Some things are just badly designed - and the microphone clip for the Sennheiser MD421 is one of them.

If I reach to reposition the mic from the back and even lightly brush the clip, it releases the mic and it falls off. Good thing it's a sturdy mic, because this happens all the time to me.

That's just one example of dumbass design in recording technology. Give me more, I feel like reading rants!

Applying EQ to a track on an Akai DPS12 is so absurdly complicated that I have tried and failed to learn it multiple times. In fact, the whole "thru mix" vs "track mix" interface is so stupidly complicated... I think applying effects/eq of any kind requires having open tracks, which have to be between 1-6 (the damn thing only has 12 physical tracks to begin with)... it's so, so unnecessarily complicated... i can't even gripe about it properly, as it is too complicated to explain. I'm sure anyone who has ever used a DPS12 knows what I'm talking about.

It is a shit interface. Fortunately, the effects are probably so shitty that they're not worth using... but wow, what shit user interface.

Oh, and you can only back up to SCSI. maybe this is a problem of obsolence and poor design.

the cable built into the back of my AEAr84 mic. it is balls putting that on stands. placing of the phantom on/off switch on midas venice boards and the back of the 002 rack, no phase reverse on my soundcraft 600, anything with global phantom power, mackie mixers...i have spent weeks of my life taking all of the hardware off to replace fucked back ordered ribbon cables, i will go on record and say that i will never own anything from that company. i will vent after i break something again this weekend.

The AKG C414b pattern selector switch lies opposite the mic body from the pad switch, ensuring that adding a pad using only one hand will inadvertantly throw the mic into omni or whatever because of your opposing thumb or finger. And you can't feel it because the switch is so shallow.

Soundcra(p)ft boards: Button down to un-mute? Bad! Bad mixer! Get in the corner!

Mackie boards: Like kicking a child, but: obvious complaints about fidelity aside, the busses in these toys like to fail, a lot. Design around shared components means crippling failures when the same in a non-shit board means only the loss of a group or something. Also: "Rude Solo Light" - fuck you.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck acoustic guitars of any kind with onboard outputs, as the players attached to them always want to use them.

HHB Radius 40 compressor: To raise the threshold, you turn counterclockwise. I am annoyed by this reverse-Polish Chinese UK design.

Fuck, fuckety-fuck; balls.

-r

You've reminded me of another one:

Shure KSM141: for a great mic, you shure have a way of making it hard to change the pad and the high-pass filter. I have to use a knife tip on that tiny little slit!

warmowski wrote:Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck acoustic guitars of any kind with onboard outputs, as the players attached to them always want to use them.

TRUE, and when you say, actually no I think this £2000+ mic will probably sound better, they say something shit like:

"Why"

FUCKING IDIOTS.

I personally think Mic Stands are really badly designed in general, unless they are actually supposed to be called "limp, wobbly finger trappers", which we as engineers have mistakenly used as mic stands. But don't ask me how they would be better designed, the only thing I've thought of so far has been if mics themselves could levetate, long way off I think.

The Scrub/Shuttle wheel on Digidesign ProControls which allows you to scrub and shuttle, but then when you're done doing either, the cursor flies back to where it was before scrubbing or shuttling. Thus making it absolutely useless for any kind of editing processes or finding a point in a song. GREAT, and to think this has been out for like 5 years and has had numerous software updates, and they still haven't sorted it out!

This reminds me of Cubase - the blue line thing which defines your current target area is really easily messed with when you're just trying to reposition the cursor - and if you fuck it up, you can't undo it! Ridiculous.

And just try and mix down from Cubase if you have the blue arrows the wrong way around...

the tuners on vintage fender basses. to tighten the string you turn the key towards you. people say for some reason or another they work better this way.

whatever. fuck you old school fender basses.

Thats so funny, just whind the string the other way!

I too feel like a fool, I ONLY TODAY discovered the option in protools to make the edit line follow the position of thre Scrub/Shuttle wheel, therefore making it useful once more.

So instead I norminate the coffee Percolator at work, whos handle on the pot has broken through poor design, who's lid always causes coffee to piss all over the place, and who's filler spout is FLAT so pouring water in fast causes it to fly up that wall. I HATE THIS MACHINE.

OH OH OH AND, Apple for making the G5 20 inches tall, therefore not easily rackmountable. STUPID!