Starship Krupa

My post is tl/dr (as usual) spells it out, but at least Ozone Elements and RX Elements were quite useful. RX came with the full RX7 editor. Great beginners' tools for learning mastering and restoration. Ozone came with their parametric EQ, compressor, maximizer, and imager. Since the maximizer is the key to the famous hyped Ozone sound that the kiddies like, it was a heck of a deal for someone who wanted it to sound good now.

So sorry to hear this. Ozone Elements was a very valuable learning tool when I was first learning how to set up mastering chains. The day when I finally John Henry'd it was a fine day indeed (note to non-Americans, John Henry is one our folk heroes, a railroad worker famous for beating a steam-powered drill in a tunneling contest). The presets and mastering assistant were great for instantly making a rough mix sound good. iZotope probably decided that they were giving too much away with Elements and cannibalizing sales from Standard. They did this same thing years ago with Nectar Elements. The version I got was this dumbed down thing with 4 sliders for the "amount" of each effect rather than a collection of 4 fully-adjustable processors. I bought it based on how useful Ozone Elements was to me at the time and it was useless poo. When I first got it, there was nothing else I knew of that did the all-in-one mastering plug-in except for those crazy Terry West things that looked like Las Vegas slot machines from the 70's (which I found amusing). Unfortunately, Terry never updated them to 64-bit, but they did sound surprisingly good (surprising given the crazy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas UI's; using them always reminded me of Hunter Thompson, "we were somewhere near KVR when the drugs finally began to take hold"). Since then, brainworx came out with bx_Masterdesk (in its many forms) and even started giving it away for free. IK Multimedia came out with T-Racks One, which was also a freebie at one point. They don't have the mastering assistant, but IMO, the presets are just as good (once you locate them), there's decent parameter control, and they aren't the freakin' resource hogs that most iZotope FX are. So I guess Masterdesk Classic will now be the first rung on the ladder when it comes to single plug-in master FX. Good to know.

Whoa! Just from hitting the spark plug boots with D5? I must try that. Best practice on for sure would be to pop the lid off whatever you're working on and hit it with a blast of compressed air to get rid of whatever crud has landed on the innards (both from your cleaning operation and just from falling out of the sky. Most electronics can take a little dust, and the stuff (dirt and oxide) we're disturbing is non-conductive (or we wouldn't be removing it). The barrel brush or a loose spiral of 1000 grit shouldn't take any conductive metal from the inside of the jack, and the DeOxit will do the rest. If you have an intermittent jack, it's worth a try. I had a guitar amp repair shop for 15 years and never hurt anything with my barrel brush. Slide in, rotate, remove.

https://store.steampowered.com/ Some really deep discounts on great games. @cclarry, I know you really liked The Talos Principle, and if you haven't played the Talos Principle DLC Road to Gehenna, I highly recommend it. If you're interested in similar games, ask and I can recommend several. Anything on the list below that says "Portal-ish" will satisfy fans of Portal or any other game so described. They're all kinda similar in a good way. I like indie games; open worlds, great art, world-building, (challenging but non-miserable) puzzles, exploration, fallen civilizations, detective and storytelling walking simulators. Game deals that I've either demo'd or played and personally recommend: Portal and Portal 2 bundle: $1.48 (the originator of the action/exploration/puzzle/platform style that so many others like Talos Principle, Superliminal, Turing Test Outer Wilds $14.99: (open world space exploration adventure. Not perfect, but those who love it really love it) Sable $9.99: (open world exploration adventure/platform in art style of Moebius, currently playing it and loving it) The Talos Principle $4.49: (Portal-ish platform/puzzle/adventure) The Talos Principle Road To Gehenna DLC: $2.99 The Turing Test $9.99: (Portal-ish platform/puzzle/adventure) Lightmatter $6.99: (Portal-ish platform/puzzle/adventure where the player arranges light sources and reflectors to make paths) Firewatch $4.99: (walking sim/storyteller/open world, player is manning a fire watch tower in a national park performing tasks and running into mysteries) Quern: Undying Thoughts $7.49: (great MYSTish puzzle/adventure, seldom goes on sale) Obduction $8.99 (Cyan's spiritual successor to MYST, from 2018. If there are any Cyan games you've....um, missed, their back catalog is all in this sale for peanuts) Superliminal $9.99 (Portal-ish puzzle/adventure that depends on adjusting objects for size depending on POV) FAR Universe Bundle, includes Lone Sails and Changing Tides $9.99 (side-scrolling platform puzzle with a land and sea-going vessel, good world-building) LIMBO+INSIDE Bundle $2.68 (side-scrolling puzzle platformers with very dark humor, you play zombie boys who need to avoid all manner of gruesome trials) ReThink $0.99 (Portal-ish first person puzzle/exploration using lasers and reflectors) Journey $7.49 (exploration of lost civilization, player has limited flight ability, interesting online multiplayer feature, you might be joined by another player with whom you can't verbally communicate. I play it when I'm feeling down and it seldom fails to lift my spirits) Abzu $6.99 (Journey underwater from the same designer) Flower $1.88 (you fly around at ground level restoring color and light to a fallen civilization) The Entropy Centre $12.49 (Portal-ish puzzle/platform) Zof $10.04: (MYSTish puzzler, if you like challenging puzzles, this is the one for you) All of these ran like bats out of hell on my system with its passively-cooled GT 1030. I'd say that if you have a GTX 550Ti or better, most or all of them will fly. I play with a PS4 Dualshock 4 controller these days, but they can all be mouse/keyboarded. Some that I want to check out are The House of DaVinci, Copoka, Planet of Lana, Hyperbolica, Return of the Obra Dinn, Kentucky: Route Zero and Red Dead Redemption 2 ($19.79, considered one of the best games of all time). PS: remember that MYST Online: Uru Live is an updated free-to-play version of The Uru Chronicles with an optional online multiplayer element and user created ages, some of which are excellent. I drop in there from time to time (handle: Superabbit, neighborhood: Musicians Guild).

Why is there no emoji for blushing? I do pride myself on being a good shopper, and I have kissed many a frog, especially in the reverb department. For anyone considering it, HoRNet's is best avoided if what you want is a spring reverb that actually sounds like a spring reverb. Not even the mighty MTurboReverble could satisfy my spring reverb needs. Where they usually fall short is when you really crank their input to get a washy sound. I'm a fan of 60's garage rock and pop, which often used spring reverbs in the small studios where they recorded. To get that sound you have to really push the spring. Convolutions don't do it because AFAIK, a single impulse can't model all of the different modes you get depending on how hard you push it. Softube's nails it.

That's a really good thing to do from time to time. You could probably go all the way down to 1000 grit and still get the same benefit. My preferred way was/is to use a metal gun barrel cleaning brush. I can't remember off the top of my head which gauge was just right for 1/4" jacks (I've only purchased two for this use in the past 20 years), but obviously you'd want it just a tiny bit larger than the hole. They come made for each standard gauge of firearm barrel. I spotted them while in a (rare these days) gun shop in the SF Bay Area to buy some Tru-Oil for guitar finishing (another miracle product). It has the added benefit that if you stick it in until you feel it just touch the tip connector, then give it a twirl, it will clean that as well. Pull it out and see how much crud comes out, which can be surprising?. Follow it up with a shot of DeoOxit red/D5 and it will be fine for decades to come. I've used it to fix Fender Twin Reverbs that had been in constant service for 50 years that came in for "bad jacks." It's not a bad thing for anyone who owns audio gear that connects with 1/4" jacks to have in their toolbox, because those jacks do get dirty, even/esp. when not in use. The one thing it doesn't clean is the connection between the tip connector and the ground shunt (in jacks that ground shunt when you pull the cable out, basically all guitar amps). For that its your 1000 grit or a purpose made contact burnisher (even for diamond ones, under $5). The symptom of that is that you'll hear buzz in the amp that sounds like having a cord plugged in with no guitar plugged into the cord. It grounds the tip when you pull the cord out. Pretty much every Fender over 15 years old got the above treatments "whether it needed it or not." I fixed amps that literally had no sound going through them using no tools other than DeOxit and these cleaning tools.

I've tried multiple reverbs that claim to emulate a spring, only one actually sounded like one was Softube's.

Do check out WA Production's Loop Engine, if you haven't yet. I think it's still in its introductory period and under $30. When I demo'd it I didn't really know what I was doing (still haven't figured the whole thing), but managed to get a nice set of changes. It's great for "I just need something to get the ball rolling," not so much "I hear a song in my head."

This is why I really don't like jacks and controls that are only physically held in place by their PCB solder joints rather being fastened to the panel. The Fender Blues Jr. I am looking at you.

Period-correct P-bass! (the "modern" style P-bass came out 2 years after he died).

Rick is one of the few critics who gives Christopher the guitarist props he deserves. (UNDERRATED!?). I think Rick did a video on something that I experienced when I first got Christopher Cross on CD: crank up the fadeout on "Ride Like The Wind" to hear Cross tearing it the fsck up.

Yes, you're right. It was definitely under lateral stress as the train passed by. I guess what I was getting at is that when the crack opened up, when the lateral stress came, it fortunately shifted so that the secure ledge was resting on the broken end. They got lucky. I just went back and ran it a few more times and I think you're right, it is/was welded. But maybe the weld didn't open up first? From my amateur perspective, the design flaw might have been in how the parts were put together. It looks like they may have cut a notch into the upright support in order to butt-weld the 45-degree brace to it. This would have weakened the upright, leading to a failure right where you'd expect it, at the thinnest remaining piece, after which the weld to the brace also failed. If they considered it at all, it might have seemed like cutting into the upright was the better choice because it would be under compression, whereas the brace would have the lateral stress. But the upright was also taking lateral stress, as you pointed out. There are other ways to join cylindrical sections together at an angle besides butt-welding them. There's a lot of technology from fluid pipelines. Some kind of sleeve fitting over the whole thing? Not my area of expertise, but I can see where things went sideways (pun intended). Always easier to see it in hindsight. They probably tested the integrity of the joint design using way more stress than they expected it to be under in actual use, but the problem with that is that in actual use, it would be subjected to smaller stresses over time that add up. Like Titan, which was fine the first half dozen times it went under. Hence my rant about periodic inspection. And yes! Sensors are cheap these days. And cameras. Even an off-the-shelf home security camera system could have caught this if they put the cameras in the right places. ?

I think he showed his hand when he said "this is gonna blow up the Internet!!" ? And really, who "rates" The Edge? While he was an innovator and sound designer with his use of FX, I think we all knew that if you hit bypass on his delay he wouldn't have been all that. Doesn't matter of course, he got a killer sound. With my tastes in guitar playing, I could probably outdo him for sheer generation of outrage. What does "rated" mean when it comes to musicians anyway? I think "overrated" means "I can't see what other people like so much about this person's playing." "Underrated" means "this person doesn't get as much attention and approval as I think they should." So in the case of "overrated," well, just because I can't hear it doesn't mean it ain't there. And "underrated," well, whatever. We've all seen guitarists in local bands performing for a dozen people whose playing knocked us to the floor. Speaking of which, I used to go see Michael Hedges, now considered a stone cold freaking legend and innovator of the acoustic guitar, in the early 80's when he was playing for the dinner crowd at the New Varsity Theater in Palo Alto. People were eating and chatting and laughing and I was watching the Hendrix of the acoustic guitar performing as background music. He didn't stay "underrated" for long, though. Imagine trying to concentrate on eating while this is going on 5 feet away:

I've never used smart:limit. Couldn't say. "Better" is such a subjective term, especially when it comes to bread and butter mixing/mastering FX like dynamics processors and EQ's. Like a magazine reviewer's multiple point categories system: Ease of Setup, GUI, Metering, Extra Features, Configurability, Character etc. From the looks of it, smart:limit has some auto-setup built in. Probably wins the Ease of Setup category, but then I tend not to care as much for "AI-powered"* FX as some people. Part of the fun of this hobby for me is learning how to use the tools. Not everybody is like that. Plenty of people just want their music to sound good by whatever means. I can appreciate that, and have my share of "it just works" tools like Trackspacer, but I'm also interested in what's going on "under the hood." The best situation for the automatic stuff is when it allows you to take control of all parameters if you like. That's how I tend to use Ozone (when I use Ozone). Ultimately, the answer is that the "best" effect is the one that lets you get the sound you want in a way that feels best to you. With pro-level tools like smart:limit and MLimiterX, it's really about what you yourself are looking for. If you want to decide, the best way is to try them. smart:limit has a 30 day trial and MLimiterX a 15-day trial. And speaking of what works best, one of my favorite limiters is Sonic Anomaly's Unlimited, which is freeware. My path into high-end FX like MeldaProduction, iZotope, brainworx, etc. was to start working with what I could get for free or under $10, then once I learned what the tools were for and got an idea of how they worked, I opened my wallet a bit more. For years it was freeware/freebies, Soundspot, WA Production, and Ozone Elements. No slam on any of these, I still use plug-ins from Soundspot, WA Production, and of course some freeware ones as well. WA Production are great for weird sound design-y toys and simple control FX that get results fast (good looking UI's, too). Soundspot are a mixed bag, but there are some gems as well (Voxbox, Cyclone). *(I am starting to really dislike the term "AI-powered" being used when what it really means is "automatic." I have a transmission in my car that senses speed and RPM and automatically changes gear to adapt. Is my car's automatic transmission "AI-powered" because it monitors multiple parameters and adapts its settings??)

An odd thing is that if you ever do level up to even the MEssentialsFX bundle, it comes with MAutoDynamicEQ, which renders this one superfluous. It will be credited toward MMixingFX, MTotalFX, and MComplete, though.

Exactly. Responsibility lies with the person(s) who is running the show, whatever the show may be.

"Wasted," though? I view it as part of my learning process, also kissing frogs. Heck, if I got an hour or two of fun fiddling around with something I paid $10 for, I consider that a deal. A couple of days ago, I took my friend to our favorite burger joint. 2 sandwiches, large fries, 2 regular drinks: $36. (and it literally ends up in the toilet!)

Carowinds has some great rides, beautiful park (at least 45 years ago when I went), but this speaks more toward lax inspections by park personnel than it does anything else. Note that the design was sound enough to have that joint fail and still run all those trains every day without the track coming down. The joint was under compression and when it deformed, the top of the pole shifted to that beam. Not sure that was intentional by the designers, but either way, it's good "if this fails, what will happen?" What is inexcusable is that park operations and maintenance missed it. When I was an operations supervisor at a theme park 43 years ago, our coaster and flume operators came in an hour early every day to walk the length of the tracks for visual inspection. Any anomaly was to be reported. If any ride started making an unusual noise, it was to be reported. Considering how many of our flat rides were friggin' retired touring carny rides, we certainly needed to be vigilant. This should have been caught within 24 hours of a crack first being visible, before it had a chance to become a break. What this implies is that the rest of the rides at Carowinds are now in question, and if I were the local authorities, I'd get some inspectors out there now to check everything. Including and especially an audit of the park's internal inspection practices and ride operator training. (I know that modern looping coasters can't have their entire tracks "walked," but there are things like scopes and cameras that can be used instead)

I wouldn't do that on the notion that they're somehow inherently dangerous. If it triggers stuff like claustrophobia (which it does in me, to a degree), then yeah. The human brain is wired to ascribe way too much danger to activities based on single anecdotes. This makes perfect evolutionary sense: if the tribe finds out that Zorg was killed by a crocodile in the local river, and heeds that as a warning, better rate of survival. Things like this make the news because they happen so infrequently. Around 100 people died that day in automobile accidents in the US. How many people have ever died in mini subs? Fatal car crashes are common, so not news unless a famous person is involved. Stay the hell away from experimental, uncertified small submersibles that don't get rigorously inspected between trips, for sure. Made of laminates and titanium? Not a matter of whether but when. So many craft have been lost or crippled due to undetected fractures and delamination that came about after too many trips without inspection. Anyone who's ever had an aging skateboard deck break in half can understand this principle: stiff materials can only take so much flexing before they fail.

Not "better." As for whether they sound different, potentially, yes, due to different D/A converters and associated analog circuitry downstream. In this situation, trust your ears. Listen to both. If you prefer one over the other, then, yes, one is better (for you) than the other.

The ones they give you free for creating an account, especially bx_Masterdesk Classic. After that, the under-$20 ones you can get for free in the MEGA sales with 3 days in a row of no-limit voucher codes. Depending on their tastes, that covers a wide swath of the Unfiltered Audio line as well as plenty of Brainworx goodies like SPL Vitalizer and elysia mpressor.

Wow, cool that I recognize so many of the people in that topic. I think I post a lot on the forum, but dang, Ed has almost as many posts as he does audio software packages! It's good when the prolific ones are people that I like. ☺

Sure. You're trying to run very old software on a modern computer system. ? While I do understand "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," at some point any given version of a computer program gets left behind, becomes no longer supported (in the form of updates to be compatible with newer OSes, peer support like you're asking for now, etc.). Past about 5 years, the time bomb starts ticking pretty loudly. At 18 years, you're lucky that it will even run on Windows 10. It's going to stop working entirely, eventually. At that point, whether you like it or not, you're going to need to get a program that will run on your computer. Cakewalk by BandLab is still free to download and use, and will remain free to use. It's about to be frozen, but it's at least designed to be compatible with Windows 10 and 11. It can open your Home Studio projects, and likely not have a problem with your .INS file. If it does have trouble with your .INS file, you can ask for help here and get more and more helpful responses.

Yes. MAutoDynamicEQ can do everything that MEQualizer can, and a whole lot more. But what if you don't need the "whole lot more" for a simple EQ task? The "whole lot more" stuff is just distracting. For me, the automatic stuff, resonance finding, matching, etc., that's specialized. Great to have but not used on every project. MEQualizer is powerful. The filter types and slopes and harmonics, the analyzer, the automatic band soloing, on and on.

Hence my "chances are." No, it's not always true, for the reasons you mention, but it's something to try that increases the chance of success. Very useful to have around, I should really get one. It's a better idea than trying to get the new computer to read floppies from the old one. Who knows, though, if the laptop's internal drive can no longer read the floppies, a new one might.?