Domain squatters really suck More to come.
For now they can burn.
Posted by chris at 06:44 PMSo I picked up some new studio monitors for my little home studio. I was at the music store this week and saw a set of Yamaha MSP5’s and just had to grab a pair. First thing I noticed was that these things are heavy! They feel like they have some killer magnets, a nice solid wood case, and a descent amp in them to make them feel really solid. They are self powered which is good cause I would hate to have a noisy power amp in the rack and worry about any ground loop issues and I know that the amps will match the speakers well.
These speakers also have two large bass reflex ports on them. I did crank them up with some thumping music and was blown away by the amount of air produced by these little 5” mids.
They have a fairly flat frequency response. But they do drop off around 50hz so I’ve paired them with a RCA consumer grade 8” sub. I have the sub set to pick up the low end at 60hz to round out the sound. According to my Phonic PAA3 sound meter they are fairly close to completely flat from top to bottom. I am looking to get a 2X15 EQ from Peavey and run each channel though it to totally flatten them like a 18 wheeler on a squirrel.
The power for these speakers is being provided by a Furrman power conditioner and are being fed signal from my sound board with XLR cables to get a nice balanced signal. There is some low level noise coming out of my board but that is no fault of the monitors, I never even noticed it with my Klipsch 2.1’s (Promedia series).
Over all I’m very impressed with the performance of these little speakers They have a very bright high end. I’m very impressed at the precision of the mids on these babies, I hear a lot of speakers that totally get the mid range wrong (usually just being really harsh almost to the point of over modulation). The low end is slightly lacking by themselves but you can’t expect a ton from 5” drivers, so of course you’ll want to add a separate sub to make up the bottom end.
Overall if you need a good set of budget speakers you could totally go with these and be very happy. If you need something a little more responsive on the low end and don’t wanna add a sub give the MSP7’s a try.
Well worth the $250/speaker price tag. Let me know what you think of yours in the comments.
Posted by chris at 03:29 AMSo I’ve been playing around with Twitter. The fun way to stalk your friends. I try to post about once a day. So if you’re a voyeur you can stalk me from the comfort of your computer chair.
My twitter page
Happy twittering!
Posted by chris at 01:07 AMSo Muncie Indiana is known for a huge Mardi Gras party in the streets of downtown. It’s a great idea to have an event that people can come out, drink, watch live bands, and show some boobs all in the name of fun. And normally I’m all for anything to do with partying. But this year they’ve just went off the deep end.
Here’s the deal, we just got two feet of snow in the last couple days and it’s just finally starting to get cleared out. Kids have been out of school and things have been crazy around here. So while I was on my way to the YMCA this morning I walked by the area this event will be held (South Walnut St) and notices that the city had paid THOUSANDS of dollars to have street crews go and and TRUCK the snow away from this area. That’s right, I said truck it away. Does anybody else see the issue here? We have people snowed in, we have cars with 5 feet of snow around them, side streets are terrible, country roads are a mess, and our city is paying street crews to clear out downtown so no one will show up in sub zero temps and they’ll have another failed event.
Our downtown development has been having bad luck with their events the last couple years. Last year’s Halloween Madness was a total disaster, less than a thousand people showed up and the city lost tens of thousands of dollars. And before that they had Lynard Skynard in town the they only had about half as many people there as they expected, again losing money. How many events can they have that totally fail? It’s nice to see them “developing downtown” like this.
Here’s my prediction for the event. I just looked at the weather, Friday we’ll get 1-3 more inches, and about another inch on Saturday (the day of the event). The temperature is supposed to be about 16 but the wind chill will be about 3*F. Oh, and did I mention that Larry the Cable Guy will is playing two sold out shows (about 16000 tickets sold) that night? So do they really expect girls to come out and “earn” beads in the cold? I doubt it when most bars in town (including the one work at) are having Mardi Gras parties and they have HEAT?
Here’s my suggestion, move the event to late April. The event is officially called “Muncie Gras” so why does it have to line up with the real Mardi Gras (Feb 20). Go with late April, the college kids will be still in town, it will be warm, and the will double the number of people that come out (in past years as many as 12000 people showed for Muncie Gras). If all this keeps happening to Downtown Development I’ll be happy to see them stop having events. It’s not that I don’t want them to happen, but they just don’t plan and make some stupid decisions.
We’ll see what happens come Saturday night. I’ll be sure to let you know, shoot I would go take pictures but I’m not paying $10 (advance) to get in to this thing. I’ll be in a warm bar watching the ladies show it all.
Posted by chris at 05:35 PM
So I got bored and redesigned my desk. On the old layout the two large LCDs were on opposite sides of the desk. At the time it seemed like a really good idea. But now that I’m doing a lot more production work, it seems better to have the two machines by each other.
The LCD on the left is a
AMD 3700+
2GB of RAM
280GB Internal Storage
320GB External Firewire Storage
GeForce 6600GT with Dual DVI (more on that later)
The right LCD is being pulled off the MacBook
2GHZ Core Duo
2GB of RAM
80GB Internal Storage
660GB External Storage (the two MyBook drives)
The sound board shown is a Peavey PV10. The mic between the two displays is a CAD 2000 (soon to be replaced by a Heil PR40). The speakers are a set of Klipsch 2.1’s. Somewhere in the picture is a 4GB Nano Black 1G. A 60GB Video Ipod black. A Duracell 15 minute battery charger. Couple of Microsoft Keyboards and Mice.
Anyway, that’s my current setup, I think I’m going to drop a 24” Dell LCD in soon and probably replace the Peavey soundboard with a Mackie Control Universe multitrack board. Let me know what you think or if you want more detailed specs. I’ll post my work setup sometime soon.
Posted by chris at 02:02 AMSo CMT has created their Music City Madness contest to show off unsigned musician’s work. So I shot and edited a video of The Big Daddy Band (the house band at the bar where I work) and submitted it on DVD. After that they were to select the “top” 64 videos to be posted to CMT.com/loaded and then it was going to go through a voting process to find a grand prize winner.
So during the whole shoot we were very careful about getting trademarks in the video, getting likeness release forms, and following the posted rules to the T. Well the top 64 have since been selected and we didn’t make the cut. Usually I’m not a sore loser, but when the contest is unfair it really starts to get under your skin. According to the rules you can’t use trademarks, the video has to be under 5 minutes. Many of the videos in the top 64 have both trademarks and are too long. A lot of the video that didn’t make it followed the rules closely.
So needless to say we’ll be shopping the video around ourselves. Feel free to watch it and let me know what you think.
So I’m carrying 2 cell phones now. My personal phone is Sprint (Samsung) MM-A900 (AKA Blade). I really like this phone. It was a great user interface, is easy on the eyes and is packed with features. It has the Sprint Music Store, which I never buy anything from, but it plays MP3 and AAC files on it so that’s nice. The phone has Bluetooth which is handy for talking while typing. The screen is beautiful, great color reproduction. It feels good in the hand and looks great. It’s a great all around phone. It has some minor flaws, such as a not so powerful bluetooth chip. But must of that can and has been fixed with over the air firmware updates.
I just got a work phone and it’s Cingular’s Motorola RAZR V3. I’ll give a short review when I’ve had it a little longer. But from what I can tell so far, the Blade has it by far.
Gaming news with a new co-Host
MS Says that only 3% of 360s are defective
http://engadget.com/entry/1234000773070605/
Xbox 360 vs Xbox – do you really need HD?
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6140621/index.html
Panaramic Shots of Xbox 360 Games, it’s just like you’re there
http://panogames.com/
Xbox 360, round 2. More 360s in stores this week
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/xboxdoessecondroundof360s;_ylt=Aoo_BBT_pZLfLd0CgAEs6e7Dr7sF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Linux On the Xbox 360
http://www.xbox360-hacks.com/2005/11/25/free60-linux-on-your-xbox360-project/
• The flash is encrypted with a per-box key
• The key is stored inside the CPU
• The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU
• Also inside the CPU is a hypervisor that verifies the running state of the kernel, making sure there is no modification (RAM checksums), else the Xbox360 panics and blows up!
• The CPU contains RAM inside of it to store the checksums
• All interrupt/exception handling is done by the hypervisor
• All code runs in kernel mode
• The emulator for first generation games can be updated via an official Microsoft download burned to CD by the user, though the CDs’ content will be encrypted and signed with public key cryptography. The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU
Someone call for Bunny?
I knew we were all idiots, but it took a Blockbuster manager to let the whole world know
http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=395807
WHAT A IDIOT.....I THINK HE IS ABUSING THE SYSTEM…BUT…WITH SO MANY CHANGES I TOLD HIM THAT NOMORE ECHANGES ON PRESELLS..[EMP NAME]
Happy 34th Birthday Pong!
http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/index.php?seldate=11,29,1971
New 2.6 firmware released for PSP
http://psp3d.com/showthread.php?t=284
-(RSS Channel) has been added as a feature under (Network).
-(Volume ajustment) has been aded as a feature to (Location free player).
-You can now download video data that supports copyright protection using the (internet browser).
-WMA had been added as a codec that can be played under (Music)(This applies to music saved on the memory stick).
Download the MP3 (16mb 33:23)
Show covering the Xbox 360 launch
The Xbox360 Launched on Tuesday. Most stores has about 30 or so consoles on hand. Most sold out within the first few hours. People are talking about a planned shortage, but MS claims that they will be shipping 3 million in the first 90 days. There is always a shortage when a new console comes out. I’m not worried.
Reviews of the 360 are mediocre at best. From what they say it’s mostly better graphics and a descent UI, but nothing revolutionary.
We do have reports of crashing like crazy. It’s MS folks! It happens!
http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EEFkZkkkyEHasmrPqu.php
Of course someone had to be an idiot in launch date. A man robed an EB Games at gun point to get 2 of the new consoles.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61837
According to Best Buy ads, the 360 burns CDs and DVDs
http://360updates.qj.net/2005/11/360-burns-cds-and-dvds-says-best-buy.html
Couldn’t afford an Xbox360 this week? Check out some good pics of it’s internals
http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2611
Shots of the Xbox 360 Dashboard at work in Hi- Def
http://g-prime.net/x360/
Get John C Dvorak has to say about the Xbox 360
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1884539,00.asp
If you need to find an Xbox you can grab one at DailyDeal, but hurry, the less they have, the more the price goes up.
http://auctionmills.com/
Podsafe Music: The Hypertonics – Are you the car or are you the road
Found at the podsafe music network @ music.podshow.com
Check out the hypertonic’s music at
http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/artistdetails.php?BandHash=21b755f71e5b0542e272ffbacfaa8594
Download the MP3 (7mb 16:23)
Posted by chris at 10:14 PMNo, the show isn’t dead. New equipment and it sounds good.
No DRM for PS3 Games
http://www.playfuls.com/news_3827.html
PSP Firmware 2.5 Hacked
http://www.psp-hacks.com/index.php?post=443
Xbox 360 Backward Compatible titles revealed
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/666/666344p1.html
Xbox 360’s BSOD
http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EEFEkAEFAkTlDmtsQO.php
Hand delivered Xbox 360 on release day
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8234236091
Current Bid as of posting $680
EA Cuts Holiday Game Prices
http://joystiq.com/entry/1234000580067963/
Games that have been cut from $49.99 to $39.99 include Burnout Revenge, NBA Live 06, NASCAR 06, Tiger Woods 06, The Sims 2: Nightlife, and the PSP’s Need for Speed Underground Rivals.
$29.99 deals include SSX On Tour and Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.
Download the MP3 (8.53mb 18:35)
Copyright Chris 2004.