E3:: More stuff from the conference! I'm utterly amazed at the amount of creative talent at this show. Like I've mentioned before, I'm not a gamer, but after becoming a bit more comfortable with the noise levels, I started to take a good look at some of these games. Check out Hami's Flash work on their game's website: www.tif2.com Yes, the logo does look like an inverted Atari Logo!

From the clever storylines to the graphics design, to the 3d modelling, to the foley and soundtracks, to the menus and trailers and animation - It's really fantastic. I've enjoyed watching these kids play through the games. Some of the AI work involved is very intriguing. Hami ran me through the guts of a PS2 and how the system works. Everyone says that X-Box sucks while Gamecube looks promising. Still PS2 seems to be a dominant force at the show.

Dolby Labs was demonstrating this interesting new perceptual listening system. it looks rather goofy so I imagine it's intended for hardcore gamers or specific installations for VR Audio environments. Sorry I didn't stop long enough to find out more information. I imagine it uses some type of phasing shifting effects with the sound emitter and parabolic dish to create the Audio Environment at the listener's position.

A shot of Hami & me hanging out in one of the studio pavillions at the SCEA party. Photo by Vicki, Photochopping by Me :-/

Hami and the WWF's Kurt Angle, Olympic Gold Medal Champion. Also from the WWF, Lita - She's a bit of a looker - and could easily kick my wimpy butt :-)

Hami and his Boss/Girlfriend/Boss, aka Vicki, aka the reason why www.computercontrolled.com has not been updated in a very long time - also the reason why it probably wont be updated until someone else takes it over or until she dumps Hami :-) Somehow I don't see this happening in the near future!

Shot of Sascha Dikiciyan - from Berlin. The man behind Sonicmayhem.com. He's produced music for Quake II, Quake III Arena, James Bond, and Sound Design for Unreal tournament. While we were discussing reason stuff over my TiBook on the Activision stand, a friend of his came by and rather handed him the Castle Wolfenstein Dog Tags he's wearing in the picture -- yeah it's ironic since Wolfenstein is banned in Deutschland. $#!T - i remember playing Wolfenstein on the Apple ][+ Sascha is working on a project dated for release Q3 2001 which Reason users may find rather interesting ... More news on this later.

TXT:: So I'm down here in L.A. and when I arrived I received this message from Hami that his boss/girlfriend/boss, Vicki, managed to get me access to the Sony Computer Entertainment of America Party. It was a massive event at the Downtown Studio Center in L.A. In the picture you see Hami and few of the other members of the SCE-Europe team. These are the people who bring you PS2 games in Euroland. --> In the background is a video projection of the band Everclear who were performing on a stage at the other end of the lot. They were ok - not the same since they cleaned up, but it's better than being dead :-) Oh, European Football fans really should check out the game that their team has created: This is Football 2 It's really quite a cool sports game.

TXT:: Well I'm off today to catch up with Hami-- you remember him right? he was the webmaster of the .:Computer Controlled:. website. He's moved on to bigger and better things -- plus he has a woman now so there leaves little free time for ReBirth stuff. Anyhoo, he's down in Los Angeles at the E3 conference (that big ass Gamer conference) where he's part of the London Contingent from SCEE. I will try to get some pictures of things. Since I'm not a gamer, I'm not interested in seeing the X-box or any of that other crap.

I'm also planning to meet up with Sascha from Sonicmayhem.com. Sascha is a sound/ music producer and he _may_ be performing, and he _may_ be using Reason. We shall see. Earlier in the week he wasn't too confident that this gig would come through. But if you're around the Los Angeles Convention Center, swing by the GodGames booth to see what the schedule of events is.

I probably wont be at the show until Saturday, so forget about trying to meet up - I heard that it's pretty insane -- much worse than other trade shows.

Propellerhead Service Announcement:: The Site is Down - and it's down Hard! Before anyone starts flooding poor Tage's email, please be really patient and show some consideration since he has a lot of work to do!

Here's a little transcript from a chat i had with him this morning:

So it looks like he has a bit of work ahead of him in order to get the propellerheads site going. So in the meantime go and check out Ludwig's Synth Jazz MP3s. The page is in Swedish, but you can look for the word "Lyssna", the MP3 download links. Ludwig does the Manuals for Propellerheads, and this week, his group will be performing at a Celebration Honoring Mr. Bob Moog in Stockholm! That's a cool gig :-)

TXT:: Recently I went to the SF Museum of Modern Art to see an interesting exhibit of Technology as Art. There are quite a few video installations with Looping Animations and Ambient Audio. It's interesting to see if you're a technology freak. There was one interesting piece which is an automatic sculpture creation device. Unfortunately, I can't remember the creator or the name of the piece which produces these red blobby sculptures by dripping a wax or plastic substance on to a conveyer belt. The entire system was controlled by a powerbook running a MAX/MSP application which drives a controller system. This controller system is probably a MIDI to Relay or SCR switching system that controls the belt, blobby stuff melter, and squirter, and the MAX/MSP application controls the timing of the process - it's a mechanical sequencer!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a bad habit of opening things up and taking a peek inside. So I opened up the MOTU 828 to check things out. I found a jumper on the inside which (apparently) allows you to bypass the output preamplifier circuit. I haven't found any information in the documentation about this jumper so I thought i'd make a little note of it here. Other than that, there wasn't really anything one could modify - except maybe those cheap ass capacitors. All of the op-amps are surface mounted so forget about any serious mods.

One pisser about the 828 is that the input gain controls are stereo pairs (with the exception of ch1 & ch2). So If you use mono sources, gain matching can be a bit tedious since there are only 5 gain controls for 8 inputs. As far as audio quality goes - I've heard better. I will say that the 828 is better than the SoundBlaster Live for Mac - and there's no apparent noise so it's good for clean recording. Fortunately the optical I/O's allow easy interface with my external A/D D/A converters. I haven't tried using the lightpipe and ADAT sync yet - i need to pull the ADAT out of moth balls before i try this.

MacOS 9.1 Sound manager seems pretty content with routing system audio to the Firewire device, so there was no problem with using iTunes or Quicktime Movies, or DivX player. ReBirth, Recycle, and Reason all work fine through SoundManager as well :-)

TXT:: It's been a good week! I made some special new aquaintances, Apple sent me a new Powerbook G4 and I've made a new Aquisition: a MOTU 828 Firewire Audio Interface.

So far so good with the 828 and Both the G4 Tower and Powerbook. The drivers run ok...but tweaking around the settings has caused some problems on occasion. I think the 1.0 drivers seemed a bit more stable than the 1.02 drivers I downloaded and installed this morning. The good news is that I'm getting anywhere from 2ms to 5ms latency with Reason :-)

Mail:: I received an e-mail from an Australian ReBirther, Gianni Renda. He made a TR-909 Butter Cake for a school assignment and sent me an image file of his culinary work. I told him that the next cake should have a set of flashing LED ornaments :-)

News:: There was an article in the Wall Street Journal, "Tech Fallout Leaves More Space for Little Guy" by Sheila Muto (May 9, 2001 pg B6) about Real Estate in San Francisco. Since the dotcom economic bubble has burst, the effects are trickling down to the Real Estate sector. There is a nice mention about Sound-Safe, Inc. The non-profit group that is trying to find rehearsal space for bands in SF - especially those who were evicted last year from the Downtown Rehearsal Studio. Another quote in the article says that people should "Wait until the third quarter of this year" when landlords are desperate to get some tenants - they will be more open to negotiate :-)

Reason:: News on the Reason 1.0.1 update has been released - visit the propellerheads website for more information! Now you know why there have been so few updates in the last few weeks :-)

Anyhoo, I've been tinkering around a bit more with that phase cancellation experiement. I've added a few new sections to file including an experiment with Redrum. The really interesting one is where the same sample is used to cancel itself by using the sample start offset to push the sine wave out of phase. Like I mentioned before - it's something to be mindful of while arranging and adding sounds to a track. The RNS has been updated as well as the information page. So if you downloaded the file on the 6th, it has been changed and you should download it again. - it's only 240k.

Reason:: There's a post on the message board which inspired me to check out something in the application. I had a suspicion that there might be certain phase anomalies which cause the audio levels to decrease. So I dropped some samples into a couple of NN19 modules and put reason to the acid test. Sure enough, creating phase cancellation was very easy.

I guess in the future I have to be more careful. I know it's a problem with the Eyes Inside track as well as a few other tracks I was working on. Check the Reason link for the file and the link to information page.

TB-303:: I've updated the format of the 303 samples page, and I've added a few other things related to the 303. One is that pattern I produced using Dan Gendreau's Trance 01 pattern. The other is a little REX loop created with ReBirth and a Ring Modulator and the Hellfire.

TXT:: Finally I managed to speak to someone with a bit of common sense at AppleCare. I called them Friday to check the status of that new Motherboard. They still had not received it! So I inquired again about getting a replacement unit or a refund, and the Customer Relations Representative agreed that I should receive a new unit. Thanks to Susie! and Thanks to Leslie for the initial support. So if you have problems these are the people to talk to at AppleCare US :-)

TXT:: Sheesh - two weeks with no update. I've been busy with a lot of stuff recently - yes Reason related. I've been putting off the web site because of priorities.

I had to take a bit of a break from Reason and sat down and remastered my old CD. I've uploaded the tracks to MP3.com. Some of the denoising algorithms I used were less than satisfying, but It's difficult to tell since MP3 encoding added a lot of strange artifacts. Either way, my old old (11 to 12 years now) tracks from my Pilgrimage CD are a bit cleaner and have a bit more presence.

I've been doing a bit of 303 doodling recently as well. I started using some of the patterns listed on TB-303.org's Database. I tracked some of this and got permission from the creator, Dan Gendreau to post up a MP3 audio sample of it. I'll get this up after I've finished reformatting the TB-303 page.

Apple is now giving me the run around with my PowerBook G4. First they said they could offer me a new one. Now they say they are going to repair my old one. However, Now they say they need to get a new Motherboard for the TiBook and so It's waiting in Service to receive a new Motherboard...... The frustration has been very taxing on my nerves - oh well