bitflipper

Thanks for reminding me that I'd promised in my OP to report back on how they're working out. Pretty well, actually. Solved the feedback issue on the guitarist's microphone as I'd hoped. Gorilla Glue is some pretty sticky stuff! At one point the cap on the spray can stuck to my finger and popped off. Next time I'm using latex gloves, because that stuff is really hard to wash off your hands. I was afraid to touch my keyboards for a couple days lest I transfer glue residue onto them. I put a total of 21 panels on the garage door and another 8 on some cabinet doors. That leaves 19 more to figure out what to do with. The rest of the room is already covered in 703, which leaves the door as the only bare surface left. Maybe glue some to the back of a shirt so I can walk around anechoically?

Not a bad presentation, but that was an unfortunate choice of "drum" track to demonstrate the effect. If your drums are entirely synthesized and/or sampled, and you don't like the "punch" or "vibe" or whatever, you either try different samples/patches or layer in something that will provide whatever's missing. That includes reversed samples, a nice effect that I use often - but as a dynamic accent. Automatically throwing in a reversed sample on every hit waters down the effect. I'd like to hear it with a real acoustic drum track. That's where it might be useful, since it's difficult to layer samples over human-performed drums. But even then, I'd prefer a drum substitution plugin that would let me draw upon my enormous collection of percussion samples.

Decades? So what, 2004 and earlier? Hmm. It still doesn't export .ape files.

Band practice was fun yesterday but totally wiped me out. Slept 14 hours, now hoping this large 7-11 coffee will do its magic. I'm out of coffee at home but although I can't walk around the grocery store to replenish my supply, I could handle the smaller dimensions of the corner 7-11. I used to joke about getting old. But to quote Betty White, "old age ain't for pussies".

Unfortunately, when they went in they discovered that the damage to the artery was too great for the old balloon + stent cure. It will require bypass surgery. I am such a hopeless optimist. Been so excited for this procedure since it was scheduled months ago, imagining instant relief from the pain. Instead, the old pain remains and I now that the opiates have worn off, I realize I have new pains from the two holes they punched into my crotch, plus a $220 copay as frosting on the cake. My bandmates have been supportive and sympathetic, asking if there's anything I need. My answer to each of them: I need to make some music. We're still on for rehearsal on Sunday. It's always the highlight of my week. We might not be able to gig much, but we all genuinely enjoy playing together. And with all this practice, when we do eventually get back out there, at least we're gonna be frickin' tight.

I'm off to the hospital in a few minutes for surgery. Nothing major, just a double angioplasty. In and out. Hardly anybody dies from it. I am so happy. The main arteries in my legs have collapsed, resulting in insufficient oxygen to the muscles and absolutely butt-clenching pain when I walk. The surgeon described it as "a heart attack in the legs". I've been enduring this excruciating agony since last December, when it abruptly began - at a gig, of course. So today is a big day. This has been the main reason the band has only been gigging sporadically this summer. I feel bad making the other band members lug my stuff for me. In my next life, I'm taking up the piccolo. Looking forward to good drugs and an excuse to do nothing tomorrow. Band rehearsal still scheduled for Sunday. Band rehearsals are so much fun, I'm not gonna miss out on that.

Best price I can recall ever seeing. Past sales have been $99, iirc. https://www.scuffhamamps.com/

I played in Nebraska. I can still smell that sweat-soaked uniform. One night after a game, I had an epiphany. By the time we got out of the showers and up to the gymnasium for the dance, all the girls were gathered around the stage chatting up the band. I decided then and there that trying to be a jock was waaay too much work to impress the ladies. Not when playing in a rock 'n roll band existed as an alternative.

Milton's storm surge is predicted to be 4' higher than Helene's, 8 to 12 feet. People don't survive that. Buildings don't survive that. No point boarding up the windows if the whole house is going to float away. To make matters worse, all the trash from Helene is still lying about and will become deadly projectiles now. Imagine surviving the first storm only to be smushed by a flying refrigerator two weeks later. What mystifies me is all the people who move there from New York. The most oft-cited reason: for the weather. I can't imagine hating snow that much.

First time at a HS football game since I was in high school, a long, long time ago. Surprisingly, not all that much has changed. The girls still parade in front of the boys, while the boys play it cool and pretend they don't notice them. My own perspective has changed, though. I kept thinking: those cheerleaders shouldn't be out in this cold with no pants on. But the reason I went was to see my great-granddaughter play trumpet in the marching band. She did me proud. My last hope for a musician in the family. I left after the half-time show. The score was 27-3 in favor of the home team, so I don't think I missed much.

I wouldn't waste my time chasing streaming standards. If Apple wants to turn you up by 13.8dB, then so be it. That won't make your recording sound better or worse. OTOH, if you turn it up yourself by 13.8dB, Apple will leave the volume alone but all the others will just turn you down. I realize this is contrary to much of the advice you'll read regarding streaming standards, but most of that is aimed at modern pop and rock productions that want to be as loud as possible and therefore tend to be brutally compressed to gain volume at the expense of dynamics. When those guys subsequently get turned down by streaming services, they sound very dull because they sacrificed dynamics for nothing.

Sheesh, looks like a war zone.

My experience with this tool... At first I couldn't get it to work. It told me my sample rate was unsupported. It was a 48KHz wave file. So I then uploaded an MP3 of the same project, and curiously got the same message. Then I re-read the message and saw that it actually said "Oops, your system's audio sample rate is not supported. Please set your system's audio sample rate to 44.1 or 48 kHz and refresh the page." It wasn't complaining about the file's sample rate, but my system sample rate. Somehow my system audio had been set to 96KHz/16-bit. I changed it to 48KHz/24-bit and then the analyzer was happy. First time any software has cared about my system sample rate. Indeed, it's the first time I have cared what it was. I chose a file that I'd been pretty happy with, dynamics- and volume-wise. iZotope Insight told me it was ~-16dB LUFS. Here's what Loudness Penalty Analyzer told me. The first is for the wave version, the second is for the MP3 version. Yes, MP3s can peak higher than the source file by as much as 6dB in theory and about 3dB in practice. But I have to wonder, is it saying that these streaming services treat the two formats differently, or that the tool is analyzing them differently?

Spoken like a true Floridian. You are probably aware, however, that most people around the world would not call that a "fine" day. I have only been to Florida a few times, and can't recall experiencing a single fine day there. Too damn hot and humid for this web-footed northwesterner. I only came close to a hurricane on one occasion. I was in Miami teaching a class, and when we got word of an impending hurricane everybody said "we're outa here". I suggested that it might be an interesting experience and as my flight home wasn't for a couple days, maybe I'd just weather the storm in my comfy hotel room. The locals set me straight. "You've been complaining about the heat and humidity all week", they said. "Now imagine three days of that with no A/C". I was quickly convinced. So I decided to find a flight out. I had to do it quickly, because they'd be closing the airport in a few hours. Apparently, a few other people had the same idea, because nobody was answering the phones at the airline. Now the hotel staff are bolting metal panels over the windows and I realize I'd be sitting in the dark for the duration with no cable TV, electricity or internet access. So I start speed-dialing the airline. Without success. I called my business partner back home and explained my situation. In those days he was doing most of the travel for our little company and had enough frequent-flyer miles for multiple round-the-world trips. He even had a special phone number to the airline, which he was able to get through on. Called me back, said he'd scored me a seat on a flight out that afternoon. "It's not going to Seattle, though", he said. "I don't care", I replied. And so it was that I found myself on a flight to Dallas, middle seat in the back row next to the toilets. I was never so happy to watch the ground fall away.