Sunday, January 15, 2006
I’m going to keep answering calls for an extra hour today - so keep those calls coming through 3p Pacific: 800–520–1534.
Tech News
Microsoft has ended development of Windows Media Player for Macintosh, but they do offer a free Apple Quicktime WMF plugin called Flip4Mac.
josh_mini adds: Flip4Mac does not work with the live KFI 640 stream, I have to use Windows Media Player 9 for OS X to listen.
More in the Listeners’ Comments section.
11a-Noon
Q John in Long Beach - recording to a laptop
He has an Athlon 3200+ laptop but it’s choking when recording multiple tracks using an mAudio interface and Cakewalk. He’s wondering if a top-of-the-line Alienware would be better. It would be more expensive, that’s for sure. I think the real key is the hard drive - a 7200RPM hard drive would help immensely. That Athlon is pretty fast, but a Core Duo would be faster.
note: It is possible to install 7200RPM hard drive on John’s Gateway laptop.
A_Witt: “Everything that John wants to do can easily be done with a laptop. The computer he’s using right now is more than enough. One of the main issues with Sonar is that people frequently use the default audio driver instead of ASIO.”
Glitch in SLK: I do all my digital recording using Cakewalk Sonar on Dell Inspiron 8200 (Intel 2.4 Ghz, 1024 MB Ram). The key is the drivers, as others have mentioned in comments, but also moving the audio processing to a decent external sound device. The sound card within a laptop is insufficient for this task. I use an Edirol UA5 USB audio interface. I can record 2 tracks at a time, but can continue to overlay indefinately. I have also recorded in a pinch using onboard soundcard with respectable results.
Studio_Dude: Really late listening to my podcasts - hence the late entry. I do a tonne of recording/mixing/performing - all with a laptop. There are plenty of laptops out there with sufficient power - many of them running desktops chips. My main book is a SAGER NP9750 with an AMD Athlon64 FX2 and it still hits 70–80% with 15+ tracks running (with double the amount of FX). You can (and should) do all of the above (drivers a HUGE issue - ASIO for sure) and get an external box (I have an M-Audio FW410) to help with the load. And if all else fails… You can always use a second book (also something I do) to run as a virtual host for your VST/DX while running SONAR on the main book. Money much better spent than the above mentioned DSP hardware, IMHO. Lastly - get SATA HDs (both internal and external if you can). You can get SATA or eSATA PCMCIA cards for the notebook to hook up if it doesn’t have one. It doesn’t help performance during recording/mixing/editing but it sure helps in transferring huge 24/96 WAV files from system to system.
bafh : Not to steer John to spending more money but an easier option would be to just purchase a stand alone multi-track digital recorder with built in hard drive and cd-burner. You can get quite a few for $1,000 or under that can record OVER 24 tracks simultaneously and will allow you to output to or work with cake walk. I have found in the past that the stand alone recorder is much easier to use and then just output the tracks to my laptop.
Q Jutta in Marrietta - monitor flicker
Turn up the refresh rate. Open the Display Properties control panel, click the Settings tab, press the Advanced button, then click the Monitor tab. Make sure you have the right monitor driver - if you don’t, get one from the manufacturer - then choose the highest refresh rate available for that monitor. The default 60hz is way too low. 75–85 hertz is the minimum for a flicker free experience. Or get an LCD monitor - they don’t flicker at all.
Also - a “personal fan” placed to close to a CRT Monitor will also cause it flicker. The motor mis-aligns the CRT beams.
neil-uk : Putting speakers too close to a crt can also cause problems.Also a crt at 60hz will give you headache,quite literally because of the flicker.
Q John in Encino - is the Nokia 770 a good idea?
It’s an internet tablet based on Linux and Gnome, but there’s no keyboard. Because it’s running Linux there is a good user community, though. Personally, I need a keyboard, but you might not.
The handwriting on the Nokia 770 has been reputed as not too great, but the onscreen keyboard is fine. Work is being done to allow use (and is presently here, for certain keyboards) for Bluetooth keyboards with the Nokia 770.
Users cannot simply install applications designed for Linux. The Nokia 770 uses the Texax Instruments OMAP processor, instead of an ix86 processor, so users must recompile the source code with an included desktop application to use software on the Nokia 770. Also, the space is limited for installing applications on the 770, as it only has ~64MB available internally for stuff to be stored in. However, Nokia bundles a 64MB RSMMC card with 770s.
A list of reviews of the 770 can be found at http://www.internettablettalk.com/content/view/134/2/
John is one of the guys behind SCALE, the Southern California Linux Conference, Feb 11–12 at the LAX Raddison. Peter Quinn, former Massachusetts CIO, will be the guest speaker.
Q Philip in Valley Center - Dell Dimension won’t boot in the morning
Core MemoryHe’s getting a DirectX error and it works in safe mode. It sounds like a problem with the video card. I’d install the newest drivers, but failing that try a different card. The video memory may be flakey.
Noon-1p
Q Dennis in Glendale - iDVD minimum requirements
Check the drive compatibility list - iDVD ‘06 now supports most third-party DVD burners. But there’s a bigger issue… he has a 400mhz G4. That’s well below the minimum, some features may not work. You should still be able to burn if you choose a slower speed and make sure you do nothing else while burning.
The iLife ‘06 requirements (partial)
- Macintosh computer with a PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, or Intel Core processor; 733MHz or faster for iDVD
- 256MB of RAM, 512MB recommended
Check Low End Mac.com for good information on what you can do with older Macs.
Q Malitta in Palmdale - mapping a shared drive
Windows has a great File Sharing Wizard, or you can check Microsoft’s instructions for drive mapping.
Q Kyle in Bakersfield - Excel book printing
He’s a digital dj with a list of 25,000 songs in Excel. He wants to print books for his clients. I think Excel is really good for that. Mr. Excel has good printing information, but I think you’ll be able to figure it out pretty easily within the Excel print command.
JAK in Long Beach adds: Actually, the header and footer are set in the Page Setup… dialog found under the File menu. As for the green bar style of the old computer paper, first choose your records and then choose AutoFormat… from the Format menu and select either List 1 or List 2 from the available formats. (This is from the Mac version, but it should be pretty much the same on the PC.)
neil-uk : I would suggest using mixmeister BPM analyzer,it will check ALL audio files,and you can export the results toexcel or other apps.Here is the link ::: http://dl4.mixmeister.com/016/bpmanlyz.exe p.s. Its FREE software.
1–2p
QDerek in Palmdale - outgrowing my drive
G4 25GB startup disk, 100GB
Kronos Art Pack
robK:
I recently added an 80GB SATA drive to my PowerMac G4 466Mhz. I had to add a SATA controller card to control the drive. My 30GB original drive was 5400RPM, so the 7200RPM SATA drive resulted in a speed boost as well. Plus you can use a freeware program called Carbon Copy Cloner to move your entire installation of OSX to the new drive. It can all be done in a day.
You can also add a new IDE drive and use CCC to easily copy OSX to the new drive.
Other World Computing has a great database that helps you get stuff that works with your particular Mac.
Q John in Costa Mesa - uninstalling Norton Anti-Virus
His copy expires tomorrow, and he’s going to replace it with Eset’s NOD32, but he wants to know if he should keep the rest of Systemworks. I would. Just turn off any programs that run in the background. And uninstall
Q AJ in Cypress - converting Earthlink email
Earthlink’s proprietary email program can only export in Comma Separated text - but no email program can import that format. Or can one? Got any ideas?
Q Tracy in Irvine - backup software
external hard drive,
Link
http://www.centered.com/
Q Jeremy in Riverside - secure sites won’t work
His sister can’t buy anything - she can’t enter text on secure sites. Sounds like an issue with SSL, but first I’d try a different browser - say Firefox. It might be something wrong with SSL, or it could be spyware. Some spyware programs inadvertantly block text entry. Use Hijack This to check for programs like Cool Web Search.
I had the same problem, and determined it was my firewall. I shut down my firewall, made my purchase, then turned it back on…..Hope this works
I had a very similar problem several years back. It turned out to be IE. To check to see if IE can view secure pages, open IE and click on the Help menu and then click on ‘About InternetExplorer’. Then look for the ‘Cipher Strength’, this should say 128-bit. If if does not then you will need to reinstall IE either through the Contol Panel - Windows Componenets or Download the latest one from Microsoft.
Cyberpunk
I had this exact problem only last month (December of 2005). It was right after some Microsoft Updates, so I used system restore to a point before these updates and then rolled them forward one at a time. The problem never showed up again.
— Fogfoot —
Chat Logs and Show Audio
Chat logs available after show ends
Listener Comments
15 January 2006
Improve CPU Speed & Performance:
Add More RAM; At least 1.5 GB/1500MB
Istall Faster Hard Drive or Use Exe Hard Drive via Firewire.
Regarding Sonar on a laptop… You will NEVER get performance equal to a desktop. Visit pcaudiolabs.com , they only make PC’s for audio and they offer a custom build laptop… You should also “render” tracks with FX plugs on them.
Everything that the caller wants to do can easily be done with a laptop. The computer he’s using right now is more than enough. One of the main issues with Sonar is that people frequently use the default audio driver instead of ASIO.
On laptop Audio Recording. I record for my college’s choir and sing in it, Compaq R4000 model, AMD sempron 1.8ghz, 512ram, 60gb 5400 rpm HDD, microphone is just a PS2 EyeToy over USB 2.0 into Audacity (often over several extention cords), granted i’m not doing much editing until after its recorded and saved, and all the music is coming in live together, but I dont seem to have any problems.
12:01 by .
BTW. I installed the Flip4Mac Windows Media plug-in last week and it worked well EXCEPT yesterday it would not play Leo’s online show audio. I had to trash it and now I’m back happily listening.
For the Dell that wont Boot: If all else fails, If you can go to a Dell Direct Store Kiosk and ask them about it (dont take the computer, they dont repair in person) but if you bug them you should be able to get them to do the calling for you if you tell them you already called and sat for hours on the phone for it. probably shouldnt say this but i briefly worked at one, and we would do this for customers.
12:03 by Rod?.
Leo, Hint Please! Where we might find the WMF for Mac’s.
the plugin is on the windows site, its flip4mac, i just googled it
12:28 by Rod?.
Thanks Leo for posting the location of WMF for Mac
Just tried Trillian that someone recommended yesterday to replace MSN Messenger but it won’t work. Says it can’t connect to MSN. Anyone know what to do about that?
Complete Video/Audio Media Player:
Try Using Video LAN at http://www.videolan.org
This video/audio player works on almost ANY audio or vidio file..
Best Of All IT’s FREE!!
Even better: It will work with Windows, Mac, Linux, . . .
Hi Leo,
I use the same music software as your caller, as weel as others. he’s got PLENTY of horsepower to do what he wants, and is gonna be really mad if he spends thousands of dollars to get the same performance on another rig!
A couple of suggestions: be sure he’s using ASIO drivers if possible, as they have the smallest latency. If he’s still using WDM drivers, be sure to go to “Tools|Audio” and set the buffers to as small as he can without distortion. This will minimize latency.
If his CPU is getting bogged down, be sure he uses “track optimized” plugins for individual tracks, and save the CPU hogging mastering plugins for mastering. It’s really important to be sure he’s not eq-ing eq, meaning that if he’s using more than one effect on a guitar track, don’t use redundant effects, just one at a time. Sonar puts effects on each track by default, and if he starts compressing another compressor, the CPU will come to a screeching halt.
Also, under “Tools|Audio” there’s an “Advanced” tab where he’ll find the i/o buffer size. The default size is 64k. Change this to at least 512k to take the strain off the hard drive, and he’ll see much smoother hard drive performance. His drive is plenty fast for up to 24 or more tracks.
Sonar is a GREAT program and AMD is the best processor for it, having a much faster effective front-side bus.
Hope this helps, and thanks for hosting my absolute favorite radio show!
.
Nice :)
For the caller who wants to print the list of his songs in a “book” format… He may want to import the info into Access and he will have greater report writing and formatting options. Even someone unfamiliar with Access can easily do this with the wizards.
The database module of OpenOffice.org (BASE) will do it too.
OOo is free (~76MB download).
Try the free excel add on ASAP Utilities at www.asap-utilities.com that has lots of tools to format excel such as shading every other row.
What was the name of the Fire Wire flash drive that Leo mentioned yesterday? Any blank ones that are good as well?
See the post by *natan* in yesterday’s ShowNotes.
for the caller regarding excel
while in the spread sheet click on “insert” then select “headers & footers” there you select page numbers titles even place a photo etc…
excel shading?
try tables…..formatting ….goto format,select sheet or cells and format the size, shade, etc…
Leo. I think “core” and core memory are 2 different uses of the word.
Core memory (oh, I fondly remember the Fabri-Tek 2Kx12 2 core/bit in the first computer I used up close & personal) used ferrite (usually) toroids strung with x-y address and sense wires. It was reliable and rugged; interestingly, the same idea of an X-Y array persists in the row-column address scheme of solid state DRAM (although SDRAM, DDR, DDR2 add all kinda burst modes).
Core was real nice compared to prior storage schemes. Stuff like the IBM 650 magnetic drum computer, which rewarded programmers who could time their (assembly, of course) code to use the data as it spun back past the read/write head. Or ultrasonic delay lines, which shot up to 4096 bits (not bytes) onto a coiled metal wire as sound pulses. The pulses would circulate back around to the read/write transducer…same idea as the drum.
“core” in CPU sense refers to the inner section which actually does the computation. to interface to the outside, there is an outer section of buffers or superbuffers that can actually drive real circuitry at reasonable (3″) distances. Power is equal to something like C times V squared, so dropping the “core” voltage really cuts the power dissipation. Every time something inside the core changes state, there is capacitance on the FET gates and the interconnect to charge/discharge thru the metal or poly connections. Metal & esp. polysilicon is not zero-resistance; you have 10 million or more transistors and a significant fraction changing state at several Gigahertz rate. The resistance may be small, the charge may be tiny, but that’s one heck of a multiplier. Hello 170W dissipation CPUs. Hello, water cooling.
Capacitance can be shrunk by making everything smaller, but only scales linearly. Make transistors half the size, capacitance is half. But geometry says you can now get FOUR times the number of transistors on the same size chip. Oops. That V squared term is VERY attractive, so they shrink the “core” voltage from 5 to 3 to 2 and now 1.5V. This is getting into the realm where FETs cannot operate well without heroic measures. Heroic measures in progress ;-). On the way to 0.9V or less. And 40, 60, 80, 120 amps of core current…
And that brings it back to toroids…that row of toroids on your motherboard with wire wrapped around them is not core memory. It’s the way they make 1.4V at 60 amps and respond to a 32-step voltage command from the CPU in a few clocks. It’s always fun tradeoff between getting these and the associated filter capacitor forest close enough to the CPU to cut delay and leaving room for the monster heatsinks now required.
Components on this scale in the “core” cannot drive real world wires (off-chip), so stuff from the outside is handled by an outer ring for interface. To the slow, high-load, evil real world of 3V signals and 5″ bus lines.
Today’s tech is great fun, but just remember — all this computer stuff we revere will be in landfills, er, e-waste dumps, in 10 years. Core memory is from the computer age that corresponds to when cars were just moving from one-off inventor experiments and small brands to widespread mass production. But still with manual timing, tube tires, hand crank starter. We’re maybe near the end of the Model T era of computers. They ain’t toasters yet! ;-)
I’m still waiting for a computer that I don’t have to double-clutch to shift!
12:52 by Al?.
To the person wondering about Trillion, I believe that last year Microsoft decided to deny all programs except MSN Messenger access to their networks. I’m 90% sure on that fact.
As reported earlier, Flip4Mac doesn’t work for streaming KFI. But if you open the Flip4Mac Folder in Applications, open up “WMV Upgrade”, choose “plug-ins” and uncheck the “Use Flip4Mac WMV Internet plug-in” and then you can get KFI. I had installed this software before the show yesterday and because of this, I missed the first two hours of Leo yesterday. :-(
Unchecking the “Use Flip4Mac WMV Internet plug-in” reverts to using the Microsoft Windows Media Player plugin to play Windows Media files in your browser. This is kind of defeating the purpose of having Flip4Mac installed. As Windows Media formats continue to evolve this will work on fewer and fewer sites since Microsoft has decided not to update their Mac Windows Media Player past version 9. Hopefully, Flip4Mac will be updated to work with more types of Windows Media streams in the near future.
Flip4Mac also wil not play some CALTRANS streaming traffic cams. I had to uninstall it.
To the user who wants to do alternating cells with different colors..
you need to use “Conditional Formatting” under the “Format” menu.
Look it up under help because you will need to use a simple formula to generate the formatting you like.
I run pro-tools 7.0 on a HP Pavilion 5385 with a gig of ram and a 2.6 ghz p4.
The key is I use a firewire connection for my digidesign hardware (digi 002) and run external usb 2.0 hard drives for the audio. (My laptop has 2)I can run 32 tracks of aiff audio at 48K 24 bit with no problems.
If you go to the DUC at the degidesign website, they list many laptops used for digital recording, plus many tips and tricks.
Outlook DOES import CSV. You need to go to File, Import and Export, Import from another program or file,
And there is CSV import. It is spelled out and not written as CSV…
WHY DID YOU DELETE MY QUESTIONS?
This is not a general-purpose questions page.
This is ShowNotes.
New subjects (that weren’t on the broadcast) are generally off-topic here.
Outlook supports csf format. I use it to copy my contacts between computers.
13:34 by anonymous.
Outlook supports CSV for contacts I’m sure, but I done know about actual Emails. CSV is a horrible way to store emails.
Leo,LEO, Thunderbird will import a CSV text file
Outlook Express will IMPORT CSV. See File-import-Text file (Comma Separated Values)
CSV is common to almost all programs in the PC world. I am suprised MAC has a problem with it.
By the way regular Outlook will also import CSV.
13:38 Correction, Outlook Express is
File - Import - Other Addressbook - Text File
It will import and export CSV
13:41 by .
It will import CSV ADDRESSS BOOKS, not csv emails. I already know about csv address books.
Ditto on the suggestion for John *11:37 by WITechGuy-Marty*.
- Get a PCMCIA firewire card (2 channels suggested). Go with a firewire interface (like the MOTU “Traveler” - http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/traveler). This will do the encoding in the external box, taking some load off the CPU.
- Also, Get a Firewire HDD to write to.
- Put at least a GB of RAM in the unit
44.1kHz@32-bit transfers at about 10.3MB/min.
What is the name of the anti virus program Leo recomends?
14:10 by anonymous.
For John regarding Laptop Recording. John needs a DSP device such as PROTOOLS 002LE Rack. The dsp chips do most of the processing in an external, rack mounted device. It’s great for what he is doing and is about 1,000.00 dollars. This is state of the industry and much less expensive than a new computer. Also since he is on the road already, with all of his gear, one more rack device is worth the trouble.
Leo,
I’m always amazed at how quickly you are able to answer questions and suggest sites. Your bookmarks in Firefox must be very, very extensive. Any chance you would list what’s in there (sans the private/sensitive stuff)?
18 January 2006
I think people who own a PC listen to Leo’s show because he assists them with fixing the multiple problems that arise when using Windows. If he can’t help them, many times a listener responds and helps them in the show notes. Personally, I use Windows, OSX, and Solaris and I’ve worked with Linux quite a bit (but I support Windows networks for a living). I’ve never felt offended by any of Leos’s comments regarding Windows. He’s even been wrong before when giving out information ‘GASP’ (he’s only human). Leo does seem to like Apple, but I’ve also heard him praise Linux quite a bit and to recommend someone NOT go with Apple if it wouldn’t meet their needs. If the next version of Windows includes the security improvements I’m hearing about, I’ll bet Leo will be among the first to praise Microsoft.
