When I start working with a new studio client at Indecent Music, one of the things that I ask is that each client bring their own high-speed external hard disk.  This allows the artist to keep their own files with them, which gives them the security of a back-up copy should anything happen to their data at the recording studio.  Hard disk failure doesn’t happen very often, but discs are wear-items.  Drives can only keep spinning for so long before they’re going to wear out. The majority of the disk failures happen when a hard drive is spinning up from stationary or spinning down.  If a computer gets hit hard while the drive is spinning the platter (the part of the drive that spins with the data on it) can crash against the stationary parts of the drive. After this happens, the only people that can retrieve your data are pro’s that have a clean-room to work in.  It’s incredibly expensive to get your data at that point and sometimes it’s still impossible.

There are a bunch of manufacturers out there that make external drives, but most of them are not designed to deal with the kind of data transfer that audio (and video!) production requires.  The industries first big manufacturer is Glyph [http://www.glyphtech.com/], which makes hard drive especially for the audio and video industries.  There is no question that Glyph does make some of the best gear out there and they do have a great warranty which is for 3-years with a 1-year overnight replacement clause.  They also have a fantastic basic data recovery service for FREE for the first two years that you own your drive.  There are no guaranties that they will recover your data, of course, but this is better than what the competition offers by far.  Many Glyph hard drives have also been certified to work with Digidesign software which includes ProTools. The downside is that the drives sell for about double the cost of other comparable drives.  You are paying for the name and for the data recovery service.  The best versions of the Glyph drives are as follows:

Glyph PortaGig 320 GB External Hard Drive

Glyph Technology 500GB Quad Desktop Hard Drive

All Glyph Technology Products

Glyph was the original for-audio drive manufacturer, but they are not the only game in town.  The major advantage to the Glyph systems is the Oxford chip which is the brains of the hard-drive enclosure.  Oxford is pretty much thought to be the best company for many chips that interface an external SATA hard disk to a computer via eSATA, Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0.

Another company call Icy Dock also makes a fantastic hard drive enclosure line that allows you to put your own hard drives into the enclosure.  This means that you can buy the same drives that Glyph uses (Seagate Barracuda’s) and utilize an Oxford chip without paying a lot of extra dough.  To get a complete package, you simply buy an enclosure (like a Icy Dock MB559US-1S External Enclosure or a Icy Dock MB664US-1SB Screwless External Enclosure) and then you just buy a hard disk.

Icy Dock External Hard Disk Enclosure (MB559US-1S)

Icy Dock Screwless Hard drive enclosure (MB664US-1SB)

Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 500GB SATA Internal Hard Drive

These Seagate Barracuda drives are extremely quiet at 28 dB idle and 35 dB writing and they have fantastic shock resistance of 63 Gs while in operation. These are the same discs that Glyph uses, so they’re A-O.K.

If you have any questions about other types of drives, leave a comment and let me know!

I am a teacher.  Right now I am an adjunct professor in Audio Production at the New England Institute of Art and I just was hired as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in the Sound Recording and Technology Department.  When I collect written assignments from students, I feel like they’re putting a flaming bag of poo on my front porch.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I get students turning in a good paper, and every once in a while I get a great paper too.  I am pretty sure that the problem is that these kids never learned how to write in high school.  I’m not sure if I should be angry at the schools who graduate kids who can’t write effectively, the parents who don’t make sure that their kids can write, or the kids who aren’t working hard enough. So I have taken it upon myself (and anyone who wants to comment…) to write up a list of expectations that I have when a student hands in a paper, or a project, or even sends me an email.

Write Like Professionals Talk

Read what you write out loud.  If you sound like the words are in the wrong order, or it sounds confusing STOP! Think about how you would say the sentence out loud to your teacher and then write that down. Read it out loud again.  Does it still sound like you aren’t sure what you’re talking about? Keep repeating the process until you sound like a pro.

Contractions and Possessives

You should avoid using contractions like “she’d,” “they’re,” and “wasn’t.”  A contraction is when you take two words and combine them, using a single quote or apostrophe ( ‘ ) instead of some letters.  This is usually perfectly OK in informal emails to teachers, in blogs and in text messages.

Possessives are not contractions.  “Henry’s” is a good example of a possessive. It means that Henry owns the thing that comes next- it belongs to him. Possessives are OK in formal writing.

Swearing and Profanity

You shouldn’t use profanity, swearing or any other impolite language in your papers or in your emails. You can always think of better words to describe something than “shitty,” “ass-tastic,” or “fucking.”  Even if you have a loose and easy going professor that doesn’t mind verbal uses of profanity, NEVER write it down. Papers and emails can come back to bite you because they can be forwarded to deans, department heads, other teachers, mental health councilors, potential employers, your parents or it could get posted in a blog like this one.

Unless You’re Prince…

Replacing “you” with ‘U,’ “Two,” “too,” or “to” with “2,” “later” with “l8r,” is not OK.  Email and text message writing has somehow pervaded academic writing.  Unless you plan on typing all your papers on a numeric key pad with your thumbs, this is out of the equestion.

Everything Should Be Typed

Unless your teacher specifically tells you differently, everything that you turn in should be typed with 12 pt. Times New Roman, double-spaced with 1 inch margins all around.  It’s easier to read, it makes you look professional and it means that you have a software copy as well as a hard copy, just in case.

Use Spell Checkers

Every word processor has automatic spell checking now. Just turn on autochecking and then fix the words that are wrong.  When you turn in work with mispellings it makes it look like you don’t care about the work that you’re doing. Or it makes you look like an ignoramous. You choose.

Spell the teacher’s name correctly. This can also make you look a little dopey.

Typos and Little Mistakes

Everyone makes little mistakes in their work and teachers understand this.  Try to avoid as many as possible and always re-read your writing to see if it makes sense and that you don’t have any big mistakes left in the work.

Pleez dont turn in NE shitty paperz. It sux. CU L8R…

As many of you already know, I really don’t like Mac much. In fact, I really think that they’re elitist and snotty and consumer oriented. It’s pretty common to hear, “If you want to do business, get a PC, if you want to be creative and work on media, then get a Mac.” This has always driven me crazy because I have long been a PC-audio guy. I like the fact that there’s more choice and that more engineers are working on software problems and improvements than on the Mac platform.

I now have a definitive statement that goes against my previous beliefs:

The off-the-shelf Mac laptops are better than off-the-shelf PC laptops for working with mobile audio.

Here’s why: it’s the Firewire or 1394 Chipset. In order to do mobile audio these days, you pretty much need to use firewire interface. Only one chipset works well with audio and video firewire gear: The Texas Instruments 1394 Chipset. The Ricoh (used in Dell notebooks) sucks hard. It’s good if you don’t care how fast data is transferred. If you do care and you’re concerned with latency, getting drop-outs and glitches in your recorded audio or getting tons of digital errors, then DON’T BUY A DELL NOTEBOOK!

In fact, getting a PC with a TI 1394 Chipset is pretty difficult. First you have to find a sales person that knows what a chipset is and then you have to find out which one they use. My guess is that the TI chipset is more expensive (because it actually works), so none of the major manufacturers use them. As of this writing, I understand that some of the high-end HP notebooks do you the TI 1394 chipset, Mac does and a bunch of audio configured laptop manufacturers. From what I have read, the best of these specialty audio laptop manufacturers is ADK Pro Audio.

Here’s what happened to my mobile set-up:

I purchased the Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop with a Intel Dual-Core 1.6Ghz, 2 GB RAM to use with Cakewalk’s Sonar 6.2.1 and a MOTU Traveler. The first problem was that the 6400 had a really hard time even recognizing that the Traveler was patched in. Then I experienced all kinds of drop-outs, digital glitching and crashes later. I had a number of mobile recording sessions that I had to comp because the audio quality was so bad.

I originally thought that the problem was with the Traveler, so I returned it and replaced it with a Presonus FireStudio. The FireStudio caused a full-system “Blue Screen of Death” Crash. Nice huh? I started to think, maybe the problem isn’t with the audio hardware. Maybe the problem is with the laptop.

The problem is that Dell uses crappy Ricoh 1394 chipsets. They’re so crappy that they don’t even acknowledge that they use the Ricoh chips. They call them “generic.” Here’s some of the web sources that I found describing the problems and how to fix them (maybe):

Sonar 6 with FireStudio: making it work [http://www.presonus.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2071]

MOTU FireWire audio interfaces and PCI/PCMCIA FireWire card chip sets [http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technotes/fw-chip-on-pci-and-pcmcia-
cards/view?searchterm=]

Which laptop brands use Texas Instruments firewire chipsets? [http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/126877-laptop-brands-
use-texas-instruments-firewire-chipsets.html]

Firewire issue affecting all the Dell Core Duo notebooks:
[http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=73829&page=46]

wikiHow: How to Buy a Laptop Computer for Audio Recording
[http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Buy-a-Laptop-Computer-for-Audio-Recording]

Right now, I am planning to get my MOTU Traveler back, disable the on-board 1394 Ricoh Chipset and purchase and ExpressCard Firewire Card with the TI Chipset.I will let you know how it goes…

“I got somethin‘ to say…” Metallica’s Version from Garage Days Revisited

I have thought about starting a blog for a long time. I have both in jealousy and shock watched my brother’s blog The Gideonse Bible dodge traffic, create chaos and explain away the fragility of the human condition. I see this blog as an opportunity to document my convictions about music, audio production, education and everything else.

Some of the specific topics that I know will be in the works:

I am a teacher at the New England Institute of Art. Despite my history of being a web geek in previous lives, I have completely avoided using the web as a format for getting information out to the classes. I teach Audio Recording and Audio Technology. The recording class is a hands on introduction to mixing and tracking on linear digital recorders. We start with 8 tracks and 16 channels and move up to 24 tracks and 32 channels on an in-line console. The class is intense, exciting and a critical building block for the students. The tech class is all the math and theory behind audio from physics and acoustics, to the basics of electricity and transformers, to the use and purposes of amplitude domain, spectral and time-based effects.

So the blog will be used to add a little web flava to the classes. Non-students of course will also have access to the blog and have every opportunity to read and contribute as well.

I will probably write some reviews of music, musical theater (Spring Awakenings in NYC was so grossly unsatisfying and unmoving that I no longer want to admit that I like Rock Opera as an art form.)

I will also write some articles about audio production that doesn’t fit into the class curriculum for the classes at NEIA.

I can think of about 312 other things that I will write about if I have the time…

Signing off,

Henny Rock da Genius