Amberwolf's Music Studio Technical Stuff

[amberwolf]

Local ES member wturber was about to recycle some old computer components, when he saw my post in the trike thread mentioning I was looking for something, so he brought the parts by last week, and over Thanksgiving and then the last couple days I've put a computer together that *finally* lets me work with my equipment and projects the way I used to before the fire destroyed the computer I used then (an old Intel Core2duo 3200, IIRC).

Pics later, I didn't take any while working on it, so I'll take some of the finished system when I'm not as wiped-out.

It's a dual-Xeon 2.8ghz; each fo the Xeons is a dual-core type. Motherboard is a Tyan S2668, has the option for SATA but no chip/etc installed, so had to use a PCI board for that (Adaptec S3112-based, IIRC). Video card is NVidia-something-or-other AGP. Uses a fan on it's heatsink, gonna fix that by swapping out to a larger heatsink that will let it work fanless. (noise is kinda problematic in a music studio computer).

CPUs came with REALLY LOUD fans on them that move a fair bit of air, but they're only a couple inches (if that) across, so they have to be high-RPM to do it. SInce it sounds like a small vacuum-cleaner even inside a case, they have to go. I tried running them at 5v instead of 12v, to slow them down by more than half, but it's not enough noise reduction, and then they don't move nearly enough air--CPU temperature went up to the 40C+ range just sitting idle.

So...I had an old dead (bad caps) PSU I'd been saving to either fix or use for parts, that years ago (win98 era) I'd replaced it's little internal fans with a 5"+ diameter AC-powered fan that only runs around 1500RPM, and is pretty quiet for what it is and does. I've had laptops that were louder. Instead of screwing it down, I glued it in place with a thick bead of silicone (to dampen vibrations/noise; it was my music pc at the time). So rather than taking the fan off the PSU cover, I pulled the whole cover off, and simply inserted it's edges into the outer edge of each of the two Xeon CPU heatsinks, so the fan now blows directly down onto those.

Originally the fan wired into the AC socket on the PSU, so I ran a separate AC cord for it out of this new PC case (later maybe I'll wire it right into the new PSU--for now it's switched so I can turn it off for a few moments during critical microphone recordings--there's enough other air circulation in the case taht it won't overheat the CPUs in that amount of time). If I run across it, I have a 30V transformer-based wallwart for some old printer, that I can take the transformer out of, and put a switch in there that disconnects the AC from the fan, then connects the transformer between the AC and the fan, so it still runs but at about 1/4 to 1/3 of the original speed.



I did still ahve to deal with doing the f6 driver install during the repair-reinstall of XP, since the chipset of this motherboard is different (of course) from the system this copy of XP was on before. Also, I had to use the SATA HDD and PCI card to do it on, because right now none of my other desktop systems are working right, and nothing on any of my utility cd's or thumbdrives I could to boot to on this one could be used to clone the SATA HDD to a PATA HDD. I ahd a problem with floppy disks and drives that wasted some hours until I got a combination that worked to read the driver, so the whole process from plugging board/PSU/drives/cards together to getting a basic bootable system with my studio-xp setup on it took over 10 hours. :/

However, of course it had to be re-activated before I could even log in to install drivers/etc. Since there were no network drivers yet, I couldn't re-activate. I've gone thru phone-activation before, and the hassle is tremendous despite me having my very own complete retail copy of XP in original folder with key and all, that I really do use on only one computer at a time (I have other complete ones to use on other machines as needed). So I used one of the various "bypass" routines posted around the web to get into Windows long enough to install all the drivers. Then I tried to do the activation over the internet, and it says it cant' reach the activation servers. So I'll probably have to deal with this again at Christmas (since the bypass usually works only 30 days, and only 4 times total).

I loaded up a CPU-heavy project that barely ran on my original system from before the fire, and it didn't even put a load on this one--maybe a few percent according to the in-program meter, and a few more according to XP's monitor. I copy/pasted all teh tracks and effects to 8x the CPU/memory loading, and it began to get a bit boggy, showing up to 140% cpu usage within the program (which I've never ever seen before--typically anything over 70-80% will simply stop the transport playback), and something close to 80% usage in XP's monitor. Even then, even with the lower airflow on the CPUs, they didn't get past the low 50's C.


That's basically as far as I got the first day, so yesterday I dug out a case to put it in, and the old system from Bigmoose that I'd had the GL8*24 card and other stuff in, and assembled it all, and amazingly it all still worked.


Basic temperature is up a few degrees to around 40C inside the case, as opposed to out in open air, but it still doesn't get past the mid-50's under loads that begin to cause garbled sound and near-locked-up-unresponsive-GUI.

Rest of the system appears to be working ok, and projects load up well, both old and new. Iv'e added a few new synths and effects in the past couple years so I had to install those, but other than that it's had no problems with the music-studio stuff.

I spent the last half of yesterday playing music with it, though nothing worth posting up--just noodling around having fun with it.







******************************************************************



For those still reading, a bit of history, condensed from four years of frustration:

I've had a few computers working with some of the equipment, like the AMD Athlon desktop Bigmoose sent me right after the fire, various systems local friends gave me (mostly pieces to build from) and the little HP P4-something (I think) Grin Tech sent me (that used to be one of their office systems) after I moved back into the house, and after that died the Win10 laptop that Greenmachine sent me, but none of them could use everything for one reason or another, and all were pretty restrictive in the projects I could run / create, either because the systems were too slow or had too little RAM in the case of the various desktops, or because the software (or hardware/drivers) was not compatible (mostly with the Win10 laptop).

Between some stuff my friend Bill gave me shortly before he moved back to Texas, and some stuff eTrike sent me a while back, and things I already had, I built a pretty good system that would've been comparable to what I had before the fire. But I could not get it working with my stuff, because it did not have a built-in FDD controller, and to install XP on it I had to use the "F6 driver install" during setup (or repair reinstall), or else it'd just BSOD whenever it actually started to boot into XP post-setup. I tried slipstreaming drivers into a setup CD, but that didnt' work either. I also tried the various workarounds for no FDD on a system to do the F6 driver install, no joy. In each of these cases, it'd appear to work, but it didn't actually do it, or else it'd have some other problem. It could have hardware issues, but it passes all the dozens of tests I can throw at it, and swapping parts out to troubleshoot takes too long because I have to start over from the beginning every time. I eventually was so frustrated with it that it sat long enough to accumulate a layer of dust thick enough to not see many of the labels/etc thru. :/

Similar problems happened with various other systems with no SATA controller on them, and nothing that worked had the same chipset as my old computer, so a repair-reinstall was always necessary. Installing fresh XP and then reinstalling everything for the music studio from scratch was a no-go, simply way too complicated and long a process. I tried it a couple of times and the first one, after several months of trying, I gave up on, because I'd had to start over from scratch several times, due to not having hte right order of installation to make everything see everything else, plus not having installation media anymore for a bunch of things (lost in the fire, companies no longer exist, etc), and having to copy files and registry entries/etc over from a "working" installation. The second one I gave up on sooner.

 

[amberwolf]

Merry frocking xmas to me.

Today I felt inspired for the first time in months (the overhead music at work beating itself into my head usually destroys anything of my own that might be developing in there), and powered on the computer to see what I could get out.

"Windows must be activated before you can log on."

Crap. Well, so we just activate it...if it wont' work by internet (problem I had last time) we'll just do it by phone. Clicked the button to take me to that, and then:

"Windows is already activated", with an OK button (no other choices).

Click OK, and it takes me back to the login screen. That's a bad sign.

Click the login button, and:

"Windows must be activated before you can log on."

frock.

So now we're back to this merry go round of hell.

AFAIK the only way to fix that is to wipe and reinstall, which is a months (at least) long process, and I've had enough of that crap for the rest of my life.

I can try another repair-reinstall over what's there, which will take at least several hours, and who knows if it will give me the same error or not. If it does, I'll have to recopy windows off the old computer's harddisk, then repair-reinstall over *that* again, another several hours. Then see if activation will work or not.

Can't somebody just publish a hack to cut out the whole damned XP-activation crap, since M$ doesn't give a crap about XP anyway anymore? I know---they figure anybody with these problems will just buy a new computer with win10...but there's a lot of people that can't do that--like me--because they have things that can't be replaced that won't run on newer windows.


There used to be pirated versions of XP that didn't have activation...but they couldn't be installed *over* an existing XP, so they don't do me any good even if they're still around.

But if I had the money, I'd pay someone to make a hack for this bullshit that prevents me from using any of my my own legitimately-purchased OS versions in a legitimate way on a single computer, per the licensing agreement.



All I want to do is make music....

 

[The fingers]

I pretty much gave up on the computer music stuff about 7 years ago, I couldn't figure out how to mix down material. All I wanted to do was get rid of the pops between songs, and add a little warming effects to make it not sound cut and dried. Now I've gotten rid of my electric guitars, downsizing and simplifying further still.

 

[dustNbone]

I'm looking into a solution for you amberwolf. It appears the activation requires a working install on IE8, and if this gets corrupted (or it's user profile does more accurately) then it loops like that. You might need to put IE8 installer on a USB stick and install it in safe mode, but I'm still looking into it. Been a while since I had to deal with stupid XP problems, mostly stupid Win7 and 10 problems recently.

Anyways, I'll let you know when I have a proper solution.

 

[dustNbone]

OK so as far as I can see what happens is when you perform a repair on XP, it downgrades to Internet Explorer 6 but Activation requires IE8. So in typical Microsoft fashion, the "Repair" function does indeed break it.

What you need to do is download the IE8 installer for XP from here http://download.microsoft.com/downl...E-936B-73AC6F95AE11/IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe and put in on a USB drive. I'd rename the file something like ie8install.exe just to make the next step easier.

Boot the broken PC into safe mode (smash F8 at boot and select "Safe Mode With Command Prompt" from the menu. Log in as administrator, it will warn you about safe mode, etc. In the command line type e: (or whatever the USB drive is, your CD/DVD is usually d: so e: is usually what gets assigned to the first removable drive) and press enter. Then type ie8install.exe (or whatever you named the installer file) and press enter. It should install IE8, after it does reboot the PC normally and the activation should work normally provided the computer has a valid internet connection, if not phone activation should work correctly now as well.

Hope this helps, if not there's a few other things that you can try but this is the simplest and least intrusive to the system so try it first.

I'll be watching the thread while I work today so let me know how it goes.

 

[amberwolf]

Oh, I wish it was that simple. And I definitely appreciate the input and help, and anything else you can think of I'll try.

The problem with installing anything (at least from M$) is that since it won't let me log in after their required restarts, they never finish installing, so they won't run (or won't run correctly). Some things will--anything that doesn't require a restart installs and runs (like Opera browser).

Regular safe mode doesn't work either, because it says activation requires normal mode to work, so it won't even try to log in there.

In normal mode, I can use the windowskey-U to bring up narrator, then f1 for help on that, then help-internet options in that, then help in that, then somewhere in there I can bring up "online help" that opens my browser, where I can then use file-open to access stuff on teh computer (can even open explorer for a few seconds at a time before activation shuts it off, but not long enough to do the usual OOBE hacks; I'm just not fast enough).

I can even download things off the internet, or run installers of various kinds, including newer IE versions.

But since it won't let me log in after their required restarts, they never finish installing, so they won't run.

The safemode with command prompt "works", but installations won't work there any better, because they have to finish in normal mode after login, which it won't let me do.

The only way there is to fix it at this point is to remove all the windows stuff including registry, then re-copy from the original harddisk, then redo the repair-reinstall.

I don't know that IE8 vs 6 is always a problem either, because I *have* successfully activated some of the installs just fine, on other PCs I've built in the last four years--the problem with those is they turned out to have various intermittent hardware problems that caused crashes and glitches while trying to create or edit or record music (which is very resource intensive). In troubleshooting the issues, I'd wind up basically having to build a different PC, which would sometimes be activatable, and sometimes not. Sometimes activation works fine to start with, but then later for no reason I can see I end up with the crap that's going on now, in one variation or another--most commonly that it'd get stuck in the "have to reactivate but it wont' let me, so have to use the OOBEtimer hack every 30 days to use it" loop.

I've gone thru all of this crap (and a lot more) at least dozens of times before in the last four years, trying to get a system working, and had hoped I'd finally gotten this one done right, but no, M$'s greed still prevents legitimate users from using purchased products where the pirates can always keep on using their hacked versions trouble-free.

Anybody know a good pirate/hacker that works real cheap?

 

[dustNbone]

You should be able to do the ODBE "hack" from safe mode command prompt, I've literally done that dozens of times over the years. If you can't do that then there's something quite wrong with the windows install. Honestly at the point you're at, I'd get a Linux live USB of some kind, use that to delete the Windows files/folders off the drive (saving the rest of the data on the drive) and starting with a fresh install of Windows. I woulds also use that LiveUSB to check for viruses/malware on the HDD to make sure you don't infect your new install. The folders/files you need to delete for this are:

C:\WINDOWS
C:\Documents And Settings (Recommend just renaming it, then you can recover things from it after reinstall)
C:\Program Files (If you have any programs installed that you can't access installers for then rename this as well)

To save the kind of activation grief you're having now in the future (and to save on a whole lot of windows updating to get it current) I'd just use one of the integrated releases (pirated I suppose but honestly there's enough legit licences of XP out there for every man on earth). It'll have all the updates up to when it was published, and actually include hardware drivers for most common hardware. Better in every way than the pain in the ass process of setting up a "legit" Windows install.

I don't want to post a direct link to pirated software in the forum, but if you go to piratebay and search

XP.PRO.SP3.CORPORATE.STUDENT.EDITION.CDR.APRIL.2017

it will only return one hit and that's what you need. The easiest thing to do is burn it to a CD or DVD because XP (and some older BIOSes) can be a dick about booting from USB sticks.

In my experience, trying to fix a seriously broken XP install is nearly futile, but doing a complete reinstall isn't that painful with the right tools. If that doesn't work you have a hardware problem, most likely a failing hard drive but faulty RAM comes up from time to time as well. It could be some kind of virus damage too. But it's really hard to nail down any of those things as a problem with a gimpy Windows install.

Do yourself a favor and find a way to start fresh.

EDIT: Link to Linux Mint (MATE Edition) download page https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=247

MATE is a lightweight desktop environment, should run fine on anything XP does, and get the 32bit version to ensure compatibility with older hardware. Once it boots up you'll find your Windows HDD under the "Places" menu up top, works pretty much the same as any file manager.

 

[amberwolf]

Honestly at the point you're at, I'd get a Linux live USB of some kind, use that to delete the Windows files/folders off the drive (saving the rest of the data on the drive) and starting with a fresh install of Windows.

I can't. Apologies for the wall of text...I'm sure I've put this elsewhere on the forum (probably the housefire thread), but here's the basics (I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out). See the next post for an idea or two that I don't know exactly how to implement or if it would work.

If I have to reinstall windows, I'd just do it on a blank harddisk and start over. I've already tried this several times. But then it takes me months (at least) to reinstall all the software, because sometimes things break during install, and then other things don't work anymore, unless I get them in just the right order. Once something "breaks" like that, then the only fix for it is to wipe and start completely over from scratch--I don't know why, but it can't be fixed by uninstall/reinstall (or else doing so breaks other things that were "connected" somehow via the registry, or shared files, etc). Usually it doesn't break until I'm several days into the process of installing things.

It's extremely frustrating, and after a while I just can't deal with it anymore, and have to walk away from it, usually for weeks, sometimes for months, depending on the "spare time" I have available. Even if that means not making any music. (I can still play stuff on the ASR88, even record it on it's inbuilt sequencer, just cant' do the stuff I really want to do, with the system I know).

Since the last install I "got right" was probably a decade ago, or close to that, I have no idea what the "right" order is. I've already tried this for four years, off and on, to get a system working from scratch, and never did, between the software and hardware issues.

And even without those problems, there is some stuff that simply cannot be reinstalled, because the companies no longer exist, and either I don't have the install media (lost in the fire) or else it can't be activated as their servers no longer exist (or tehy don't support the old versions anymore, but their new ones don't do the same stuff or open presets/etc from the old ones, so upgrading is pointless). Some of the stuff came for free from beta testing, but was never released (or the company went away, or both).

Another problem is that presets I created for various effects, synths, tools, etc., are stored in the registry (stupid way to do it--they should use separate files for that that a user could back up), and I need those. It'd take me months (or years) to recreate them all, if I even could.

The XP computers from Bigmoose and Justin and the win10 from Greenmachine I got working with the very basics, but there's a lot of stuff, like the ones with no installers or activation available now, that I can't use (and so can't open the many projects that used those).

One reason it takes so long to do this stuff is I only have a little time here and there to work on things, and I have to decide what to spend it on. When I start trying to make music, and stuff doesn't work (or isn't there), then I have ot waste time finding alternatives, or making new setups to do the same thing, and that usually takes me right out of the flow of creating whatever it was I was doing. After that, it's just technical twiddling around, which isn't any fun, and doesnt' usually get me where I want, and leaves me frustrated. At taht point I don't want to do anything but walk away from it. Or I just dont' have time anymore to work on it. Then days (or usually weeks) later, I get more time, go back and try to make music, find some other broken thing, work on fixing that, and ahve to walk away again. And so on.


The computer music thing has always been like that, to one degree or another, until I got that system working (that was destroyed in teh fire). It's why I became a computer tech in the first place, even why I learned electronics (that and ham radio)--because I couldn't afford to pay anyone to setup or fix any of my stuff for me, so I had to learn how to do it, and I got really good at it. But I hate it.

If I could, I'd pay someone to do all this stuff for me, so I could just make music and do my art and create things.

Heck, I'd do that for my bikes adn everything else I need, too, just create the basic idea prototype, then get osmeone else to build me the real thing out of new stuff....but that's all a pipe dream.

I woulds also use that LiveUSB to check for viruses/malware on the HDD

There's definitely none. This computer is not used on the internet--it is only for music creation, and other artwork stuff. It doesn't normally even get plugged into the router--if I need to get files to it I use an external USB HDD. The only internet stuff that's been done on it was last night, to get the IE / etc to see if it would make it work. And to try to connect to the activation server. :/

Under most circumstances, most of the networking services (and hardware) are not even enabled. (I made sure they were reenabled after the repair-reinstall, and hadn't turned them off yet, so they're still enabled now). (quite a few other services are also normally disabled, as they aren't needed for the programs I use and some actively interfere with smooth realtime operation of the recording / playback stuff).

Still, I already have some livecd's I can check it with, so I'll do that, but I cant' see how it would have gotten infected with anything.

To save the kind of activation grief you're having now in the future (and to save on a whole lot of windows updating to get it current) I'd just use one of the integrated releases (pirated I suppose but honestly there's enough legit licences of XP out there for every man on earth). It'll have all the updates up to when it was published, and actually include hardware drivers for most common hardware. Better in every way than the pain in the ass process of setting up a "legit" Windows install.

If it can install as a repair-reinstall over XP, I'd be willing to try it. If it will only work as a clean install, I can't really use it. I'll look and see what I can find, though---thanks. It's worth a shot.

In my experience, trying to fix a seriously broken XP install is nearly futile, but doing a complete reinstall isn't that painful with the right tools. If that doesn't work you have a hardware problem, most likely a failing hard drive but faulty RAM comes up from time to time as well. It could be some kind of virus damage too. But it's really hard to nail down any of those things as a problem with a gimpy Windows install.

The hardware (of this particular computer, at least) tests ok with various suites, including a long ramtest, and hdd tests including spinrite (which often finds things others don't) run on the drive before I bothered using it. Virus is very unlikely.


I think the problem is rooted in that I no longer have the original XP install media used to create this installation (lost in teh fire most likely), so I'm using a different new set, same version and SP level, but different product key, and AFAICR the original key wouldn't work with the new media (I don't even remember what the old key was, now; I have it documented somewhere I'm sure but stuff has been shuffled around). So the activation stuff craps on me because it thinks something hinky is going on.

That's my best guess.

Do yourself a favor and find a way to start fresh.

Just not possible, or I would have gone that route to start with.

 

[amberwolf]

If there was some way to do these things, a fresh install *might* work:

--Export all of the registry *except* the parts that windows relies on for activation/etc.,
--just collect all the files (in *all* folders) that are not part of the windows install itself, and put all those on a separate drive,
--reimport those registry entries into a new fresh XP install
--recopy all those files back to where they should go,

Then I wouldn't have to reinstall any of the software, as it ought to just work.

But it probably wouldn't work even if it was that "easy".

And teh registry export has to include the hardware keys, too, as well as all the software stuff, because some of the software uses hardware CLSID stuff to create it's activation/registration info. Some of it uses other wierd stuff in files and in registry to do that. At least one version of SONAR itself uses a file that looks like a CLSID in the "outlook" data / etc folders inside the D&S subfolders, which is an asinine thing to do, as it doesn't have anything to do with outlook and shouldn't be sticking stuff in folders taht don't belong to it--but that's how Cakewalk chose to create their activation/registration routines. There's a number of programs that do that sort of crap, and is part of why I keep trying to recreate the computer system I had before the fire.

Heck, I wouldn't even ahve to do any of this reinstall-repair stuff if I could get a board that had the same chipset on it, so it could boot up normally without the BSOD that happens when there's no driver for the boot device in the windows already on there.



Alternately, if you know a way to "install" drivers for "new" chipssets into an existing install of windows, without actually booting to that install, that would also keep me from having to do the repair reinstall, which would also probably keep me from having to do the activation, which would probably keep me from having to deal with all these other problems.

In theory I could run the "new chipset" installer while booted to a board with the old chipset on it, but if I had a board with the old chipset I wouldn't have to do it in the first place. :/

 

[amberwolf]

@ dustNbone, thank you for pointing me to the student thing. I located it and found that it does work, and it actually already has all the drivers for the boards slipstreamed in, so no "f6" driver issues during setup.

Unfortunately it does not have a repair-reinstall option, so to test it I just let it do it's thing on my trashed system drive, and at least it works, only having to install my music-hardware-specific drivers. To get any of the software to work I'd have to reinstall all of that, which for so many things just isn't possible, but it does function for windows itself.

At present what it does is sees an existing windows install, and just installs in parallel with it, essentially as a dual-boot. It leaves the old one intact as "C:\Windows", isntalling itself into a new "C:\Windows1" folder, and leaves all the old D&S stuff and users, and makes new ones of those in the D&S folder. It does reinstall all the windows Program Files stuff over the old ones, but that doesn't matter--it still leaves all the old non-windows PF stuff intact.

So if I can find out how to alter it's installer routine to give back the repair-reinstall option, I'll try that over the broken windows; if it works at all I'll reghost and do it over a "clean" original music-computer setup that hasn't been booted to the activation issues yet, and see if that just works. (it could, if I'm really lucky).


I did try a couple of registry view/export/merge tools and tricks to get the music-software-specific keys moved over to the new one, along with copying any non-windows files from the old install to the new one, but the software still won't run without being reinstalled--there must be keys hidden in there I can't manually locate, and just merging both registries would probably nuke the new windows install (none of the tools I can find have a way to automatedly just merge the things that *arent* already there, and it'd take me years to do it manually).


But there is actually a light at the end of the tunnel...even if it's just an oncoming train.

 

[dustNbone]

Sorry for slow reply, just noticed your new post in the thread.

Ahh yes the old Windows version game.

The key is a file on the Windows XP Setup media (CD/USB) called setupp.ini (in the i386 folder) that describes what version (Retail, VLK, OEM) it is, and what type of CD key it will accept. You can edit this and make it whatever "version" you need it to be, and as long as it matches the version installed on the PC, you should get the option to Repair. If they don't match, no Repair.

There's no actual difference between the different versions other than licensing, all the installation files are common among them.

Here is an article detailing all the stuffs.

http://www.thetechguide.com/howto/setuppini.html

Hopefully you're able to use a USB stick to install, and can just edit that file and run Setup again. Otherwise you need to use WinImage or something to edit the ISO file, and burn the modified one to a CD.

 

[Dauntless]

[youtube]LoZk51a-A5s[/youtube]

 

[amberwolf]

That kid plays way better than I do (or probably ever will).

But I have fun, so it's all good.

The key is a file on the Windows XP Setup media (CD/USB) called setupp.ini (in the i386 folder) that describes what version (Retail, VLK, OEM) it is, and what type of CD key it will accept. You can edit this and make it whatever "version" you need it to be, and as long as it matches the version installed on the PC, you should get the option to Repair. If they don't match, no Repair.
<snip>
Here is an article detailing all the stuffs.
http://www.thetechguide.com/howto/setuppini.html

Thanks! I hadn't gotten around to looking for the info yet, so this should save me a fair bit of time.

That should be a fair bit simpler than I had expected.

Hopefully you're able to use a USB stick to install, and can just edit that file and run Setup again. Otherwise you need to use WinImage or something to edit the ISO file, and burn the modified one to a CD.

The original test install posted above I'd just burned the ISO to a DVD and booted to that, but I don't remember if this old Tyan board boots to USB media--if it does that's easy to deal with, if not, I've done ISO editing before, long ago when I built a custom XP installer with slipstreamed drivers and programs for my main system (unforutnately I no longer have that; it was with teh computer that burned in the fire almost five years ago now).

We'll see next vacation most likely, last week of April, unless I run into bad weather on my regular weekends preventing me from doing the outside stuff I would normally have to do. (this could happen this coming monday, with lots of gusty winds >25mph and rain predicted).

 

[amberwolf]

Was too busy finishing up my brothers trike to ridability and some other house/yard stuff, so didnt get to the music computer stuff.


However, on the guitar front, I put the pickup back in the electric guitar, because my brother got me a pickup for the acoustic thats actually designed for that; its not a high end one but its a humbucker under-the-strings soundhole pickup, with a 1/4 female jack that clips to the strap pin on the base of the guitar. Works pretty well. Significantly better than the first-act transplanted pickup.


I also found a program called MIDIGuitar v2 by JamOrigin
https://www.jamorigin.com/
that works at least as well as the Yamaha G10 I lost in the fire, and has a lot mroe features--and it works with a regular guitar, so you dont have to put on headphones to play (the G10 used all one size string so it was discordant with whatever you were playing, so using it without headphones or really high volume was really annoying).

Im just playing with the trial version, whih doesnt save and only works standalone, but the full one saves patches you create, and can be used as a plugin inside SONAR and other programs.

It has a number of useful modes for self-accompaniment, and it also works with any VST plugins you have on your system already.

 

[amberwolf]

Got my first actual piano; was fun bringing it home.

Then getting it into the house and moving furniture around just to get it into the bedroom (it's just long enough to make me have to move everything except the bed itself away from teh door end of the room).


Wasn't tuned right even before the ride bringing it home--lot of notes slightly off, but the entire piano was tuned a half step low for some reason. :/

So tuning it was a process that's not completely done yet.


Am using a shareware app called Tunelab in "free" mode (which has limitations I can live with) on the old tablet from Bill (sometimes the tablet acts up in wierd ways, usually whenever you need it most to work right...but it still has uses as long as you don't depend on it).



Neat app, much easier to tune with than something like a guitar tuner, or the old tuning fork methods. Tell it which note you're tuning, and it shows a spike in the frequency graph of the actual string sound, so you can tune and watch it move till it lines up in the center, then watch the cents bar until it's "full" showing fully tuned. You can zoom in on the centerline to more clearly see the distance of the spike from the line if you like.

The hard part is muting the harmonic strings of the one you're tuning, while adjusting the pin with the (DIY) piano hammer, and striking the key to sound the string, all at the same time. Tried making a few kinds of mutes, but none of them worked well, so I just kept doing it with a fingertip.

Once I'm done with the basic tuning, I'll go back and fine-tune each set of harmonic strings to resonate correctly.

Is playable now except for the most righthand octave and a half; that's all still a half-step off.

Doesn't sound as nice as a grand piano would, but I don't have room for one in the bedroom anyway. Unless I build a bed on top of it or under it. :lol:

 

[amberwolf]

Been a while since I made any music worth sharing, but here's one I started a few days ago, and it's ready enough (if not perfect):

Cloudwalkers:
https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v4/player.cfm?songID=13827051

It's almost all (real) guitar, with two small synth parts over the top, and synth percussion, all done in SONAR 7.


EDIT: Someone asked how I processed the guitar tones, so:

I have four guitar tracks.

The first is the one I laid the basics of teh song down in, where i just played until I had something useful, and cut several minutes of the beginning out entirely, reducing it to the 9 or so it is now. Recorded in dry via the Avid FastTrackProUSB.

In SONAR's effects bin for that track it has Wusikstation's FX, set to preset 16, with some of the levels of controls tweaked (don't remember what I adjusted, would have to compare the defaults to what I have to figure that out; I just tweaked till it sounded like I wanted). Next is SONAR's SonitusFX Delay, which is basically jsut a stereo delay, set to sync with the host with a left delay of 1 beat and a right delay of 3/4, which at the 99bpm of the project gives me 600ms/450ms. There's a crossfeed of about 10% between the two, and a feedback of about 13%, and a mix of 67% wet. THen there's SONAR's SonitusFX Delay, set to the Big Blue preset (kind of a big hall) tweaked up to be fairly diffuse.


This track's main audio clip is also cloned to the Bass track, which has the SonitusFX Delay in it's bin with basically the same settings as the above, except only about 10% feedback and 6% crossfeed. The bass has a sub-bus it goes to that has the Sonitus Multiband EQ in it, which is setup for Vintage Compression and the EQ maxing out the bass up to about 80hz, then the next band up to about 300hz a few dB above normal, then the rest of teh bands way down below normal or zeroed. Effectively this could just be put in the bass track itself, as this song has no ohter stuff routed thru it, but it's part of my template so I just use it this way.


The "fat" lead guitar track uses the same effect types as the first track, in it's own bin, except it has the VST BJ Overdrive between Wusik and Delay. Deptha and volume are maxed, with drive at about 45. The reverb settings are almost the same, but the early reflections are set much lower.


The overlay track (the high pitched bits here and there) has the WusikStation FX with teh same preset as the tohers, then teh SonitusFX Modulator set to "Creeping Feedback" which is a string phaser, I tweaked it but I think most of the settings are the same. Then the same delay, but with feedback at 25% and mix at 30%.


I didn't adjust the tone or volume controls on the guitar for any of them, both are at max clockwise, so full high tones and full volume.


All of those except bass track feed to an Audio sub buss, whihc has the SonitusFX Multiband EQ set to th Vintage Master preset, untouched.

All the busses go to a Main Buss that has another SFX MEQ, which I think was originally the VM preset, but I've tweaked it here and there enough that I don't recall where it started--but it is still very similar to that preset. It's pretty flat EQ, average compression, mostly just there to ensure the final mix doesn't distort but still "fills" the speakers. Without it, the audio is more dynamic, but must be turned down significantly to keep it from peaking out in a number of places in almost any project.

The best way to use a final EQ/comp like this is to automate it so it's bypassed almost all the time, and then just adjust it's mix ratio (or knees) so durign the too-loud parts it is compressing sufficiently to prevent clipping, but that most of the time it leaves everything dynamic.

 

[amberwolf]

I've been looking for a hardware compressor for a long time, to help with recording vocals via mic and whatnot, and for some guitar stuff, but it's tough to find a good one at any price in my lack-of-budget. Mostly I find them for $100 and up, that would only deal with one source.

Sort of recently (few months ago?), however, I ended up with a used Yamaha MG-166C someone didn't want anymore (it has several scratchy pots and switches, but I'm unlikely to use it to fade anything manually; that will all be done in the computer later).
https://cvp.com/pdf/mg206c_manual.pdf
It has a compressor on several of it's channels (though oddly it does not have that on the one mic channel that has phantom power...which means it won't work the way I'd like it to on the better mics I have, but I can still patch one channel to another's input and use it that way).

It didn't come with it's ac adapter, however, so I looked and looked for one I could use or adapt. It uses AC input, 18VAC @800mA on two inverse-phase inputs with a common ground (internally it's power supply makes a positive and negative voltage DC bus out of this, to run the various op-amp circuits). But in the weeks I'd been looking locally at my usual thriftstores and yard sales, I couldn't even find an 18VAC transformer (or anything with one in it) of more than a couple dozen mA. (The one 18VAC transformer I already have is required for my desktop PC audio card's external portion). Online, they go for up to $100 each, but typically about $60, for the original (or clone) units made for this series of mixer.

I was about to start unwinding and rewinding some transformers I have here (a PITA I would rather not do), when one of my internet searches turned up a series of hits on a Chinese site called "TomTop", which I'd never heard of. But they had several versions of this, including one that's 17VAC x2 at 600mA...which also had several sellers, one of which had it for various prices depending on the refresh of the page. Once, it came up as $12 and change, including shipping, so I gambled on it. Took over a month, but it did finally arrive, and it works. Gets pretty hot, so I'll probably want to open up it's already ventilated casing, and add a fan to it. Personally, I doubt it's actually built to match the mA rating it's listed at, but it does function, and it also had the connector on it this mixer uses, which itself can cost anything from a couple bucks (plus shipping several times that) to nearly $20 (sometimes including shipping).


Anyway, it's going to help doing recording of stuff, once I learn it's functions and make wiring to hook it up to the various things I want to use it to record.



Someone else I know also provided me a used Ibanez basic 6-string electric bass guitar, it's dinged up a little but it works fine, just needed a bit of setup and tuning and a new 9v battery. The output connector didn't make a good connection, but taking it out and bending the contacts a bit fixed that. Strings appear fine, almost unused. Holds tuning well, too, which is better than my other electric (the First Act thing posted earlier in this thread).



I also ran across some cheap bits on Amazon to try to fix up some of the problems with the FirstAct guitar; have to post about those later; the dogs seem to need my attention at the moment.

 

[amberwolf]

I forgot to come back to this. The FA guitar improvments were to replace the single humbuckerish-like pickup (which didn't actually have a mounting, and was just held in place with some bits of foam in it's hole) with a prewired faceplate that has three pickup sets--two singles, and a humbucker, as well as a switch to go between them and two tone knobs and one volume.

Had to dremel out holes in the FA body for the two new pickups, teh switch, and the three knobs (since they don't line up with the existing spots for the original two knobs); it was pretty easy to install, though I had to modify the faceplate a bit since it's a slightly different shape than the FA body.

The other thing is a new bridge, with a "whammy bar" / "tremolo" arm, and the spring set and mount to balance it. It's a cheap one, of similar quality to the original bridge...but it isn't missing any parts, unlike the original which was missing both of the lowest strings' mounting points / adjustment blocks; I used a 1/4-20" bolt and nut glued to the face of teh bridge to run the strings over, when I got it, to be able to string it and play it. That's part of why the tuning would never hold / come out right (and sometimes the strings would come off the hex part of the nut/bolt, and I'd have to loosen the strings and pop them back up and retune them).

I drilled thru the body and dremelled out the hole for the part of the new bridge that sticks down thru the body for the springs to attach to, but I haven't widened that part out for it to move back and forth for the bar to be able to pitch the strings up and down together, and I haven't dremeled out a hole for the spring mount and springs, either. But I did test mount the bridge, and string it, and it works significantly bette rthan the original.

The pickups also sound better, even though they probably aren't really much (if any) better-built.

Need to get some pics up, and upload some of the "music" created with this and the bass guitar.

 

[amberwolf]

I haven't got pics of my horrible dremeling job, but here's the present exterior stuff. First is the top, which is pretty much the way it's going to look even when complete. (someday I might paint it, maybe with doggie faces or something...I'd rather get someone to print me some color versions of some photos of various dogs, and then I could glue them on and clearcoat them.)

Then there's the bottom, with the whammy-bar springs and bracket just sitting there near where they'll be installed once I dremel out the area for them.

This is the old hole for the old pair of pots, which moutned to the body rather than the faceplate like the new ones do.
View attachment 5
This is the old pots and wiring and pickup.
View attachment 1

The old bridge, and the bolt & nut I used in place of the missing string holders.



This is where I got the prewired faceplate
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M2Z5AOE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
though it looks like the price went up a fair bit.

And this was the whammy bar bridge
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JJ8FCNW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
which is about the same price it was then.

 

[Dauntless]

[youtube]wOBnMmUCMJU[/youtube]

 

[bigmoose]

Nice track Amber, real nice!
https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v4/player.cfm?songID=13827051

 

[amberwolf]

Thanks! It's one of my favorite ones...but it still needs a lot of work...which I'll probably never get around to.

I'd like to redo the bass with the 6string bass guitar (the original I think I used the regular guitar for, just the low string or two, and filtered with EQ, etc). I didnt' have the bass guitar at the time, and I'm still learning how to use it well enough.

 

[The fingers]

Would be a great track for some Skeleton Coast surfing video, longest tube rides ever. 8)

 

[Dauntless]

Carol Kaye wrote the definitive books on bass, the bass line series is 6 books. She was a member of the Wrecking Crew, recording how many hundreds of hit singles that were released under the names of bands who didn't record them, etc. This includes the Beach Boys. And there's TV themes such as 'M*A*S*H*' and 'Mission: Impossible.'

https://www.amazon.com/Play-Electric-Bass-Carol-Kaye/dp/B00321GXBO

https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Bass-Lines-No-1/dp/B0006XRSH4

[youtube]-ZgBexrZvM0[/youtube]

 

[amberwolf]

A new one, spent most of yesterday laying in bed playing and editing this one.

https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v4/player.cfm?songID=13894544

It's very long, and I considered editing it down, but it evolves enough I left it alone for now.