Mike Rivers

After months of deciding that there would be a NAMM show in January 2022, it's now been postponed until June 2022. The usual suspect - Covid19

The Chromebook is really for common applications and the Chrome software won't hardly run anything on its own. It was a good choice for no-budget families and students who need a way to get their school lessons done on line. I'm surprised at the shortage of "real" laptops of about that age with a 12-13" screen, and how much they cost nowadays when one can be found. I'm willing to go $200 for what I want, but either I can't find it or it's $379.

He was indeed a most unique artist, producer, engineer, and whatever else he's doing at the time.

There have been some great drummers over the years but only Charlie Watts was the drummer for the Stones. The fact that he kept his job and the band never quit working is what made him noteworthy. Now you want a really interesting drummer, look up Joe Morello with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. He was such a dynamic and melodic player that when he took a solo you never lost the tune.

Looks like they also know how to sell businesses, too. I saw recently that, while Chuck is keeping his job as CEO, a majority of the company ownership is in the works to be sold to a venture capitalist group. We're assured that, as customers (and, I suppose, for you, Craig, as a supplier) that things will remain as they are. Hope so. I'm not a major Sweetwater customer, but I've always had good service from them when they're the right dealer for what I'm looking for. A news article about it

Sure. Why not? If you walked around the house playing the bass, that would be weird. There are many contemporary artists who have taken the uke to places where it's never been before (and sometimes I question if it should go there), compose music with it, write songs with it. And there are still traditional Hawaiian singers, song writers, and players for whom the uke is there regular working instrument.

Sounds like good news, and that the end is in sight.

I've missed out on just about every new form of music since about 1950. It's why I don't use tons of plug-ins when I mix.

Well, of course there's a difference sonically between Soundcraft's mixers. There can be a sonic different between two cables. But you're using the mixer primarily if not exclusively for live sound, and you don't don't have a lab to run tests that you can agonize over. And with live sound, you have a lot of distractions from the small subtle differences between op-amp circuits or transformers-or-none. So, for all practical purposes there's nothing to worry about there. Make your choices based on functionality. Does one have a built-in effect processor that you think you'll never use? Do they use the same connector types (and mix of balanced outputs and inputs) as your present mixer so you won't need new cables? At least the same number of outputs and inputs as you presently have? Input and output levels? I haven't done a comparison search of those mixers or other similar ones, but do that. See what you can get and don't get with each one.

C64? Commodore 64 computer? Computers and audio until fairly recently have always had a hard time co-existing. Most of the noise problems stemmed from the power supply and computer chassis that didn't have a solid ground connection, That's why you can still get hum with the device turned off, Proper grounding through cables can help, but they as long as there's any connection between grounds of the computer and anything connected to it, there will be a problem. Whatever works.

Good progress with both you and your gear. Always glad to hear it. You'll probably be up and running while new things that make walking more uncomfortable for me keep popping up - some have predictable end points like the scrapes and bruises from the fall I took due to my brain not knowing what my feet are doing due to neuropathy. It's just like troubleshooting electronics but at some point you just can't get the right replacement parts (like a new brain).

I applaud you for making your own cables, though given what I think an MFX3 is, the analog I/O is on a D-sub connector, so all of the cables are "custom," so you probably made the ones you're replacing anyway. At least the outputs are balanced so you'll be taking advantage of their common mode noise rejection with new balanced cables, assuming they're going to balanced (differential) inputs. But are you certain that the noise as you hear it now is due to crosstalk through cables? It's possible, given the age of the equipment and what the designers had to work with at the time, that they did their best to keep all the stray noises bottled up inside the case, but that some made its way to the output connector and is getting into your system the same way the music is. Like Craig says, "It's authentic." Have you discovered a way that you can predictably make the noise occur? By executing some function? Loading a file? It would be good if you could do some testing like that - make the noise, move a cable, make the noise again and see if it's still there. A new balanced connection will guard against some noise, but not all, so your work won't be for naught, but it might not solve your problem.

Good to hear that you're back at work with the ever-expanding rack. I think every day, and stare at it about every other day, of re-configuring my patchbay, but haven't warmed up the soldering iron yet, My jackfields are surplus telephone company ones and they're all solder terminals. The cable lengths are all tailored to the old Soundcraft console and had plenty of slack to remove a row of jacks and get it into a reasonable soldering position, but with the Mackie console in there some are too short and don't leave me very much working room. If I wanted to do the job right, I'd either dig out my ADC patchbays that have punch-down connectors (the tool only coss about $50 last time I checked, about 10 years ago) and rewire the whole works. The ones I have now are standard long frame 1/4" jacks with 2 rows of 24 while the ADCs are Bantam jacks with 2 rows of 48 jacks. I could save enough rack space with those to move a few pieces in a home made mini rack in the hutch over my desk - because they fit there. But buying a handful of Bantam patch cables would cost a small fortune. So it sits, and when I need to patch in some mic preamps, I have a snake from there to the patchbay resting comfortably behind the rack. But nobody uses patchbays any more. It's been a while since you've posted here and, knowing you had a few band gigs scheduled recently, was concerned that you hadn't overworked your leg. Too many pedals? Too many gigs?

That's why they became so popular. As a common school yard instrument up throuth the 1950s, they have now been replaced by cell phones, Sad.

OK, so you missed it. A video of the talk is now up on You Tube. You can get to it directly here: [video:youtube] The official reason for this seminar was to convince the AES and manufacturers to get together on standards for interconnecting analog equipment, adhere to them, and that manufacturers specify the input and output configurations for a piece of gear so the user will know how to connect to it. The talk was well balanced, well explained, and well illustrated by Bill (as usual) and it's a worthwhile primer on what balanced and unbalanced really means, why we have ground loops and how to avoid them, and best practices for cable wiring when connecting a balanced and unbalanced device. Stuff you should know about, and think about next time you have an XLR connector in one hand and an RCA jack in the other and know that if you buy a ready-made cable or adapter, it won't be the best way of connecting them for minimum hum and noise - and how you can do it correctly with some parts and a soldering iron.

OK, since everyone missed it, the video of the talk is now up on You Tube. You can get to it directly here: [video:youtube] The official reason for this seminar was to convince the AES and manufacturers to get together on standards for interconnecting analog equipment, adhere to them, and that manufacturers specify the input and output configurations for a piece of gear so the user will know how to connect to it. The talk was well balanced, well explained, and well illustrated by Bill (as usual) and it's a worthwhile primer on what balanced and unbalanced really means, why we have ground loops and how to avoid them, and best practices for cable wiring when connecting a balanced and unbalanced device. Stuff you should know about, and think about next time you have an XLR connector in one hand and an RCA jack in the other and know that if you buy a ready-made cable or adapter, it won't be the best way of connecting them for minimum hum and noise - and how you can do it correctly with some parts and a soldering iron.

At least as many kinds of harmonicas as there are kinds of guitars, but a beginner today probably will initially be inspired by James Cotton (blues) or Doc Watson (country), both of whom played diatonic harmonicas, as opposed to Toots Thielmans or Stevie Wonder who play chromatic. I had a little giggle on the shuttle bus from, I think a Summer NAMM show in Nashville to the airport. I was sitting across the aisle from a woman who was hounding her seat mate (obviously not a companion) about how popular the harmonica was getting, being played by inexperienced players who were always too loud. Her seat mate was explaining that this can happen with any instrument and the harmonica could be well played at any volume. As they were getting off, she asked his name. "I'm Lee Oskar. I make and sell harmonicas."

I play blues harmonica pretty darn well. The secret is NOT playing in the key of the song, but a fourth above - e.g., for a blues in E, you want an A harmonica. Harmonicas are great. You can fit them in your shirt pocket, and get souful in under 10 seconds. They're also one of the few instruments where you can blow and suck. There are many different types of harmonicas - not all of them work like that. The most common harmonica is the diatonic harmonica like the Hohner Marine Band model, designed primarily for playing European folk tune. We can thank country and blues musicians of the 1920s for developing the "cross-harp" concept of playing in the alternate key and developing the overblowing technique for bending notes and playing notes that are in the cracks. Bands that featured the harmonica like jug bands played in just a couple of keys but folky harmonica players in the 1960s carried a box of instruments in different keys (I think it was Tony Glover who used an ammunition belt to keep them handy) to go with the singers. Back then, a Marine Band harmonica cost about $5 - I don't know what a new one or equivalent costs today. Howard Levy (at least he's the first one I know) extended this technique so that he could (and did) play in any key on a single harmonica, with each key having its own characteristic "almost right" notes sometimes called "blue notes." There are chromatic harmonicas with a button that shifts every hole by a half-step. And harmonicas that are a foot or more longer with an extended range. Keep sucking!

Working on a circuit board in a microphone is quite a bit different from making 1/4" or XLR cables or replacing components on a terminal board in a point-to-point wired amplifier - things that are probably second nature to you. Having the right size soldering iron tip is important to avoid burning pads off the board or creating a solder bridge if it's too large, and taking too long to get a connection hot enough if you have a tip that's too small. Good thing you recognized that before doing any damage, As far as bending resistor leads, where there's a need, there's a tool. This little jig from Jameco will get you a clean bend with the right lead spacing every time, and it's only five bucks. You might want to pick one up before you start your next mic modification, Hope you continue to like the sound of the mic, That's the important part.

Great! I've found that I've become so fumble fingered that whenever I assemble something even as simple as as a 2-conductor shielded cable, I always check it for correctness and inspect the soldering before putting it into service. That usually takes only a couple of minutes, but if it takes half an hour of crawling around behind racks in order to plug in the cable, I don't want to discover that I've crossed the wires or made a sloppy solder bridge and accidentally connected one of the signal leads to ground.

Anyone make it to this show? I remembered that it was at noon today, I just forgot to make sure I knew when noon was. By the time I remembered it was nearly 2 0'clock. Don't get old if you can avoid it, I looked for the YouTube version and of course it wasn't up yet. I guess someone has to get around do doing something with something in order to get link to the video set up. Maybe in a couple of weeks, . . . .

"Narration" is good for a video, though I suppose that the video could be what the voice is over if you wanted to use "voiceover." I suppose there's nothing wrong with "vocal mic" when talking about a microphone, but when talking about the activity that vocal mic is used for, it's not necessarily "over."

(borrowed from Dr. Mike on his recording forum) I never thought much about the term "voiceover" until home-brew podcasting became so popular. "Voiceover" implies that the voice rides over something, usually music, though I'd accept ambient sound such as street traffic if one is telling a story about a busy street or jaywalking. But I think we need a hip sounding (or not) word for just plain spoken voice without (intentional) background sound or music. When I was writing reviews and wanted to describe the performance for voice, I usually used "spoken word," but that sounds so stuffy. Any thoughts? Any good words about a new, or old resurrectable word that we could use?

Y'all must think I'm Bill Whitlock's agent since this is about the third presentation he's given that I though might be of interest. Bill took over Jensen Transformers from Dean Jensen, and, while he knows a lot about a lot of stuff that goes into our gear, his specialties are in making thing work in the best way when you connect them together. He's put together a talk for the Audio Engineering Society Standards Committee Analog Interconnections Working Group that you can sit in on. It will start (as accurately as these things start anyway) from Noon to 1 PM, Eastern time, on Monday, July 26. I don't have anything specific about his talk, but I always find that when he talks, it's worth while listening. He's great at explaining why things work and why they don't. Since the broad scope is to establish standards that equipment manufacturers can use to assure that their gear talks to the next piece of gear in line. And I can assure you that digital audio didn't make analog interconnections go away. It'll be worth an hour if you have the time. The Zoom version of the event (and ability to submit questions) is open to AES members only - you have to register and to do so you must be an AES member, but you already know that if you are one. They will simultaneously broadcast to AES's YouTube page for any nonmembers who would like to watch the event. AES's YouTube channel can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/user/AESorg. You'll probably be able to find it there if you connect to that YouTube page just a couple of minutes before noon (or maybe a couple of minutes after).

Two U87s, two KM84s, and I'd trade one of my two D224s for an RE-20. Why? Because with one or the other - or either - ofthe Neumanns, I can make a good good recording of anything, in mono, X-Y stereo (KM84s), M-S stereo (a U87 in figure-8 and a KM84), Blumlein stereo (U87s in figure-8). Also, although I've never done it, record like Bruce Swedien recorded some of Michael Jackson's vocals with two U87s in omni. I'd break up the pair of D224s or one of the Sennheiser MD421s to trade it for or toward most of an RE20. I originally bought the D224s for stereo recording with a cassette recorder with no phantom power, and I have no further need for that, but it's still a nice "universal" mic. I used to have three MD421s, but one disappeared after a gig, and I never use those as a pair, just one here and another there. I don't record drums with too many mics so I wouldn't miss the third one there, and I've always wanted to have an RE20, another great universal mic, but I just never found one at a price I was willing to pay without having a specific use for it. I suspect that for miking a group, an RE20 might get more use than another MD421, since it would work well in places where the MD421 is OK, but there might be a better choice.