The Quietest Place on Earth: The anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories is the Quietest Place on Earth, as awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Frustrating: We have a six-year-old Linn Classik system with bi-wired Katan speakers. We've been quite happy with this over the years, but the majority of the time it has been in standby mode. The problem is that lately the receiver tries to reset itself, going on and off, flicking out of standby, etc., and finally settling on displaying "11C". We can get it going for a couple of days by unplugging and resetting everything, but after a day or two, there it is again. Also, the CD player does not display status anymore such as track number or time remaining. If anyone has an idea how to fix this, let us know.

Update 20100412: delivered the unit to Definitive Audio for service

Warmth for Kitties: An abandoned kitty has taken up residence in a box on our porch. We installed an outdoor small animal heating pad (totaling $37) to help out with the overnight temperatures dropping to 14 degrees. Kitty seems very happy! Highly recommended if you can spare the 25 watts. See CozyWinters.com and look for the "outdoor" version.

Also, here's an excellent resource for learning about options for keeping kitties kozy.

Easy, intuitive, beautiful!:


Portable pocket-sized stand-alone wonder-machine with 8 synthesizer models, 8 samplers and effects like Delay, Flutter, Filters and EQ all built in. The Operator 1 is tentatively slated for a Spring 2010 release. See TeenageEngineering

Squeaker is romping in heaven

The CD version of mode includes an 8-page booklet of art designed by Alyce N. Hoggan, M.Des.

Twitter: follow us under the alias rareEntity.

Cubase Studio 5 arrived in the mail yesterday morning...we can't wait to dig in.

Ordered Cubase Studio 5 today...gotta keep up. Also, added a few news feeds to the bottom of this blog.

Designing for Scalability

Here's a white paper I authored and published while at Microsoft in 2000 titled "Architectural Design: A Scalable, Highly Available Business Object Architecture." The paper has since been dropped from TechNet, but it embodies the essential guidance for availability and scalability derived from integration testing with the Barnes & Noble order processing system. This paper is referenced by nine technical articles and two patents (6542902 and 7114158). It is here as archival information. The paper can also be found in archive.org



2019 update: The scalable workflow architecture described in the white paper predates what we now call a microservices architecture.
Further reading on scalability can be found here

A Good Cause: A nonprofit group called kynamatrix is supporting interactive communication research. They recently connected a number of university labs together using donated high-definition video equipment. It's like opening a window between labs! Perhaps this can help improve the nation's collaborative research infrastructure...reduce expensive travel and carbon footprints. More people should recognize and support creative efforts like this.

mode

The debut album "mode" is now available at CD Baby. You can read more about the artist there.

Please note: The album is participating in the CD Baby $5 sale, so pick up a copy or two today!

mode is also available at all three locations of Silver Platters in the Seattle area. These guys are great about carrying the music of local independent artists.

All songs composed by James W. Dunn

Instruments & Effects

1-Mode 120BPM 4/4 Fmin
Texture v1.2
Roland XV-5050
CM-505 v1.02
ZebraCM
Crystal v2.4

2-Rhythmetric 76BPM 4/4 Cmin
Texture v1.2
ZebraCM
Proteus VX v2
Atralis OrgoneCM
Motion 2.8
CompressiveCM

03-Octahedral 110BPM 4/4 Fmin
ZebraCM
Dominator
Proteus VX v2
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06

04-Vector 100BPM 4/4 D
HALionOne
Roland XV-5050

05-Harmonic 120BPM 4/4 Fmin
Garritan Steinway
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06
Access Virus Classic

06-Spiral 85BPM 4/4 Cmin
Analog Warfare 3.1
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06

07-Inevitable 81BPM 4/4 Cmin
Proteus VX v2
GenesisCM
Atralis OrgoneCM
Vocals: James Dunn / Alyce Hoggan
E-Phonic TapeDelay v0.2
Phaser / StereoEcho / Reverb
Glitch v1.3
CompressiveCM

08-Transcend 120BPM 4/4 Cmin
Proteus VX v2
Roland XV-5050
Texture v1.2
A1 Analog Synth v1.0
VB 1
Grungelizer / Reverb
Tranceformer v1.2
Vocals: James Dunn

09-Continuum 86BPM 4/4 Cmin
Garritan Steinway
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06
Access Virus Classic
LM7 v1
ReaFIR v1
Sampled ocean waves

10-Departure 120BPM 4/4 F/C#
Access Virus Classic
AmpSimulator / StereoEcho
Mysterizer / DaTube / TAL-Dub-2
Vocals: James Dunn

11-Solace 120BPM 5/4 Fmin
Garritan Steinway
Analog Warfare 3.1
Proteus VX v2
Motion 2.8
ZebraCM
Tranceformer v1.2 / Glitch v1.3
TAL-Dub-2

12-Convergence Fmin
Roland XV-5050 w/ SRX-06
ReaFIR v1
RoomWorks

Here's an interesting music service for emerging artists and interested listeners: TastyAudio

Cubase has announced the next version of its flagship music production system which boasts "stunning innovations and additional enhancements that boost productivity and performance". (And just as I was getting comfortable with Studio4!)

Microsoft Research has an interesting tool called SongSmith which generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice.

We received 204 pounds of CDs today (that's 1000).

mode

The debut album "mode" went up on CDBaby this week. Check it out!

(listen to some samples and follow the link to CDBaby)

Monster Power PRO 2500 arrived Thursday safe and sound. Did a benchmark noise level test prior to installation. Then, after making room and rewiring everything, Ran a comparison test. Going from two power strips to a rack-mounted power supply is quite a change and all the equipment is sensitive to position of just about every wire. Not detected a significant change in background noise yet. In fact, hearing more computer processing noise, which leads back to the issue of where all the wiring is running and where the computer is positioned. More A/B testing is necessary. Latest discovery on the web is http://www.soundsnap.com/ where you can find all sorts of interesting sound effect, loops, and aural delights.

Learned this week that ground loop is possible even among two surge protectors. With all studio components plugged into two daisy-chained strips, thought everything would be OK. It wasn't. During a mix down, noticed some background hiss and hum. This led to inserting Blue Cat's FreqAnalyst to investigate the problem. (the CM version from Computer Music Magazine.) Shut down equipment one-by-one and observed the relative noise spectrum. Several bumps were predominant in the 60Hz and multiples thereof.

Found that just having the ground pin of one of the KRK studio monitors was enough to introduce a spike in the the hum levels. Heard the term "ground loop" but never really knew what it meant. After investigating the term in wikipedia, did some further research and found some interesting products that can help with power cleanliness. In particular, Blue Circle's BC86 and any of the Monster Power products in the Pro Power line for musicians.

Being creative, tried a number of plug configurations, starting with just the computer and working up to having all 7 plugs connected successfully introducing only minimal hum. The best configuration found was the mixer and powered studio monitors plugged into a separate strip. All other components are plugged into a Monster PowerCenter HT700 power strip for now. Both power strips are now plugged in parallel to the same outlet.

Upgrading to a Monster Pro 2500 this week, so will compare the relative noise floor.

Found a really cool site today containing a free collection of online audio tests, test tones, audio signals. Conducting audio tests in the studio and doing some of the listening tests to determine levels of response, range, volume and pitch variance detection. It's almost like a game.

Here are some quality links surfed today:

Love the audio plugin information on the KVR site!

Interesting approach on news. (also see the CEO's blog)

Some good design sites:
Eben (in Seattle)
BlueMarble (in Atlanta)
SmartDesign (in NYC, love the Vista packages)
CarbonDesign (in Bothell)
Motivara (in Redmond)

Update: talk about good design, check out Mode (and their blog too)

The current 2-way high-definition telepresence vendors:

LifeSize Communications
Cisco Systems
Tandberg
Sony
Polycom
HP

Studio Log 20061114: Frustrating! One of the Bluebird mics cannot be used due to its higher noise floor.