Shane_B.

I haven't seen any improvement in my DAW performance. I thought I would when I added in the RAM but nothing has changed that I can tell. One thing that blows my mind is how lightning fast this old game loads that I'm playing. I played it on PS3 many years ago. When you would go from one area of the open world map to another, or load a saved game, it would takes almost a minute depending on how long you played and how large the saved game files were getting. They increase in size the farther in to the game you are. It crashed constantly on the PS3 but so far I haven't had a single crash and the maps and saved games load in less than a second. I click 'Yes' to load the game, the saved game screen closes and it's loaded. It has to be less than a second. But as for a DAW work, I see zero performance increase. That's going to solely rely on your CPU based off what I'm seeing with this rig now.

Two things I've learned the hard way over the years is leave the PC plugged in but turn the PSU switch off and never spin the fans when blowing them out with compressed air from a can or from a compressor. You can actually create a voltage by spinning the fans and feed it back to the mobo if you spin them fast enough. I also have a wrist strap with an alligator clip on it but I can't find it. I threw it in a box somewhere years ago and swore I'd never open another PC. And here I am. I just rub my hands on a faucet, fridge handle (they always give you a good shock) and then touch the case. As long as it's plugged in and the PSU switch is off. I hold the fan blades still with my fingers or a pen/pencil. Anything nonconductive so they don't spin when I blow them out. That's all assuming your outlets are properly grounded. If they aren't you and your PC can get fried. EMF's can destroy data and chips too. Just touching any data cable inside your PC without your body being properly discharged beforehand can destroy it. I've told the story hear a few times about how I worked of fax machines a long long time ago. One of the big laser fax machines I worked on had a sensor to detect if the drum cartridge was in it. After a while it couldn't read it. It turned out to be the EMF between the sensor wires confusing the control board. Someone at the factory put the nylon tie straps on the wire harness too tight and the official fix was to cut the strap and that fixed it. I may have to flip this new PSU around in my PC. That clicking is driving me nuts. From a distance it sounds like arcing but it's not. I tried laying the PC on it's side and sitting it upside down and it doesn't do it so it has to be the fan in the PSU. Half the time the fans aren't even spinning on the GPU and I still hear it so I know it's not that. I just don't feel like going through the hassle of returning it and probably getting another one with the same problem. Honestly, I've never seen a PSU with the fan pointing down, but that's what the install sheet said to do if there were vents in the bottom of the case. This is a pretty nice case I have. It came with a PSU with the fan pointing up and it has vent holes on the bottom with a filter. There's a guy on youtube that has an entire channel dedicated to cleaning PC's. He does local drop off and every once in a while a viewer will send one in. It can make a difference. Thermal paste breaks down over time, fans get clogged with dust, dust settles on the electronics and all that makes everything run hotter. I didn't have the nerve to take the heat sink and fan off the CPU and re-paste it. Probably should have though. The guy on youtube goes as far as to take the GPU's apart and re-paste those too sometimes. Here's a link to his vids. Kind of fun to watch.

That's the ***ch about it. I was looking at the CPU's my Mobo supports. I can go one CPU higher than mine and it shows up on the Win 11 supported list last time I checked. It's the next CPU in the Mobo supported list from my 6700K. It's still selling for the same amount as some new CPU's and the speed is faster than some of the current gen i5's. It's all a scam. This PC right now is absolutely rock solid, really fast, and completely silent. It's unreal how well this thing is working. There's absolutely no excuse for them to be forcing people to upgrade their hardware. There's a lot of people po'd about it. I've seen some really good rants on youtube and on MS's forum about it. It's a scam and people know it. It may change by the EOL cycle for Win10. It almost has to. Some tree hugger needs to draw up a chart showing how evil MS is for creating all this e-waste and force them in to making Win11 work on "older" cpu's, most of which are as fast or faster than "new" lower end CPU's. Another bit of proof it's all a scam ... Netflix is the only app I'm running that won't show movies in 4K on my PC. They have it locked and 4K isn't even an option. I pay extra for their 4K service but the 4K list won't even display on the app on my PC. After spending an afternoon going down the rabbit hole looking for a solution, I found a tech pub they released. It's my CPU. Every other service I've used will stream in true 4K HDR except Netflix. I can stream it in 4K HDR using their app on this TV that has a CPU equal to a TRS-80 with 256Kb of SRAM and 1Kb VRAM, but I can't stream from my i7 6700 with 48GB RAM with a 12GB video card capable of 8K HDR on my PC because the CPU is too old. It doesn't bother any of the other services, just them. It's all one big giant steaming pile of ... scam.

Oh man, that's a loaded question here. I used to use it for more in depth projects like that but it was a crash fest so I switched DAW's eventually. I can honestly tell you I can count on 1 hand the amount of crashes I've had since I switched. That said, Sonar is now CbB and a different program now. It seems to be as rock solid when I do try it as S1 is. I wouldn't hesitate to use CbB now for larger projects. The only reason I haven't switched back is I paid a lot of money for S1 and I'm so used to it now. The GUI is soooo horrible in it though. I much prefer CbB's. They just need to update it for 4K monitors .... nudge nudge wink wink. That and I'm winding down on music. As the years roll on and the people who created the music I love are all but gone it's having an impact on me and I'm losing interest in recording and playing more and more. I could even see a day soon when I just mix down what I have now, put it on a storage device and wipe my HDD to save room. And the irony of that is, I have the most screaming, rock solid DAW I have ever had right now. Give it a try. It's free. But I understand the reluctance seeing how you risk getting deep in to a complex project like that and find it's not working. Make a fake project. Just do something from the hip with tons of tracks with tons of VST's and sample libraries. Randomly draw automation. Mess with tempo timing. Just take a Sunday morning and create something even if it sounds horrible and see how it holds up. I do remember using a lot of automation took a toll on Sonar. It makes any recording software run harder. The more I added the more corrupt the project became and the more unstable it all was.

It's frustrating really. I have a lot of software that has to be activated and re-activated regularly via the net so I have to keep this PC on the net and I don't feel comfortable doing that after Windows 10 is no longer supported. This CPU is plenty fast enough for what I do and it's really bothering me I have to upgrade it because of their software. I still have my last 3 PC's. I hate to throw that stuff out and there's no E-recycling places around here. I have a 486 with DOS 6.22 a Pentium and an i5 650. I keep the 486 for playing old DOS games but to be honest, I can't remember the last time I turned it on. It's an old Packard Bell 486 DX2/66. I have no idea. The TV is a cheap little Vizio model number V405-H19. I love it. Cheap, great refresh rate, great picture quality, and it plays nice with the video card. As soon as I boot up, the TV goes in to HDR mode and stays there no hassle. 60Hz in 4KHDR mode, and 120Hz in 1080p. I can't complain about that at all. The cheapest equivalent PC Monitor in this size with a 120Hz refresh rate is a little over $1, 000. This TV was in the $200 range IIRC? It's not available anymore but I'd bet the replacement model works just as well. I'm thinking that it was probably due to the fact I reseated all the cables. I move this PC around a lot and I probably should have done it sooner. I can't believe how quiet this is. I actually ran it without the cover on the case to make sure all the fans were going. It's pretty rare the video card fans ever kick on and the PSU fan is dead silent. The case and CPU fans are on all the time and I can't hear them unless I put my head near the case. They recommend you install the PSU with fan pointing down if you have vents on the bottom of your case and I did. I normally have the fan pointing up and that's how the PSU that came with the case was installed. It will make a rattling noise some times. At first I thought it was defective and arcing but when I lay the case on it's side it doesn't do it. Plus I could feel it vibrate when it made the noise. I'm sure it's because the fan never kicks in to high speed and is in there upside down so I'm not worried about it. It's been running as quiet as it did without a dedicated graphics card. I'm really shocked. I know I'm only playing an older game but still, it's in true 4K HDR with all graphics settings turn as far up as they will go. Plus I have a few eye candy mod's running. I still can't believe I never even had to change the BIOS settings. I left everything set up to be optimized for DAW usage. Side note about the PSU, I got it at the right time apparently. I've been watching prices and it's jumped $70 in price.

She was great in Mad Monster Party ...

I didn't hear any difference between any of the sets he A/B'd other than going from light to heavy gauge. I preferred the lighter gauge sound. But, in general, I hate the sound of new strings. IMO. YMMV.

I know Martin makes their own strings so there's at least 3. How do I know this ... some of my relatives used to make their strings in Nazareth ... before they opened their factory in Mexico that is ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

How do you go about fixing that? I ask because I recently discovered the California Patch method as they call it. You cut a scrap piece of drywall 4" wider all around than you need. Score and remove the drywall from the back leaving the front paper and a small filler piece of drywall to fill in the hole. You use the drywall paper as tape. It takes all the stress and frustration out of fixing holes like that. Here's a good vid on youtube with details on how to do it. I don't recommend using the premixed pink stuff for this kind of mud work because it's too thick. I watered it down and it worked ok but I went and bought a bag of the light compound because I had a lot more to fix and I had some skim coating to do. I just finished this remodel just before Christmas. That's primer on the trim in the last pic, that's why it's streaky and flat. There was an alarm system panel on the wall there and when I removed it I found that huge hole. It worked out because I could get in there to guide wire I had to run. There was only 2 switches in the box so I put in a new 3 gang box and added another switch and used all smart switches. The middle one is for the ceiling fan/light in the room. The original only had 1 hot wire so I had to go in the attic and build walkways across the floor joists and through the insulation to get to it and rewire the box with 14/3 w/g wire. I love doing this stuff. Wish we had an OT place here on the forum to talk about this stuff and show pics freely. I document all my projects and have tons of pics and video of the work I've done here at our place. Anyway, here's some before and after pics of the patch I did. You can't tell anything was ever there.

I used to have to run both depending on the business. I've installed a lot of it. I've installed a lot of cabling over the years for point of sales systems. When I started Panasonic used huge 5 pin din connectors. I got so good at soldering them I could strip the wire, tin it, bend it so it would line up perfectly with the solder connectors on the back of the plug, hold the plug and wire and solder in one contorted hand, and solder them with the iron with my other hand. And I'd get so in to it and moving so fast, I'd usually have to take desolder a few because I forgot to put the casing on the wire before I soldered the actual connector. Then sometime in the early 90's we stopped selling Panasonic and went to Arba and CRS and they were just switching over to RJ45. I learned all about the differences between the ones made for solid wire, stranded wire, the ones made for both (they failed a lot), plenum, non-plenum, shielded, un-shielded. My neighbor who is an IT guy that runs his own business said he's never, not once, installed shielded wire and has never had a problem. Not worth the risk IMO but to each his own I guess and who am I to argue with a guy who is almost 60 and been doing this his entire career. One of these days here soon I'm going to wire my house with CAT6. I was looking at enders and tools and they have RJ45's now that the wire goes all the way through and sticks out the front so you can see more clearly if you have a wire inserted properly and you don't have to worry about getting them all the way in to the end of the connector. The tool cuts the wire and crimps at the same time. I don't recall having access to anything like that back in the early 90's.

I can't wait until 2/22/2222. I'm gonna have a big party and invite all you guys's.

It makes more sense than most of what is actually here. (It sort of looks like the hack screen of the computers in Fallout ?)

Works fine here. Never had a problem. It's the best rendition of that web site I've ever used. Must be your system.

This is what a tiny Ball Peen is.

Current Bing search engine home page . . .

Here's my layout this year since we're on the train thing. This is the first layout I've had since the mid 70's. We've collected the village items over the last 20+ years. We always wait till they are on sale after the holidays. Sometimes I'll buy broken stuff and fix it. Like the trolley. I got that for $5 bucks. It was a broken display model but I got it going. (I painted the thumbnail on the video 2 years ago at Christmas while on heavy duty pain meds while recovering from surgery. I don't remember painting it ... ) Side note: Do you hear the chuff sound of the engine? It has other sound effects as well. It can be controlled with a remote that is included with the set or via a cell app. The sound system was developed by Neil Young for his son who is handicapped so he could activate the different sounds by hitting switches while moving his body. He owns a small part of Lionel now. He was always a huge Lionel train fan from what I've read about him. It's pretty awesome that he developed that for his son and it became part of Lionel history.

This blows my mind ...

Gasp! It's on in 720p! ?

Here is the video I use to confirm whether or not I'm actually in HDR mode. If you are actually in HDR mode the Settings button where you change the video resolution will display the letters "HDR" over the top of the Settings icon on the bottom bar of the youtube video. Not all video's are uploaded in HDR though so it won't always say that even if you are set up correctly, that's why I always check with this video when I'm changing things around. My TV will also put up an icon on the screen for a few seconds that says HDR10 as well but my older one won't. This cheap little Vizio looks amazing in true 4K HDR but everything else that is only HD or less is all washed out. There is a setting in Windows 10 where you have to enable HDR capability. Right click on the Desktop and go to "Display settings". While swapping monitors it somehow got turned off and when I hooked the Vizio back up it wouldn't work in HDR mode until I turned that back on. ??

Just for the heck of it I hooked up the monitor I got. The TV actually works better. The colors aren't as vivid, but performance wise it's far better. And this is a really good IPS 4K monitor. Strange how that all works isn't it. The monitor is a 28" full 4K HDR gaming monitor with G-Sync and the TV is a cheap crappy Vizio 43" smart (ish) TV and it actually works better. Doesn't look quite as nice, but it performs significantly better. Funny how all this stuff works isn't it.

I was trying to find where I read that they can't achieve anything over 120Hz and what I found was it's the cost, not the ability to do it. Maybe at one time they couldn't but apparently it can be done now but it raises the cost significantly and has no benefit. Gaming is different because of the way the video is processed, but playing back a video file be it from disc or streaming benefits very little over 60Hz from what I've read. I've been tinkering with this cheap TV here and it's amazing how clear and responsive it is. It's native 4K@60Hz when connected to my PC and it's working great for what I'm doing. ??

I thought I read that about 1080p and 4K. I was truly shocked when I found out that 1080p Bluray's are compressed. I always thought the selling point to everyone about going from DVD to Bluray was it was uncompressed and the best quality you could get. Not true. I can't imagine a screen that big and still being smooth. Thankfully the prices are coming down. I'm convinced all screens are the same and they throttle their ability via software to create certain price points. There was actually a big scandal about the inner panels one time years ago but I can't recall the details of it all.

I know. Makes you wonder where this is all going to go. I can see a difference between some 1080p and 4K movies but I attribute that to the compression they use for 1080p. All these super duper Bluray's in stunning 1080p HD ... they're all compressed. If you had the original 1080p uncompressed file I'd bet almost anything you couldn't tell it from a 4K file. That's why some streaming movies look better than the actual discs. They are streaming from a better source with better compression. I downloaded a program to show the FPS while I'm running Fallout 3. It's steady at 60FPS which is all the TV is capable of doing. That's plenty for this type of game and it looks fantastic. Seeing how we're running on 60Hz AC, I wonder how you can truly have anything above that? I know you can increase voltage but I'm not sure how that works with Hz. IOW, is it all marketing scams and gimmicks? I've read that no matter what TV's can only do 120Hz native. Anything above that is artificially achieved. At any rate, my DAW is screaming fast, everything works (knock on wood), and I'm happy. Spring will be here soon and it will all go in the basement anyway so I better go enjoy it while I can. LOL!