Shane_B.

Well that image is implanted in my head now.

I wrote a song called Shades Of Death Road. I never posted it because I mever copyrighted it. I didn't want it to get passed around locally and have one of the local artists steal it. Plus I lost the master and never polished it. There is a history to that road. Native Americans occupied that area. Settlers came and they tried to get rid of them. They chased one of the settlers daughters down that road and trapped her on a cliff. Her father yelled to her telling her to jump off so they wouldn't get her. If you look at a map near SOD Rd. you'll see Jenny Jump State Forest. That's how it got it's name. It is a very creepy road. Goes through the woods. Swampy area near the side in one part. Always seems foggy out there.

There's a road near me in NJ that is called Shades Of Death Rd. That sign gets stolen a lot too.

And if they do use them things will be even brighter. For a few minutes at least.

No way. Only Realtek for me.

40% to 70% of the time.

I have my own Cakewalk history compilation. Unfortunately the crash log file is too large to upload to the forum. OK ok. That was/ wasn't funny. I started with Pro Audio 7 iirc? Or was it 9? I can't remember anymore. Skipped a bunch of versions then jumped back in at S8PE. But my favorite version to date is CbB. Not sure which version of it I started with but it is rock solid since Bandlab took over.

This one has two lines ... "It's strange what desire will make foolish people do." "Nobody loves no one." Wicked Game - Chris Isaac

I love Menards and Lowe's. The closest Menards to me now here in NJ is about 5 hours away. I loathe HD. Never have what I need and what they do have is junk.

A&W used to be run by the owners here. Then it turned in to a Mcd's type situation where you have an owner or group of owners that just sit back and collect the money and pay people the bare minimum to keep it going. That's when they changed here. But they used to be very good. Now it's rare to see one here. I looked in to 'buying' a Mcd's a few years ago. At the time it cost $1M and iirc you had to have another $500K cash in the bank. A lot of times groups of investors will buy these chains and never even see the restaurant.

I prefer the real hardware versions myself.

Popeye's I could actually feel my arteries clogging from the grease and fat.

"Yo" Every rap song.

"I thought that they were angels, but to my surprise, we climbed aboard their starship, we headed for the skies." Styx - Come Sail Away

Yeah but eventually the AI ones will evolve exactly like the real ones and start using a strong password you can't figure out and wont share with you. Then they start using a VPN and develope a strong encryption and start using "ad" blockers to the point where you just give up on the digital ones too ...

"Merry Christmas" Humbug

Parametric Equalizers Need Incremental Settings for mic checks.

I used to service office equipment. I installed multifunction machines on business networks for printing, scanning, faxing. Our IT guy was a Mac guru. Always telling everyone they were the best in the universe. How bad MS was. On and on. He set up the networks in all of our offices. He talked the owner in to forcing us in to a training class one time. I drove 2 hours to get to the office and he spent the entire day trying to get the network to connect to anything with the Apple name on it. At the end of the day we had zero hands on training and he sent us home with a booklet he made of how to set Macs up on networks with print drivers and how to set up shared folders. I also remember how it was very easy to set up print drivers on PC based machines. But if you wanted to hook up to a Mac you had to buy a proprietary 'font interface' to be able to use any Adobe fonts. That added an additional $1000 to the cost of the machine. The sales people would always without fail forget about the board and end up losing their commission because they would write the leases and get them signed but never put in the cost of the board. Strictly looking at it from an installation point of view I do not care for anything Apple related. But everyone I know that has an iPhone absolutely loves it though. As for Winamp ... I absolutely loved it. You can still find it but the current version is clunky and doesn't play well with modern higher resolutions. Someone is still working on it though. Last I checked they were officially planning on releasing it again but it looks a lot like a SoundCloud type of thing. I loved how you could customize it and all the skins you could get for it. I had one that turned it in to a Analog looking device with VU's. Looked awesome on my 24" flat CRT. Need a magnifying glass to see it now because you can't scale it.

I really like John5. But maybe it's his infatuation with Tele's that makes me admire him so much. Look up Hell Haw on YouTube. It shouldn't be posted here. It's vulgar but he plays live(ish) at the end. The video is live but you can tell by the mix the audio was done in a studio. His bass player is really good. I saw an interview one time with John5 and he said he grew up watching Hee Haw with his dad and that's where his fascination with Tele's began. Watching all my old country hero's. It's probably why I respect him so much. My nephew was really in to M.C. back in the day and had me to listen to them a few times. I could never get in to them.

Speaking of Hallmark movies I watched a Hallmark Christmas movie the other night starring Bruce Campbell. If you don't know who he his, he's a very famous comedy horror/ gore movie actor. Evil Dead 1 & 2. Army Of Darkness (Evil Dead 3). Bubba Hotep. He had a crime series on TV and an Evil Dead series too.

How clean your LPs are will have a far bigger impact than the difference between a low end and high end turntable. If you are even considering getting an all in one stereo with a turntable built in then it doesn't matter which one you get. They all sound equally low fi. I made my own LP wet vac system for like 50 bucks plus the the cleaning chems which will last a lifetime. There was a massive impact on the sound quality after cleaning them. I'll post pics later of what I made. There may be pics floating around the forum somewhere already. Also the room will have a huge impact on sound quality just like recording. IMO speaker/room placement and how clean the LPs are have a far bigger impact than money thrown at high end gear unless you have golden ears and a perfect wave coming through your AC ... which nobody has unless you buy a $10,000 dollar wave regenerator.

I bought one of those on Facebook marketplace last year to transfer some very old masters in to me daw. I still have my original Tascam 8track too. I think, if I remember correctly, my first was Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. But I can't really remember anymore.

I played a stripped down Epi Studio version of a Les Paul one time. Best feeling and best sounding LP I ever played. I really regret not buying it. I've had both and I greatly prefer the Epi version. I had a Gibson LP Custom one time. I could never warm up to it. I don't remember who it was now but I sold it to someone on the old Cakewalk forum. I had it on consignment at a very well known guitar shop in Lawrence Kansas and they posted it on their website and he bought it through them.

I have the 2x12 version of that. They are really great amps. I got it thinking I might play live again. Then when faced with an opportunity to play live again I just didn't have the drive to do it anymore. So it sits in a closet. Lots of good times playing out but a lot of headaches too. My goto is Guitar Rig 4 and my Epiphone Sheraton II Sunburst (lefty version). If I ever were to play live again my goto would be my Champion 100 and my 84 MIJ Strat with EMG Golds on it. I put them on back in the 80s to stop the neon sign buzz in bars back before LED signs were a thing and hum from bad grounds in various places we played.

Some places had Christmas decorations out with the Halloween decorations this year. I can only guess it stems from lack of workers and having the ones that were there on Halloween put out both for fear of not having workers at Christmas. Seems nobody wants to work any more. Or greed. Probably some of both.