theshaggyfreak

I have my 2600 still from my childhood and it works just fine. They're not too difficult to fix it they're not working. Also, you don't need one of those UHF/VHF adapters. You can hook it up straight to the coax connecting on the back of your TV. All you need is to get a little adapter from Radio Shack or the like.

Oh, the 32X just sits there. Occasionally I bring it out to play Doom. When I got the 32X, someone stuffed 3 games in the box with it. I picked up my N64 from some rich family whose son went to college. $25 for the consoles, 2 controllers and 5 games in the boxes.

Most of my used consoles were picked up via Craigslist. It's amazing what you can find out there on the cheap. I got a couple Genesis for about $10-$15 each that way. One came with the Master System adapter. Since becoming somewhat of a collector myself, I found that garage sales can be a great place to find things as well. I got my 32X practically new in the box that way. Not that I really wanted a 32x for games, though, since those are mostly crap.

Woot! Happy birfday!

I have an ART Tube PAC that I use quite a bit. I also have one of their little Tube MPs too. Despite being fairly cheap, they actually sound pretty damn good. I prefer using them over the preamps in my Digi 002r.

Well, with Reason, you can always Rewire it to whatever DAW you use since pretty much every DAW has that ability. The one nice thing about Reason is that it's really CPU efficient and Propellerheads support has always been good to me and my friends. I honestly can't say the same about NI. I suppose I'm a pretty heavy equivocator of Reason since it pretty much replaced all other VSTi for me. I like the fact that I don't have to think about upgrading so many plugins when a new version comes out. Your mileage may vary, though.

I admit, I LOVE Reason and pretty much everything you need can be accomplished with it and a handful of good refills. http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/Propellerhead-Reason-4-Premium-Edition-Bundle?sku=500286 That will get you pretty damn far, IMHO. While the orchestral samples that come with Reason are usable, you can always do better with the refills from Miroslav or Garritan. BTW, there are lots of examples of some of the Reason premium refills on propellerheads site.

I wouldn't mind doing something for this!

Well, here's a diagram I did when if first moved in this house:

I have some emulators on that machine for when I occasionally need a brain break but it doesn't get used that often. I swear my wife uses it more to play Dr Mario.

Oh, and here's a sort of 270 degree view of my little studio to give you a better idea of where I work. It's not a very good attempt at doing this sort of thing but you get the idea of what the room looks like. http://www.bsodmusic.com/temp/thestudio.jpg

Just in case anyone wants to see a pic of my Les Paul...

While I've only really started hanging around the forums and IRC over the past month, I've known about OCR for quite a while. I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of people at MAGfest.

I'd personally go the way of M-audio. From what I know, they have better driver support anyway. Also, I'm not a huge fan of having XLR connections in the front of a rack system like that. I suppose that's mostly because I would use an interface like that on a desk and XLRs in the front would mean having cables making a mess in front of me. Meters on the rack really shouldn't be that much of a big deal either since your DAW should have better capabilities in that respect. As far as the converters go, I'm not really betting that the Lexicon is going to be that much better at that price tag. And only 55dB? That doesn't give you a heck of a lot of headroom. Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of Lexicon unless it's one of their reverbs. Just my 2 cents...

Oh, I'll be there.

Wish I could have made it! Next time!

You can try but you'd get mixed results. It was mainly designed to work with single instruments. The software isn't intelligent enough to know the difference between a guitar and a piano playing the exact same pitch. If they were playing different pitches, it may be able to do it but that's not what the tech was designed for. It also doesn't work well on heavily effected instruments. Stuff like delay and reverb will caused mixed results. Here's a bunch of videos that give you a better idea of what it can do: http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=editor_betavideo

So, many of you may have heard about the new Melodyne Editor that was first talked about nearly a year and a half ago. Well, they finally released the first beta for it and I can honestly say that I'm completely blow away. I've played with it a bit and it really does work! I threw in a jazz organ loop that had some cool chords in it. This is the original and unaltered loop that I got from http://www.acidplanet.com: http://www.bsodmusic.com/temp/organ1.wav Here is the same loop but I altered some notes using the new Melodyne Editor: http://www.bsodmusic.com/temp/organ2.wav Nifty eh? This really will make for some creative uses of loops as well as song writing with your own recordings. I'm pretty stoked!

If one is being picky, most of the pre's built in the interfaces are fairly mediocre but they're usable.

If you don't mind spending a wee bit more, you can get a refurbished Macbook for $850 from Apple. http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC240LL/A?mco=Nzk2MTU0Mw

I occasionally do something similar with my Line6 Tone Direct that came with Gearbox when I bought it about a year or so ago. Not a bad little package for $100. They still sell something similar with Pod Farm now but I'd grab something like the UX2 if I were buying something new. If I start doing live gigs again, I'd like to pick up something like the KB37 so that I can have something that functions as a midi controller and an interface. Line 6 makes good stuff. Podfarm/Gearbox really has replaced any need for me to record from an amp but I still do sometimes because it can be fun. Their support is pretty decent as well. Personally, I'd probably stick with either Line6 or M-audio as far as interfaces go. They probably provide some of the best driver support compared to other companies. I originally started recording with an M-audio interface several years ago (a PCI 2496 card). I eventually switched to a MOTU firewire interface and boy did I regret it. I've been using a Digidesign 002r now for the past 3-4 years and it's never let me down but it was rather pricey. I wouldn't buy any Digidesign product unless you're hell bent on using Pro Tools (which I personally love. BTW).

If you're having firewire issues, let me ask you this... Are you using a separate firewire card or are you using the one on the motherboard? If you're using a laptop, I guess you don't have much of a choice but if you're using a desktop, it's better to use a separate firewire card. In the past, I've found a lot of the integrated ones end up having strange issues with audio interfaces.

I never got to play The Secret of Mana when it was originally released but I picked it up on virtual console several months ago. I got through about 2/3 of the game before I quit. I agree that there really isn't a lot of substance to it compared to some of the other games that were released in that era. Games like Chrono Trigger and A Link to the Past were much better at telling a story. I for one would rather have a game with mediocre graphics and a great story than some shiny 3D extravaganza with a crappy plot. In a way, I'm glad that I'm just now getting caught up on a lot of games that came out on the 90s. Plenty of good titles to keep me amused and Suikoden is currently on my plate. As far as nostalgic games that are horrible to me now...ET. For some reason my 8 year old mind thought it was awesome when it came out. I hang my head in shame just thinking about it.

BTW, if any of you DC folks ever want to get together and collaborate, I have a fairly decent sized space here in my basement studio with enough space to fit a handful of people. All you'd need to do is bring any instruments you'd want to play....except drums. Can't really record that here unless they're of the electronic variety.

One of the problems I've had with a lot of online communities (and people in general) is that lack of interest diversity. I'm not exactly one of those people who gets interested in one thing and suddenly that becomes the center of my life. In the geek realm, I find that a lot of people are like that and I just don't enjoy surrounding myself with that type of crowd. Even though I'm fairly new to OCR, I'm starting to see that it's a pretty diverse group who has a large handful of common interests...not just one.