicking puppies, littering, lying to children, taking up two parking spaces, pranking strangers for Instagram, posting revenge porn , telling gullible rubes they're going to hell if they don't buy you a jet, telling noobs that if you don't record at 192KHz you aren't a pro - these are things bad people do. Admitting you can't hear an audible difference between the 14 compressors already in your kit, that's just confidently embracing reality.

Well, I figured the AEA was positioned up high enough to be beyond the reach of any random flying drumsticks - assuming your friend wasn't also practicing his stick-twirls.

Well, I survived the three-hour tour. My daughter, who's far wealthier than me, had booked the boat for a private excursion so it actually went 4 hours. Our guide was knowledgeable and respectful of the whales, clearly an ecologically-sensitive preservationist in spite of his exploitive job. I still have reservations about following whales around. Now I know how movie stars feel when they're just trying to have lunch with a pack of paparazzi lurking about. There were several other whale-watching boats out there (I tried shouting that they couldn't look at them because we'd booked a private tour and those were OUR whales, but they apparently couldn't hear me), all tipping off the other boats as to which pods were where. Still, I'd rather see them swimming free than performing tricks at Sea World. (If you've never seen it, I highly recommend the fantastic documentary "Blackfish". But be forewarned: it's one of those documentaries that will leave you fuming.) We saw them play. We saw them fish. We did not get to see them mutilate any harbor seals, though. They seemed to be content with salmon. As would I. I have to admit, those Orcas are truly majestic. Boats have to stay some distance from them, but the animals have no such restrictions and often came right up to us. We saw a total of 12 of them in 3 different pods, including babies as well as elder giants. It was interesting enough to keep me from falling asleep, despite having only four hours' sleep the night before. I normally veg out on the Sunday after a late gig. I can't veg today, either, as today's chore is unloading the van and setting up for guitarist auditions tomorrow and Wednesday. On that front, we're hopeful because one of the candidates was enthusiastic enough to come to Saturday's gig. Now, if he'd only stuck around for the loadout and helped move gear, I'd have been inclined to offer him the job on the spot.