Tag: usb audio interface

Two Recent Items of Note

Two things that I have been wanting to post here just so that I could find them if I need them in the future. One music related, one marriage related.

First, the music one. I plugged one of my USB audio interfaces into a USB-C adapter and then into my iPad. It works perfectly. I can bring up the mic input in GarageBand, pick an available channel from the interface, and record without lag or errors. Sigh of relief. Now I actually have to have a song to add guitars and vocals to. Maybe I can still sneak in a Record Every Month Challenge song for October. There’s NaSoAlMo next month to think about too. Also, I haven’t played guitar in ages and I am starting to get the shakes from guitar withdrawals. You know how it is. I still haven’t tried GarageBand on my MacBook since taking the last OS top off update. It shouldn’t make a difference. I don’t think anything audio related was included in the update. I am still thinking about wiping the whole thing and restoring from a backup and seeing if that fixes whatever crap was wrong last month. Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yes. Have you tried killing everything and reinstalling it? Not yet.

That’s the music thing I wanted to write down. What’s the marriage thing? My wedding ring is in the shop. I took it back to the jewelry shop we bought it from back in 2009 to get it resized. It was a size 14. It will be a size 12. I mentioned the cause of the weight loss and asked if it will be okay if I need to get it resized a second time. They said sure. We did that on Saturday, October 22nd. They said I could expect to be without it for a week or so. Jen also dropped off her engagement ring as one of the clasps that holds the diamond in place is broken. Hopefully they will both come back at the same time. I seriously miss my ring. I keep absent mindedly reaching for it and being surprised that it isn’t there. I am looking forward to not having to wrap yard around it to make it fit better though. I won’t miss that annoying little thing.

There. Now we’re all up to date.

Car Music Fail

I knew this was going to happen eventually, and today kinda became the day.

If you go back to all the car music posts from the last year or so, at some point I start talking about having signal flow problems. There are signal drop outs and extraneous noises and things that make takes unusable. Eventually the system I use for my personal Rolling Truck Stones Thing was going to fail. Today I only had two songs to work on and I spent a full hour on one of them, just trying to get the signal to hold together for eight or nine bars. It was so painful.

The frustration comes from not knowing where the breakdown is happening. What could it be?

  1. The microphone
  2. The connection between the mic and the mic cable
  3. The mic cable
  4. The connection between the mic cable and the USB interface
  5. The USB interface
  6. The connection between the USB interface and the USB cable
  7. The USB cable
  8. The connection between the USB cable and the USB to USB C adapter
  9. The USB to USB C adapter
  10. The connection between the USB to USB C adapter and the USB C port on the computer

Today’s issues happened in more than one USB C port, so I know it wasn’t the port. I also know it isn’t the sound card or GarageBand itself because both of those work perfectly when I’m at home and using a different USB interface. That rules out the tail end of the chain, but every other device or connection could be the culprit.

The next time I do this I am going to take a different mic, a different mic cable, a different USB cable, and a different USB adapter. If it still happens then I know the interface itself is the problem.

The upside is that I actually did get that one song finished. It probably sounds like dung, but it’s finished. So the trip was a success as far as the goal to record one song per month is concerned. It was a frustrating, painful fail as far as everything else was concerned.

A Hero of the Pandemic

I took this picture yesterday with dispo because I don’t know why I use dispo but I still do and it bugs me a little but that’s irrelevant.

What was I saying? Oh yes. I took this picture yesterday when I was thinking about how I want to play guitar more than I do.

This Tascam US-16×08 is one of the great unsung heroes of the Covid-19 pandemic for me. This is the interface I use to record guitar parts. I used it for vocals a couple of times too, but for car music I use a different interface. That’s another pandemic hero, but this guy… this guy has been a huge part of me recording about 130531531 songs over the last year.

I bought it to record Lizardfish rehearsals because if I mic up all of the instruments we need a ton of inputs and this can handle 16 at once (only 8 mic cables though, I need xlr to 1/4 inch adapters if I need more). I took it home before the last gig, though I don’t really remember why. I think I was considering recording the 2/1/20 gig. I didn’t though.

Larry and I were looking at digital mixers on amazon yesterday. We were talking about a really nice one that runs about $2k. That would be awesome to have, but it’s overkill for me. I just need the interface. GarageBand handles the mixing. Still… the thing was really cool. I can’t start GASing about PA gear though. I do that enough for guitar and camera gear. I can’t make it worse. Nope, can’t do it.

Anyway, three cheers to this 16 channel USB audio interface. You’re doing good work, my friend, and I am glad I bought you.