I am Patrick Perdue! I am bad for you!

Things and Stuff for December 5, 2009

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:10:06 GMT

My Phonic board is broken. Did that stop me from doing what I do best, I.E. wasting time, energy, and resources for not very much other than my own enjoyment, and hopefully that of at least two other people? Of course not! As a result, this week's show is now downloadable. In this show:

We learn the day's true date, November 35, 1990-19.

The current issues with Phonic, TriTech Electronics (who are, according to Phonic, supposedly authorized to fix my board under the manufacturer's warranty, although they claim otherwise), is discussed, as well as a description of this show's very convoluted broadcasting setup. Just for the info, this is probably the weirdest one I've used to date, and includes a keyboard being used as a master compressor.

Wo, where'd that come from? A totally unexpected phone call from a long-time family friend, Josh Owens, which lead to an interesting discussion about radio, greyhound buses, West Virginia, Christmas, and many other things. This is a longer phone call than usual, as it was so unexpected, given that Josh had no regular computer access the last time we spoke, and, in fact, didn't really know how to use one that well.

A standard fallback, going through production libraries at random, leads to a few interesting things, including showcasing some very nasty scratchy pots on the current broadcast board.

Let's have a Sennheiser MKE2002+dummy head demo from 1973.

Why wasn't the popular Beatles song 'Let It Be' called 'Let It Generally Exist' instead?

What Things and Stuff episode would be complete without playing with an effects processor or two, even on a scaled-down streaming setup?

If you don't have a phone booth, you can put a phone call in a box... Well, I can, so I did.

And there you have it, another show thingy has passed us by. As a reminder, Things and Stuff won't be on next week, since I'll be at Randy's place, for which I am leaving in about 10 hours. Maybe I should start packing? Yeah... Maybe. If possible, I will try to stream at least one of Randy's live gigs, but there isn't a lot of 3g coverage in West Virginia, unless you're in Charleston, Huntington, Parkersburg, or Wheeling. Maybe we'll get lucky, and have some available wifi somewhere. Who knows? Stay tuned and find out, because, after all, it's something to do.

Several stream archives for your face

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:36:23 GMT

Today, we have several stream archives available for you, the strange, bored person who likes that sort of thing.

PDAudio Realtime 2009.5

On Friday, November 27, 2009, P&D Audio Productions Realtime 2009.5 took place in the beautiful bedroom studio of one Derek Lane. Quite a number of bad, abnormal, and generally dumb things happened during the course of the stream, which, of course, is only to be expected at this point.
Here are just a few such examples:

Autotune the blues, a prime example of why Derek and myself should never be given access to studio equipment

slide whistles through autotune are fun.

So are 1-a-cans with guitar slides.

TBRN.AM, a good idea or not?

Uncle Hanson's redneck poetry... enough said?

Swedish disney songs... Sure, why not?

How about a wire tape machine playing back a recording of an atomic bomb test?

All this and more can be found in this clickable link. I Think this may have been the shortest realtime stream to date, although this made it no less enjoyable for me.

PDAudio Cartime 2009.5
Adding to the shortest ever series, we bring you CarTime 2009.5, which only lasted 26 minutes due to being late, thanks to a few technical issues.
For those who don't know, CarTime is so named because the streams are done live from the car on the way back from Derek's place. Every one we've tried to do while taking Derek back from mine has completely and totally failed, and this one came close to not existing at all. Fortunately, it did manage to work, and was apparently more stable than any other stream we've done from the car, although it started later than we would have liked. Unfortunately, we couldn't take phone calls (again), but the messengers worked. Although the original stream was done at 24 kbps mono to improve the bandwidth to sound ratio, the archive is in stereo. So, even if you heard it live, you may have missed something interesting. Congratulations to you! Now you can hear just what you missed, and then say "Wow, was that really worth it?"

Things and Stuff for November 28, 2009?
Well... um... I haven't sent my board off to be fixed yet, though I plan on doing so this week. It's gotten even worse than the last time you all heard it in action. TO prove it, instead of a real show, have this fake one as I demonstrate why I didn't actually do a show this week. I think you'll understand, and I hope you'll forgive me. Hey, you can't say I didn't actually do a show, now can you?
What now?
Derek and myself are going to visit Randy Gilkey up there in West Virginia where it's all relative, so our respective shows won't be on for a couple of weeks. Naturally, we'll make up for it by doing strange, possibly random things while there. Of course, I encourage you to stay tuned to the website and TBRN's Twitter for all the latest news, and stuff. No, before you ask, I will not start a news show, and call it News and Stuff, amusing though the concept is to me, for a few seconds, anyway.

Things and Stuff for November 21, 2009

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:55:59 GMT

Proving that I'm still dedicated to the fine art of completely wasting time, this week's show is now consumable. It's probably not very tasty, but feel free to ingest it at your leisure... or something.

On this weeks highly enjoyable show:

Although it's not terribly obvious unless pointed out specifically, my Phonic Helix Board fw24 MKII, the console I use to produce Things and Stuff, and many other fine? things, is having some power supply problems, and will most likely be shipped off to Florida for repair in a few days. Not happy about this, you know. It's the kind of problem I only know will get worse, so I'd better do something about it now.

A fake section called "why I shouldn't own a studio" was introduced, including bad drumming, and a cover of a Beatles track I did while under the influence of a headache on Friday. Sorry about the nasty sound from the floor tom.

We hear from the 1956 RCA MK II synthesizer, and explain very briefly how it worked, on the fundamental level.

Mommy reports nothing at all, which is becoming more and more standard in these parts, now that all the loud fighting neighbors have moved away.

We briefly discuss and demonstrate the G722 codec on a Snom 320 IP phone, and wish all phones could sound like that.

Let's have fun with recordings made from my Icom tuner over the week, as well as an incredibly inefficient but amusing way to communicate with the show.

Thanks to Kyle, a discussion of the Large Hadron Collider occured, including several possible theories as to why it didn't work originally, which leads to the world having never been destroyed, of course.

Bored enough to count from 11:48 PM to 11:49 PM? I was, apparently.

Random crap was added to the end of the archive to make it exactly two hours long.

As per usual, other stuff happened that never quite made it to these pages when it actually came to writing these fake show notes.

And there you have it, people. Another week over, another show gone. Next week should, theoretically, play host to PDAudio Realtime 2009.5 from Derek's place on Friday, assuming it all works out. What it will do, I've no idea, but then again, things work best that way.

Have fun, and don't die.

Things and Stuff for November 14, 2009

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:06:46 GMT

And now, on the forth anniversary of a very memorable show from Portland with myself and maryannn, one of the more unusual shows in a long while comes to you a lot later than normal, and is available for download.

This show is a great example of how to recover from technical issues that make things impractical to deal with, and end up doing something interesting anyway. In this case, Melanie and myself streaming from the netbook on the hotel's internet connection wasn't working out so well due to saturated bandwidth, most likely caused by someone running torrents on the network. After nearly an hour of broadcasting this way, being highly fragmented and only just existing, I decided to try streaming via my phone on AT&T's 3g internet, which worked surprisingly well given that we were streaming in ogg quality 3 and taking phone calls through a sip softphone at the same time. Latency on phone calls was a bit long in some cases, and, over all, the sound isn't as polished as I've like, but given the circumstances, things could have been a lot worse.

This was a rather crazy show, which I would be hard pressed to describe and get right, so I don't think I'll say much, leaving you all to figure it out for yourselves. I will, however, mention that drunk people in a hotel on a Saturday night are fun, hockey in the south is apparently wrong, and... oh, look at the time!

live from the Hyatt hotel, it's...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:41:34 GMT

Hello people, both good and bad.

This entry comes to you today from my new Samsung N130 netbook, which I received on Wednesday. I'm writing from a desk in a room on the first floor of the Hyatt hotel, which is only about a five minute car trip from my house. 'Why are you there?' Well, I'm here because lostgirl33 is staying in Greensboro for a few days, and it's the thing to do. On top of that, thanks to all the water from Hurricane Ida, my basement has once again flooded, including part of the studio. It's not quite as bad as the swimming in the studio clip from August 2008, but it isn't so good, either.
Therefore, I'm not sure if there will be a show tomorrow. The part of the studio that really matters is dry, but with a quarter of it covered in about a half inch of water, it may not be such a good idea to try doing anything useful. The grounding down there already sucks, and standing water sure doesn't help that sort of thing. I may go home on Saturday afternoon, grab some mics and one of my small boards, and attempt a show from the hotel, although the internet here is reasonably fast, yet not very reliable, with sucky AT&T routes. We'll see how things go, I guess.

In the meantime, because it's the thing I usually do, have this placeholder, otherwise known as a Hyatt Hotel toilet. It's nothing special, but it's something I have to do, as you probably know by now.

The next few days should be interesting. Later today, we're doing somethingI never honestly thought I would do... going to a hockey game between the New York Islanders and the Carolina Hurricanes at the RBC Center in Raleigh, otherwise known as watching the Hurricanes properly representing the state by losing, most likely. After all, this is North Carolina, and losing is what we do best. Well, hey, we have to do something, right?
We're also planning a trip to Derek's place on Sunday.
As for all the time in between, who knows?

I'll leave you with this for now, with possibly more in the future. Oh, and I apologize for not having anything more interesting to show for myself other than a very standard American toilet (which I think is actually an American Standard), but as we all know, no two flushes are ever the same. So, have another one of your very own, or something.

Things and Stuff for November 7, 2009

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:35:32 GMT

I know you're tired of hearing this phrase, but I seem to be saying it a lot lately. I apologize for this show in advance, and promise to nevewr not do something like this again.

This week's show can be downloaded here, and offers the following:

Co-host Chris is introduced, and what is left of a heavily medicated dgl1984 explains the state he's found himself in.

The technical problems begin with failing messengers, and a dying APC UPS that really wants my attention.

A Canadian listener calls in, at which point several things, including broken Messengers, an appropriate sound scheme for Windows Vista, and old, bad Things and Stuff references from 2007 are discussed.

Chris plays with my effects processor for what is arguably a bit too long for anyone's own good.

Haven't you always wanted to play with a model airplane? Well, now you can, on model airplanes and stuff!

More unfinished ideas, brought to you by the Yamaha Motif XS and it's pattern sequencer.

No Mommy Call this week, truly breaking that after almost a year of doing it.

Thanks to a Canadian node on GlobalTuners, we have a comparison of the United States NOAA weather radio, and Weather Radio Canada. Both are bad, but which is worse?

Have you ever wondered how WWV sounds on narrow band FM, instead of it's proper AM?

Shins for Windows takes the streaming client and a couple of other things down after a nice, hard crash, prompting a remote session from another computer to kill it, resulting in issues with the stream for several moments. Gotta love those external archiving solutions... I suppose I could have edited this more, but if Don Joyce can spend half an hour trying to fix a buzz on real FM radio, then I don't feel so bad.

A ringing endorsement of Time Warner Cable business class? Well, maybe it doesn't actually ring...

TBRN's live stream is dead... or is it?

A call from a slightly intoxicated Kyle and Jody at a camp fire ends this poor excuse for a show.

Well, there you have it. Enjoy it more than I did, for what it's worth. Next week's show should be interesting, since Melanie, A.K.A. lostgirl33 will be spending a few days here, starting on Thursday... the twelth... OH NO!

Things and Stuff for October 31, 2009

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:45:25 GMT

Another month gone, another show in the can.
This show features a failed not quite demonstration of my Icom PCR-100 on Global Tuners, talk about radio for nearly an hour, the introduction of Berny the Fuse (yet to be developed into anything useful), proof that the Greensboro social security office is bad for you, cheap toys from Mommy (again), banging on drums for about 20 seconds, a tribute to 100.3, the not buzzard anymore, and a grand total of five incoming phone calls (all from kd6cae. Enjoy.

Things and Stuff for June 13, 2009

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:06:32 GMT

Yes, that's right, folks. It's October 25, and, instead of posting yesterday's archive, which is 12 minutes long, by the way, since it broke in all kinds of fun and interesting ways, I'm giving you a show archive that was previously not uploaded, because I didn't like it at the time. Have I changed my mind? Well, not really, but it's something to have.

According to the notes I wrote for this show in June:
At the time of the show, I was being plagued by a migraine from hell. I did manage to do a few fun things, such as putting a well-known and quite horrible song through a midi controlled Granulab, which was rather amusing (at least to me), showed the last couple of minutes of WCWG's analog TV feed as it went off the air forever, and complained about various things.
For some inexplicable reason, I extended the show for almost an entire hour just to talk to Alexander Nelson about keyboards and pointless things, and to play around a bit with the Ensoniq TS-12.
I think I left out a few things, such as Venison's problems with big words, I.E. anything longer than two syllables.

As there was no archive for this week's show, though I still may do another one soon to make up for over-sleeping, then breaking things yesterday, have this thing from last summer instead. I'm not really sure that this is any better. You can judge that for yourself if you like.

Things and Stuff for October 17, 2009

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:22:35 GMT

Well, ya know, time for another stupid show? ... or something like that.

This week's two hour masterpiece includes:

How many knobs does Borris's board have?

Derek's girlfriend, a Roland Juno G, is leaving his life after just a few days?

The fake plastic stalker gets two seconds of fame.

A listener's comment about being temporarily broke leads to the constipation blues.

Let's play with a barebones Motif pattern and acoustic drums.

Autotune the news? Sure, why not?

to the listeners in Antarctica, We've got your weather conditions!

"Ha Ha," said the clown, including a bunch of Mary Anns for good measure.

This week's Mommy call reveals the fact that my father lost his sell phone at a local WalMart.

A discussion of belching with Mommy results in some bad time with burping delays and drums.

The Borris Sorry Mix?

A fake Fideliphone promo (except not) provided by Over the Edge.

A bit of info about my new Icom PCR-100 all-mode pc controllable receiver, which will be available to the public to play with soon.

A waste of time, jerks, and going all keyboard crazy.

Buzzy times with a Marshall condenser, a bad cable, and a sink.

Kyle calls in to tell us about a retarded cat, which apparently has vocal quality of a dying baby, as well as introducing his new, up-coming show on TBRN (sort of).

Someone in LA really didn't want me to leave. Too bad for them!

As usual, other things happened, which weren't mentioned in text.

Enjoy, have fun, and good night? Well, maybe it's not night where you are. For that matter, it isn't here, either. Oh well.

Things and Stuff for October 10, 2009

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:00:29 GMT

First of all, let me apologize for the lack of an archive last week. A show did exist, but it was a bad experience (tm) and I didn't like it much, so it never was uploaded or written about. I didn't even want to think about it, and thus, haven't actually reviewed it, and don't remember if there was anything fun from it. If this turns out to be the case, I might post it later on.
Now, I would like to also apologize for this week's show being available from here.

Due to the fact that I am sleepy, lazy, slightly preoccupied and lazy, I will summarize this week's show with the following few words:

Mommy and toys that make bad noises

a fake stocker who won't die, even with a burned and broken face

self-made Jerks, and a call from Venison

Kyle Mckenzie, music and more noises

random samples from a vast, unorganized collection of crap

a review of audiorabbit03's difficult phrases from Augost 2007

a fake ride in a 1965 Ford Pick-up truck

other unmentioned things.

Enjoy. I did.

Things and Stuff for September 26, 2009

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:13:11 GMT

Well, it's that time of the week again... Time to go off and download this week's show if you dare.
Here's what it did this time:

Playing guitars in the rain, bad mic checks, the lonely conductor, and a phrase sampler? How do these all fit together?

Monty's phone line is really, really noisy, and gets progressively worse throughout the course of the show. Since he called five times, this becomes apparent.

I was bored enough to make my listener count a part of the metadata using a PHP script, so you can simply look at your player's title bar to see how many people are bored enough to listen to me being bored. Yep, innovations in all the wrong places, that's us...

Don't stand on my monitor, a comparison between a badly miked and compressed recording of a track played first through my Alesis monitor 1's six years ago, then the same track miked up and played through the new/old JBL 4311's. Why? Why not?

An abrupbt change from the standard archiving method to the Behringer Squishalizer at thirty minutes and seven seconds into the file, because I apparently was stupid and closed the archiving solution. Sorry about the Squishalizer. I really don't like it's sound anymore, and I'm to the point of maybe trying a software multiband solution that isn't Stereo Tool to replace it... if I can find a decent one.

More accidental fun with a phrase sampler? Sure, why not?

Cloning MaryAnn's, and a possible returning show on Sunday mornings?

Kyle Mckenzie, a friend I met during my days as an active ham radio operator in 1994, showed up for the rest of the show to make life interesting by playing random sound effects, and some of his tracks via Fideliphone, after a technical issue on my part.

How much are people willing to pay to have their caps lock indicator lights repaired?

Some callers are apparently much more amusing in boxes.

Talk of spring tank CB radio reception, fun with old cordless phones, baby monitors, FRS and drive through windows... Alwys a good fallback.

Where did the weather go?

How about the weather at the south pole?

This edition of Things and Stuff has been brought to you by an increasingly leaky set of headphones that I should really replace with something better.

Another complete waste of time

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:30:40 GMT

People do the strangest things, then go off and tell other people to do even stranger ones. Why? No idea! Welcome to human nature, I suppose.

Due to the events of last week, causing a temporary scale-back of TBRN services until the start of the month, which has resulted in adding preventive measures to ensure stupid things like that don't happen again, I decided to move FX Radio completely in-house, since I have enough bandwidth to support the couple of users that exist at a time, without wasting TBRN's resources.
So, that's exactly what I did, using two internal icecast servers in a master/slave relay configuration, homing on both the residential and business class gateways, and a round robbin DNS for fake load balancing (as if I'm really going to saturate anything locally with FX Radio).
The end result: you probably won't notice much of a difference. FX Radio can still be found at http://fx.pdaudio.net:8888/fx.m3u as always, with the same great content and SHOUT-Box, just that you may get one of two internal basement servers instead of a real one in New Jersey. Oh well, New Jersey is a bad idea, anyway, even if it does have some fast Linode boxes.

Speaking of bad ideas, a few people suggested, for some unknown reason, that I should stream my Omnicron TCC-14 talking clock, which just sits in the studio and announces the time all day. It's available on TBRN's PBX, and you can theoretically sip to time@pbx.tbrn.net from the outside to reach it as well.
Now, as if looking at your watch or clock wasn't standard and efficient enough for you, you can inefficiently get the time via an Icecast stream, too, all be it a slightly delayed one. Yep, that's right, I was sad enough to set it up, because everything I needed was already available without much extra effort on my part. So now, as a result, radio time, all time, all the time exists for your enjoyment. Note: this streams at AAC+ 24kbps, which is probably a bit much, but with all the natural aliasing provided by the clock, I figured I'd give myself some headroom to play with. Please feel free to say "Oh, wow, that's totally useless, pointless, dumb, etc." and I will agree, but remember, I wouldn't have bothered had I not been asked to do so by not just one, but several people. I only do what I'm told, you know? Sorry if it's abnormal or otherwise socially unacceptable, but that's just the way it is.

In other news, my vintage JBL 4311 reference monitors arrived from Fort Worth yesterday, all 107 lbs of them, and I just got them into the studio this morning. I think this particular set was made in 1974, given what I know about the serial numbers. These things are very, very different from the monitor 1's, obviously, as they are three way, and contain 12-inch drivers. Power? Yeah! Efficiency? Lots of it! Loud? Oh yeah, definitely! I'll have to get used to them, but so far, I love them! They have a very tite and beautiful stereo image, and sound so punchy you'd think you're being knocked over by accident. They do need some cosmetic work, some new fome rings around both tweeters, and a couple of other superficial touch-ups, but they sound and work great. I'm not sure if all the drivers are original, or if any of them have ever been replaced, but unlike dgl1984's pair of jbl 4311's, my set actually has two sets of fully working drivers. His right mid and tweeter drivers are dead, or maybe the crossover is bad. I don't know, but they've been that way for as long as he's had them in late 1997. There are many, many parts on Ebay, and Derek is a bad person for not having them fixed, in my opinion. I've heard Derek's set many times, and even with no highs on one side, I thought they were great. Having them on monitor stands rather than the floor, the way Derek's are positioned, I've come to realize very quickly that those presence controls for the mid (1.5k) and tweeters (6k and up) are really quite a good thing to have, because full on, when you're sitting between them and the mids and tweeters, which are on the bottom, are facing you, it can get pretty intense. So, rolling the output back on those is a really good idea.
Now, to figure out what to do with my Alesis Monitor 1's. At the moment, I'll keep them in the closet, and probably find something interesting to do with them at some point, as I still like them.

Oh, and on a side-note, freakyfwoof and his wife, Kirsten, had a big ol' baby boy on Monday morning at 6:58 AM BST. His name is Jacob Peter Louis (although I think J. P. Louis sounds very important, kind of like J. P. Morgan, but not), and tipped the scales at 10.6 lbs. Pretty big for starters, ya think?
Things should be pretty interesting after this point, and I, personally, am looking forward to the likely madness that will occur as a result.

Now, I will internally debate with myself as to the merits of staying awake, or not. I will most likely lose that battle with myself, as winning would just be too boring, now wouldn't it?

Things and Stuff for September 19, 2009

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:48:48 GMT

TBRN's archives are currently offline due to a situation beyond our control. Thanks, China, plus some other things. They should be back up by the first of the month.
In the meantime, you can download this week's show from my personal server.
I'm lazy, so I'll just say this about this week's show.
Did you know there is an official sound for Summer going away for a year? Yep, there is.
Basically, as for the rest of it, the show features a lot of fideliphone, including alcohol issues (except not), loud things that go toot, dogs, and a friend who found me after losing contact for about thirteen years. Fun times.

Due to levels being all over the place this week, I decided to try using the c4 multi-band compressor in post-production. Doubt I'll use it every week, but it worked for this.
If loads of people complain about the sound, I still have the unprocessed file, and can edit it all over again... Of course you'll all want me to do that, right? Yeah, definitely a fun time!

Sleep is also a fun time, followed by existing. Yes, it's a great way to live your life, I think.

Edit: October 10, 2009
This archive is no longer on my personal server, nor is the one from September 26. However, I have left the references for the sake of history.

Things and Stuff for September 12, 2009

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:00:07 GMT

click here to download this week's show thing.
What does it do?

Thanks to MaryAnn, a new rule has been enforced. If you don't have a valid ID in your possession, you can't listen to the show.

Last Saturday, I went to Piedmont Dragway with my father to see some nytro-burning Harleys in action. I talked about that, played a small preview of what I recorded there, and complained about the horrible band I saw at a bar afterward.

Last Tuesday, I blew up my Hafler 50-watt per channel amp, which I replaced with a much cleaner AB International precedent Series 600A on Thursday. Twice the power, and three rack spaces instead of two. I had to move things around in the rack to make it fit.

Let's play with keyboards and vocoders again.

Mommy visited the studio, at which point, such strange things as bad bands, bar violence, wireless microphones in toilets, marshmallows, cadavers, condoms, and beeping baby Borrises brought to you by slow scan TV are discussed. We also discover that Mommy's mic technique sucks, but not as bad as some.

The recording I made with an open transducer in the toilet was played again.

Slow scan TV will die? Apparently, Borris through a pitch shifter thinks so.

Beds and vocoders are fun.

FX Radio is also fun.

9-minute drum solos from Deep Purple are also fun.

Plastic melodica keys and fake wurlitzers are fun as well.

Enjoy.

Things and Stuff for September 4, 2009

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 06:49:35 GMT

Yes, that's right, get a Things and Stuff archive a day early this week! Aren't you special?
Click here to grab a copy of your very own!

In this week's edition:

It's the Ensoniq TS-12's 15th birthday.

Derek got yet another broken turntable, but refuses to trade his three broken ones for all the working ones I have. Oh well, I tried.

Time is apparently not consistant, prompting what turned out to be a running discussion about time in various forms throughout the show.

kd6cae pointed out that the last four letters of PDAudio's phone number also happen to spell another relevant word.

Roland SC88's, filters, an pitch bends? Um, ok, if someone says so...

Apparently, the US naval observatory master clock is brought to you by a guy who sits in a room all day and says the time... Well, according to Ken Nordine, anyway.

I mentioned in passing that, after over a month of absence, FX Radio is now back online, including it's SHOUT-Box.

As this was the Ensoniq TS-12's 15th birthday, I relayed the story of how I found and eventually obtained the keyboard, and played a couple of celebratory sequences made for the occasion.

I found, and played, some sounds from the old Fairlight CMI IIX workstation, including the sounds of it's actual operation (floppy drives, keyboards, fans, etc.) as well as some of the effects, some of which were presumably digitally sampled in the late 70's. Someone even included "the standard door."

Thanks to byron27 and PhoneSpell.org, we are made aware of some incredibly amusing alternative spellings of PDAudio's phone number.

The reason Things and stuff was a day early this week was discussed. To make it short, I'm going to a drag strip later today, and may stream it live on location, just for something to do.

I called WWV, discovered just how drifty my TCC-14 has become over the last couple of months, and attempted to synchronize a Things and Stuff intro at roughly 120 bpm to WWV's ticking.

Let's play part of the Ensoniq TS instructional video, shall we?

Byron called in, broke the law, and went to jail, without passing go, or collecting $200.

I can now break it again on demand, thanks to a submission from audiorabbit03.

On a side note, I want some headphones that don't leak as much as my Audio Technica ATHM40's do, though I don't remember them being quite this bad before. I'm hearing my speech come through the archive more than I remember, and this angers me. Maybe I'll buy some that isolate better when funds are more easy to come by. OH well. At least it's an acoustic problem, not an electronic one.

Time to get my stuff ready for the morning, and crash. Hey, this is like Saturday night, except an hour earlier, and stuff to do the next day. How weird.

No Things and Stuff for August 29, 2009

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:47:51 GMT

For those of you who heard the show live, you'll know why I'm not going to bother uploading. In short, everything broke, except the computer I was streaming from, and the server hosting the stream. Oh, yeah, it was pretty bad, and included the final moments of one of my Cad M179 multi-pattern condenser mics (time to buy a new pair of those with money I don't currently have). Some, however, may find it entertaining to watch thing after thing completely break on the air. Believe me, if it weren't me, I would have. So, for those of you who want the archive bad enough, I offer the following proposal.
Give me something nice that I can really use, and you can have this week's archive. Now I think I understand how Don Joyce of Negativland's Over The Edge must feel some weeks.

Want to hear things fizzing, hissing and buzzing at random? How about pops and clicks that show up out of nowhere, and completely break my train of thought? How about a partially high quality FideliMommy call?
Just give me something worth having (and it must be something I don't already have, and find valuable enough as trade for something this incriminating, and generally bad), and a password protected temporary link for this week's show will be created just for you. If only I had access to DRM licensing stuff, I'd have fun enforcing things, like only one play time per user, and all kinds of fun stuff, just because I could.

All I have to say is thank (insert deity of choice here) that August, and thus Summer, is nearly over!

Things and Stuff for August 22, 2009

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:16:43 GMT

This is another one of those apology shows. Sorry, both for the show's actual content, and for the late post. IN the words of Lord Belchly, "Oh deer, I broke it again."

In this week's episode:

We celibrate the fact that this is archive number 200 in my local Things and Stuff folder by... well... not doing anything special.

A new "oh no" has been found. Whether or not this is a good thing is left up to you.

Some callers apparently preempt themselves, but don't die when told... even by themselves.

Apparently, 1(800)JustDie is the national A1 advertising hotline.

Remember the big red knob from Realtime 2009? It makes a comeback on a few phone calls during the course of the show, and makes ending calls a lot more interesting.

arfy8820 called. I became bored while doing post-production, and slammed it all together in the style of someone who won't be named to protect the not so innocent.

Let's all hang out in the fake rain, and talk about lightning strikes.

Apparently, Remote Studio No. 0 was experiencing intermittant buzzing problems. Well, you know how we are about making things even worse than they already are, also known as post-production and boredom...

Frustration about said buzzing causes us to go on an incredibly bad keyboarding tangent with the Motif XS and Ion, drumming, and timing issues.

byron27 calls from a CTA bus, just in time for the show to end. Convenient, given who provides the intro and outro music to the show at the moment (Chicago Transet Authority, before they were forced to change their name to Chicago by the real CTA).

Just because it could be done, this, as well as every show this month, has been exactly two hours long to the second. Remember that thing I said earlier about post production and boredom?

If the above description doesn't turn you off too much, and you still wish to download this week's episode of Things and Stuff, you can click here to do so.

Share and enjoy!

Things and Stuff for August 15, 2009

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:28:59 GMT

Though it's a bit late, thanks to a bit of stupidity on my part, it's now available to download.
This was the first show done with the new Kel Audio HM2D microphone. I think I like it. Yes, it's dark like a cold Russian night, but that's why I like it for this sort of thing.

On this week's show:

After a quick ride on Beeping Becky's rather empty Beyond Bus, the show starts off with some chaos provided by Mommy and a drum kit.

A discussion with nick6489 about microphones, and the possible bands to which Mommy's awesome drum skills can be contributed.

P&DAudio Productions now has an official phone number (951-PDAudio). Eventually, it will do something more interesting than simply ringing my phone. Eventually, PDAudio.net will have a website, too. Right...

This week wasn't so great for Les Paul, as he died on Thursday, incidentally, the same day I got the new microphone, though it's probably not related.

Hear how to not properly modify a set of MXL 604 omni-directional capsules, the result of an unfortunate accident I had with mine when trying to do so.

We mentioned that Playback Magazine, a production done by Edd Potter on cassette every two months from 1979 to 2007, has been digitized, and is now available for download. Lots of historical stuff here in regards to radio, audio, electronics, and blind toys. The server's a bit slow, though.

What happens when two songs with nothing in common are played back to back?

Let's have fun manipulating the sound of an incredibly loud wall-mounted brass ship's bell that belongs to my brother.

The weekly Mommy call is followed by a call from audiorabbit03, which leads to lots of intelligent belching, naturally reminding us of a particular bit from last year's reverendbigdawg Christmas cd.

My domain, BadForYou.net, is due to expire tomorrow. I invite all domain squatters listening to take advantage of this fact.

More trouble with patch bays, sliders, buttons and knobs that ultimately winds up going nowhere, as per usual.

A listener wrote in asking for the old "You're Screwed!" series done in 2000 by myself and dgl1984. Some things never quite die, do they? Nope, not played, not published. Sorry.

Let's hang out on the front porch of the past... well, a few hours before the show, with nothing much interesting going on.

Part of a recording of myself hanging out at Randy Gilkey's studio was played by accident. Randy Gilkey and a pedal steel guitar... oh boy!

More pointless drumming.

As per usual, enjoy. I certainly did, even if I lost all the edits I made to the archive while editing it, and had to do it all over again. Oh well.

The Kel Audio HM2D has arrived, finally!

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:30:02 GMT

To say "that took long enough" would be kind of an understatement.
First of all, I'd like to actually congratulate Canada Post on being pretty fast about getting the microphone from Winnipeg to my local post office (shipped last Thursday, arrived at the PO on Monday). This is not typical for stuff coming from Canada.
I, however, would like to not congratulate my local post office on good service.

As this package came from Canada, it required a signature for proof of delivery. I, being the boring person I am, was home all day on Monday when they attempted to deliver the microphone. The doorbell is broken at the moment, and they didn't bother knocking. The dog made no indication that someone was at the door, worthless Dexter that he is. Thus, I had no idea they were there until someone notified me that there was a sticky note on the door, indicating that the next delivery attempt would occur on Tuesday the 11th.
That was never even attempted, apparently.

"No problem," said my deer ol' Dad. "We can just pick it up from the post office. They're open until 5:00 PM, according to this here card, so I can just swing by and pick it up after work."
There's this problem, however... Closing time was changed last month to 4:00 PM, and dad leaves work at around 4:00 PM. Oh, yeah, the cards were supposed to have been updated, but weren't. Thanks for the misinformation, people!

Anyway, I now finally have the mic in my possession, and have yet to really do anything with it other than plugging it in, making a short test recording, and going "hmm, this sounds pretty good."
It's a very strange looking microphone. It reminds me a bit of the Cad M179, except it's longer and even more rounded, and has no controls. Also, instead of having a ring that goes around the bottomm which sits in the shockmount to keep it secure, the Kel actually threads directly into it, with no additional pieces required. It's a large shockmount, very much like that of the M179, and seems to work quite well. We'll see how that actually goes with real usage.
It's a very dark microphone, which is the intent, as it's supposed to sound like a large diaphragm dynamic. It's certainly much darker than the Cad M179, which, in turn, is more so than the Cad GXL-2200's I used for much of 2005 and 2006. It would probably not be my prefered vocal mic for projects where the voice really needs to cut through the mix, but that's hnot what I bought it for, really.

Anyway, the whole point of this post was to throw this short, non-scientific mic comparison at you, using the Kel Audio HM2D, the Cad M179, and the Heil PR20, the other primary mics that see the most use in my studio. What do you think?

As I'll mostly be using the HM2D for broadcasting and perhaps voiceover work (should I ever do that stuff again), with the Cad condensers for special applications like singing (not me hopefully), guitar miking, or on the Jecklin disk, with the PR20 on the snare drum in place of the Behringer XM-8500 that's there now, I recorded this very short thing to provide a general idea of how these mics sound at the same distance and at the same volume, with my particular voice. Of course, if other voices should show up in the studio, they will react differently to different microphones. I personally think Rainee, my sister-in-law, would be very well suited to the Kel Audio mic, given how her voice shoots through rooms.

I'll be using the HM2D as the mic for this Saturday's Things and Stuff in place of the normal PR20. Let's see if I like it enough to keep it around past the 21-day return period.

Things and Stuff for August 8

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:37:51 GMT

This week's show warrants an apology in advance. "I'm really sorry about that." OK, now that's been taken care of...

Here's what happened this week:

The show starts off with a dying microphone, in this case one of my Cad M179's. The normal Heil PR20 was still on the snare drum, and I didn't get it off the kit in time to start the show, though I switched to it a few minutes in.

No phone calls could be taken due to a situation beyond my control, except for Derek, who called from inside the PBX.

On Friday, I finally got around to creating a track template for recording my drums discretely. Here an incredibly bad mix of something I threw together with the kit, a bunch of melodicas, and some issues. This is not an example of what will eventually be the final result, I promise, I just wanted to make sure it worked, andI want something better for miking my toms.

Speaking of microphones, we talk about them for a while, including the premise behind my purchase of the Kel Audio HM2d, and demonstrate the mystery, maybe electrovoice mic, which people seem to think was made in the mid fifties.

After playing a couple of tracks and calling Mommy, a discussion of grounding, balancing and 60 hz hums resulted in... you guessed it... playing around with my keyboards in some pretty stupid ways.

There's nothing like having an arguement with a recorded version of yourself, is there?

Oh, yeah, and as per usual, all that other stuff in the middle that didn't get explained, because I'm just boring like that.
You can, of course, go over here to grab your very own copy of this week's fine program to see just what you missed for yourself. Naturally, you don't trust my poor excuse of a description, do you? Oh well, I don't either.

More microphone madness

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:36:14 GMT

You all surely know by now that if I have a single vice in the world, it's studio equipment. I particularly enjoy playing with different types of microphones, though I haven't really figured out why: it's just a hobby of mine, I guess, although I don't do much of use with any of the stuff I have. Maybe one day...

Over the last few years, I've acquired several different mics ranging from the $17 Behringer XM-8500 (which sounds much nicer than it should for the price), to the Cad M179 multi-pattern condenser, with lots of oddities in the middle of the spectrum, such as the old, strange Grundig W1 stereo dynamic set which I haven't used much due to one of the mics having a slight issue that I haven't yet fixed, a mystery mic from probably the 1950's that everyone seems to think is from Electrovoice and has a talk-back quality to it, the 48-volt phantom power carbon mic I built using components from a broken Cad GXL-2200 condenser, a cheap project box, and an element from a Western Electric telephone, and others.
Of course, we have the obligatory standards, like the MXL-603 pencil mics for acoustic guitar, drum overheads or whatever, including a stereo bar, the Audix drum mics (although I want something better for toms), and more stuff not worth mentioning. Oh yeah, can't forget the Heil PR20, which I originally bought for vocals, although I really like the sound of it on the snare drum. All this stuff, and I don't have a single Shure SM57 or 58 beta, although I do have an SM85 from the early 80's. Oh no, what's a studio to do without a 58 beta, or even a 57? Yeah, whatever...

Now, I've gone and purchased yet another microphone, this being the Kel Audio HM2D, brought to my attention by nick6489. This is an interesting approach on a large diaphragm condenser. It's built to sound like a large diaphragm moving coil dynamic, like the Shure SM7B. I've liked the sound and off-axis rejection of the SM7B as long as I've known about it, but, like most mics in it's class, such as the Heil PR40 (which I don't really like all that much, personally), the EV RE20 (which the PR40 wants to be), etc. it costs about $350, and requires a pretty nice preamp, as these mics aren't very hot. That having been said, I'd bet the PR40 would make a good kick drum mic. The RE20 has been used as such for a while, although I don't really like either on vocals, though their side-rejection is great.
Anyway, back to the HM2D: I've heard samples of the mic provided by the people who make it, as well as other users not directly offiliated with the company, and I'm pretty impressed with the sound this mic puts out. It's not your typical bright, sharp like a knife sound, which is very apparent with cheap Chinese condensers such as the Cad GXL2200/2400, MXL 990, or the Behringer B-2 Pro I used to have. It seems to be warm and fat, which is what I like in a good dynamic microphone, and why I like the Cad M177 and M179 so much. They're not cold and clinical like some of the cheaper, standard-issue condensers. There are even some recordings available where the HM2D is used as a kick drum mic, and, surprisingly, it didn't do bad things like you'd expect with a condenser at such close proximity to that kind of source.
Kel Audio even links to other competing microphones, with the idea being "if our mics don't work for you, here's something that might." You don't see that every day. Welcome to small companies?

Although I haven't received mine yet, it having just shipped from Canada yesterday (Yeah, they're conceived and tested in Canada and made in China), given what I've heard of it, I'm thinking the axis on this mic will be pretty defined. It's a supercardioid mic, which would be perfect for stuff like broadcasting, voiceover, etc. without picking up extraneous reflections off to the sides and behind the microphone. I currently don't have a supercardioid mic, although the Shure SM85 pretends to be one, though it calls itself a cardioid. I bought the Heil PR20 for the same reason, but even it's pick-up pattern is a lot wider than I thought it would be, though I do like the sound of it, especially when the bass is rolled off just a little to compensate for proximity effect, and, as I said earlier, it's great on the snare. At the moment, I'm using a Behringer XM-8500 on the snare, which, to me, sounds better than the Audix snare mic from the fusion drum pack. If this Kel Audio mic doesn't suck, I want to put it in place of the PR20, and move that mic to snare permanently, keeping both Behringers around as throw-around mics for guests, or whatever application requires something that doesn't suck too much or require a lot of effort to set up. Kel Audio has a 21-day return policy on all their microphones, so that's a good thing, especially considering the HM2d is $199, which is actually more than I've ever paid for a mic. Even the Cad M179's were a bit cheaper at $169 a piece, and the Heil PR20 was around $130. Yeah, I know, I'm just not a true high-end person, since I don't have at least one Nueman, not even a Sennheiser MD421, or even a Rode NT1A, and certainly nothing with tubes in it, but, for a little person such as myself, dropping $200 on a mic is a pretty big deal. To those who already have such better stuff, not so much. That return policy may come in handy. Who knows?

So far, the only thing I'm not sure about regarding the Kel Audio is the fact that the self-noise (14dBa) is a bit higher than my Cad M179's (11dBa). Both the Cad M179 and HM2D are considerably noisier than the Rode NT1A, just for the reference, although in the case of the Cad, it matches the noise of my preamp pretty well, so it's not very noticeable, though both mics are great for the price-to-noise ratio, especially the NT1A.
If the output is hot enough, this won't be a big deal, but it might become a problem otherwise. That's my biggest gripe with the old Shure SM85. It's output is almost that of your typical dynamic, but it comes with noise that you wouldn't get from a dynamic as well. So, to compensate for output, you introduce more noise into the system.
Of course, you get no self-noise with a moving coil dynamic, just preamp noise. If you have an ultra-nice preamp, you can get away with having less noise with a dynamic mic than with all but the quietest condensers around. However, on most mixers (unless you've got an Avalon, Neve, Allen & Heath or something nice like that), getting the mic as hot and non-noisy as possible before channel gain is a good thing to do. The Heil PR20 I've been using for broadcast stuff over the last year isn't such a hot mic, but fortunately, the preamp on my board isn't terrible, so I can get away with it. The same mic on my Presonus Bluetube or Rob Sizemore's old Peavey board, though... well, let's just say "ffffffffffffffff" and be done with it. I'd hate to see what things would have sounded like with my old Alesis 1622, the first "professional" console I had. Quite nasty in all respects, except for the fact that it had six aux sends.

OK, that's all for my geeky rambling for now. I'd write about my life and be standard, but that's terribly uninteresting. Actually, so was the stuff you just read, so maybe I will. Let's see... I slept some, I woke up, I did things, and I'll do more stuff later. Yeah, that didn't take long. Back to your life.

Things and Stuff for August 1, 2009

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 07:48:42 GMT

And now, friends and foes, this week's Things and Stuff, starting the chronically depressing month of August out good and... proper? Well, maybe not.
Description=off. download=on. Just know that it had several issues, including a live Wesley Willis impersonation by yours truly, a back-up Borris via radio link, Dexter talking to himself (again), and several other bad things.
Enjoy. Yeah, maybe I'll actually write a description for the next one.

Things and Stuff for July 25, 2009

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:55:57 GMT

What do "we are the Borris," "we are the flock," an old Omnichron TCC-14 talking clock, a couple of clippy drum solos, some stupid Digitech Quad presets, Buckethead, Deep Purple, Ozric Tentacles, and Herbie Hancock all have in common? Well, this week's show, of course!

This non-description has been brought to you free of charge by a very lazy person. Enjoy.

Things and Stuff for July 18, 2009

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 05:07:11 GMT

OK, I did a terribly, horribly stupid thing, or would that be a very good stupid thing, given that it was dumb, and we're possibly rating the level of stupidity.

Since dgl1984 wasn't around to do his show this week, I decided to do his three hour slot rather than my standard two hour one. Never again, I tell you! Here's why:

The show received one phone call throughout it's duration: a combined call from Andre and Alexander, which totally broke my fake professional start, and all that.

"How was your week?" Mine sucked, with the possibility of maybe, finally moving out of this place sometime in the not-so-distant future. Information pending.

I finally got the Alesis Ion fixed after about 3.5 years, and bounced around with that for a while, though nothing ever really came of it.

Accidental patchbay configurations lead to some interesting effects that shouldn't happen, spawning radio free Borris, another idea that will probably never go anywhere, but was fun at the time, at least to me.

Let's talk about guitars and stuff for a while. Sure, why not? Not much else to do.

I decided to open Fideliphone, which meant several bad people dropped in, including freakyfwoof, matt02392, Alexander Nelson, and, very briefly and without the ability to hear anything, Danny Mac on the fretless bass. Fun times with melodicas, pitch shifters and keyboards, with much chaos to go with it.

I tried closing one fideliphone window, after which point about 300 of them popped up in my face, causing me to have to kill the process from another computer, breaking the normal archiving process along the way. Thus, the last few minutes of the archive sound completely different from the rest, since it came from the stream archive which was compressed with the Behringer Squishalizer, while the rest was mastered in Sound Forge, as has been the norm for archiving lately.

We learn what happens when broadband audio is piped through a narrowband FM 2 meter transceiver, in this case the Icom ICT2H, purchased from kellytheeyes a few weeks ago, using the old Behringer MX2642A board, the Samson C-Com compressor, and the Heil PR20. Again, nothing better to do.

I don't even want to talk about the badness that occurred while editing the archive. In fact, I don't want to say much about much these days, prefering bed.

Yes, for those who missed it, I also did a show from Derek's place last week using his Mackie 1202, Samson S-Com, and the Heil PR20 in his basement. It was either that or try to use the big scary digital board, which I refuse to do. I like buttons and knobs and everything, but I prefer to know what they're doing.
More info about that and lots of other stuff to come in a future entry.

By the way, please don't blame me for this week's archive intro, it's all Andre's fault. He made me do it, you must understand.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to put an actual link to the file in here, stupid! Well, here it is. Enjoy.

Things and Stuff for July 5, 2008, and a quick voice post from Florida

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:34:39 GMT

No, the date you just read was not a typo. This is, in fact, a link to Things and Stuff for July 5, 2008, since there was no Things and Stuff last Saturday. There will, however, if things work out, be a stream tonight (this being July 6) at some point to make up for it, live from Florida, featuring myself, Derek, Kelly and Brandon, live from the KLA campground in Polk County, Florida.

I didn't originally post the archive for this show last year, because I didn't like it at the time. It was done on a vastly scaled back studio setup, due to the main Phonic board being broken. I used a $39 Behringer UB802 as the board for the show, the VoicePrism for a mic preamp, compression, gate and effects, and the Ultramizer compressor/exciter, all rigged together with some virtual duct tape, and managed to make it sound pretty good for what it was. I listened back to it a couple of weeks ago, and decided it wasn't as bad as I originally thought, so now it's available for those who like that sort of thing.
It features a few loud, clippy wizzing fireworks sent in by Everett, which were edited to be slightly less painful than the original broadcast, and lots of other random things that I honestly can't remember, since I don't have the file locally, and don't feel like downloading it from here to make fake show notes. So, have fun being surprised.

Now, for a short and rather dumb voice post from Florida, recorded on Saturday night while at the Everglades Restaurant/bar at the hotel, which is hosting the ACB national convention this year.
Seems there was a slightly out-of-tune baby grand piano at the place. Derek started playing it, so I got my recording stuff out (in this case, the Zoom h4 and Audio Technica AT822) and was immediately told to play as well. I honestly just wanted to record the piano from the inside with the X-Y while he was playing, but ended up playing and recording. Unfortunately, the batteries in my recorder died a few minutes after starting, but the best bit was captured, that being the fact that we were a bit loud and were told to turn it down slightly, in a nice way. Have the PDAudio Everglade Piano Experience and enjoy yourself choaking on it.

As a random bit of information, I'm thinking when I eventually finish writing the webpage for PDAudio.net, I will probably convert all my audio content, including some stuff that was never posted, to mp3, using the rather nice mp3 encoder on the Zoom H4 (which is probably the best one I've ever used) rather than Ogg, since it is compatible with more players, though I like the ogg format.

Now, I will go to bed, for tomorrow/today is the last full day of convention fun, since we'll be checking out of the KLA campground at 11:00 AM Tuesday, probably hang out at daytona Beach for a while, then start the long, lonely 13 hour road trip back to North Carolina on Tuesday afternoon/evening. I've yet to purchase a train ticket from Charlotte to Greensboro, since I don't know exactly when we'll be in the area, but I will most likely be back home by Friday night at the latest, so the pointlessness that is Things and Stuff should continue as normal. Isn't that lovely?