Skip to main content

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...

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

Popular posts from this blog

WordPress: How to add custom fonts to a twenty seventeen child theme.

Quick help to those who have tried to find some help and failed (as I have so I have to write the code myself). Assuming that you have your virgin child theme configured and activated: here is a function which goes into the functions.php file (of your configured and activated child theme): function childtheme_twentyseventeen_fonts_url() { $replace_original_font = true; // unless you really like Libre Franklin if ($replace_original_font !== true) { $hyph = '-custom-'; } else { $hyph = '-'; }; $font_families = array( //add your Google fonts and weights (400 and 700 are defaults for normal and bold) here: 'Oswald:200,400,700', 'Lato:200,400,700', ); $query_args = array( 'family' => urlencode( implode( '|', $font_families ) ), 'subset' => urlencode( 'latin,latin-ext' ), ); $fonts_url = add_query_arg( $query_args, 'https://fonts.googleapis.com/css' ); wp_enqueue_style( 'twentyseventeen' ....

Who is running MacAddict forums?

I normally hate to complain, but, being a happy subscriber to the magazine for some time now, feel like I do need to express a concern about my recent experience with MacAddict forums section of the web site. Due to some server misbehavior, I had to re-register, my old profile disappeared, while I was updating it. My new profile was assign a label "n00b" (None Of Our Business, if I am not mistaken. This is some way to welcome a new member to the MacAddict community). It could've been cute, but it isn't. And I don't think, it was intended to be: from the post of "Scott": "...using tables for layout...is for lame-ass n00bs..." I have read several more posts in the "Web Design and Development" forum, which, for some reason, was for a couple of days named "George" (the name is back to normal now; but here is how forum moderator "Gipetto" reacted when he was asked about this oddity: "...poop, it blew me away tha...

Sometimes You Just Know

Sometimes you just know what's going to happen, like, when flying Delta to Moscow (happened some years ago, flight was cancelled due to horrible weather, then they decided to send us there through Amsterdam, then changed it to Paris), at that vividly remembered moment, when we just checked in our suitcases to the Amsterdam flight and someone comes and says "no, they are going through Paris" and we are sadly looking at our luggage being slowly dragged by the conveyor belt to that Amsterdam flight we are not going to board anymore, and we say "what about our luggage" and they say "don't worry, it is going to be taken care of" and you just know it is not true. And it wasn't, and we landed in Moscow in a middle of a snow storm, and most of our warm clothes were traveling to Amsterdam and back and it took them three days to finally reach Moscow. Sometimes you just know, and now I am having another déjà vu moment, different curcumstances, same feelin...