It’s in my mind to ramble

Welcome to the first blog generated from my new computer. I must comment this new computer really makes a difference in my efforts in Second Life. It’s much like the difference between walking to work and driving to work. Now ever feature seems to work as it should… at least when Second Life is working when it should.

Of course the set up seems to take forever with a new computer. Yes, you are up and running in short order but the real work of a new computer is finding all your program disks that you’ve not use in years and getting all your tools as you like them.

One benefit of starting clean is you really get to evaluate your tools. Especially when it comes to my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I really had collected a bunch of stuff that I hardly (if ever) used. I use to be a big fan of browsing the VST plug in sites and picking up all kinds of free piffle. Most of it worked, and some of it even sounded good. But time after time I found myself going back to the commercial versions of programs that seem to get the job done with consistency.
The current set up… for those that care, consist of Sonar Producer version 7 (I don’t plan on upgrading), Reason version 4 (God help me I love it so), and Ozone for the mastering (out of everything you could buy… get this).

I do have one hardware issue I need to address at some point. Back when I was using my Laptop computer I plugged in a 19 inch CRT monitor as a second monitor. I’ve been using two monitor since window supported the feature. As it stands now I’m using one monitor and it’s driving me a bit nuts. I really can imagine working with the DAW and one screen. I tend to keep the mixer up in the second monitor at all times so I know what the signal routing is at a glance.

Speaking of software… let’s talk about what I’m retiring. I have a copy of Sound forge somewhere. I’m not going to dig it up; because I had it installed on the laptop and didn’t ever use it. In its place I’ve been using Audacity. A free program that seems to have a vastly superior work flow compared to Sound Forge. Perhaps I should qualify that a bit, a better work flow for what I use it for. Sound Forge is feature rich, but do most of my feature intensive work in Sonar.

Also not making the install is my trusty version one Sample Tank. Simply speaking, it doesn’t sound quite as good as it should, and I had become quite use to using it, in spite of its 16 bit samples. All future sample playback will be handled via Reason’s NNXT advance sampler.

Wow, this may be the most boring blog I’ve ever written. But it’s what is on my mind.

I do have the “Story and Song Vol. 1” project ready to ship. I just need to find time to have an event for it.

I do plan on doing another Zorch-cast soon as well.

That about covers it for now. Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far.