“Hey, breaking up is an idea that has occurred to far too few groups. Sometimes to the wrong ones.”
–Steve Albini

Just as I don’t really “do” Christmas, I’m not a huge fan of the traditions that usher in a new calendar year. Getting blinding drunk for too much money? No thanks. Thus, not a big fan of the New Year’s resolution.

However, I am a big fan of reflecting on one’s life, taking stock, adjusting one’s life goals. And I’ve been doing that over months leading up to 2009. Specifically, about my music, my life, this blog, my studio. More specifically, this blog in relation to my music, my life and my studio. And this blog in relation to world at large.

Just the other day, the great MusicThing blog closed up shop indefinitely. Like many a gear geek, MusicThing was one of the first music production blogs that I came across – if not the first. And what a delight. It got me more excited about the possibilities of production, the joys of finding and creating sound, than anything outside of actually making music myself. And, yes, it probably pushed me closer to opening my own blog.

But there’s one thing that MusicThing’s open-ended hiatus and possible demise easily illustrates: blogging, while not hard per se, is time consuming. Not just the writing – which it can be, especially for long-winded, discursive fuckers such as myself – but the actual time it takes to digest information. You know, to have something to write about that is of possible interest to people other than you and six of your friends. Setting one up is easy enough; coming up with an idea or an “editorial” mission is even more simple. But keeping it going for any length of time past a year or two can be tiresome, even if you’re not doing your own coding (which I am).

And MusicThing had a clear editorial vision, a keen eye for the interesting, and a strong authorial voice. Someone like me, what exactly am I bringing to the table? Other than I can type well. And I’m reasonably literate. (If overly dependent on adverbs.) Other music tech sites cover releases and how-to and such with far more efficacy than I ever could part-time, esp. on my own dime. So that just leaves me as a feeble editorial voice out here on the edges of CreateDigitalMusic and KvR.

I don’t generate enough traffic to warrant any google revenue or to solicit targeted banners. And at some point I have ask, in a word, why? What I set out to promote – the music I’ve been chiseling away at for pert near a half decade; over 25 years if you count all my years before home recording and digital lofi production – is so lost in the haze of technology and trainspotting as to be almost obscure to me now. I’ve become, more or less, a minor advocate for a small cadre of developers that never really asked for my participation. I’ve had some good conversations with a few of these developers, whom I respect a lot (annoyed a few of the same, I’m sure), I got to review/test drive a couple of awesome products, and hopefully I’ve helped them in some way or another. But the truth is what I need to be concentrating on doesn’t translate into a blog quite so easily as “let me talk about cool music tech”. And even that never turned into quite the conversation I had hoped for.

Beyond this, if you read back a few months, you might divine that my relationship with new music tech is, erm, changing. I’m tired of being a beta tester, of buyer’s remorse (whether for pay or freeware), opening an interface and quickly realizing that despite whatever internet/magazine chatter it’s just another piece of software. In some ways, we’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. So unless I’m just going to comment on a lot of shit I won’t necessarily use, ever, I’m doing what again? It’s not like people are turning to me for advice.

Going into this new year, this new post-birthday, I want to get back to making music. I want to play guitar. I want to write songs. I want to finish CDs. Maybe even play out in some regard.

Already I was leaning toward just using what I have. The tools I want/need for my studio at this point aren’t really impulse purchases. Of course, let’s be honest, I’m sure there will be updates and a few goodies I’ll purchase, mostly from the developers/companies I’ve been championing over the last few years (I’m looking at you, Rough Rider Pro); but, by and large, I’m going to force myself to be way more practical and deliberate in my studio. And, thus, I want the software upkeep to be way more minimal.

So, yeah, this blog. At first I thought I could blog about the process of sifting out the chaff of my plugin folder, reviews of the software/soundware I was keeping. I could to try to revive my Album a Day in a less demanding format. Plus I have a bunch of drafts that I could try to revise into shape. But all of this is time I don’t really want to be putting into something that’s more like a job (keeping up the post count as to not fall of the radar) than something that’s bringing me any joy, or at least bettering my life. I am glad that this has given me an outlet for my writing and helped me rediscover my love of that, albeit in an unexpected form. But I think it’s apparent that even that is better spent elsewhere.

The proverbial ice awaits. In a final act of Me-too-ism, I’m going to follow MusicThing’s lead into the greater unknown. O, I may be over-come by a desire to post something. Maybe I’ll finish off my epic over-view of Poi Dog Pondering’s complete recorded output. Maybe an open plugin standard will finally come to fruition. But once I fall off people’s RSS readers then I truly am writing for myself.

At some point I’ll figure out how this fits into my overall plans, such as they are. With a new mission maybe, or at least new sponsorship that will provide me with the time to type away about my peculiar and narrow obsessions. I’ll be around, and I’m sure I’ll be unable to control my urge to not just shut the fuck up, but this place will most likely be quite for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to those who commented. Thanks to the readers who came here deliberately rather than just following some errant google search. Thanks to the other sites that kept me going even when my ADD (not really) pulled my attention elsewhere. Thanks to the developers who put up with me or encouraged me. And, fuck it, thanks to me for making it this far and knowing when to bow out.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Peace,
C. Puffer

I was thinking that I wasn’t going to do this. It’s not like I have that much to say throughout the year, so “wrapping up” seems a tad redundant. But, really, it’s bitter cold outside, the coffee is strong, and my girlfriend is sleeping off her New Year hangover¹, so why the fuck not?

Top digitallofi.com posts of 2008²:
1. Well, I’m happy to say that a significant portion of my traffic comes through various subscription services, stumbleupon, off my favorite sites, and I have a good number of returning visitors. So, cheers to you all. You’re among probably about a couple hundred other “regular” “readers”.
2. My unintentional backhanded compliment to SynthEdit and some of the better SE authors.
3. A Pre-Sonar8 launch bitch-list of what I thought was the most ripe for updating, and which missed the mark pretty vastly. Really? That had to be one of my weakest posts all year.
4. I’m just going to go ahead and roll up my 2008 Holiday Gift Guide for the Disenfranchised posts into one big pat on the back for myself. Most of this traffic the result of a mention on CreateDigitalMusic.com, which just further illustrates how necessary that blog is. If only on a personal level.
5. Again, thanks to CreateDigitalMusic and the dude who made BeatBurner and released it as donationware.
6. My “review” of SonicCharge’s delightful, “controversial” new musical sound generator. Again, mostly thanks to cdm.com; Peter, if I made any money I would pay royalties or something.
7. SonicCouture’s Gamelan: Believe the hype. Coming in 2009: The Digital LoFi Gamelan EP.³.
8. Found Sound.
9. Part of my misguided, half-hearted but on-going campaign for an open plugin standard.
10. Yeah, even I don’t know what I’m thinking sometimes.

Digital lofi’s top software instruments of 2008:⁴
I don’t know, I guess I’m going to go with the 1-2 punch of GForce’s VSM & MTronPro. And Synplant. And didn’t BFD2 come out in 2008?

digital LoFi’s top DSP plugins of 2008:
Good God this is a tight field. Let’s just give the title to the fuckers at AudioDamage. If they made an EQ there would be little debate their absolute Godhead status among purveyors of DSP. No actually, there would be lots and lots of debate. And let’s give props to Voxengo for continuing to make waves for the rest of us. And the donationware/freeware/perpetual-betaware developers who just keep raising the bar every year.

digitaL LoFi’s top soundware of 2008:
Do I even need to discuss this? Goldbaby, SonicCouture, NineVoltAudio. Independently owned and conceived all. Honorable mention to Homegrown Sounds; I’m looking to see what they have in store. And I look forward to kicking myself for neglecting PureMagnetic for so long.

Puffer’s favorite album of 2008:
Didn’t buy too much new music this year. I want to say Poi Dog Pondering but shamefully I haven’t purchased that yet, only listened to their stream of it. I really was digging the new Slipknot album⁵, but I have a feeling once I really hear the older, harder stuff I won’t find it quite so satisfying. The Eno/Byrne joint really rocks the party. But I haven’t had enough time with it. I’ve probably listened to the General Fuzz catalog more than any other single artist outside my playlist shuffle mode.⁶ And Boards of Canada: Always BoC.

Digital Lofi’s top hardware acquisitions of 2008:
Most definitely my pawn-shop MPC1000. I barely know how to utilize it to its fullest, but I’m determined to learn it and to use it live.

Saddest non-Trend of 2008:
This Was Grindhouse: A site in search of movement and a guiding hand. A movement in search of…

DigitalLoFi’s no-brainer digital audio industry predictions for 2009:
Alas, Project5, we hardly knew ye.

The Digital Lofi Audio Blogosphere 2008:
*CreateDigitalMusic.com: The check’s in the mail.
*AnalogIndustries.com: Jesus, dude, get over yourself.
*MusicThing: Tom, as far as I’m concerned you could post once a year and still be one of the best music blogs out there.
*MatrixSynth: I get tired just thinking of all the posts they’ve put up just while I’ve been writing this. What’s not to love about synthporn? And what could make synthporn even better? Babes!
*http://rekkerd.org/: The only thing that could make ronnie’s site better would be if more people joined in the discussions. And this year I’m going to take part in one of your competitions, I swear.

Most unwelcome Digital Lofi blogging affectation of 2008:
Footnotes.⁷ It didn’t start off as a tribute to David Foster Wallace, more just a ripped-off conceit, but I’m fine with it turning into one. He is a writer I will truly miss.⁸

So, I guess that’s it. It’s approximately my birthday this time of year, so wish me a happy birthday in the comments.

PS – I’ll most likely be updating, correcting and revising this post over the next week or so while I get together my New Year’s Ambitions and Ruminations. Hell, it will take me a week just to sort out the footnotes on this Hindenburg.

^{1I stayed in. For what’s it’s worth. I’m going out on my birthday presently.
2Mostly according to Google Analytics. I really should look more closely at my server reporting. I’m also discounting any older, perennial posts that keep generating traffic. But other than that, these are really the top posts.
3Don’t hold me to that.
4Let’s not be sticklers for release dates, okay? I got ‘em in 2008 and they are all pretty recent.
5Go ahead and mock me. My girlfriend does. As does pretty much everyone else. I don’t know, something about their shtick appeals to the 13 year-old boy in me.
6Honestly, some of it gets a little lite-jazzy in places for my taste. But it is top music, really. And great for coding. Music for coding is important.
7 Really, they’re kinda of a pain in the ass, and roughly double the amount of time to post, no matter how entertaining and useful they are for my long-winded style.
8Though I suppose it could compete with not deciding how I want to type out Digital Lofi/digitallofi/digital lofi/Digital LoFi/Digital Lo-Fi/et al. But I won’t even go into my reasons behind this.}

No real update, though I’m writing an epic post on my troubles with PACE.

But I did get my font issue with this site sorted out. While certainly not dazzling it should be a whole lot easier to read, and should scale correctly.

So I encourage my few new readers to go back through the archives and/or recent few months and fully enjoy the wit and wisdom¹ of C. Puffer without straining your eyes.

^{1Self-deprecation doesn’t really translated to type very well, does it?}

Ron Paul ‘08!

I kid, though you got to admit, it would have made the Republican Convention a hell of a lot more interesting.

To quote The Daily Show “Barack Obama kinda gives me a boner…” He’s smart, articulate, and obviously can run a good organization. I trust him to attempt salvaging what’s left of our Constitution. And while I don’t have strong feelings about Biden, I have abstract roots in Delaware and his debate performance was reassuring.

McCain, I never really liked him, esp. after reading D. Foster Wallace’s profile in “An Supposedly Fun Thing…” but I think I could have suffered through him about as well as I have Bush. At least he’s articulate even if I don’t agree with him and think he’s probably a real unpleasant sonabitch. But Palin. Words can not express my dislike, distrust and scorn of this, erm, politician. An embodiment of all that’s wrong with the US body politic. Really, if McCain was half the independent he claimed to be he would have chosen Olimpia Snow as his running mate. In that case I would have said, well, at least things will completely fall apart on their watch. I no longer have that distant comfort.

Unfortunately, I can make no threat to move elsewhere. While I’m an independent contractor that works from home, I’m still a paycheck-to-paycheck mofo. But if I *could* move anywhere, I think it would be Germany or Amsterdam. Maybe England since I come from a long line of Anglophiles.

If we as a nation are smart/lucky enough to have an Obama/Biden administration I will be glad to continue to participate in the American Experiment. Should they get away with their usual gerrymandering, fraud and suppression, I’m not how I’ll stand another 4 years of not being able to watch the President and Vice-President speak. (Literally, I’m almost physically incapable of watching Bush/Cheney.)

Fortunately, to vote I just have to walk across the street. I live in a very Blue State so I’m going to read up on my local bond initiatives tonight. But beyond that, I hope against hope that our electorate isn’t beyond repair and that Cheney and Co. don’t leave things in such disrepair as to doom us all.

And, yes, the title of this post is tongue in cheek. I will go back to ranting to myself about digital production minutia presently.

No, no. Don’t get your shorts in a bunch. I don’t have any insider info, or a leak or anything.

But my half-abstracted mutterings of the other day, I made a bunch of vague criticisms of Sonar in regards to future of the program. While my speculation came primarily from a grass-is-greener place and not any measurable dissatisfaction, the estimable Peter Kirn of CreateDigitalMusic reasonably wondered what specifically I am finding lacking in Sonar, and where I’d like to see it go with this next supposed version.

So, let’s see…

• ACT (Active controller technology): This is one of Sonar’s biggest “almost there” features. You’ll notice if you watch the promo videos for this feature they always use a particular Edirol controller. Since Edirol is a Cakewalk partner it looks pretty slick, with a nice GUI and and a nice easy handshake between controller and DAW. But I don’t have an Edirol controller. And working with the ACT interface that controls the 95% of the controllers out there is pretty kludgy. In Cake’s effort to make it simple for us musicians, they left out a deeper level of control that doesn’t involve some digging. 75% of the time it works pretty great; it’s that other 25% that’s a bitch.
• Track presets: As I have been trying to “optimize my workflow” I’ve been setting up a bunch of track presets. They’re great: setup a synth you like, or a chain of plugins that has that certain something, complete with folders sends and buses, and call it back up with a few mouse clicks. Sweet. But these aren’t effect chains per se, so if you have an already recorded track it takes a little juggling to make that work. And it doesn’t include buses, and that would be handy.
• Better asset management: That “Audio Pool” feature in Logic sounds awful handy. How about being able to audition MIDI clips? Come on, admit it, the “Clean Audio” utility is pretty long in the tooth.
• Windows… sigh: Come to think of it, some of the modal windows could use a little bit of buffing. It’s pretty apparent there’s at least a bit of legacy code in there that, while perfectly functional and not entirely essential, could stand to be upgraded. And a lot of vst plugins that are more vertical than horizontal (like a few of the fabulous Bootsy plugins) can end up with a swath of dead window space Sonar fills up the Window bar with it’s functions. There’s got to be a more elegant way.
• I refuse to believe that video can’t be improved. I haven’t used it in a while, but last time I tried it was pretty easy to get the video stream to stutter and fall over, even some rudimentary editing, cuing features would be helpful.

Anyway, I’m getting picky. I’m really not that much of a bitch.

I’m sure I’ll think of something later on. So this is subject to revision.

Here’s the big thread at the Cakewalk forums from a lot people who a.) possibly use Sonar a lot more than me. b.) mostly spend more time on the forums than I do.

Further my explorations in finishing my audio rig, I’m getting close now. So very close.

I had ditched the Alesis i|o 26 a while ago due to its really poor drivers. This pretty much convinced me that I don’t like firewire audio interfaces. I don’t see the point really when you have a desktop computer and latency is important. In my experience, PCI drivers are more solid. Perhaps on a Mac this is different, but even the heralded RME drivers used way too much CPU when I pushed them at all.

For a while I reverted to my EZbus/Audiophile setup. M-Audio may make absolute crap but they know how to write a driver, or at least a solid PCI card driver. And I didn’t have to worry about the quality of the card’s converters or clock since it was handing those duties off to the EZbus Mixer. But I quickly remembered why I ditched this setup in the first place. Sure, the output amplifiers on the EZbus are really nice, but the pre-amps have little-to-no headroom which makes them pretty useless for any sort of line-in. I’m guessing that the converters and clock are above average at best. And the loop-back latency is huge. Plus there are a few other limitations that I won’t bother to enumerate but make it a less than ideal recording rig, digital lofi or no.

So, after another round of reading specs and gearslutz.com threads, I bought a Lynx L22 card. I contacted the guys at Mercenary Audio, who are fortunately just up I95 about 20 minutes, and they had one in stock.

Let me take a minute to say a few kind words about Mercenary. Obviously, I’m lofi. And kind of thick. On top of which, I don’t have a lot of money to throw around. I’m not entirely their target customer. But they treated me with complete respect, answered all my stupid questions, and helped me understand my purchase. They also showed me around their studio and workshops, which was very inspiring. I can’t recommend them enough. I really look forward to being able to business with them again.

The Lynx was a painless install. More importantly, the difference in the sound was stunning. The same night that I installed it, the friend that I record with came over. I didn’t tell him about the upgrade and just pulled up a song we had been working on. “The bass sounds great,” he said a few bars in. “What did you do to it?”

Seriously, insert your favorite audio snob cliché: “Blanket lifted off the mix…” “…punchy…” “tight bottom end…” et cetera. I just know that a lot of the muddiness that I/we had been struggling with was either cleared up or much easier to sort out. Even running into the EZbus (via SPDIF, so clocked and covereted by the L22) the improvement was stunning.

But the problem was basically, what to use as an interface. The EZbus wasn’t going to cut for the aforementioned reasons, and I don’t have the dosh to splash out on a summing box, outboard converters or an AES mixer. Nothing was really worth my trouble in my price-range after blowing my load on the card itself. Then it occurred to me: just use the Alesis as an small mixer, and save myself a lot of expense and hassle.

So I get all the advantages of the Alesis (multiple in and outs, SPDIF, optical, phono) but I don’t have to worry about its shortcomings. It’s converters, as near as I can tell, aren’t all that bad, but since I’m summing to the Lynx, as well as sending my analog signal to the L22, it is basically souped up patch-bay. And for that it works pretty well.

All I need now is a decent pre-amp.

So my advice to you bedroom producers and project studio jockeys: scrimp and save and get yourself a decent soundcard. It’s worth it.

This blog? You should be so lucky.

My extended absence can be blamed on many things – you know, the work/life/relationship bits I occasionally allude to – but mostly it’s because as of my last post (or thereabouts) I’ve been sans cigarettes. Yeah, I’ve retired my beloved and longtime companion, American Spirits. The fuel for many late nights at my DAW, the thing that keeps me focused while I put together posts here, my blessing and curse. After almost 30-something years it’s finally time to figure out how I can live my life without this glorious crutch.

Of course, I’m great at quitting. I’ve done it many times. (As the old joke goes.) But I really want to become a non-smoker. I’ll really try not to become a complete asshole about it – hell hath no fury like a smoker reformed – but cost, potential ill-health and social stigma have gotten to be too much for me to afford.

It will be a couple of weeks soon, and hopefully I’ll be able to do something other than glower at life and obsess on justifications for something that ultimately makes me feel shitty about myself.

• I’ve said before, I’m not inclined to fault companies for what they didn’t put in their product – I generally know what I’m getting into when I fork over for a license and trust that it will meet my expectations. I’ll even be pretty forgiving for “bugs” and what I see as over-sights/blunders in the execution – to a point of course. And, as I’ve also said, most of the companies we’re talking about in the independent audio software world are benign to very cool. But indulge me in climbing on my rackety and feeble pulpit and address my benefactors over at Native Instruments.

Greetings Native Instruments Co.,

Congratulations on all the great products you’ve been releasing lately. I hope you’ve been having a lot of success with them. However, I want to specifically address your upgrade policy on your Kontakt line of products.

I’ve been using Kontakt since literally the day it arrived at a local Mega Lo Guitar Mart and upgraded to version 2 because of all the fine work you put into improving and expanding the product. It’s been great. I even purchased the tutorial DVD to more fully utilize it’s deeper features; to what extent this is actually the case is sorta besides the point. Suffice to say, I’ve acquired (legally it should be said) a lot of soundware that does fully utilize Kontakt’s deeper features.

The latest version Kontakt 3 looks pretty swell also. Looks like you improved a lot of the features. Perhaps not a whole version upgrade. But, you know, it’s your product you can give it what number you want really; who am I to judge the work that went into it? I look forward to trying it out.

My problem is this: Why do I have to buy the whole library that comes with it? Honestly, I don’t really use the 2 NI Kontakt libraries I have as it is. And while I’m sure you’ve done some stunning work on improving the included library, and the reports seem pretty favorable, I don’t see this being a whole lot different. I’ve got a lot of these sounds well covered, and the last thing my sample drive needs is more redundancy.

I’m guessing it’s because you want to keep it a boxed product, no? That even with your very well implemented registration management, and your high profile, a boxed product is more like a “physical thing” – shelf space and all that – and thus somehow less prone to being ripped off or dismissed as not worth the investment. Okay, I may well be grasping, but, seriously, couldn’t you offer an “engine”-only download update for users? Well, I know you *could*, but for some reason you don’t. No offense to the many sound designers and editors who put together your library. But I just don’t need it. And it seems a waste for me to buy a whole lot of packaging and content for what probably comes to about 20MB of program and plugin files.

And, yes, I know it’s only around $130.00 street. It’s not really the price so much as it is the waste of it all. Offering it for under 90 bucks from you website seems a reasonable amount to pay considering what you’re charging for the boxed upgrade.

I’ll just give in and get it I suppose. I’ll get sick of manually exporting MIDI files, or trying to built multis will finally drive me batty and I’ll get the packaging then go ahead then download the latest build. Either that or you’ll release Kontakt 4 and just upgrade to that. Or, considering how I’ve wound up with a lot of your products, just before the next version is released you’ll blow out the remaining stock of 3 and I’ll just pay what it would theoretically cost me for a download now. And then start the cycle again…

Do you see the folly?

Cheers,

Your Customer,
Digital Lo-Fi

Of all my posts over the last year, by far the most viewed has been my post on the open-source-ing of the DiscoDSP Highlife sampler. People love the open source. The project is not without its controversy – for a lot reasons I don’t understand and have no opinion about – but is still something I think is a good move for the alternative audio software world.

Since that post both the commercial version and the source code have been updated. Not in tandem; it appears there is a fork in the project, and the commercial version exists independently of the open-source version, i.e. features and improvements in the new commercial version do not necessarily appear in the source code. But the source code now has an official update with some new features. And I like to believe that somewhere a developer or neophyte is tinkering away and will release something none of us saw coming.

I’ve mentioned it before, Rayzoon Jamstix is a great value for the Windows-based project studio. It has another update that adds a boat-load of new features and fixes. I’m not using it much these days because I’m not doing much composing or creating, but when I start writing again I’m hoping to get some good use out of this.

And here’s a new old one: Beatburner, possibly one of the best names for an audio production tool, is now Free. As in lunch, erm… beer… erm… well, free software.

I haven’t had the time to install and give it a whirl, but that the developer turned what was, he says, a commercial “meh” into a hotly downloaded piece of software that will be powering thousands of users’ digital lofi tracks for the next few years is a Great Thing. And he’s supporting the swarm all on his own time and dime. There’s a new torrent which should ease some of the burden, and I’ve badgered him into putting up a PayPal donate. Give the guy a few bucks if you’ve downloaded it, or are planning to. He said something like 20,000 (!) downloads; if everyone gave one or two (insert currency here) he’d have made a nice little return on his investment.

And, as always, to stay up-to-date on all things computer audio related, soundware and software, rekkerd.org is a great blog. And his “short links” roundups are always interesting.

I’ll finish up my series of posts celebrating cross-platform plugins with an elder statesman of the cross-platform plugin world, SonicCharge’s absolutely awesome µTonic (or microTonic).

I bought this back shortly after it was released, or at least when it was reviewed and demo’d in Computer Music. I made the decision like 15 minutes after installing the demo. It is really that fabulous. It is both simple – the presets are by and large brilliant – and really, really deep. To this day I’m constantly surprised by the sonic interest it adds to my music and the sounds I can get out of it – and I use it a lot.

I’m bringing this up for few reasons:

• It fits in perfectly with my cross-OS celebration, natch.
• A few months ago SonicCharge updated all the code for today’s top-o-the-line Macs (and a built a new Vista installer, though the program itself worked fine).
• In conjunction with said update they also released a new folder full of patches.
• To give away a little freebie pack of patches for use with µTonic.
• To make you suffer through a lot of back story.

All of this after the jump.
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