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New idea: What if the ragtag musical groups could compete for an act on the mainstage? It would make everyone step up their game somewhat, and create and supply sheet music (or other way to learn the song) ahead of time.

With that criteria in mind... Rygar (PS2) Haven: Call of the King (PS2) No More Heroes (Wii) - This one's gotten critical acclaim, despite the very glaring presence of cut corners, so you know it's good Legend of Dragoon (PS1) - What can I say? The combos grew on me. Sonic 3D Blast (Genesis)

So I downloaded the Music Animation Machine and tried to play a MIDI through it. The default (and only) output was the Microsoft Wavetable Synth, which sounded bottom-of-the-barrel bad. I opened up Windows Media Player expecting the same, but it wasn't. It actually sounded like something it was probably supposed to, but I'd thought that WMP would use the Wavetable Synth. If not, what does it use and how can the MAM access it?

Christ, how many Jeremys were there this year?

What if they were made 32x32 and used as forum avatars?

Making Sonic jump by swinging the remote downwards has got to be THE stupidest and most pointless use of the motion sensing I've ever seen.

Question to all before I pass it on to Brendan: From what I can tell (especially since I wasn't there for the meat of it), it was a little difficult to balance all the different music concerts. Chiptune and Open Mic concerts in Jamspace with bands in the concert room. What if the smaller instrumental groups and DJs could perform in between the different band sets in the concert room? I personally think it would add a good deal of weight and legitimacy to the performance, and get a wider audience to boot.

Sonic has been an uncharacteristically large part of my life from my earliest days. It started, of course, when I played Sonic 2 at friends' houses. It was so cool to watch him spin through the pipes. I played computer games with my dad, but I wasn't a console gamer yet. That changed when I convinced my parents to get me a Genesis. The game it came with? S3&K. That's right, Sonic was my first console game. I liked it so much I got all the other Sonic games that existed for it. Then, one day, I saw someone reading a Sonic comic book. I did a double take. Wasn't he a... video game character? I picked up the issue, liked it, and started getting them consistently. While I was making Knuckles run through Angel Island and Ice Cap Zone, I was also reading about him fighting against his great^1000 grandfather. This was when the comic started to become serious. I wrote a story about Sonic once, and discovered a passion for Creative Writing, and I wrote Sonic stories throughout elementary school and read them to my class. I shit you not. Well naturally I was a complete devotee at this point. I got a Game Gear, and all the Sonic games there. Yes, I even owned a 32X. Then the Saturn. Yes, I owned Sonic Jam. All the way through Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast I was with him, missing only a few nothing titles along the way like Sonic Shuffle, Sonic Drift 1, and Sonic Schoolhouse. And all along I read the comics, even as things got more convoluted, turning on styles, genres and plot directions at the turn of a hat. Robotnik died, but then an alternate dimension one came back. Sonic Adventure had a five issue long adaptation, and Sonic Adventure 2 had half an issue. Issue #100 was completely lame, and then they revealed Mobius was in fact Earth (WHY?) and then Sonic was killed, except he was actually warped across the universe. Eventually, Ian Flynn came in and brought a lot of it under control, although I don't like a lot of his story decisions. So I still read it now, but it is with a sigh of remembrance for the comic as it once was. And then came Sonic Heroes. Expectations were high... all the characters I'd seen up to now were going to come together in one big mishmash... but my god, what had they done? THREE characters at a time? Ridiculous collision detection, clunky controls, a switching scheme that was laughable. THAT, I contend, was the major deviation, not Sonic Adventure. After that things only got worse and I was done. The one thing I missed out on the first time around was the TV serieses. I only saw SATAM episodes a couple of years ago. They were awesome (well, my eight year old self would have thought so), but of course it was cancelled, and the other shows were pretty lame. So where does that leave me? Of course, I can still play the old games and read the old issues, but it's obvious to everyone that Sonic isn't aging well. There are other places which have kept track of Sonic over the years, and I have pipe dreams of becoming a successful game artist so I can buy all the different Sonic IPs and bring the 'hog back to his glory days, but more realistically I imagine he will fade from the hearts and minds of younger gamers, known only to the passing winds as "that wolf hog game."

FUCK YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH! A true inspiration for me to get my mixing act together.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck I wish I could've stayed.

Someone just asked Howard Drossin this question today. He said it usually takes between two and four months, but then he's also usually got several projects going on simultaneously. So you be the judge from that, I guess.

I wondered which state would have a city with such a ridiculous name. When I found out it wasn't a state at all, things made much more sense. Have fun with that. I just saw it in Newark. Be sure to take advantage of the meet & greet after the show.

I can do bongos and other hand percussion. In fact, I just played them at MAGFest. I can also do drum set but it would be much harder to get and record that, so I'll leave it with bongos and other hand percussion. As for recording, I've got myself an Apogee Duet. How does this sound for a microphone?

Well, it was fun while it lasted for me. As I type this you're all probably rocking out to Armcannon or prepping for the OCR panel or the open mic concert or some cool thing like that. But it was great to see you all again, and meet some new faces. We'd better have another meetup over the summer or something. By the way, I just listened to Drossin's Virtual Sonic. God, it's bad. He said Sonic & Knuckles wasn't work he liked and it shows. For some reason, he even has a hip hop track on there, despite what he mentioned. The one exception is the Spinball theme, which is an expanded version of the three second long theme he had to draw up at the last minute. The Comix Zone CD, by contrast, is pretty rockin. It's a bit hard to hear the Comix Zone inspiration at points, so if they were OCRemixes they wouldn't pass. But it's a good listen all the same.

I've been told that one reason DJP doesn't post mixes more often is because that setting up a link and writing a writeup takes more time than it sounds. So on average, how much time DOES it take?

Personally, I doubt it. I recently bought a 2005 Pocket PC from a friend, and that was one of the last devices before the iPhone made the scene, and started browsing the "real" Internet. With more and more people getting iPhones or iPhone like devices every day, I can't imagine the percentage of people browsing the mobile Internet will be significant for much longer. And now that a Last.fm app has come out for the iPhone, it's easy enough to add your favorite OCR artists that way.

This is veering off into dangerous territory. I don't want to mod anything but I don't want to see this get locked either. Here's a question: What are the confirmed new features of Windows 7?

What software you want is hard to nail down if you're just starting out, though. Take it from me. Based on my limited experiences and what I've heard on these forums, I've gone from Reason to FL to Logic to Ableton and back again trying to figure out what I want, and I'm still not 100% sure of the setup I want because I haven't actually made a tune yet. In short, starting from what software you want is not easy if you're not familiar with it. And you can't become familiar with it until you choose an OS (for the OS exclusive programs, anyway). However, I did settle on a Mac because of the Core Audio drivers (a big deal when I was trying to run Reason and FL on my PC and getting all sorts of problems) and the fact that I can still run Windows if I want. For me, that reasoning was enough. You do have that option with Mac as well.

As a recent convert from Windows to Mac, I'll speak on this, and basically say that I agree with you regarding the culture of Mac users. I don't like it, and I don't support it. But that didn't stop me from purchasing a Macbook when they updated it and being very happy with my decision. Word, mang. As someone now fairly familiar with both OSes, I'll outline a few positives about my Macbook and its OS, and though I will need to compare it to what Windows does to do so, I will be as objective and straightforward as possible. 1) The hardware/software interactions possible by having both coming from the same place. This includes minor things like the LED battery indicator, the hotkeys, and the various multitouch gestures available on the trackpad, to more major things like Core Audio (no audio driver settings to mess around with), which is something anyone on this site should appreciate. 2) A more streamlined interface. I can go to the finder and discover what I need instantly. Installation of most programs involves a one-step dragging of a single, self-contained program to your applications folder. The menus are clear, straightforward, organized, and provide you with just as much information as you need to know (whatever technical level you're on). And if you need help, the help feature returns any number of topics sorted by relevance. 3) More features out of the box. Windows users can download a number of little programs which can graph functions, perform advanced scientific calculations, record music, throw up webpages, video chat, share screens, edit photos, and more. Macs support all that out of the box. My teacher claims that the only reason Windows doesn't is because of antitrust suits. That whatever programs Microsoft developed would eclipse third party programs in use simply because they came with the OS. Apparently, in Europe Real Player was trying to get Windows Media Player taken out. Macs don't comprise enough of the market share to be worth similar suits. I don't know how true this all is, but regardless Macs can do much more than Windows machines can without additional downloads or installations. This also promotes a unity and flow throughout the OS and applications. 4) More support for outside features. You may do a double take at this at first, but it really is true. And if Mac doesn't inherently support it, you can bet there is some inexpensive or free software which does. With that in mind, Macs support coding for all sorts of languages, the ability to run other OSes fluidly (since they can write drivers to support Windows and flavors of UNIX), reading NTFS and other file systems, controlling applications which access the Internet, and more. They're tight with software developers as well, so everyone can be on the same page about what kind of software should be coded, and the best way to do it. And whatever Mac OS can't support at all, the whole "run other OSes" pretty much takes care of it. 5) This is what will actually bring it back around to the topic at hand: updates and upgrades. Microsoft spends all its time with Windows working on service packs and bugfixes to plug different holes, which prevents them from taking chances and releasing a significant upgrade more than once every four or five years. Apple certainly has to deal with bugs and issues as well, but there are fewer of them, and as a result they're able to issue major upgrades once every two years or so. The idea of Windows releasing a whole new version and Mac releasing a version update is more than semantics: Microsoft changes the look of every Windows version to make it look new and fresh, while Apple does less of that and more of identifiable new features for developers and users alike. I'm not going to talk about spyware (or lack thereof) because that has less to do with MacOS itself and much more about its current market share. I hope that was a reasonable, well-thought out description of what I, at least, enjoy more about Mac OS. I didn't belittle Windows users for their choice (cost is a big consideration), and I still recommend it for people who want nothing more than to write up documents and check their email. But if you're a power user who likes to do as much with a computer as you can, then I would definitely recommend Mac OSX. And with EFIX you don't have to buy a ridiculously expensive Mac Pro either. Also note that we have a pretty good idea of what Snow Leopard is going to do (OpenCL, tighter sized programs, etc), but I don't know what Microsoft really has up their sleeve for 7.

I think I might be able to make it in for something. Personally, I thought the Guitar Center jam alone was worth it enough.

First time I've heard an aria as a VGTune since FFVI. I don't know this game or its tone at all, so are the lyrics just random Italian words strung together?

Doesn't MAG end on the 4th? Wouldn't that make the 5th accessible?

Hey, man, wish you had spoken to me before announcing this. January 2-4 is MAGFest, a (perhaps the) premiere con around this time. It's likely that some people interested in audtioning will be otherwise occupied. That said, I do want to encourage people to audition. This is a fun project, and when the lines are done they will be spliced together into a legal hack that PC owners of FF7 can amend to their game. Why don't you dig out the example Google video, Mesden?

Man, this MAGFest seems doomed for a lot of people. Myself, I can only make half, but dammit, it's going to be the best half-MAG ever.

Decent mics are not expensive to come by. Maybe $100 or so.