That's better...

After my walk I went back to Guitar Showcase in search of a second isolation transformer, but realized on the way over that I might not need one. Just as well, since they didn't have any on hand. All I really had to do was move the transformer from the office end of the cable to the bedroom studio end, which put a balanced signal on the entire cable run by decoupling it from ground. The result is still noticeable, but not nearly as bad. It's essentially inaudible (at least to these ageing ears) at my usual listening level.

I could do even better if the monitors had balanced inputs, but a quick look at the manual shows that they don't. I'll have to look for another isolation transformer eventually, but it's good enough now.

What kind of lemming^W nerd am I?

( for some reason this quiz thinks I'm a science/math nerd, with music a very close second. Imagine that! )

(Blame wcg and quadrivium.)

tracks: three steps forward...

Worked on "Little Computing Machine", "Silk & Steel", "TEOTWAWKI", and "I Wanna Be a Webmaster". That last may have to be scrapped, though. That would leave me with 5 tracks that need to have both guitar and vocals redone (separately). Fortunately I have nice clean scratch tracks to work from, so it'll be quick. He says.

Part of the problem is that a lot of the older tracks have a very bass-heavy guitar track; my fancy finger-work on the treble strings ends up totally swamped. But if I filter out the low frequency and pull it up, I end up amplifying the bleed-through from the vocals that was picked up at the same time. Since there's roughly a 2ms delay, it sounds like I'm singing in a sewer. So it has to be fixed.

Was going to do some actual recording, but the Y.D. is having a birthday party (one day early), and they've been playing just outside the bedroom studio window. This evening and tomorrow.

At least it's now feasible for me to edit in the office without moving the recording machine back and forth. Yay for Linux and X, which make it possible to have a program (Audacity, in this case) running on one machine while displaying on another. It actually improves the performance because the work is split between the two CPUs.

Why do I have the feeling that Hackers' Heaven might end up being a Tres Gique album rather than a solo? How did it get to be so close to tax day? Where am I going, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

Humming along

As it turns out, the isolation transformer has some problems -- it gets overloaded with a full-range line out signal. (The technical term is saturated: the transformer's iron core won't transmit any more signal than it takes for it to be fully magnetized. This turns out not to be a whole lot.) So, although it blocks hum like a champ, it's worthless for line out.

Fortunately, my output mixer has a monitor output with a volume control. That appears to cut the output enough to not saturate the isolation transformer.

In other news, some of the older tracks I've been having problems with might be fixable if I apply Audacity's built-in compression tool to each part separately. We'll see. It may work on "RFC1149", "Stuck Here", and "Uncle Ernie's". I've been playing with "Wannabe", which has other problems -- I can do anything I want to the scratch tracks because, well, they're going to get scratched. (Problems include clipping on a most plosives, and a couple of horrendous "clunk"s apparently caused by banging the microphone against the guitar. Oops!)

Tire(d) tracks: my brain is fried

It's pretty clear that I'm not likely to get much more done today. If I persist, I'm likely to do something stupid. Still, the day hasn't been entirely unproductive.

Thanks to a little experimentation with compression, it looks as though "Paper Pings", "Stuck Here", and "Uncle Ernie's" won't have to be re-recorded. Stick a fork in 'em. I've done preliminary merging on "Little Computing Machine" and "Mushrooms" -- they just need a little volume adjustment and reverb.

Spent a lot of time -- too much, really -- beating on "I Wanna Be a Webmaster". It's not salvageable, but the experimentation was worthwhile. So that's six tracks worked on today.

Spent about half an hour organizing tax stuff. Not done, but it helps; I think I have almost all of the 2006 receipts filed now, and ready for data entry.