Shane_B.

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!

GPU prices are starting to come down so I decided to put a video card in my old i7 6700K DAW. I had to upgrade the PSU and I decided to put some more RAM in it. I didn't see any difference when I put the RAM in but when I changed the PSU it made a significant difference. I don't know if the old PSU was too small (550W) or if it was the fact that I cleaned everything and reseated all the connectors, but it boots almost instantly again and everything loads incredible fast like it did when I first built it. I got an RTX 3060 video card and man it is incredible. I hooked up my inexpensive LG TV and it's running at 60Hz in 4K and 120Hz in 1080p. It blows my mind considering that actual PC monitors this size cost 3 times more than this thing at those refresh rates. I also downloaded a bios tweaking utility from Intel figuring I would have to take my BIOS settings out of DAW mode. The utility allows you to create BIOS profiles and you can change all your settings with just one click of a saved profile and a quick reboot. I tried a little bit of gaming with all the DAW settings and it's screaming fast. I didn't have to change anything. I can just leave it in DAW mode. Everything has stock fans for cooling and so far they haven't moved off idle. I can't even hear it running just like it was before I put the 3060 in. I got the GOG version of Fallout 3 and I'm running it set to Ultra settings with the highest resolution it supports which I think is 2K. I don't have software that tells me what the FPS is but it has to be near 100. It's smooth as glass on this cheap LG TV. It blows my mind. So now I just have to milk this system a few more years until I'm forced in to Windows 11. Then it's getting repurposed as a NAS server. I already have an i5 650 I'm going to set the server up with then transfer the hardware to the i7 when the time comes. The GPU is a PCI 4.0 card but my mobo is only PCI 3. I've read that unless you are really pushing the limits of the GPU to the max that you won't even see a difference. I can't imagine how this could look or feel any better. I found the exact part number for the RAM I currently have but I could only find 32GB sets so I'm up to 48GB of Kingston DDR4 now and I put in a 650 Watt modular PSU. All turbo settings off in BIOS so the RAM and CPU are running at stable stock speeds. The DAW side of it hasn't improved but I didn't expect it to. I've done some video rendering tests and it's lightning fast compared to how it was. I'm very happy with how this turned out and I got in to PC gaming and video editing again for not much more than the cost of a new game console. I can't complain about that at all. I ordered a monitor thinking the TV wouldn't work but it's going back because this TV is working flawlessly so I saved even more money there. I can't say how a newer game running in true 4K would work, but considering the TV is running at the same rate as the monitor I bought and it has excellent reviews, I think I'll be ok. I'm not really in to anything new anyway. I just like the old Fallout series games. I'm actually streaming 8K video's on Youtube flawlessly with this thing. All this technology stuff blows my mind. I can't imagine what we'll have at our disposal 10 ~ 15 years from now. ??

Don't rule out ART gear. It's cheap, but it's in almost every pro studio I've ever seen a picture of. See my signature for the two I have. The tubes are super easy to change, but it's extremely rare you have to do that. I've had mine for almost 15 years iirc and I've never had a problem with the tubes. I had one defective one from the factory and Sweetwater swapped the whole unit out and I've never had a problem since. These run on low voltage and don't take a beating like the high powered type. If you step up to the high voltage powered tube pre's then you're talking at least the 4K range and more and it's not worth it in my opinion. ART makes a mic pre that has the same features as your old Presonus but I don't think it's dual channel. I could be wrong. It's best to check their site because their products do change from time to time. I use the two in my signature all the time, simply just turned on, without ever adjusting the compression. The variable mic impedance adjustment has proven to be invaluable and I'm surprised I don't see it more on other mic pre's. They just add something that I can't emulate going DI. They are incredibly clean but can be driven. Zero line noise especially with balanced cables. I've even started using the compressor to master. It took forever to figure out how to loop them using my Presonus 1810C but once I got it figured out it's very simple. They are absolutely dead silent. No hiss or line noise whatsoever. I do use the compressor when mastering but when tracking I just have it chained with the mic pre with all the settings at minimum. Both pieces of gear in my sig are dual channel and the mic pre can be set to mid/side. All this inexpensive gear performs far better than I'll ever need and in reality I'd venture to say better than 99% of us need. Unless you have a professionally treated recording space where you can hear and capture such subtleties, mic placement is going to have a far greater effect on your sound than the pre's themselves for the vast majority of us. In my opinion.

The Stones do that in Angie. There's actually two very different vocal tracks going at the same time in that song. With your headphones turned way up you can hear the different vocal tracks throughout the song. It almost sounds like bleed through on the acoustic track on the left then they redid the vocals and couldn't fix the bleed? I don't know. But there's clearly 2 vocal tracks going through the entire song and whispering during some of it after the 3:40 mark.

That's clearly photoshopped. There wouldn't be any grass out in the desert like that. You just can't believe anything you see on the internet anymore. ?

Mine too until my clock broke. ?? That's clock with an L.

Sorry to hear all that Craig Hard drives suck. The larger they get the scarier they get and the more you stand to lose.

I'm really glad to hear that! I'm happy for you. At one point I did have everything on Indeed and I think Monster too, but that was a very long time ago the first time I was out of work up in IA when the company I worked for closed. I never got a single response. I eventually found a job from a tiny little ad in the paper but had to quit when my wife lost her job and we had to move to KC for her new job. The recession was still bad when we moved here and nobody was hiring in this area either. She was extremely lucky to find what she did and it's a great job. She interviewed at several places all over the country. I was really hoping she got one closer to NJ where I'm from but I knew in my gut she wouldn't. She loves it, her family is all down here, they love her, so here I sit ... I have to stop thinking and talking about this. It's starting to bother me too much being reminded of it all and thinking about my situation. Like everyone else in the world, I'll either survive or I won't and there are people who have it far FAR worse than I do and I'm very thankful to be in the situation I am even though it should be better. Them and Lowe's do around here. There isn't a single person under the age of 25 working at places like Target or any of the fancier Wal-Mart type places. Home Depot is just depressing around here so I never ever go there anymore. I like Lowe's. They will work with you on pricing especially if you spend enough time there buying building materials and the workers get to know you. When I going through the lumber and getting stuff that's actually usable, I always restack everything nice and neat so the guys don't have to do it. I always leave it looking better than when I got there and they appreciate that I think. I got $105 dollars worth of flooring for a small remodel project I'm doing this weekend for $20 bucks. The boxes were marked damaged and I asked if they'd take $20 for both and he said ok. Got them home and only a couple were damaged and at the ends that will get cut off so it all worked out. I have a gift for bargaining and selling. I should probably go in to some kind of sales. For example, this past summer, I sold almost $1,000 dollars worth of weeds. Seriously. I cut some cattails down around the pond the previous owners put in the back of our yard. I told my wife they were nice and I bet the home decor places around town would love them. She laughed at me, so I got mad and sealed a bunch of them so they wouldn't explode and drove in to town and just stopped in to talk to a few places. The first place I stopped bought 10 dozen from me. I used them as a reference and sold almost 1,000 of them to all the local flower shops. And they all want me to come back this fall. So there is money to be made and doing it yourself. You just have to think outside the box. It wasn't a lot of money but I felt so good knowing I found a little niche and actually brought in a little money. It made for great conversation with family calling myself a cattail farmer now that's for sure.

From one Special Ed., to another special Ed, Happy Birthday.

That's exactly what I've been facing, word for word, for the last 10 years. It's basically over for us if you are beyond 35 and not locked in somewhere. There is a factory I would love to work at about 20 minutes from me. Always has a giant banner across the fence of the front of the property. "HIRING. FULL TIME. PART TIME. APPLY ONLINE." It's been that way off and on for the 10 years I've lived here. They can't keep people there. I hounded them and they finally told me to stop calling. I have no record. Never been arrested. Never even been accused of anything. I haven't had a speeding ticket in going on 17 years. I've been in 2 accidents that weren't my fault. An old guy fell asleep driving and hit me and admitted it to the officer and a bus ran a stop sign and admitted to the officer. Yet I haven't even gotten a call back in years and I finally gave up after I was literally told to stop bothering them. And people think I have it made because of my wife's job. 6 years of college, $100K of debt, over 250 job interviews over our 24 years together and 2 job offers. She has a Master's and 2 Bachelor's. We got lucky with this cheap fixer upper house and if she can hold on till retirement and I can finish this place, this will be our retirement. If one thing falls out of place it's all gone. I'm scared for you Craig. I'm not facing what you are right now but I'm one HR decision with her employer away from it. It's an unbearable amount of stress at times. It's why she volunteers to do things like go to job sites for a month at a time. The Hawaii thing was awesome, but she's also been sent to area's by herself in a tiny trailer where there's gang shootings every night. I hope things pick up for you. Ever think of selling realestate? It seem to be where a lot of people are landing and I've been thinking about it myself. Just thought I'd get my 2 cents IBTL ... ?

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.