<< >>
justin = { main feed , music , code , askjf , pubkey };recent comments
search
[ present ... 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 ... past ]
February 14, 2008
to my love, OS X.

JUST KIDDING. Quite the opposite in fact. It's been really exhausting porting stuff to OS X. Here are some reasons why:

1) Poor (and often hard to find) documentation-- Yes, some of the newer APIs are decently documented, but dig in and try to use ATSU to render text, and it's a world of pain. Looking through header files that all seem to assume you know what to do. This is tolerable, though, with enough digging you can find what you want.

2) The AudioUnits SDK-- the API for AudioUnits is defined in a header, but not documented. So to use AU, you'd have to either just use the SDK (with EXTENSIVE amounts of code), or reverse engineer it to figure out what calls you need to do to control the plug-ins yourself. Someone obviously spent a lot of time defining an extensible plug-in API, why the fuck don't they document it?! I mean, really, just a "first, call this, then, call that, then, when you're ready to process X, do Y." If this info is somewhere, someone please let me know... (see the next point)

3) The previous two points might to be related to the fact that Apple seems to assume that as a Mac developer, I've been developing for macs continuously since 1984, and have religiously read the developer mailing list since whenever it was created. Apple: for the love of god find some way of getting those mailing list posts linked to/from the relevant documentation pages.

4) There are WAY too many ways to accomplish similar things. The classic example which I bitch about a lot is text rendering--last I checked, there is CoreText (apparently awesome, but 10.5 only), CoreGraphics text functions (seem nice, but lots of limitations including non-functioning text measuring), HITheme rendering (which is nice but doesnt give you much for font style selection), AppKit NSString/NSAttributedString drawing (great, but slow), ATSUI (seems to be the best all around but takes a bit to get to the point where you get what's going on). I understand that there are historical reasons for these APIs, but again, this can be fixed with proper documentation (perhaps a page describing all of the APIs and their benefits and drawbacks).

5) Addition of new APIs in new OS versions. I know Apple wants to sell new OS versions, but from a developers standpoint, it's really difficult to properly support multiple versions of OS X. I'd like to use new OS features if available, but fall back to old versions if not. If there's a clean way to do this, I'd love to hear about it -- on Windows we usually just load the appropriate DLLs if available..

6) Performance on OS X for basic graphics drawing seems terrible. Perhaps if you take advantage of the highly OS X specific stuff, you can get around some of this, but as an example I made two native projects, one for OS X and one for Win32, that create a 640x480 window and try to draw at about 30fps. They fill the background black and draw white lines. On Windows basic double buffering is used, on OS X the system buffers the drawing. The OS X version uses Cocoa and CoreGraphics to draw, and the view is opaque.

The source code which you can build is here (VC6/win and Xcode2.4+ for OS X required).

Results: on the same Core2 hardware: OS X: 11% CPU use. WinXP: 1% CPU use. In fairness to OS X, it was drawing pretty antialiased lines, however when I disabled AA on the OS X build, the CPU use went _UP_ to 20%. Go figure. It's not really the line drawing, either--make it draw just one line the numbers dont change much...

February 14, 2008
and Windows...


Well I don't have anything to really bitch about Windows right now, but I'm really disappointed with all of the VC++ builds after VC6. The issues are a plenty, but it makes it hard to upgrade. All dynamic linking uses msvcrt71.dll etc which even MS doesnt distribute anymore, so you end up having to static link. Bleh.

I guess most people don't care about the size of their software, but for us keeping the program size down is also part of keeping the development process fast and efficient. If I have to upload a 30mb installer and everybody has to download one to test...

14 Comments


February 13, 2008
Music
freeform jam with brennewt


February 11, 2008
Music
freeform jam with bren


January 27, 2008
Music
freeform jam with newtbider


January 26, 2008
Music
slow


January 24, 2008
no time prototype video

My old Canon XL1 finally gets some use.. I love putting it in full-manual mode, mmm.

Shot this in 45m, then spent an hour or so editing:

It's actually a lot better in high quality form (17MB XVID AVI).

Perhaps if I'd actually written a song ahead of time it would have been better...

2 Comments


January 9, 2008
Music
freeform jam with brennewtsteve


January 1, 2008
HAPPY NEW YEAR(S)

(this serves as a reply to those who texted me HNY and didn't get a response from me).

The Radiohead NYE special was (predictably?) good. Mmm. My tivo won't erase that for a while.

We migrated to SVN for version control a while back. Definitely liking it, and Tortoise SVN rules. No good free mac SVN clients I've found, though (anybody?). So for now the command line version isn't bad. I can't believed I'd used VSS and/or SourceOffSite for over 8 years. Eep.

I've set up an SVN server for use with audio and REAPER projects, to aide in some collaboration. It's sort of working, although I think most people aren't used to version control.

Someone REALLY needs to make a web site where you can upload projects with media, then other people can make derived versions, and upload them, and you can go through the whole tree of projects etc. Seriously. Either using something like SVN or whatever. Would be awesome to open up that sort of collaboration. I know there are sites out there doing half of this, but I haven't seen it done really well.

Oh and I never posted this link here, our show we played in November:

But now sadly Christophe has fled the country off to a beach somewhere, and we're lonely and drummerless.

What else? Well it'll have to wait til next time.



Recordings:

freeform jam with biderman

5 Comments


December 21, 2007
Music
freeform jam with bren


December 16, 2007
Music
biderman - 1 -- [42:54]
biderman - 2 -- [41:04]


December 14, 2007
Music
summer-novox
summer


December 6, 2007
Music
freeform jam with newtbren


December 5, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenshawn


December 1, 2007
Music
bla


November 30, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchrlast


November 25, 2007
Music
freeform jam with newtbiderman


November 20, 2007
wooo

We played a fun show last night, should have some video up soon.

Man this is funny shit though (which I first read on At Ease), Lily Allen complaining about Radiohead, "It's arrogant for them to give their music away for free - they've got millions of pounds. It sends a weird message to younger bands who haven't done as well.".

YEAH! THATS MESSED UP! And all those people making open source software shouldn't do that either, because it's unfair to all of the soon-to-be Microsoft's of the world as well!

(As a side note, sorry Craig, I know you like Lily Allen, but think how this could be directed at Prince, too)..

The comments on that At Ease article page are hilarious, though. Some great reading, especially if you are putting of write a tab control wrapper layer...



2 Comments


November 19, 2007
Music
freeform jam with biderman
freeform jam with brenchr


November 15, 2007
Music
dzbacoustic


November 8, 2007
blogness

OK I'm going to start using this more so REAPER users can see what's happening with development. The last bit of time has been spent on Mac porting. To do the mac port we are developing some software called SWELL, which is part of WDL.

SWELL allows you to easily adapt Windows code to target Quartz natively. It's not trying to be completely compatibility like WINE or WINELib, but rather is focusing on providing the minimal subset, with maximum efficiency and minimal overhead. I'm actually getting into it, too.

If you are a Windows developer considering porting stuff to OS X, you should check it out. Well, actually wait a few weeks cause we're in the process of making it a LOT better. :) Oh and don't forget to remap XCode's keys to make it behave more like MSVC!



1 Comment


November 7, 2007
Music
freeform jam with newtbren


November 6, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


November 4, 2007
Music
biderman - 1 -- [48:53]
biderman - 2 -- [27:43]


November 3, 2007
holy shit the daily show rules

Been watching some old Daily Shows (which I might add is fucking great that they put them ALL online! HOLY CRAP! AWESOME!).

Just watched election night coverage from 2000, and man, Stephen Colbert CALLED IT. Watch this video:

Now I know you could say he was just joking, but holy shit.



2 Comments


November 2, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


November 1, 2007
Music
excuses


October 31, 2007
Music
mayplay


October 30, 2007
Music
atthebottom-99
atthebottom
brenchr - 1 -- [72:07]
brenchr - 2 -- [85:33]


October 25, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


October 22, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


October 19, 2007
Music
bowedsoul
freeform jam with chr


October 16, 2007
Music
shawn - 1 -- [4:43]
shawn - 2 -- [19:29]


October 15, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


October 14, 2007
Music
bdayjambrenbidernewt - 1 -- [15:43]
bdayjambrenbidernewt - 2 -- [43:42]


October 10, 2007
Radiohead "In Rainbows"

I'm digging it. A lot. Not as huge to me as some past Radiohead albums were, but then again I probably ruined some of the impact for myself seeing them play these songs live a few times first, whereas before I heard Kid A the first time I had never heard any of it. Not that I'm complaining-- seeing Radiohead live is absurdly fantastic...

October 10, 2007
REAPER 2.0 woohoo


After over a month in beta, we finally released 2.0 final. Woohoo. Here's the changelog (condensed but shown here so I can reflect on the lengthh of it):

  • added elastique Pro, Efficient, and SOLOIST as pitch shifter/time stretcher options
  • action: new actions to toggle/clear/set individual lock modes
  • action: actions to set take by index (1-9) active
  • action: "Take/Paste as takes in selected items"
  • action: "render items to new take" (which is like apply fx but without fx)
  • action: action to toggle item "preserve pitch when changing playrate"
  • automation: added option prefs/editing/"Automatically add/arm envelopes when tweaking parameters in write modes"
  • automation: autoadding vol/pan/playspeed envelopes autoresets trims to unity
  • automation: mute envelopes for tracks/sends (no UI integration for automation recording yet)
  • automation: fixed vol/pan/playspeed tooltips when in automation modes
  • compatibility: perf meter: fixed incorrect ram usage on w2k
  • compatibility: fixed a win2k text drawing gdi corruption issue
  • compatibility: fixed a win2k media explorer refreshing bug
  • compatibility: vertical zooming now flickery in WINE (since WINEs WM_SETREDRAW breaks things -- WINE developers, contact us)
  • defaults: made Take Lane viewing on by default
  • display: fixed bug with changing screen resolutions
  • editing: fixed cutting items in ripple all mode
  • editing: split items at loop selection selects only items in selection (not unsplit previously selected items)
  • editing: apply fx to new take now works on empty items
  • editing: better zoom from scrollbar when zoom set to center on mouse cursor
  • editing: enabled zoom out to see more than a few hours
  • editing: better envelope behavior in item moving and ripple editing
  • editing: fixed bug with slip editing items fudging automation
  • editing: shifting/nudging loop selection works better with time signatures
  • editing: main track view sub-pixel accuracy improvements
  • editing: ctrl+dragging loop selections when item left/right locked now works
  • editing: force selection to beat lengths now supports multiple time signatures
  • editing: new item lock modes (item edges, controls)
  • editing: better drag and drop file positioning in certain instances
  • fx: comment window is now modeless
  • fx: added vertical scrollbar to comment window
  • fx: you can now rename instances of effects to better describe their application
  • fx: action to build multichannel routing for the output of multichannel VSTis
  • fx: action to build 16 channels of midi routing for the current track
  • fx: vsts that have latency and send MIDI now can send ahead of time
  • fx: updated VST samplerate change calls for buggy plug-ins
  • fx: special case code for simulanalog VST plugins (aggressive denormal prevention)
  • fx: fixed alt+drag fx moving bugs
  • fx: fixed plug-in config window close order on quit (good for EmuX)
  • fx: better denormalization prevention methods used throughout
  • fx: faster offlining of plug-ins with large state data
  • fx: startup project loading now initializes audio device before loading plug-ins
  • fx: modifiers when drag and drop adding fx (shift=dont bring up config, ctrl=toggle floating of config)
  • fx: floating fx windows remember their positions when closed
  • fx: less showing of fx chain when "auto-float new fx" is on
  • FX: added JS: utility/bufsave, which lets you route feedback in fx chains easily
  • FX: added JS: utility/time_adjustment which allows delay/predelaying signal
  • FX: added JS: autopeakfilter for fun autowah type effects
  • FX: added some new loser JS fx
  • FX: JS PDC support for effects (pdc_bot_ch, pdc_top_ch, pdc_midi and pdc_delay to specify sample delay)
  • FX: JS shared memory (gmem[]) is now shared across all JS instances in reaper
  • FX: added JS play_state, play_position, and beat_position variables
  • FX: safer window class registration/unregistration in many Rea* fx
  • FX: reacomp/reaxcomp performance improvements
  • FX: better offscreen window checking for ReaNINJAM
  • FX: ReaTune now uses REAPERs pitch shift algorithms (elastique soloist is great for this)
  • FX: ReaTune added "click reduction" mode for SoundTouch and possibly other modes
  • FX: ReaTune manual mode ruler, mousewheel support
  • FX: ReaTune subdivision mode (to update at higher frequencies with larger window sizes)
  • FX: ReaPitch, new multi voice pitch shifter
  • FX: ReaEQ and ReaXComp now update undo states on add/remove of bands
  • installer: now allows selection of pitch shifters to install
  • keyboard: better handling of keystrokes when mouse captured
  • master track: can now have more than 2 channels
  • master track: can now control source channels/phase/volume/pan/etc of each hardware output independently
  • master track: better RMS metering, lots of RMS display options
  • master track: better pdc with anticipative rendering
  • master track: master fx chain no longer defaults to bypassed
  • master track: made solo/mute click modifiers not affect master mute/solo
  • master track: right click marquee works in master track (for envelopes etc)
  • master track: fixed undo with no master hardware outs sometimes adding in a default output
  • media explorer: added "Insert as takes in selected items"
  • media item properties: "choose new file" automatically updates take names
  • meters: better event light for record output (midi) mode
  • meters: updated track metering rounding to better pass synthetic tests
  • meters: better track meter clip indicator hit testing
  • meters: better metering for record output (midi) mode
  • metronome: better metronome countin for tempo changes
  • midi: MID file import can now import tempo maps
  • midi: better looking and faster midi peak drawing
  • midi: midi items are now treated as ticks/Quarter Note, except for items in old projects (which are still ticks/beat)
  • midi: fixed open copy of items sometimes dropping notes
  • midi: better sorting of noteoffs and allnoteoff messages
  • midi: reduced excess sending off allnoteoff loop markers
  • midi: fixed splitting items on notes producing 0 length notes
  • midi: fixed bug in fadein for midi items
  • midi: fixed extraneous notes at end of some items
  • midi editor: can now reflect project time signature changes
  • midi editor: grid/quantize are now fractions of whole notes, not of beats
  • midi editor: separate colortheme settings in prefs (including for piano keys etc)
  • midi editor: fixed bugs with play cursor and looped midi items
  • midi editor: better vertical scrollbar
  • midi editor: better focusing when opening/activating and switching modes
  • midi editor: internal cleanups, improved ctrl+select behavior
  • midi editor: pass through to main window keyboard action
  • midi editor: updates to list editor play cursor, better list editor sorting
  • midi editor: list editor note properties sets focus depending on which column the mouse was on
  • midi editor: better focusing when opening/activating and switching modes
  • midi editor: moving notes now uses both absolute and relative snapping
  • mixer: optional FX and Send views (configurable via the mixer menu)
  • mixer: more settings are now stored in the project
  • mixer: options are now assignable actions
  • mixer: new FX/send views are themeable (mcp_fxlist_norm/byp/off/empty, mcp_master_fxlist_ too)
  • mixer: (theme images): mcp_sendlist_knob.png, mcp_sendlist_meter.png, mcp_*list_arrows.png
  • mixer: fixed incorrect minimum height on nonstandard display DPIs
  • Monkeys Audio: fix for Unicode files, fixes for offline support
  • Monkeys Audio: fixed mem leak, fixed 24 bit stereo mode, optimizations
  • Monkeys Audio: now uses asynchronous disk reads if set
  • option: options to not show peaks for muted tracks/items, or non-selected tracks
  • option: added working set configuration in prefs/general/advanced
  • performance: portions of REAPER are now compiled with the Intel C++ compiler
  • performance: faster zoomed-in peaks display
  • performance: fixed muted folder tracks still running fx
  • performance: updated on-stop behavior to keep audio thread locked for less time
  • performance: UAD synchronous fx multiprocessing support
  • performance: improved anticipative fx processing on looped playback
  • performance: renamed fx renderahead "anticipative FX processing"
  • performance: added new "Synchronous multiprocessing" option, which allows multiprocessing on input monitoring, better UAD multiprocessing, etc
  • performance: per-item pitch shifters are now freed when they are no longer needed or media set offline
  • performance: fixed silence-at-end-of-rendering issue with asynchronous writes enabled
  • performance: more robust asynchronous disk writes
  • performance: fixed SMP rendering glitches
  • performance: fixed cpu munch when stopping at end of project
  • performance: mono items pitch shifted are now processed in mono (big speedup)
  • performance: reduced cpu use of empty tracks
  • perf meter: graph shows cur/avg, range, action to reset graph
  • project directory cleanup: now defaults to sending items to recycle bin rather than deleting
  • reamote: possible fix for Nebula plugins
  • reamote: fixed crash when invalid data received on certain message types
  • reamote: fixed support for larger config packets
  • routing: fixed labelling on hardware outs after adding routing
  • routing: renamed send type "Post-FX" to "Post-FX (V1 deprecated)", added a new, better "Post-FX" mode
  • routing: fixed i/o windows open when adjusting/removing routing bugs
  • routing: better rearoute labelling all around when audio device closed
  • screensets: added keyboard shortcut column and button to edit shortcuts
  • screensets: autosave wont save anymore when switching to same screenset
  • screensets: added auto saving option
  • screensets: fixed docker issues
  • screensets: added mixer flags saving
  • screensets: added last focused window state saving
  • tempo map: overhaul: simple tempo changes no longer force a new measure
  • tempo map: improved tempo editing behavior when editing tempo changes and time sig changes
  • tempo map: lengths calculated across timesig markers now use the time signature at the start to determine measure length
  • tempo map: more accurate tempo envelope saving/restoring
  • tempo map: small fades are no longer adjusted by tempo changes
  • theming: faster drawing, faster mouseover updating
  • theming: background for faders, window backgrounds, name backgrounds, etc support pink line for unstretch areas
  • theming: docker is now independently colorthemeable
  • theming: new default colortheme (by WhiteTie!)
  • theming: support for when path to theme dir changes on diff systems
  • theming: advanced faders can have zero line set
  • theming: configurable fonts for track panels / volpan labels etc
  • theming: track_fxempty_h and track_fxempty_v
  • theming: window drawing improvements (less screen corruption issues)
  • theming: fixed stopped resize of transport drawing issues
  • theming: fixed some playspeed automation refresh issues
  • theming: fixed some dark custom color issues with advanced themes
  • theming: better background image edge scaling when compressed to small spaces
  • theming: classic theme color tweaks (for mcp send/fx list)
  • theming: bg tinting for track labels in advanced themes
  • ui: most modal dialog boxes now restore window focus on close
  • ui: added option for gap between items on adjacent tracks (defaults to 4px)
  • ui: fixed non-fancy peaks display on muted items/inactive takes
  • ui: better envelope spacing (small gap between envelopes)
  • ui: better item loop indicator drawing
  • ui: fixed edge loop indicators on some items
  • ui: fixed zero line drawing issue on items
  • ui: fixed peaks display at end of heavily looped items at certain zoom levels
  • ui: better record mode display for midi overdub modes
  • ui: fader ctrl+precision modes hide mouse cursor
  • ui: better spacing for transport status state
  • ui: better volume fader ganging at extremes
  • ui: grid/snap boxes will now correctly display smaller fractions
  • fixed some tiny PCM-floating point import/export precision issues
  • better external midi editor support (fixes, open copy in external editor creates .mid file)
  • faster dB unit conversion throughout
  • demo song: updated mix
  • new about screen



6 Comments


September 26, 2007
Music
bren - 1 -- [9:33]
bren - 2 -- [41:59]
bren - 3 -- [6:18]


September 25, 2007
Music
freeform jam with bren and little and chr
brenchr - 1 -- [13:44]
brenchr - 2 -- [68:07]


September 22, 2007
hoofin..

Listening to an mp3 album and reading Deerhoof's diary (both here).. awesome. Those guys rule.

September 22, 2007
wow i just noticed...


Radiohead (my favorite band) is now selling all of their catalogue online in DRM-free MP3. WOW. This is awesome.

I might have to buy some of the B sides I don't have...

September 22, 2007
four paths to mediocrity


I've just started using my fourth mobile phone this year. They all are lacking, in mostly different ways...

The Motorola MPx 220

This phone I've had the longest. It's a great flip phone factor (which makes it very satisfying to hang up), and while it's technically a smart phone (running Windows CE of all OSes), it has good phone features (the dialing feels nice, and it's easy to look up names in the address book using the number pad). It was a pain to sync with the computer without having to use some shareware backup software, though. There was no pointing device, the data connection was a bit slow, the browser basic, but even though the screen was pretty small, you could play videos using TCPMP.. Also I like how easy it is to charge via the USB cable too.

The Palm Treo 650

I think I had the biggest complaints with the Treo (in fact, I think it's the one I'd be the least likely to go back to). From crashing silently and not answering calls, to the touch screen annoying my face, to it being the largest, the list can go on. The upsides are the huge software library (mmm the VNC client was very usable), and incredibly good battery life.

The Nokia E70

This phone (which isn't really offered by any carriers in the US) was great, and I think I may still use it. It's bluetooth support is by far the best (I used BT dial up networking + GPRS on a 3 hour train ride last month and it was outstanding), the phone has great features (WiFi, fast EDGE data, great keyboard that flips out, a good SSH client that you can leave running and come back to, even after making/receving calls or running other apps, etc). The screen is really high resolution, too, but it's a bit small (so you really have to get very close to read it). I really loved my old Nokia TDMA phones, but I think Nokia needs to reevaluate some decisions they made on the E70's firmware. For example, there's a button on the left side of the phone that opens the voice recorder and starts it recording. It's very easy to hit, and there's no way to override this function! Ack. Also there's no auto-lock after a certain amount of time, so you have to be sure to manually lock the keypad. Oh, and little things like looking up names in the contact list, with the keyboard closed, is much harder than it needs to be. The MPX220's method was far superior.

The Apple iPhone

I just got this yesterday (thanks DB), and there's definitely things to like. I dig the screen. It's about the same resolution of the E70, but oh it's so much bigger and easier to read. The web browser is fantastic. The phone is decent. The homebrew software is getting there (VNC client looked nice, but no keyboard yet? ack). Mmm, real headphone jack, too. Why couldn't they do that on the E70? And it autolocks too. Hello, Nokia? But alas, no BT DUN (sad). The touchscreen keyboard, while as good as I've seen for the type, makes me wish I had the E70's again... Oh well...

So maybe I'll start carrying the iPhone and take the E70 with me on trips (for when I need BT DUN)...

anyway

3 Comments


September 19, 2007
Music
freeform jam with biderman


September 18, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


September 1, 2007
Music
the wonderful boots


August 31, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


August 27, 2007
HI DENNY

Denny insists that I update this, since he checks it often, and I guess since I'm the only person on the planet (other than my wife, at least) not to be on Facebook, it means he has to check it himself, or something. Speaking of which, LEAVE ME ALONE, FACEBOOK! Getting AIM messages from you is ANNOYING AS HELL.

We've started on REAPER v2. It won't be long before 2.0 beta is ready. A ton of good things in there. Really good. Stuff that before, I might have said "this might be kinda nice to have" then after I'm feeling like I can't imagine how I would have gotten by without it. The list of stuff done since the last public release is about 20 lines long so far.

I don't really like doing non-public builds of software. On one hand I get to hold out and surprise users, which is nice to do once in a while. But on the other I feel like I'm running with a MUCH smaller testing pool and as a result I have to be very careful--which is tough though because some of the things we're doing are big and awesome. Oh well, we'll sort it out with a "2.0 beta" or something soon enough.

It's been a month since the last post.. funny how this timing is. What else has happened? Had a vacation.. Dave Wiener and I made this song. I got a 1TB SATA drive (awesome!) to back up the "recordings" folder of my formerly large 1.2TB array to. Dammit why did I end a sentence with to? Dammit I did it again!



Recordings:

freeform jam with newtonbryan

3 Comments


August 21, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


August 15, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr


August 13, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brennan and electronic and stupidness


July 30, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchr
freeform jam with newtbidermanchrarasteve


July 26, 2007
REAPER stuff

We've had a crazy month of development--things like Advanced Themes and a multiband compressor have been added, as well as persistent Undo/Redo, and support for multiple redo paths (!!! This is huge in my mind, and once we build an even better UI for it it will be even more ridiculously awesome).. The mac version is coming along, too... Anyway..

I was able to give a quick (19 minute) presentation to a bunch of people at the TechBreakfast NorCal "Mixing In The Box" seminar. It was a lot of fun and definitely got a pretty good reception, especially considering the audience was mostly Pro Tools users... Here are some videos:

Part 1, Part 2 (YouTube, what gives with the 10 minute limit per file?!)

But with all of this work getting done, I still miss our cat friend...

7 Comments


July 25, 2007
Music
freeform jam with chr


July 22, 2007
Music
freeform jam with biderman


July 21, 2007
Music
brenchrgermliquid - 1 -- [51:18]
brenchrgermliquid - 2 -- [18:52]
brenchrgermliquid - 3 -- [84:46]


July 11, 2007
Music
brenchr - 1 -- [23:38]
brenchr - 2 -- [60:23]
freeform jam with brenchr3drums


July 10, 2007
Music
freeform jam with biderman


July 9, 2007
Music
chr-covers - 1 -- [20:26]
chr-covers - 2 -- [31:33]


July 3, 2007
one more




5 Comments


July 2, 2007
at a loss


We miss you, sweetest Kiki.



6 Comments


July 1, 2007
Music
freeform jam with newtbiderman


June 20, 2007
Music
deadlast


June 19, 2007
Music
brenchr - 1 -- [12:25]
brenchr - 2 -- [49:19]
brenchr - 3 -- [31:43]


June 16, 2007
Music
freeform jam with kevchrnewsetup


June 14, 2007
Music
brenbiderman - 1 -- [51:31]
brenbiderman - 2 -- [19:56]
pianowank


June 8, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchrnobass


June 6, 2007
Music
newton - 1 -- [11:05]
newton - 2 -- [10:18]
newton - 3 -- [24:33]
newton - 4 -- [24:49]


June 2, 2007
Music
freeform jam with brenchrfrancismig


May 30, 2007
Music
brenchr - 1 -- [7:59]
brenchr - 2 -- [107:36]
feedbacklove


May 29, 2007
I got a guitar amp that I LOVE

For those of you dedicated bored enough to listen to our Recordings, you may have noticed that the guitar sounds we've been getting have improved dramatically.

I attribute this to my newish custom built guitar amp, from Underhill. HOLY CRAP. This thing rocks. It's just so much more fun to play than anything else I've played on. It's similar to a JCM 800 with a bunch of goodies, and something special that comes from the love of being handmade by someone who really cares. Wow! Before this I thought playing using the CrusFX with modelling was adequate! No more (anybody want to buy a CrusFX? OK I should probably keep it even though it hasn't been powered on in ages)....

Here's a little clip with some clean and then some loud in the middle: Song about Flying Cars and Unicorns.

8 Comments


May 27, 2007
Music
kevin - 1 -- [39:36]
kevin - 2 -- [19:59]
kevin - 3 -- [9:42]


May 25, 2007
REAPER in Sound On Sound

Martin Walker was nice enough to review REAPER in the UK magazine Sound On Sound.. I think it's a great review and am very proud to see it. Here's a quote from the end:

    ...unless you are 100 percent happy with your current MIDI + Audio sequencer, you'd be a fool not to give REAPER a try. Don't be fooled by the tiny 2MB download: this is a powerful application that does a huge amount, is being improved on a daily basis, and already does some things better than most of the competition.

I put this quote and some others on the REAPER Reviews Page. Woo.

May 25, 2007
you care a lot about your perception when it's all you got


Today I saw a Technology Review article on eJamming, which is a service for people to jam together online. I have tried eJamming a few times, and haven't been terribly impressed (and yes I am biassed towards NINJAM for obvious reasons), but I thought I'd just pick apart what bugs me about this article (and likewise the whole situation).

    First, the eJamming software decreases the file sizes sent over the network. To do this, the company's engineers developed their own compression and decompression algorithms that shrink the file size, yet still maintain an audio quality higher than MP3, a common compression scheme, says Glueckman.
OK so shrinking the size of data does help latency, but it's not the biggest part. What bugs me here is that A) they appear to be using Speex for their audio side, which is an open format, and doesn't scale to high qualities. Do they really need to claim that they developed their own codec? OK so maybe they did develop their own codec-- why isn't this news? If it's so much better than OGG or MP3 or AAC, how come we haven't heard of this?

    Second, each musician is directly connected with the other musicians in a jam session, instead of being routed through a server. This peer-to-peer configuration "results in a lower latency by routing the audio stream directly to your jam mates rather than, on average, doubling that transport latency by directing the audio stream through a remote server," says Bill Redmann, chief technology officer of eJamming.
Wow! Connecting clients to clients! Peer to peer! This is so unique!

But what the article fails to mention here is that while this approach does reduce latency, it also increases the amount of bandwidth requires by each host exponentially. Their stuff is limited to 4 people I believe, but if you have 4 people, each client needs to send its stream to EVERYBODY else, so if they run a 50kbps channel (though it appears they're using a much lower bitrate codec anywa), that'd be 150kbps of upstream for a 4 person jam. Which isn't that bad, but it doesnt scale well and definitely requires some decent broadband.

The following quote, however, is what really bugs me:

    The company is promising to reduce the delay experienced over the network to, at most, hundreds of milliseconds (depending on upload speed and geographic distance between musicians)--a delay to which, Glueckman says, most musicians can adjust with practice.

Hundreds of milliseconds?! Are you kidding me? This is unusable. Their patented "delay monitoring of the local signal to sync with the remote" even makes it worse. I tried it with Christophe, who is on the same ISP and less than 10 miles away, and the latency was very noticeable and made it difficult to play anything remotely complex.

Imagine trying to play synchronized with someone at the other end of a football field. ugh.

Granted NINJAM's solutions aren't perfect either, but I find the increased quality and overall experience to be far superior. And the newer voice chat and session modes are damn usable.

OK OK so I didn't mean to turn this into a big eJamming vs NINJAM thing.. I just am irritated with these people being all "look we're soo innovative" and having lofty claims, yet when we use their software it's miserable (and I didn't even go into how badly constructed their application is-- application development isn't an easy thing, and in this case it definitely shows).

May 25, 2007
mac poo


I hate Xcode. Too bad I have a ton to get done using it.

4 Comments


May 11, 2007
eraserhead

I mistakenly got a laptop (Lenovo X60) that didnt have a trackpad, but had one of those eraserhead pointing devices. At first I was upset, but then I realized how much I found myself despising the trackpad anyway, so I thought I'd give it a shot.. and I think I'm pretty much OK with it now. I must say it is very nice having a fast laptop again. I really love my old Sony TR3AP, but man, that 1ghz P-M was getting weak...

May 11, 2007
NINJAM Session Mode


ReaNINJAM in REAPER now supports something new called NINJAM session mode. This lets multiple users to work on projects, and when each person plays their own, they get to hear the other peoples too. This is the perfect sort of things for people who want to collaborate on recording and arrangement remotely. It works amazingly well-- exceeding my expectations by far.

Here's a little session we did early on.

Soo much fun.

May 11, 2007
1998


It's feeling a little too late 90s.. I keep reading these articles about startups that piss me off.

Now there are some of companies that do interesting things and stuff that impress me. SOME. So this isn't an encompassing generalization, just a large one.

I don't know what my problem with it is.. Maybe because so many companies like to say just how important they are, or will be... Which in some cases is true, or rather WOULD be true _IF_ they succeed.. which is a big if.. But nobody seems to predict that very well, except certain VCs.. but then again when you start looking at those VCs, you start questioning the causality of it.

I think my problem really comes down to the fact that I'm jealous. The people running these companies, for the most part, have something I lack-- they can focus on the thing they're doing, acting as if it is the only thing important to them, and as if it is as important as they tell their investors it is. Oh, and they're willing to have an exit strategy, which I'm very much not..

But at least I think I'm having more fun...



7 Comments


[ present ... 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 ... past ]
search : rss : recent comments : Copyright © 2024 Justin Frankel