stepping outside of the world of recording technology for a second....

the area of technology with the worst design standards is the VCR remote control sector. go look at your remotes... you probably have two or three of them. maybe even four. odds are that three out of four feature such brilliant choices as the "play" button being the same size and shape as the "10 minute sleep timer" buttion, with buttons being stuck all over the plastic plank with a complete disregard for normal usage practices. what kind of internal logic resulted in the power button being in the middle, the play button being on the side, and such useless functions as "rec time + 1 hour" and "frame advance" being afforded the precious lower third real estate?

remote controls get my blood pressure up, they really do...

shagboy wrote:stepping outside of the world of recording technology for a second....

the area of technology with the worst design standards is the VCR remote control sector. go look at your remotes... you probably have two or three of them. maybe even four. odds are that three out of four feature such brilliant choices as the "play" button being the same size and shape as the "10 minute sleep timer" buttion, with buttons being stuck all over the plastic plank with a complete disregard for normal usage practices. what kind of internal logic resulted in the power button being in the middle, the play button being on the side, and such useless functions as "rec time + 1 hour" and "frame advance" being afforded the precious lower third real estate?

remote controls get my blood pressure up, they really do...

I have one remote control for the 10 a/v devices in my living room. It is easily the best designed and most ergonomic item I have ever used. I smile every time I use it, because it fits perfectly in my hand and everything is where I unconsciously expect it to be. And if you really want to change how it works, it's completely programmable and customizable.

It was the best $100 I've ever spent on technology. I've convinced 6 friends of mine to buy one as well, and they've all raved about it since.

http://www.universalremote.com/products ... item=mx500

beckertronix wrote:Could you be more specific? It's a stereo microphone, quite useful. Is it something about this one you don't like?

i've just never seen one that's mounted on a vertical axis like that, and can't understand what kind of situation someone would use it in. that's all. that, and it looks like something pulled out of a meltdown in the Studio Projects' nuclear reactor. i thought it was funny.

stewie wrote:The Psychology of Everyday Things

This book is great. Don Norman did a few guest lectures for seminars I took at Northwestern as an undergrad... very, very interesting guy. I can't believe I never took a class with him. Stupid, stupid.

instant zen wrote:

i've just never seen one that's mounted on a vertical axis like that, and can't understand what kind of situation someone would use it in.

http://www.electrical.com/item.php?page=151&pic=pictures/151.jpg

http://www.electrical.com/item.php?page=129&pic=pictures/129.jpg

I'm not trying to be a dick. It just comes out that way. That Studio Proj. mic is uninspiringly ugly, I'll give you that.

Don't forget this one:

http://www.electrical.com/item.php?page ... res/69.jpg

Different design and method of combining the 2 signals, but 2 capsules all the same.

Oh, and I really, really want one.

phildodd wrote:

davidpye wrote:However, i've recently moved over to using some fancy fuckers with yellow bits on them. None of this screwing and unscrewing to move it, instead you get a bit you press and it just moves. I can't believe it's taken the industry 60 years to get there...

I can't remember the brand, but i'll check tomorrow and post it. Suffice to say, I am heartily impressed.

These are Hercules stands, they make guitar stands and stuff too. Do you really like them? They have them at the rooms I practice at and those models are really annoying, you can't change the mic clip on them or rotate the boom bit (meaning to change the direction the mic points in you have to pic up the whole stand and put it back down in the right direction...)

The mechanism is good though, very easy to reposition...

Just so we're clear, I didn't say that.

phildodd wrote:

ziessB wrote:However, i've recently moved over to using some fancy fuckers with yellow bits on them. None of this screwing and unscrewing to move it, instead you get a bit you press and it just moves. I can't believe it's taken the industry 60 years to get there...

I can't remember the brand, but i'll check tomorrow and post it. Suffice to say, I am heartily impressed.

These are Hercules stands, they make guitar stands and stuff too. Do you really like them? They have them at the rooms I practice at and those models are really annoying, you can't change the mic clip on them or rotate the boom bit (meaning to change the direction the mic points in you have to pic up the whole stand and put it back down in the right direction...)

The mechanism is good though, very easy to reposition...

It was me who said that. I'm in the middle of a session right now (just checking my emails) and I can confirm that the models we're using DO NOT suffer from the problems you speak of. We're using the model in the middle of the picture on that website (the one with the boom arm). Which one are you using?

Basically, that black bulge you can see around the top of the stand where it meets the boom is acutally a movable clip. To change the height of the stand you simply depress it and, like magic, you can raise it to whatever height you want.
Just above that (immediately below the boom) is a clip that allows you to remove the entire boom without having to unscrew it. The mic clip at the end can be taken off as well. You can see a better picture of the removable boom on their 'accessories' page.

Their main benefit is just that they're of much higher quality than most crappy stands. The fixtures (on ours at least....) are all-metal and look like they could take a bit of a beating.

I'm impressed anyway. Perhaps the ones you've been using have just been abused too much? It is a practice space after all...
Oh, and try pressing the boom-movement button to rotate them if they're stuck.


Tommy.

stewie wrote: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...

AAAAAA!!! I hate that one! I thought it was my own personal hell. I'm glad to see that you share in my personal hell.

I just got a Tascam digital mixer. It has Mackie Control emulation for Cubase. You can set the F1-F8 to control useful things in Cubase, like RTZ, locate points, etc. Except Tascam requires that you reach to the other side of the console and hit "CTRL+F1" rather than just hitting "F1".

So basically it takes more keystrokes using the Tascam control surface than it would to use the keyboard. Great work guys.

Any guitar which has a jack socket fitted any way other than the Fender Strat socket.

Why are there other jack socket designs? They are all worse than the Strat. Every single one of them is designed to shorten the life of your cable/jack-plug.