Shane_B.

I don't even ask. I can say though she's as frugal with herself as she is with me. Living is pretty cheap in the midwest unless you want to be right in the heart of the cities. I'm quite a ways away from KC.

My wife put a stop to that real quick. In going on 24 years together I've only had 2 PC's, 2 VST's (Ozone and Melda, the rest free or came with Sonar), and Studio One. (Edit: I forgot ... I bought a few Nomad Factory plugins years ago when they were asking for help paying for the owners medical bills.) I did get 2 new audio interfaces because my old ones died. 1 new acoustic, 1 used electric, 1 bass, 1 new mic, 2 pieces of inexpensive ART gear. I used the PC monitor I came out here with for many many years until it completely died. Got the cheapest one I could find at the time and it died. Got another one about 13 years ago and it's starting to die. I've been using TV's as monitors now because they are more bang for your buck. The rest I came out here with almost 24 years ago. Not a whole hell of a lot over 24 years is it? It's to the point where when I do need something or even think about wanting something I get sick to my stomach and just shut it right out unless it's something I truly need to keep recording. I'm actually shocked that she's been so decent about me wanting to upgrade due to the impending Windows 11 forced upgrade. I wake up every morning and ask myself the same thing. Believe me, it could be far far worse man. LOL.

It's cost prohibitive to build a house with one like this in it anymore. Only people with a lot of money building custom homes have true mason built fireplaces anymore. The modern inserts that use insulated steel flues are nice but they can't heat like this does. If I ever built a place I'd do a wood stove. They seem to be much more efficient than the inserts. There is a concerted effort to ban LP and Natural gas now so there may come a time when you can't even have one other than electric. They are nice but don't help you when the power goes out. Gas stoves and ovens are being banned all over the country in new construction, mainly in CA and NY. I'm sure home heating, water, and fireplaces will be next if not already. They are trying to force everyone to electric. We got very lucky when we found this place. It is an older custom built home. The lady who had it built passed away a long time ago and it sat empty for almost 2 years. It passed hands quite a few times and the last couple who lived here got married, moved in, and in less than a year got divorced and wanted to dump it to get away from each other. I can see why too. It's almost doubled in value since we've lived here and Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath don't even know about the repairs. There are two fireplaces and 3 flue's. The third is for the gas water heater and gas furnace vents. The guy who came to inspect and clean it when we bought the place said he's been doing this for 25 years and it's the biggest fireplace he's ever seen. They actually welded the the forced air ducts for the furnace in to the blower box and it heats the entire house through the vents. I just did a quick measurement. It's roughly 36" Wide, 30" Deep, and 32" tall before it starts to tapers to the flue. I would be afraid to fill it. I think it would get too hot and crack the tile in the flue even though it has steel liners. The hottest I ever had it in here was 88F burning Hedge. But yeah, we're very lucky to have found this place when we did even though it needed a ton of work. It's sort of been my job to remodel it. It's taking far FAR longer than I expected due to health reasons when I first moved here and an accident I was in. But I'm a lot better now and want to finish it so I can get back out in to the real world amongst the living again.

Actually ... LOL ... wood is a green source of energy. It leaves the same carbon footprint burned or laying there rotting. IOW no increased emissions just a rate difference. What bothers me are the people who don't know how to properly start and maintain a fire. If it's always smoldering and smokey that's bad, but done properly there should be almost zero smoke/particulate. I bought a moisture sensor this year because I cut and split a bunch of wood early in the year and didn't want to burn it green. It seasoned perfectly by fall. Got a little over a cord out of it.

Not sure if I would like it like that all the time. I love the different seasons. It's 8°F/-18°C here today. When my wife was in Hawaii for work last year she said people were complaining it was winter. They had coats on. It was in the low 80s instead of upper 80s iirc. It's all what you are used to I guess. For example its 8F here today and I was out shoveling snow with just sweat pants and a light sweater no coat because there's low humidity here. Back home in NJ near the ocean when it's below 40F it's almost unbearable because of the moisture in the air.

Here's my inferno today. 17°F/-8°C, windy, snowing on the outside. 81°F/27°C and dry on the inside.

He has distortion on the brain so to speak. HAH! He comes from a world where they strive to eliminate distortion and I think he has a hard time articulating how to capture it cleanly. I saw another video of his and I can't find it now where he's talking about what sample rate to record at. 192kHz/16bit is what he said is the best IIRC. Definitely 192kHz, but I can't recall if he said 16 or 24 bit. In his world, and the real world too I guess, he feels there is enough dynamic range in a 16bit file. He tries to capture the stuff you can feel but can't hear with the 192kHz. I guess that's fine if you have a $30,000 dollar pair of his speakers being driven by another $90,000 dollars worth of his equipment that actually can produce things you can't hear. Man, I'm in the wrong business. They just released a new series of speakers. The FR30's are $28,499 a pair. Free white glove delivery though so there's that. What blows my mind is the first two runs of the speakers sold out. They are on their 3rd production run now. I have to admit, the distortion thing is real IRG to HiFi amps. The most stunning and beautiful thing I've ever heard were a pair of Magnepan's driven by a McIntosh MA5300 amp. So clear and so real that for the first time ever I could actually pick out where each and every thing in the recording was coming from. It was amazing, as well as the price.

I'm telling sir you said that. Even if an older boy made you do it. I don't think you can have more than one account here like you could over at the other place. Probably a good thing. ? Although, I did have a lot of fun with Mickey McFinnegan. In true Irishman style, due to circumstances I control, I forgot my login and password. Hmmm. I wonder if I could pretend to be him using a different email account and see if I can get the guys at CbB to bring him over here. .... hold my beer ...

He sure has some highfalutin friends fur one who favors lower frequencies. When I came back I asked how to get mine transferred. 3 years later I'm still waiting for a response. But on a serious note, it really doesn't matter. No problem. We're in for a foot of snow and blizzard like conditions the rest of the week. Got a weeks worth of firewood stacked by the back door. Huge pot of chili made in case the power goes out. And I just picked up some libations to hold me through while the wife is working from home the rest of the week. Doesn't get any better than that. Well, she could be staying in a hotel somewhere while I'm stuck at home with beer, chili, a fire, and my guitar, but other than that, it doesn't get any better than that.

That would be a great name for a band. Praise or Death Metal.

When I think "High End Audio" or high quality audio, the last thing that comes to mind is rock and the type of music he does. Have you seen his latest video? Sounds horrible, guitars out of tune, recorded in a barn ... and he's demanding people listen to his music on a high definition streaming service? No thanks. Listen at 2:25 ... It went all crash in the loudspeaker. And this guy is preaching to the world about "high quality audio". LOL!

Yep. Same here. It's why it is extremely rare that I participate in the random thoughts thread. I think I've only ever posted twice? I would feel really bad if that got axed and I avoid it. I think a lot of bad blood spilled over from the old forum. Same people using different names ... people who get off on stirring the pot ... go crying to the admin when someone says something that triggers them ... that kind of childish garbage.

Have you tried the Cakewalk forum?

That must be why their stock is soaring. ?

Saved? ....

Thanks. I did. He got me a great price on a great new system but unfortunately video cards are so expensive now. The system price was great, but adding the video card I want blew it way out of budget so I'm going to have to hold off more to see if they come down. I need a video card this time around because it is going to be a dual purpose system. I was also under the impression that Windows 10's support was ending early next year and it appears I was wrong. It's actually 2025. I think what threw me off was I had read that some builds of Window's 10 were no longer being supported. But the upgrade to a newer build is free and those are going to continue for several more years. I think that's where I misunderstood what was going on with that. So that gives me a little more time. My CPU isn't supported by Windows 11 so I pretty much have to upgrade if I want to stick with a supported OS but it seems I have quite a bit more time to wait and see if video cards come down in price.

I've recently become interested in simpleton mathematics myself. So, I sat down, well, actually I stood up, and got a ruler and a calculator. It cost me $18,571.43 an inch. Pretty enormous numbers I'd say.

I still have my Korg X5 I bought new many years ago. It still works like new although I had to replace the battery a long time ago. A lot of the sounds in it are as good if not better than most VSTi's I've heard. Especially the drums. I've sampled the drums a few times and used them. We started using backing tracks in my band way back in the 90's before it was the norm. There were guys using keyboards with memory cards for different sounds, but nobody that I'm aware of in our area was doing backing tracks. It and my acoustic were all we used. They were all live tracks recorded on to 8 track and transferred to DAT to keep the speed right. No software or midi sequencing or editing. Now, it's the norm. It's how things are mostly done especially the one or two man shows that play at coffee shops and winery's and places like that. We were decades ahead of our time and all I used was a tiny little Korg X5. If I were still back home my old drummer and I would be killing it right now. Life duo's at places like I mentioned are exploding out there in the NJ area where we lived. Not so much here ...

I'm afraid to say anything. Every time I do the thread gets locked or deleted. LOL!

Crap. Now I gotta cancel my XM subscription.

Try not to let the carotid artery thing worry you. The carotid artery hearing thing is common. I have it. It's causing a low pitched hum in my left ear. I can actually make the humming go away if I shake my head back and forth really fast like I'm twitching. I've had scans in my legs and they did the carotid too and I have zero blockages. In my case it's the sound of the blood being transferred by bone fusing from infections. Right now I can't hear any low end out of my right ear. I found out my ear drum is collapsed again even though I have a permanent tube. They were in a foul mood that day and very rushed due to covid related staff shortages and he didn't have time to address it. ? I have to go back again in July. It's driving me nuts because it hurts and I can't hear anything below around 1K in my right ear. I'm assuming the low freq. loss is due to the collapse. If not I'm screwed. After all that though he tells me my hearing is great especially for 50 and being in a band 16 years straight. It's above average for others my age. What do you do. Good luck. I hope it all turns out well for you. Did you see my thread about the NAD+ Supplement? Might want to try it. I have documented proof it improved my hearing.

The songs I've written came to me almost instantly like a valve opened and they just flowed out of me. I'm most creative at song writing when I'm very tired and it's late at night or very early in the morning like 1 or 2 am and I'm alone. I've never been able to sit down and say, "Ok, I have an idea and I'm going to write a song now.". I wrote a lot when I was a kid by myself in my bedroom and after almost 24 years of being with my wife the only time I write now is when she's gone on a work trip for a week or two.

Hey, it worked for the bear. Just sayin' ...

Happy birthday. BTW ... Who the heck am I wishing happy birfday to?