System rebuild....aw yeah.

[jhale667]

There were a few bumps along the way, but I finally managed to rebuild my computer, going as crackhead obsessive on it component-wise as I do on my guitars. I wanted enough processing power to not ever have to worry about it bogging, and so far it's kicking ass...here's the specs:


1. Intel i7 processor
2. 8g of RAM (that's getting bumped up quickly)
3. Asus P8Z68 Motherboard
4. Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive (1024MB GDDR5)
5. EVGA GTX550Ti video card
6. Corsair H80 CPU Hydro Cooler
7. Corsair AX750 power supply
8. Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/524393_10150789112567246_620012245_11515744_440049 78_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/523470_10150789677362246_620012245_11517789_788739 491_n.jpg

It's stupid fast, and coincidentally looks cool as shit... other than the fact that the case I chose won't fully close with the Hydro-Cooler super-fan installed (who knew? who cares? :D), not too shabby if I do say so myself...lol :D
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/539910_10150936490067246_620012245_11767383_545882 829_n.jpg

Already re-installed PODfarm, but I may have to bite the bullet and do the full upgrade to Pro Tools 10.






:guitar:

[ashstralia]

i just got one of them iphone 4s.

an amazing bit of gear.

[jhale667]

I'm tempted to replace my Blackberry with an iPhone... 'course, that's gonna wait if I have to do the PT upgrade...

Did I mention it's running the 3 storage drives, a Maxtor 250g ( what was the OS drive of the old system), a 500g and the 750g external HD I use for Pro Tools no probs? :D

[ThrillsNSpills]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/523470_10150789677362246_620012245_11517789_788739 491_n.jpg

:guitar:


No wonder the water don't woik. Dees pipes is clogged up wit wiyahs.

[jhale667]

Nah, de pipes works just fine! ;) And looks like there's still a version of PT9 I can get an run my exiting Mbox2 with...awesome.



:guitar:

[jhale667]

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:guitar:

[Nitro Express]

I had a case like that. It had bogus gauges on the front. Not really good for anything but they looked cool. AZZA makes a wider case that will probably work. It's even ported for cooling lines so you can run them to an outside fan if you want.

[jhale667]

It's only a matter of moving the fan on the side panel about a quarter of an inch down, I just don't feel like dealing with pulling it out of this case and doing yet another re-assembly at this point. It's not hurting anything as is.

[Nitro Express]

Fix it when it's due for cleaning. After the dust bunnies cover everything. I drives me nuts when I start to see dust bunnies in my computer. I'm always blasting it out. One of the chores of having a see through case.

[jhale667]

Yeah, I always keep a can of compressed air at my desk, I blast the place continuously so it doesn't build up.

[Nitro Express]

I run a little air cleaner in my office and I'm amazed at how much less dust I have. A good one makes quite the difference.

[Hardrock69]

If I were to build a new PC now, I would get a solid state drive for my C drive.

Sounds like you got a smoking machine, but SSDs make standard disc drives look like they are running at 33 1/3.

They are still too expensive though. I noticed on Newegg.com that they are now down to about a buck-fifty a gig. They were about 2 bucks a gig. I never spend more than 100 bucks on any one thing. That is my "price point".

And I have to have at least an 80 Gig C drive.....so it is going to be awhile before I can get one myself.

Congrats on the new box!

I just upgraded a few months ago. One component. I had originally bought 4 1 gig sticks of Geil Black Dragon gaming memory....1066 Mhz DDR2.

Only to find out that the ASUS mobo would only run in dual channel mode for what was in 2 of the 4 ram slots. Ugh.

So just a few months ago, I got a pair of 2 gig sticks of 1066 G. Skill gaming ram. Big difference. WAY faster. But it was a beast to begin with. Am running an AMD Phenom 9600 quad-core Black Edition.....running it at stock speed, as the mobo (ASUS M3A) is a piece of shit when it comes to o'clocking. Has the ability to o'clock in the BIOS, but it will freeze up, crash, etc. So I just let it run stock....

My mobo has an AM2+ socket....which will handle AM3 CPUs.....so I can still upgrade CPUs someday....and yes, one other upgrade would be an SSD.

By the way....I just saw a piece on the net that said that DDR4 is going to start shipping by the end of the year, even though there has not been any sort of official spec released.

Also, found out on Newegg.com the other day.....you can buy AMD 8-core Zambezi processors for 150 bucks now.

Insane how kickass the hardware is these days.

I figure with the occasional upgrade, I can keep my current machine for another year or two before building another one.

I have never bought a factory produced PC in my life. Well, my Dad gave me my first one in 1998, and I don't think he built it...but it was a no-name PC (which I am still keeping for sentimental reasons, lol). But I built my first PC from scratch in 2000, and there is no turning back.

[Hardrock69]

This is like discussing cars in the old days before computers. :hee:

[jhale667]

This is like discussing cars in the old days before computers. :hee:

Isn't it? :biggrin:

[jhale667]

Currently waiting to hear back from a contact at Avid to see if the LE- version 10 cross-grade will work for my system...

http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do;jsessionid=0B60AFA63F6358387FDCDF764D3D 0CC4.ASTPESD1?product=307527273741024

[Nitro Express]

You get less dirty and greasy rebuilding a PC. But you are right. Instead of cubic inches, cam size, horsepower and torque it's how fast the processor is, what type of drives, and how much RAM you have. It is the same shit. Then you put it all in a case that looks cool because those cream white office looking cases are so boring. Got to have a window to see the guts and some lights to make it look cool.

[jhale667]

Preferrably blue UV lights that look really cool in the dark... :hee: But yeah, same thing as spec'ing out a car or a guitar. I knew I needed at minimum an intel i5 and 4g of RAM, so I went with an i7 and 8g...totally not f*ing around here.





:guitar:

[Nitro Express]

You need to add some big speakers and a smoke machine and more lights.

[jhale667]

I do an impersonation of a smoke machine occasionally...:stoned-smiley: that'll have to do... and the M-Audio BX5A monitors I've got can get plenty loud for an apartment studio...when I get a house again I'll get bigger speakers, or just re-cone the set of old Tannoy PB8s I've got in my living room. :baaa:


Oh, and does my lava lamp count light-wise?

[Jagermeister]

Kinda overkill for downloading porn don't ya think?

[jhale667]

Kinda overkill for downloading porn don't ya think?

Would be if that was all I planned to do with it...smart ass. :hee:

[Nitro Express]

Kinda overkill for downloading porn don't ya think?

Shit. Not if your system has an attached transporter beam and makes the porn real so you can join in the fun. Then the food replicator makes you a pizza.

[Hardrock69]

Dude...you got Tannoy PB8s? So do I! They are my "studio monitors" and main speakers for mixing, video editing, gaming, etc.

I bought them for $450 for the pair in 1997, and melted the crossovers the day Pantera's Reinventing The Steel came out. Since then the woofer foam suffered dry rot, so I had them refoamed, replaced the crossovers and put brand new tweeters in them.

THEY ROCK!!!

[jhale667]

Yeah, they're cool... I've had them forever, but one of the woofers is toast...won't cost that much to redo them, just haven't needed them with the BX5As (which came with my original Pro Tools package). Maybe I should fix them and get them running in here just for the sheer overkill factor... :hee:


EDIT: Better side view

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h217/jhale667/LosAngeles-20120513-00408.jpg

[jhale667]

Oh, and THIS was kinda funny: When I installed the two drives from my old system as storage drives, figured I'd be able to res-use my TV tuner card from the old machine too, so threw that in the tower. When I tried to initialize the program, got a "no device detected" error message, figured I hadn't seated the card properly, and planned to try to re-seat it the next morning, since I wanted to watch the Mayweather fight replay that was about to start at that moment. Woke up to a Win 7 system alert the next day - "The ATI (model number) TV tuner card you are trying to use is not recognized by Windows 7. ATI has no plans to update the drivers for this card" etc. which is hilarious - "I don't recoginize the ATI yadda-yadda card you installed in me~" if it can't recognize it, how come it can tell me WTF kind of tuner card it is??? :lmao:


So, about another 5 bills to go and I'll have the latest version of Pro Tools (again) using the cross-grade, and HDTV.

[BigBadBrian]

You should've bought a Mac. Once you buy a Mac, you'll never go back.

They just fucking work!

I won't buy anything but since I got my Macbook Pro last August.

Just a friendly little piece of advice.

[jhale667]

You should've bought a Mac. Once you buy a Mac, you'll never go back.

They just fucking work!

I won't buy anything but since I got my Macbook Pro last August.

Just a friendly little piece of advice.


Considered making the switch but A) I'm already on PCs at the office 8-9 hours a day, it's what I'm used to, and B) this has just as much processing power as a Mac that would've run me at least a grand more even BEFORE I update Pro Tools.

[jhale667]

:bump:
Had to deal with system compatibility issues, a "missing iLok authorization" error issue (in that I'd had an account with them since '09 but never needed the actual physical USB key before having never transferred licenses, went and bought the stupid USB key, got sidetrack and blew it off for a week, but then after a momentary scare reading my Mbox might not work with the new OS, finally after poking around on their user's forum got the Win 7 drivers from Avid for my Mbox 2 to get PT LE8 up and running tonight. Still having an issue with plug-ins since all the file paths in the song folders have changed, but I think I can work it out...:rolleyes:

<object width="400" height="300" ><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/10150998790582246" /><embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/10150998790582246" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="300"></embed></object>
:hee:

So now I can apparently do the cross-grade to PT 10 with no issues, but if I can get the plug-ins functioning again w/LE8 might hold off on that for a minute...

[Nitro Express]

I have both Macs and PC's. They both have their strong and weak points. I actually have had more hardware issues with Macs than I have with PC's. I bought a MacBook Air and found the new operating system is not compatible with power pc files. All my financial backup data was power pc files and even if I upgraded the software the back up files would still be not compatible. So that was a bitch. Then I'm having compatibility issues with Windows 7. Software that will run just fine on Window XP won't even load on Windows 7.

I've just learned don't get rid of your old computer. Hang onto it until you get your new system working because you might have some surprises. Stuff you think will be compatible often is not.

As far as the MacBook Air goes I like it. I was worried about it being fragile but it's made of aluminum and has proven to be durable. The keys in the keyboard are under lit and the sound for the speakers come out of the keys and the sound is surprisingly good. The computer runs cool but one time a little fan turned on inside the computer. These things are pretty damn thin but there is a fan inside.

I used my last Apple laptop every day for six years and never had one problem with it. I hope this one holds up as well.

[Nitro Express]

Yeah, they're cool... I've had them forever, but one of the woofers is toast...won't cost that much to redo them, just haven't needed them with the BX5As (which came with my original Pro Tools package). Maybe I should fix them and get them running in here just for the sheer overkill factor... :hee:


EDIT: Better side view

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h217/jhale667/LosAngeles-20120513-00408.jpg

Are those dust filters on the cooling fans worth getting? I'm running no filters on my fans and have to crack the case open and vacuum out the dust bunnies more than I would like. I'm running like four huge fans in an AZZA box. No liquid cooling but the box stays so cool with all the circulating air I could keep beer cold inside my computer case.

[Nitro Express]

Considered making the switch but A) I'm already on PCs at the office 8-9 hours a day, it's what I'm used to, and B) this has just as much processing power as a Mac that would've run me at least a grand more even BEFORE I update Pro Tools.

To be honest, I think Microsoft did a pretty decent job with Windows 7. I've had problems synching MP3 files to some of my mobile players from Apple iTunes. So I use the Windows 7 Media Player. Apple tends to make their stuff work with Apple products like if you download your music from the iTunes site and sync to an iPod it works but if you use let's say Amazon and use another portable device you run into problems. Windows 7 is more adaptable and I'm using it to download songs and synch with. I was having compatibility problems using OSX. If you use all Apple products everything tends to work fine but if you use an Android or something else you have problems and Windows 7 seems to give you more flexibility.

There sometimes is an advantage to go with a closed system like Apple and sometimes there are advantages going with an open system like Windows. You pretty much get what you buy from Apple. With a PC you can customize it into what you want. Sure it won't be as clean and neat as an Apple product but big boxes full of lights and fans are still cool.

For me it's like asking what I like better blondes or brunettes. I like them both.

[Seshmeister]

If I were to build a new PC now, I would get a solid state drive for my C drive.

Sounds like you got a smoking machine, but SSDs make standard disc drives look like they are running at 33 1/3.

They are still too expensive though. I noticed on Newegg.com that they are now down to about a buck-fifty a gig. They were about 2 bucks a gig. I never spend more than 100 bucks on any one thing. That is my "price point".

And I have to have at least an 80 Gig C drive.....so it is going to be awhile before I can get one myself.


What a lot of people do is to get a small SSD and put the operating system and swap file on it. You then have a big conventional second drive for your applications and data.

[Hardrock69]

In the past there have been problems with SSD failure rates being abnormally high.

I must assume they are correcting the problems. Just Google SSD failure and you will have too much to read.

I had found info on using an IDE-to-SD Card reader adapter in my Roland VS-1680.....it only can read up to 16GB of storage space....and a 16GB SD card is what, 20 bucks?

Only problem is they are not designed for the massive amounts of read/write cycles they would have to undergo, and they are not reliable as a long-term replacement for a hard drive.

I figure by the time I have money to spare on an SSD, they will be much more reliable. An advantage to being "Po' Folks".

[Seshmeister]

With the small SSD with the OS on it, if it does fail you don't lose anything as you just keep a ghost copy of your Windows install on the big drive.

[jhale667]

I've just learned don't get rid of your old computer. Hang onto it until you get your new system working because you might have some surprises. Stuff you think will be compatible often is not.

I kept my old OS drive and incorporated it into the new system. I've been copying files over to the new C drive where necessary, so far the main issue is my 3rd party plugins.

[Hardrock69]

Right on, J! ;)

[jhale667]

Strange Windows system message today... says my Line 6 UX2 is "not supported by this version of Windows" and yet I'm able to update the drivers to the current version on the Line 6 website, and both Windows Device Manager and Pro Tools can see it...


Fuck it, I'm going to run PODfarm via my iLok as a plugin going forward anyway, but looks like I should just fully bite the bullet and upgrade my Pro Tools interface as well...



:guitar:

[jhale667]

Here's what I should have done in the 1st place, and probably will be doing...

http://www.avid.com/US/products/eleven-rack_2

http://www.avid.com/Static/Resources/Common/images/products/Eleven_Rack/ElevenRack_Feat_CaptureYourPerformance.png

[ELVIS]

How much is that baby ??

[ELVIS]

Those samples sound cool...

[jhale667]

It's anywhere from $800 -1000, depending on where you get it... I like that it does a lot of the emulations inside the box itself, freeing up CPU space (not that I have to worry about that a lot with an i7, but still). It's got a lot of the same amps you'd get with PODfarm too... Marshall Plexis, Boogies, Soldanos...pretty cool.

[jhale667]

You kinda have to overlook the Cookie Monster Vocals on this, but their Mesa MkIIC+ emulation is not too shabby...



Here's a cool Mesa Road King mod...



Definitely seems to do brootals well...



And if you can get over this dude's yammering he demonstrates some cool clean and mild dirt tones with a Strat..

[jhale667]

More amp models...oh yes, liking this.

[Coyote]

Lovin' that SLO model...

[jhale667]

I'm likin' a LOT of the models I'm hearing...

[ELVIS]

I might have to find one of those at guitar center on a DAW and try it with one of my Strats...

[Hardrock69]

Gotta love technology.

For the price of a decent tube amp (or less), one can have every amp ever made and then some.

Good thing for all of us who can't afford to run out and blow some spare change on a 1967 Plexi or a JTM45 or something.

[jhale667]

Gotta love technology.

For the price of a decent tube amp (or less), one can have every amp ever made and then some.

Good thing for all of us who can't afford to run out and blow some spare change on a 1967 Plexi or a JTM45 or something.

Pretty amazing, if you think about it... what's more impressive is the models actually SOUND decent...imagining they'd sound even better with Recabinet substituted for the Avid speaker emulations...

[twonabomber]

It's anywhere from $800 -1000, depending on where you get it...

that's a good deal. regular (not M-Powered) Pro Tools is what, $699? Sweetwater has the package for $899, with upgrade to PT 10 and the expansion pack.

[jhale667]

that's a good deal. regular (not M-Powered) Pro Tools is what, $699? Sweetwater has the package for $899, with upgrade to PT 10 and the expansion pack.

Yep...I've seen it slightly cheaper than that, too...

[jhale667]

Completion BUMPAGE.

So last week after doing a tap-dancing LE 8 re-install w/ a version that was for Vista, was THEN able to run the Win 7 update - which finally allowed me to get Pro Tools running AND permitted the crossgrade (nice, since I paid for the @%&#ing license once already) to PT 10 , which saved me like $600 (!!) as opposed to just buying it AGAIN. :killer: Did the install after work, took a dinner and drink break, and after working out a couple of I/O errors, (thought I'd fried my recording drive for a sec) I am fully functional again - and then some (https://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-Software#Features). Here's the track I did just to verify everything was working, but once I had everything configured correctly, it was: select one of the preset beats (first one, since I wasn't sure it was gonna save) and one of my stock PODfarm rhythm tones. Did a rhythm track and it SAVED. :cool: So pulled up another preset I use for leads and slammed a 1-take goof down. Surprisingly quick and easy workflow, almost no latency w/o fucking with it yet, low CPU usage recording stereo guitar tracks...holy crap.

http://soundcloud.com/jayhaleguitar/jameson-jam


Not bad for a 21 hour day and a few Jamesons...right? But confirms the install was successful, and IT WORKS. :biggrin:

[Hardrock69]

Yaaaay!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8GRQHsAVjI

[Nitro Express]

Gotta love technology.

For the price of a decent tube amp (or less), one can have every amp ever made and then some.

Good thing for all of us who can't afford to run out and blow some spare change on a 1967 Plexi or a JTM45 or something.

You can even buy those amps and still not have a magical sounding one. Also, almost all the vacuum tubes are made in Russia. A change in the geopolitical situation could render that supply gone overnight. Yeah tube amps are fun but then the maintenance sometimes becomes a pain. For me it's about sound. If a little black box gets the sound why not?

[jhale667]

Yaaaay!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8GRQHsAVjI

That's exactly what it felt like! :lmao: Looks like I DO have to replace my drive though. But no biggie, it's getting older...

[jhale667]

Fortunately I have a couple of other storage drives, so in the meantime I've just created a new folder on one of them and am off to the races, will just copy whatever onto the new drive when I get it. Gotta love the new option to export and upload your tunes to Soundcloud from within Pro Tools now... handy!

http://soundcloud.com/jayhaleguitar/gone-riff

[jhale667]

:biggrin: M'kay, turns out the recording drive had a USB out too (had totally forgotten), so after finding an adapter, I'm back in business. And I just stuck 8 more gigs of RAM in here - I thought this thing was fast before... :eek:

Update: Still getting 1117 errors on the recording drive, replacing it.

[Hardrock69]

I was just given a PC by a friend.....he had 5 machines and an HP Laptop he wanted wiped, Windows reinstalled, etc. Some of them wouldn't boot up....he wants to sell them on Craigslist....
Got them all fixed, am replacing the hard drive for the laptop.

And for all this, he told me to pick the machine I wanted and keep it. I got a Dell Vostro 200...Intel CoreDuo processor....will handle 4 gigs of Ram...I just happened to have 4 gigs of Geil Black Dragon gaming ram.....and it has a 250 gig hard drive.....am going to sell it and use the cash to buy a 1 TB external USB drive....

[jhale667]

Cool! :baaa: I'm debating between a 1 or 2 TB drive, will probably pick one up this weekend.

[jhale667]

Probably going to break down and pop for & do this download this weekend, too...7000 sound files, and 8000 MIDI drum patterns for $99? It'll do for now...also, not sure if it was a feature in LE I didn't utilize or not, but the PT10 session templates set up multiple MIDI channels, so once I learn how to create a drum track, it's (in theory) drag and drop into the Pro Tools session...

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h217/jhale667/DV016_Jpg_Large_H70047_box.jpg


Eventually need to get a non-crack version of Microsoft Office for this machine, too... no Excel at the moment, could read my track sheets with OpenOffice or some freeware shite, but may as well just get the real thing.

[jhale667]

Here's something cool ... @studiotracks hit me up on Twitter and shot me a link to their library of isolated tracks...pulled up some Bonzo drums, and using YouTube video downloader, was actually able to convert the drum track to "Fool in the Rain" to a .wav file that I could conceivably cut and paste into something (staying within copyright limitations, of course)....fun stuff...and they have tons of tunes from many genres.



Starts off with a bit of "When the Levee Breaks"...which you can't have a problem with... :D

[Hardrock69]

I was told last night of an iPhone app called Jam-something or other that offers a shitload of songs in multi-track format.

For instance, my friend was downloading tracks by Rush for .99 cents each....shit like Geddy's bass line from Limelight....it has gone crazy....


AND....I saw a Seagate 2 TB USB external drive at Walmart today for 89 bucks!

Though I would research it first....Seagate is hit or miss on the quality of their drives....

[Hardrock69]

Wait a minute...7000 files? Good lord!

[jhale667]

Crazy, huh? :D And yeah, I've heard similar things about Seagate... I have Maxtor and Western Digital Drives...but doesn't Maxtor own Seagate?

[FORD]

Crazy, huh? :D And yeah, I've heard similar things about Seagate... I have Maxtor and Western Digital Drives...but doesn't Maxtor own Seagate?

Yeah, Maxtor and Seagate are now the same company. And while it's true that Maxtor and WD used to be considered "good" and Seagate considered "crap", it's not that simple anymore. When I was in college, they bought Seagate hard drives in bulk and about half the case seemed to be bad.

On the other hand, the only hard drive I've ever had which suffered a complete mechanical breakdown which made data recovery impossible was a Western Digital.

I've used all three, but I've probably used Maxtors the most and the longest. Not exactly an endorsement.... but what I would endorse is backing up everything, and burning to disc the stuff you really want to keep forever. And solid state drives if you have extra money lying around, though I expect they should probably start coming down in price, as any technology does after a few years.

[jhale667]

Still debating what to get drive-wise this weekend... probably a Maxtor again if I can find one, we'll see what Fry's has in stock. I'm still feeling like crap so took today off, but just installed EX Drummer, and can't wait to learn how to use it...the first "rock" kit I pulled up sounds HUGE through my monitors! Just going to put stuff down as MIDI tracks once I get it figured out, but it sounds great so far. :baaa:

[jhale667]

OK, said fuck Maxtor or WD, and went with the Pro Tools-recommended OWC 1 TB USB 2.0 external drive (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU4S7S1TB32/), should be here in a few days. Hopefully no recording issues after that. Otherwise all is running well, including getting (finally) Recabinet 3 emulations on some of the older tracks IF I'm able to save them on the old drive, which is kinda hit-and-miss. But what I AM getting done is already sounding pretty cool...

http://soundcloud.com/jayhaleguitar/drunk-n-hugely

[jhale667]

The new external HD got here just in time for the old one to crap out (still runs, but isn't recognized anymore). New one works great. :umm: I think it's the external converter adapter shell connections and not the drive itself that's tanking, so gonna try the $40 OWC conversion kit. Best case scenario it fires up, worst case I'm out close to 3 years of work. We'll see.

I also have been dickering around with EZdrummer and BOOM (the drum sequencer that comes with PT 10) and have finally taught myself how to program drums in Pro Tools. :D Just think, now instead of "your stuff would sound cooler with drums" I'll hear "your stuff would sound cooler with REAL drums"...upgrade! Turns out if your DAW is set in grid mode, it's very similar to grab patterns or individual drum/cymbal hits, and then drag, drop, cut and paste like you would in Excel -which I work with every day at the office, so it was like "hey!" Here's a reeeally basic pattern I laid down as a test:

http://soundcloud.com/jayhaleguitar/i-can-haz-drums

That was EZdrummer, and it's similar in BOOM but you're straight up doing MIDI grids in Pro Tools once like EZdrummer you've got it pulled up as an insert on an Instrument track, dealing with learning that now. I'm also gonna install AcmeBarGig Head Case Lite on this machine, just to have a larger stash of amp emulations than PODfarm alone would provide. You can write (in the lite version 5 of) your own based on their presets, and then and logo'd or non-logo'd amp skins. PLUS they seem to have a few more of these emulations goin' on, how COULDN'T I?




http://i1131.photobucket.com/albums/m559/headcaseampskins/Boogie.jpg

"Nice skin, man!" :baaa:

[Hardrock69]

Right on, man!

[jhale667]

Right on, man!

Thanks. :D Was able to combine the track I did Saturday in EZdrummer with one in BOOM.. works pretty cool! :baaa:

http://soundcloud.com/jayhaleguitar/i-can-haz-drums-and-boom

[twonabomber]

Don't go all Tommy Lee/Methods of Mayhem on us now... :D

I have been playing around with loops in Sony Acid. More of a techno thing so far, but it's pretty fun.

[jhale667]

Don't go all Tommy Lee/Methods of Mayhem on us now... :D



:lmao:

[jhale667]

Installing a few EZdrummer EZX expansions kits (more heavy sounds so as NOT to go all Methods of Mayhem with BOOM)... can't be a bad thing, right? ;) Got the "Metalheads" kit, the "Classics" (still awaiting download), and the "Drum Kit from Hell" EZX packs...(pre-Black Friday Musician's Friend half-price dealio). The drum samples sound killer!



And "The Classics" pack has the "Glyn Johns (sp)" 4-mic set up too, for the whole classic Zep, Cream 60s-70s vibe...




:guitar:

[jhale667]

"DKFH", "Metalheads", and "The Classsics" sounded so good I grabbed the "Twisted" kit as well...gotta love 2-for-1 sales. :bigwink:

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h217/jhale667/480131_10151311550572246_1913432697.jpg

Pretty stocked up.

[jhale667]

Seems I still need the "Vintage" EZX at minimum, due to the fact IT's the one with all the Ludwig kit samples (think Ringo poppy, or Bonham and Banali heavy). The OWC HD adapter will show up this week, hopefully that will solve the issue and I can start writing drum tracks for all the (pre-existing) tunes. Dragging and dropping the beats, once you've found them (another cool thing, all the new beats you get with each kit work with the other ones, so you can mix & match drum tones) is pretty easy. Hardest part so far seems to be figuring out, once you've got the basic beat down, how to throw in fills from the library that fit what you've already laid down. I guess eventually I'll figure out how to do them from scratch with MIDI but not quite there yet... did I mention I need a MIDI controller now? :lmao:

One extremely cool job perk I also made use of this week is the Microsoft Home Usage Program...basically got shot a link through the office IT guy that allowed me to download Office 2010 for like $20 (including a backup disc they'll mail later). So now at least if I can't recover the tracks I know all the tempos and what guitars and tones I used on each of them since I can open my Excel track log again...

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h217/jhale667/Trackworkbookscreengrab.jpg

Already logged the info for the Bomber guitar and the two tunes I've started on working on the new drive, too... if your company offers the HUP do it, saved like $80...! ;)


:guitar:

[jhale667]

So, should I install Reaper (http://www.reaper.fm/) to run amp emulation programs that aren't PT compatible? Hardrock, that's your primary DAW isn't it? It seems like a long way to go as far as "workarounds" go, but I DO like what I've heard of Headcase....

[jhale667]

Turns out I might not need Reaper after all (though the ability to rewire tracks from Reaper to PT could come in handy)...worked with Richard D at Ampskins designs last night to get Acme Bar Gig Headcase working in Pro Tools. It took til almost midnight PST (was early AM for him in Australia), but if you install FXpansion VST to RTAS adapter 2.1 it allows you to use literally hundreds of normally incompatible VST plug-ins in PT as if they were native... HeadCase being one of them.

Funny, we sat there working out the kinks and I suggested a screen-shot tutorial (http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=18947), which he did as we were working, and had it posted like an hour after we were done...very cool, helpful dude! :baaa:


And unfortunately the OWC enclosure showed up, and did the same deal as the old...the HD is indeed gimpy. Couldn't back it up before the old system died and didn't realize I'd need to so quickly with new system - bottom line, 2 years of work down the drain. :( Only bright spot is everything can be re-recorded at 32-bit now and I have way more amp sound options to use, but it's still gonna be a huge, time-consuming PITA.