On Addictivity And Connectivity

First things first—after a year (at least) of drooling over one, I finally decided to cash in my almost-two-years-of-non-smoking credits, and got myself an EWI.
It sounds a bit like a medical condition, and frankly, it's quite mental, because I can't stop playing with it.
So far it seems to be an amusingly addictive instrument even with a stock soundbank—I plan on making my own patches later, as soon as I figure out how to use that UniQuest joke of a software—worst of all, it can be played in headphones, so I can do it even at 4am if I wanted to. So far, I have more fun then problems playing it, in spite of its little fingering differences (I use SA(x) mode), and totally different breathing technique.
Now comes the connectivity part.
I've used FastTrack USB for a couple of years with a microphone through the XLR input with no problems, but when I tried to connect a line output of EWI's synthesizer to the line input of the FastTrack, the signal level was very low. There was no noise, it was just quiet, even with the track volume all the way up—no match for the rest of the tracks.
I use FastTrack USB for audio input, and built-in audio for output, it's connected through a hub (no problems for two years). In GB microphone is going to the Channel 1 (mono), and still works fine. Synthesizer goes to Channel 2 (mono) and is really quiet. I tried the EWI with two different 1/4" cables with no difference.
After some more research on the Net it appeared to be that all the FastTracks suffer from the same problem, which makes me believe that it's not a bug, but a feature of an unexplainable kind.
Oh, well, back to my old iMic noisemaker (this one works, it's just screened very poorly, so it picks up all the possible interference, and also makes its own little nasty hiss—this is why I switched to the Fast Track a while ago—so I will need to cut it out with an equalizer).
Hopefully, the EQ surgery will not affect the synthesizer's sound consistency and quality as severely as it used to, when I was dealing with a microphone's input.
We'll see. There is also Lightsnake*, which looks very nice...

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* Ended up getting the Lightsnake eventually. Works fine, in spite of it showing up as "Unknown USB Device" in GarageBand menu.

On Variety Shows

Well, to put it shortly—if the best number in your variety show is performed by the quick-change artists, and the second best is Chinese acrobats (and even they cheated and bailed out of properly dismounting from the top of the chair tower), there is something wrong with the rest of the people on the show. I rightfully expect Ellen's Really BIG Variety Show—if I remember the name correctly—in it's dreadfull boringness to be challenged only by the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Should have gone to bed at 9 p.m., but didn't. Shame on me.

Template Update

Nothing special, really, just updated the blogger template for the sake of trying something new. And, yea, I lost my previous template backup somehow, so there was no way back. Now I have found my backup, but I don't like it anymore, so I am going to stay with this template for a while. Who cares.