Still slow going - lingering tennis elbow, technical issues with my studio PC, new gear update

It's getting somewhat frustrating - elbow pain limiting pretty much everything I do, from simply resting my arm on my chair while typing, thru picking things up or moving my hand around, and then of course the most worrisome is when I pick up my kids. There's a fear that my strength will fade with the pain and I'll drop my kid - so far no such thing has happened.

In other news - my PC is acting up, coincidentally after I decided to do a full disk image (effectively migrate my 120GB SSD C: drive sector by sector to a larger 256 GB SSD) I started seeing blue screen of death appear on that PC. At first I wondered if it was the new SSD that was causing the problem which prompted me to roll back some Windows Updates, try scanning drives, etc.. Then, just because I didn't know what it could be, I opened up my system monitor and checked out details for memory load, CPU/GPU temperature, etc...

Lo and behold - all 4 CPU cores showed temperatures riding around 100C!!! Seems like my processor fan is having issues of some sort - I haven't quite dug into it yet, but it could be anything from dried out silicon paste through a failing CPU fan... I'll be digging in either Saturday or Sunday morning this weekend. Hopefully I can resolve and the DAW will be back in service again.

Now, as part of my investigation, I started looking at drivers for all my external devices - started with the USB stuff (since it seemed like after installing Logitech drivers all my problems started) and updated everything, then to my firewire based M-Audio 1814 interface. To my horror, Avid (who bought M-Audio a few years ago) had sold that division off to inMusic - and neither of them are supporting any driver development for what is now a legacy device!!! No Windows 8 drivers ever... and any problems with Windows 7 - nope... I'm SOL on this device!!

Here's where Craigslist and EBay become my savior - the M-Audio 1814 and Octane preamp (yea, two devices that are both solid performers and were very expensive) go for sale on CL. Then research what is the best option to replace... found the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 to be the highest rated in my price range, and its on firewire as well with 20 in/outs and compatibility with Intel's Thunderbolt interface! It's universally rated 5/5 stars - and I found a store on EBay who sold it for 25% less than anywhere else! With someone now committed to purchasing the M-Audio devices, my actual out of pocket investment in the new hardware is roughly $100 - nice! The new hardware is also compatible and has drivers available for Windows 8 - so if the new Windows 8 update at end of June actually delivers the improvements promised, I'll be looking to update my DAW in July.

So it seems that I've already started digging into the new gear update without formally announcing it. I have some other updates I made:

• new 27" 2560x1440 LED monitors - two of them
• 2 small condenser mics (one hihat, one ride cymbal) - got these on Musician's Friend Stupid Deals site
• Epiphone EL-00 parlor guitar with Fishman pickup/mic system
• SoundTrax audio insulating foam panels for the vocal booth - a lot of it
• sold old Ultimate Support keyboard stand, bought a new one with 3rd tier
• Seymour Duncan JB SH4 Humbucker pickup (for the HRFiii)
• Arturia Minilab  - for my Ultrabook enabling me to do stuff on the road
• two SMS-6000 adjustable heavy duty audio monitor stands (to properly position the Mackies)
• Soundblox Multiwave Distortion stomp box (I couldn't resist)

I've had my eye on a Godin MultiOud now for a long time - I'd love to have a more Middle Eastern vibe get into the music in spots and this is a wonderful instrument that sounds like an original Oud, but more stable and has a pickup. Doing the Tea Party cover tune and digging back into their catalog really has me wanting more exotic stringed instruments going forward - there's a lot of new instruments acquired the last four years that will provide exceptional timbral variation in the new material... not to mention simple replacements of stuff to get better results (such as replacing the Lark in the Morning mandolin with the Epi Mandobird, or an actual lap steel guitar instead of faking it with one of my electrics). I'm particularly excited about the EL-00 since I've always been highly influenced by Jethro Tull and specifically their Thick as a Brick and Songs from the Wood albums - the latter using parlor guitars to get a more period accurate sound.

The EL arrived today :) I'm going downstairs to go get my new axe - cya later all!

Slow going right now - elbow / tendinitis pain, Windows 7 headaches, many other bandwidth demands...

It's been a slow few weeks since my last post, I'll give some indication of items causing delays in production...

• I've been suffering with a weird tendon/ligament pain in my right elbow for many weeks going on several months now. Its a strain injury I'm sure related to a fall I had back in the winter - I think I hyperextended my elbow and as a result pretty much everything I do has been pretty painful. It started becoming noticeable when simply picking up my kids - the pain in my elbow from the strain was sharp and limited my strength. And it's been getting progressively worse - even now just clicking my mouse and typing on the keyboard are problematic and I need to find a more comfortable position to do this, usually with my elbow resting on the armrest but it can be awkward to do this and type... I've got a tennis elbow brace on my forearm now, it gives a bit more stability but the weakness and pain is still there. A trip to the doctor will be necessary soon...
• I've been having some fun with Windows 7 on my DAW recently. Bluescreen on shutdown caused me to investigate, and I found that I only had 10 GB left of 120 GB on my main boot drive (SSD). So I spent some time Friday night moving the master partitions (Boot partition and the system partition) over to a new 256 GB faster SSD - this would provide about 130 GB of free space on the system drive and alleviate some of the issues. I also formatted the original system drive and set up a large Virtual Memory (Pagefile) allocation on it - going to the SSD with the pagefile will improve the performance of the system immensely. Well... since then I've had the system bluescreen once again last night - result of a driver update was what the message said. I'll be watching this carefully since having to format and reinstall my OS and all the software would be a serious pain in the ass. There is a risk in waiting on catastrophic failure though - there is no certainty that its not a SSD issue and I'd be best to replace that going forward...
• ah the vagaries and demands of home ownership... pulling our heads up into bright sunshine after a long and dreary winter usually results in abject shock and horror as we confront our front and back lawns. This requires much effort usually spent over two or three weekends ripping out "dead" plants and then putting in new ones to replace. For me - as I'm usually safety challenged and hurt myself with certain regularity - its an occasion to reflect on a lack of physical fitness, effects of aging, negative connotations of UV radiation, etc.. but yet we do this and in the end it's declared to be all worth the effort. Compound this though with the needs of attention and physical activity for the young boys, and the sports aspirations of the oldest boy (baseball season my boy!) and you have a very busy Rob to try to contend with. We're also going through early discussion and feasibility assessments for vacation property ownership, and time is a commodity that is rare.

Bottom line - the music thing has been delayed, and I'm going to be synching with John shortly to check on his progress. My suspicion is that I've failed to provide something (I think tempo maps or at least a written tempo map for each song) and we're in a waiting period until that gets delivered. With my new 27" 4k displays though I need to make time - both to get John his tempo maps, and also to resolve item #1 above. Getting this resolved will be crucial to my efforts, and with a couple changes in gear that will allow me to do better multitasking (an Arturia MiniLab USB keyboard for one) I hope to move forward and have something audible for your pleasure soon.