303:: Finally I'm getting back to adding sample downloads to the site. Koen Heldens (F-Nul) has sent me another ReBirth Pattern which I've transcribed to the TB-303. This sample is a little different mainly because of the recording technique. The audio chain has a whole bunch of vacuum tubes in it - including Vacuum Tube distortion Tube D.I. and Tube Compression. It's pretty cool, but for some reason, the notes were not easily recognized by ReCycle! and I had to manually locate slice points for the REX file.

The ZIP archive also contains a PDF chart for fellow TB-303 owners to program the pattern. The PDF file is created using the PrintToPDF Chooser Extension by Jim Walker. Hey Jim, I still owe you the shareware fees! Anyhoo, it's rather handy for printing up stuff when there's no printer available and you don't have to worry about the postscript stuff. Cool for making PDFs of Web Pages.

I'm working on a little FileMaker Database for TB-303 pattern. The scripting is still unfinished, but the interface and database are functioning. I will probably make the Filemaker file available. The file wont be a runtime and will require FileMaker 4.03 for MacOS to function. If there are any Filemaker developers out there who want to compile this puppy for me, please drop me an e-mail.

ARGH!!!:: The Ti Died in Hawaii.... I was struck by the power up bug! That's what i get for investing in untested technology :-( Anyhoo - apple has offered to replace it with a brand spankin new one :-) In the meantime, I've pulled the drive and swapped it into my old Wallstreet and the data is still intact. I'm waiting for a new drive to back up the data before I put the PBG4 back together and ship to apple... It's a damn good thing I held on to the wallstreet!

Anyhoo, I'm home after a nice trip. While i was disconnected from the computer world, I managed to read a few books (a good one: The Hours by Michael Cunningham), go scuba diving, eat lots of tropical fish and drink some really good coffee. I've been ordering my coffee from this place in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii but this was the first time I had a chance to visit the store! Country Samurai Coffee is located right down near the pier in Kailua. For my fellow caffiene and cafficotine addicts who have discerning pallettes, I recommend ordering some beans from their site! The Kunitake family raises the beans on a relatively small 2 acre farm, but they let the trees grow as high as nature allows. Mr. Kunitake explained to me that most coffee farms cut off the tops so that the beans can be harvested without the use of ladders. Another little known fact about "Kona Coffee" is that many places sell it but only a fraction of the beans used are from Kona while the rest is filler beans from some other country.

Creative Labs finally shipped me the Sound Blaster Live for Macintosh. After some tweaking, I have it running on my old 8500/G3-300 under MacOS 9.1. It's not bad for $99 bucks since you get audio inputs/outputs and a MIDI interface. When the system boots up, the SB drivers load up sound fonts into ram and this makes startup considerably slower on an old machine - you can edit a filename to bypass this process (RTFReadMeFile).

There are MIDI drivers for the onboard synth and soundfonts which are recognized by OMS 2.3.8 and I've tested MIDI note data, controller data, and MIDI beat Clock synchronization which all seem to work. In order to get MIDI Clock working I had to create a new instrument in OMS and dedicate it to the SoundBlaster Port 1 in the Studio Setup. The SB native OMS instruments don't have the options for MTC, MIDI Clock, and MMC, however with this work around I managed to get MIDI clock into reason.

One thing that pissed me off is that there are no ASIO drivers for the thing....The Creative People said there would be ASIO drivers by the time it shipped, but I can't find them at Steinberg's ftp or Creative's support pages...So I'm limited to using Sound Manager with the 11ms latency - not bad I guess! Reason is suprisingly responsive through the card.

Another thing i've never liked about SoundBlasters is that God-forsaken Mixer thingy with the effects. Some People have that tendency to mix with the SB Chamber Verb or 3D spatialization process which never sounds good on other sound systems. They work on a ReBirth Track with those DSP effects on - then they render the file to AIFF which bypasses the DSP effects and the Mixes sound pretty bad.

One cool thing about the SB is the S/PDIF output - the only bad thing is (which i have yet to confirm) is that the word clock jitters and would sometimes drop out. The other bad thing is that the digital output seems fixed at 48khz - which may be the cause of the dropouts since I had Reason set to 44.1Khz in the Preferences. I will work on this a bit more because the main thing is to get a dedicated machine running Reason with the Digital Output going back to Pro Tools. I have this working now, but I can't say that it's "Solid". Reason on the 8500 synchronizes to the MIDI beat Clock output in Pro Tools, but there are those occasional Drop outs in the Digital Audio...

So...I have yet to really explore the SoundFont stuff or the Quadraphonic Spatial processing of the SB Live yet. Oh, it comes bundled with some nice software - Cubasis AV, SoundJam MP (get iTunes if you're using MacOS 9), SonixWORX, and MIXMAN! :-) I don't think I'm going to bother putting it into the Sawtooth or the MP. Sonically I don't think the inputs/outputs are better than the built in ports on PowerMacs--Especially the new G4s with the completely digital audio architecture. Theres a spot on the SB for a S/PDIF input but they conveniently left the molex connector off it--something to tweak around with in the future! None of the software seems to recognize the digital CD input though and each of the analog inputs seems to incur a bit of noise, so i have them all disabled in the Creative Mixer application.

I'm hoping that creative and steinberg will come through on the ASIO Drivers - then I think it will definitely be worth it for an entry level MIDI/Audio card.

TXT:: Hmm only one person fell for the April Fools joke! That's pretty good!

Aloha! I'm off for a bit of Sun in Hawaii for a week. It's a business trip actually - yeah yeah boo hoo. So there wont be too much of a site update for a few days . However the TB-303 sample Archive has been uploaded to a server and I will be sending out a new newsletter as soon as I get connected in Hawaii. The newsletter will have the download URL for the 12.5 Meg Zip archive.

The TB-303 samples are straight single shot samples from the TB-303 with no effects, distortion or any of the other fluff that the Loops and Recycle files have. Basically you can load these into your sampler/softsampler/ or reason and tweak them to your heart's content. These Multisamples are only from the Square Wave Oscillator and are recorded at 16bit 44.1Khz - using the typical stuff that I use. A touch of compression was added - but it's analog compression (old Manley 10db limiting amplifier - the one based on the fairchild design).

More Inane TXT:: Well, the little ones are out and jumping around like the cute little beasts that they are. Here's little Bart after 2 days prancing around the patio.

TXT:: I'm sick of music and I'm sick of computers and the friggen Internet! I've decided to give everything away to 5 lucky newsletter subscribers...This includes the MP G4/450, the Powerbook G4/500, many vintage synthesizers, my workstation, effects, recording gear - all of it! The randomizer will pick the 5 at Midnight Pacific Daylight Time (GMT-8) So Subscribe now!

Subscribe to the Peff.com Newsletter - "I pity the fool"- ® Mr. T

Seriously now:: The message board is back online. Something happened to the server and it seems that the board script couldn't write data to the drive, so it basically shut down. In my futile attempts to replace files, i ended up screwing things up more. Finally it's working again along with my e-mail.

TXT:: Before I forget, another interesting web thingy happened this week. I received an e-mail from a really talented producer, KELIX, who I worked with a long time ago. The funny part is that he's been a rebirth user and visiting this site, but didn't make the connection between 'Peff' and the real me :-) He's still producing tracks for enjoyment. Apparently, you can find his bootleg remix of TLC's "No Scrubs" out on Napster. Search for "KELIX". (Unfortunately I don't use napster, but maybe I will install it to find the tracks) He has some incredible skills for making dance grooves.

Something is quirky on the server and the message board is disabled at the moment. I thought there was a corrupt file and attempted to replace it, but i kept getting errors on my transfers. Since other parts of the server are misbehaving, i'm assuming that that it's something more critical than a mere corrupt file. Perhaps Simon is upgrading something? My e-mail runs on that part of the server as well, so don't bother sending me e-mails!

It's been a busy week. Real life stuff has kept me occupied, but I've been tooling around quite a bit with the studio rig. I'm supposed to go off on a business trip next week, but like a damn fool i sprained my ankle today. I'm not sure If I can make it. Oh well, after a few nights of rest, I should be ok. I'm prone to ankle sprains, but it's been a long time since I've been this clumsy. If this journal entry seems a little bizzare, well that's the pain killers doing their job!

I've been asked by B.Free to do a little radio promo for his Swiss based radio show "NET" on D.R.S.3. On this show, he showcases music on the web. I'm not sure what station that is, but if you live somewhere in listening range, tune in during May! It started out as a little text interview since he wants to showcase my latest reason track, Noesis, but then I got the crazy idea of recording part of the interview. I'll post more information as the date nears.

For this radio spot, I wanted to track my voice through some nice tube stuff. I pulled out my trusty old Siemens/Telefunken V72 mic-pre (rack mount modified). It's been a few years since i've had this puppy running, and when i connected it up, it spewed out this nasty ass hum (with lots of harmonics). I forgot that I had it modified with the chasis ground lifted - my old set up was set up using a star-ground. At first I thought it was the old bucking transformer (converts 120VAC to 240VAC), so i picked up a new one (which is grounded) and the hum persisted. Finally i opened it up and wired up a ground to the chasis - voila! the hum disappeared.

In the process of things, I disconnected a few signal processors and spent some time trying to remember which units are pin 3 hot and which units are pin 2 hot. In the end, everything is working fine (probably better than before!) Maintenance is a never ending struggle...

Unfortunately, I didn't record the spot through this nice tube stuff. I ended up doing a straight recording into Pro Tools through the ultraclean HV-3 with an AKG414. It sounds fine, but I know how much better it would sound if I rerecorded it through the V72!

On Wednesday (28 March 2001) my friend and I went to the Exploratorium to see the exhibit they have on Filmmaking - For the most part it was uninspiring. The had some chroma key superimposing things set up which were fun to play with, but the audio stuff was rather archaic. One presentation let you drop different music soundtracks with clips from movies. It was interesting to see a scene from Hitchcock's Vertigo first with the original score, then with different pieces like an aria from Carmen. Or a scene from Independence Day with some hard Rammstein Guitars playing. I tried my Robert De Niro impersonation in the ADR booth demonstration, but the recording system sucked. - "You Talking to Me?" There's quite a bit of the exhibit dedicated to sound, foley, scoring, and the audio aspects of film making. One other cool thing is an original Yoda Model from Star Wars - Return of the Jedi :-)

Yesterday (30 March 2001), Mama-Goat gave birth to two more kids. If you're new to this site, you probably wondering - what the f*ck, Goats? These pygmy goats are my pets - ask Thomas "Jesuspark" - he's been here and played with them :) To avoid a growing goat population here, I got rid of the one potent male. However, late last year, Mama-Goat jumped the fence in heat, ran across the hill to my neighbors, and got busy with the neighbor's billy goat...So now I have two more. One boy and one girl... I'm thinking of naming them Bart and Lisa :D

Yesterday (30 March 2001), Mama-Goat gave birth to two more kids. If you're new to this site, you probably wondering - what the f*ck?! Goats? These pygmy goats are my pets - ask Thomas "Jesuspark" Merkle, he's played with them! To avoid a growing goat population here, I sold the one potent male. However, late last year, Mama-Goat jumped the fence in heat, ran across the hill, and got busy with the neighbor's billy goat...So now I have two more. One girl and one boy... My mother suggested naming them Bart and Lisa because the boy goat looks like a troublemaker and the girl seems quite intelligent (yeah they already display personalities hours after they are born)

Samples:: I've edited down these 37 single shot TB-303 samples, and I will make them available fairly soon. The samples are the standard 44.1khz AIFF format, but included in the download archive is a Reason .SMP file. People who use reason can automatically load the samples into an NN19 module. Otherwise, they are fairly well named, so it's easy for anyone to load the multisamples into a sampler.

Launching Site Version 3.1 beta!

If things around the site seem a little strange lately, it's because i've been reworking things for compatability with windows browsers. I guess some of my style scripts contain fonts that some WinOS machines cannot read.

I've added a Reason Navigation Link item to my new top frame. This is also being tested out. Feel free to give it a test drive here: New Navigation Frame

MP3:: The new track made with Reason is now available for MP3 download or streaming. Noesis is a light and fruity dnb track. I'm rather happy with the results since I'm finally achieving two things: a bit more skill with reason and a better understanding for programming interesting rhythmic patterns based on loops.

Reason's Subtractor Synth was used quite a bit on this track, and I'm rather amazed at the results. The lush pad is subtractor in combination with the pingpongXdigiplex effect (on the reason archive page). The patch is using both oscillators with Squarewaves and multiplied phased mode. I'll make the patch and it's variations available at some point...

Noesis Download Page on MP3.com