analogika

There's some fact-checking issues in what you write: Petroleum plays almost no role whatsoever in the production of electricity in the United States: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php Globally, it's about 3% — and falling: https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix (Nuclear is dropping sharply, as well, because it's just ridiculously expensive compared to renewables.) The other point here is that this isn't static. Renewable energy production is growing at a tremendous pace, globally, and prices have come down enough almost everywhere to make everything else almost stupidly expensive by comparison. (If nuclear is cheaper, that's only because the local government is subsidising the hell out of it.) Whatever energy mix is powering EVs today is only going to become MORE environmentally friendly in six months, let alone six years. Additionally, all of the environmental aspects of lithium need to be put into perspective next to petroleum-based mobility. The vast majority of lithium is conventionally mined, and it is much less "messy" than oil — compare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_the_Niger_Delta And that lithium is mined once for a ten-to-fifteen-year run, after which the battery is recycled or repurposed into energy storage for another decade. Petrol just keeps requiring fracking, piping, refining, shipping. Speaking of which: It's generally ignored that the production and distribution of petrol and diesel requires massive amounts of energy itself. It's difficult to come by hard data here, since it includes things like cross-continent pipelines etc., but it seems realistic that just the energy required to get the gasoline for a given driving distance out of the ground and into the tank is equivalent to about half the energy required by an EV for that distance. Again, hard data is difficult here, since at least some of the energy during required during refining is produced by burning off extraneous gas and oil derivatives — which in turn comes with its own environmental issues, of course. I agree that the cost of battery replacement is a show-stopper, and IMHO, battery development is moving so rapidly that we'll see a bunch of major news in the next few years, as the industry standardises on sodium batteries (they're already in the market). Also, charging coverage isn't nearly where I'd want it to feel comfortable, yet. But even given the price, the flux and rapid movement in technology, and the various aspects that aren't ironed out yet, and given the fact that mobility will be moving away from lithium batteries, EVs are ridiculously more effective TODAY than fossil-based mobility. All that said: my next vehicle is due this summer and will be a (used) fossil engine, but I'm not under any illusion that anybody will want to buy it off me in six years' time.

I dunno about "more heinous than saying 'fuck'" (which I don't mind), but it is profoundly disrespectful to the person concerned.

The idea of eventually having three six-foot displays right above the console and the side-racks, with additional plug-in instances set right aside the physical hardware (apparently, they absolutely nailed — pun intended — location persistence of windows), with zero concern to acoustics and obscuring monitor speakers etc., is worth the money on its own. Motion sickness does not appear to be an issue with AVP at all, because a) pass-through is that good, and b) it's not aimed at gaming/movement and the necessary compromises involved with making that work in a headset.

Meanwhile, the Europeans are sitting back, Chantré in hand, content to let the Australians think this is about them…

Assuming that you're talking about SSD storage: The entire Logic Pro application package takes up 1.99 GB of your disk, and the MA Resources frameworks, which include all the graphics and code for the included plugins, apparently take up about 2/3 of that. Since the resources are spread across several folders within the application package, there is no real way to remove any one plugin. I'll note that when trying different presets to search out a particular kind of sound, I'm consistently surprised by some of the sounds coming from ancient plugins like the ES2. The actual space eaters on my disk are: /Library/Application Support/Logic/ (66 GB) /Library/Application Support/GarageBand/ (15 GB) /Library/Audio/Impulse Responses/Apple/ (2 GB) /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/ (31 GB) As mentioned above, you can relocate most of those files to an external disk. Thanks for mentioning the FM synth, btw — I'd never actually used it in 25 years, and just now, trying a couple of presets, I immediately found a handful of sounds that would have been really useful in the past few months… I'm keeping an eye on that one in the future, for sure.

Still kicking myself that I didn't immediately jump on the classified ad for a Wurlitzer flightcase at €150 a while back. Ah well… at least I got crazy lucky on a flightcase for the philicorda — which has really oddball measurements. Got a used trolley case the other day, with exactly 2 cm of space on all sides, and 4 cm at the bottom end. Just bought the foam and am glueing it later today. Been scouring the classifieds on and off for months to find this random deal. 65€ including shipping, plus another 30 for the foam. Perfect score! Sorry…what were we talking about? 😁

I know, thank you! That works out to pretty much exactly four times the price I paid, after shipping and taxes…and only slightly less than a custom flightcase… So I'm using the GEWA bag for now. Let's see how it holds up.

For context: My B3 has been with me for 24 years now, and it's been pretty permanently sitting on its Roll-or-Kari since day one. https://www.musicstone.de/Gewa-Keyboardtasche-Premium-L-neu Came recommended to me by one of the prime key techs here (did all the official setup/warranty service for Vintage Vibe for years) as "not pretty, not great, but cheap and does the job". The Wurli is played a lot more often than the organ, currently. But you're right: it wasn't along on that particular tour. The Hammond needed some TLC; a bunch of contacts needed resoldering, mostly.

If that's your experience… I just lugged the Wurli up out of the basement in its gig bag to prep for a rehearsal tomorrow. My Hammond is not even in the basement — it's currently in storage in a warehouse, because I've temporarily refocused and dismantled the studio, and rehearsal spaces accessible without staircases are fairly hard to come by. I'd also need a van, but I only own a station wagon. When the Hammond goes out, it involves a rental van and driving out to the warehouse before and after the gig. With a minimum of one other guy to help load. Also, FWIW, my Wurli has needed a small handful of reed replacements in the twenty years I've owned it, while the Hammond and Leslie needed a service after a two-week tour across Europe.

Thanks! — I kept trying to remember the name of that piano. Yeah, that's probably a good example. That certainly is a nice price point, but our own @Josh Paxton's extensive review seems to bear out my intuition that the keybed is probably the component most affected by cutting costs to meet a target price: Seems they repurposed a Fatar TP100LR digital piano keyboard, Frankensteining it with additional felts and hammers into an action that it was never designed to have, but didn't quite manage to make it work. I assume (but do not know for a fact) that the keybed and action are the biggest chunk of the Rhodes Mk8's $9,500 price tag.

Vintage Vibe pianos are their own, brand new pianos, not refurbished originals. Their well-running repair/parts business was what enabled them to build new electromechanical pianos. Since we've had several companies re-issuing Rhodes(-like) pianos over the years (Mk7, Vintage Vibe, Mk8), and none re-issuing Wurlis, I think it makes sense to look at how that business works when trying to gauge what a "new Wurli" might mean. There is literally nobody who would not prefer a vintage Hammond, given both options. The reasons that (hardware) clones exist that I can see are: • Weight/Bulk • Reliability • Cost of upkeep • Hassle of requiring recording space/noise level, and • sometimes price (depending on the clone; some are more expensive than shopping around for a good deal on a real Hammond, plugins can be free or $50) Literally none of that applies to a Wurlitzer piano except price — and there are tons of cheap or free plugins, and no way a good Wurli reissue will be cheaper than a used one. A reissue will be of comparable weight and bulk. A Wurli is pretty light. My Wurli was serviced when I got it twenty years ago, and has been rock-solid in studio and gigging ever since. I've had to replace a handful of reeds, but that applies to any reissue, as well. (They're not expensive.) I usually record it DI through a nice preamp. Sounds great. No issue with neighbours. The weak spot of the Wurli, IMO is its keyboard action. And keyboard mechanics will probably be the most expensive part of any reissue.

I think you vastly overestimate the market for electromechanical pianos. It's not large enough to substantially bring down cost through mass production. Not in an age where $400 gets you a shockingly usable digital piano with an electric piano sound built in. Vintage Vibe is probably the most successful company building such products, with the most experience in pricing capacity vs. market demand, while remaining viable as a company. Their 73-key Vintage Vibe piano starts at $7,000 for the basic model. I was taken aback at how tiny their market was. Take a guess how many they've made? 600. Six hundred. In twelve years. https://www.vintagevibe.com/blogs/news/vintage-vibe-piano-600 Compared to about 250,000 Rhodes Mk I - Mk V (as estimated by Harold Rhodes). The current Wurli hype notwithstanding: This new Wurlitzer will be hand-built for a tiny market, and it really, desperately needs to be no worse than the refurbed vintage Wurlis that are out there already.

I dunno. There's probably a dozen possible ways to get it wrong if you cut corners. Exhibit A: Rhodes Mk 7, $3000-$5000 Exhibit B: Rhodes Mk 8, $9,500

I'd add the qualifier "and make it not suck", and you're back at around five figures.

Thanks for this. Bob was a major, major influence during my teenage years, and having watched and read most documentaries/bios available up until about the mid-90s, I was extremely wary of this thing, but now it sounds like it might be worth watching...

Louis Cole is insane. Great stuff. I had no idea they did a number with Snarky!

Thanks! I hadn't found that info on the Audacity website.

It's the Moog/Akai Synth Wolf!

There is no mention of stem separation in the "new features" video, nor in the manual (which, AFAICS, does not differentiate between Windows and Mac versions). https://support.audacityteam.org/music/isolating-or-removing-vocals-from-a-song

Not knocking the players. It just feels like an imitation of the studio production, but it's got that cover band uncanny valley-feel. Partly because of the horns. It's all super good, but the only part of it that feels "authentic" to me is Styles himself.

That cover of Sledgehammer sounds sadly like a pretty okay cover band version of somebody trying to do the recording. But man, those vocals are really great! Just terrific.

❤️

This appears to be a German family of that name having secured the brand name rights and licensing them out to…someone. This company has no connection to the original in anything other than name, from what we know so far.

If you watch the video above: they’ve just added a bunch of features (like grids and auto-quantising) that turn it into a DAW. This is great for people who start of using it as a basic dictaphone for their music but want to move on to more. Their previous option was to move to GarageBand (manageable), or Cubasis for those on Windows (which is a HELL of a jump in complexity).

I’m not seeing the “stem separation”? There’s vocal isolation/vocal removal (which leaves much of the reverb on my test with Adele’s “Someone Like You”), but that’s it. Am I missing something?