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Magnetic Ether

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Posts posted by Magnetic Ether

  1. Hey I know I could rent that Ebtech HumX from a local shop where they sell and rent stuff like speakers for small events. It was like 10$ for a few days and he would credit me the 10 bucks on the full purchase, you might as well look for such a shop. They fucking sold it 80$ tho.. I kept my hum :).

    I've looked around, but none of the rental places here seem to rent accessories like that. If I can though, I would like to try it out first if I decide to buy it; I don't want to bring it home and find out that it doesn't fix the problem.

  2. Ah, I see. Another question, then: is the power to the audio interface provided by the USB connection or does the interface have its own AC adapter that plugs into the wall? My understanding is that USB-powered interfaces tend to have more of a problem with noise since the current supplied by USB is less consistent than you get from an AC adapter. I could see how having a bad connection from wall to computer -- especially on laptops, which aren't always great at powering USB devices in the first place -- could perhaps make any USB power issues even worse.

    EDIT: If the interface is USB-powered, you could maybe try getting a powered USB hub that has its own AC adapter and running the interface from that so that the interface isn't getting its power supply through the computer's power cord.

    Yeah, it's usb powered.

    As for your hub suggestion, I didn't even know something like that exists...could you show me exactly what you mean?

  3. Is your guitar pickup a double-coil humbucker (which is less prone to noise) or is it single-coil (which is more prone to noise)?

    Double.

    Have you tried plugging into a different outlet?

    Once or twice. Didn't seem to make a difference.

    Alternately, have you priced a new laptop battery? Knowing laptop batteries, it would probably be more expensive that the ground hum reducing thing, but it might be worth checking.

    Yeah, they're way too expensive. My battery wasn't even very good when I first got it either (Lasted maybe 2-3 hours and recording would just drain it faster). Ideally I'd like to be able to record while it's plugged in.

    Additionally, are you talking about using the ground hum reducer on the laptop plug or on a guitar amp plug? If on the laptop, is your laptop plug three-pronged? If it doesn't have that third grounding prong to begin with, the ground hum reducer is probably not going to do anything. Even if it is a grounded plug, the hum reducer may still not do anything because it may not be a laptop grounding issue -- it may just be electrical interference from the AC adapter that's messing with the guitar like you sometimes get from CRT monitors and florescent lights. There's a shielding thing you can do to the interior electronics-containing cavities of the guitar that's supposed to reduce this sort of interference, especially for single-coil pickups. If you're comfortable taking your guitar apart, you can get kits for this for ~$20 (e.g http://www.stewmac.com/shopby/product/3789).

    I would be using it on my laptop power cord. I record directly into my audio interface so there is no amp.

    I don't think it's interference because the noise is there even when the guitar isn't plugged in and as soon as I unplug the power cord it goes away.

    I was thinking about shielding for a while but I'm really not comfortable opening up the guitar. I may still do it in the future, but the noise coming from the guitar itself is usually quite minimal. I'm almost positive the issue is being caused by the laptop cord.

  4. So I figured out that the hum I get whenever I try and record electric guitars comes from my laptop's power cord. Having learned this, I would just record from my battery, but it's so bad that it can only last a few minutes.

    Just wondering if this plagues anyone else and if there's anything you do to get rid of/minimize it. I know there are things you can buy to eliminate it, but they're expensive...

  5. As for the display of the votes, I think that you should post a chart of the votes, but not who voted. Anonymity is a good thing when it comes to voting cuz no one can be judged about it. You could put a tally of how many points each mix received, in descending order of course.

    I think this is the way to go. Besides, the final scores are all that matter :)

    Also, I agree with SuperiorX and Sir_NutS about the project file thing. I understand what the rationale is for not allowing it, but I think it would just end up being limiting, especially when time is a commodity.

  6. What do you mean by "not too much?" As far as I'm aware, there's no such thing as "too much source." Now, being too similar (cover-ish) will get a mix frowned upon, but never will anyone decry a mix for incorporating too much of the good stuff.
    I think that's what Kuolema meant.

    Yeah, I should have been clearer...How about Not to cover-ish, and not too unrecognizable?

    I guess I'm just not clear on how to evaluate the mixes based on that.

    Also, in case anyone missed it, these are my sources.

  7. Awesome, I'm listening now!

    So our source was

    from Valkyrie Profile with some
    in the middle and a hint of
    at the end.

    The arrangement and recording were done by me, Sir_NutS did most of the production and made everything glue together quite nicely.

    The arrangement went pretty smoothly; the recording not so much. The piano, for instance, was a last minute addition when I started having problems with my whistle's tuning.

    Due to some fail email sending on my part (Well it was Windows Live Mail's fault really) our weekend communication was delayed until last night and the track didn't get mixed until this morning. Still, I think it came out pretty well considering he only had a few hours. A lot of the fullness of the track came from what he did and it sounds much more coherent than it did originally.

    I learned a lot working on this, from both Sir_NutS and my own experimentation, but I'm not sure if there's anything specific that I can mention. It was more an overall learning experience.

  8. One hour left, still hoping to get something from you. If you think you need a short extension (< 1 hour), let me know.

    It should be fine, but we did have a little bit of trouble with power outages this morning.

    If we do need an extension it should just be for rendering/sending it in.

    Edit: In with 10 minutes to go! Woo!

  9. Hey I just realized BLIND GUARDIAN is remixable on OCR.

    Can staff confirm or deny this?

    Here's the song:

    The song was made for the game Sacred 2 and was featured as an in-game concert, I played the game and pretty much dumped it after seeing that. It had fulfilled its purpose for me.

    Game released November 11th, 2008

    Blind Guardian's album that features the song was released on July 30th, 2010 almost 2 years later!

    Please confirm this staff

    please confirm this

    Now the only problem is...how are you going to make that song even more awesome? :P

  10. Yep, I sure have. However, that tutorial is Garageband-exclusive (refers to certain patches within Garageband) and seeing as I use Windows, I obviously can't use Garageband or the tutorial.

    Figures you would have browsed MLR :<.

    Still, doesn't it give some idea of how to achieve the same thing using different plug ins?

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