motu and green dmg 001 gameboy play it loud! hooray!

the motu ultralite mk3 i got is working great!

the computer it's running on is a lil black macbook with 2gb of ram, only 2ghz dual core i believe, it has a hard time if i crank up the samplerate of the motu to 192, i use all of the inputs so it's probably just way too much for the lil macbook, so i've dropped down to 96 and it's been working pretty well after increasing latency just a tad, it sounds really good, cleaner than the presonus, brighter in a way

so that's great, on top of that i finally won a green gameboy on ebay, only the red and blue one left, maybe white =)

motu ultralite mk 3 audio interface and an older motu 828 firewire

so i went soundcard shopping on saturday, i hit up a couple different pawnshops, the pawnshops are pretty overpriced in and around the hollywood area, didn't find exactly what i was looking for either, found something close but they wanted way too much for it

so i took a trip to guitar center of hollywood, the one on sunset by gardner, i was told they don't carry any art branded products anymore, i didn't want to wait for shipping to get the art tubefire device, so i went ahead and purchased a small and portable motu ultralite mk 3 interface, this thing is so cool because it is bus powered, so it is 1 less power plug to have to worry about, very robust features, sounds sooo clean, from my ears it sounds like i am getting a greater frequency range and response than the presonus firepod ever was capable of

i decided to check out a boutique music gear shop that is just a 1/2 block away, right at gardner and sunset, jimmy's guitars i believe is the name, they always have unique and rare items, i saw a mellotron, a paia modular synth, they even had a roland tr 808. when i asked about the price of the 808 the sales guy told me $2800, HOLY CRAP! i told him i saw a few go last week on ebay for 1400 and 1500, haha, boutique indeed...when the sales man heard me balk at the price and then make ebay comments, he suggested i check out a store a block up the street that had tons of more affordable gear

i went up another block, and sure enough there it was, thrift store music, at 7591 sunset blvd., this store has tons of organs and synths and beatboxes and amps and pedals and cases and and and, just tons and tons of random cool stuff, a lot of older gear, the sales guy was so helpful, answering any questions i may have, and more than happy to let me just meander around and gawk at all the gear, i wound up leaving with a slightly used motu 828 firewire interface, this will be a great addition to the studio, i plan on using it to leave a turntable, tape deck, and a few other devices permanently connected using a pc for sampling and recording purposes, so it won't be directly part of the beat making section of my studio, but this will make a great workhorse for general dubbing of mixtapes and conversion of vinyl...i have been very bad about dubbing things recently, and bad about recording vinyl, i try to sample strictly from vinyl, so when i'm ripping off loops i prefer to get it from vinyl, once you toss it through a few plugins things get muddy quick if you are using samples from mp3s and other medium, 24bit samples from vinyl sound so luscious and smooth, imo it's a huge difference! so this will get me going in a more timely manner for sampling and whatnot, just got to get the pc laptop all setup and situated for it now, why pc? just for cool edit/adobe audition, i know there are mac alternatives, but i prefer audition, someday maybe they'll port it and stop pushing the other adobe audio software i hope

my presonus firepod is dead =(

they have an issue where the firewire chipset gets corrupted somehow and then the thing displays a perpetual blue sync light even when disconnected from the computer, the computer will no longer see the device, this seems to have happened to a lot of different users of the presonus firepod, that and apparently the firewire connectors themselves get lose and loose connection which worries me because even if i do pay to get the first issue fixed, there's no telling when the second will crop up

so i have decided that i can not rely on this card any longer, and have set out in search of something else that i can afford without racking up too much debt

one intriguing interface i'm checking into is the art tube fire 8, it has 8 tube preamps, 1 for each of the inputs, you can even link a few of them together to give yourself a 24 track recording setup if you wanted. the tubes can be changed out as well, that part is kind of crazy but might yield excellent results, gotta' get ready, deposit the pay check, then visit guitar center

more colored gameboy fun!

i just won a yellow play it loud gameboy dmg001 on ebay! this is awesome because i won it by 7 cents, with 5 seconds left in the auction, no sniping software, just doin' it the oldschool way.

i was supposed to go out last night to an icomplex party, failing that, a do lab party, however my lovely wife distracted me and now, well, i just woke up at about 5am, lol...anyways that was just in time for me to nab this auction! funny how things work out, wheee!

different colored dmg 001 gameboys

in 1989 nintendo came out with the gameboy, the original model dmg 001, they have come out with several updates over the years, adding color, back lighting, and a whole slew of other features, unfortunately the sound was not improved, instead it was weakened

in 1995 nintendo announced a new gameboy product, the gameboy "play it loud" series. in actuality, the play it loud series was exactly the same as the original gameboy model dmg 001, aside from 1 major change, the case came in different colors. exactly the same gameboy guts, and sound, as the phatt thumpitty gameboy dmg 001, but now in a plethora of color, ditch that old grey gameboy brick and grab a blue, green, red, black, yellow, or clear one!

i have been slowly hunting these colorful little beasts, trying to catch them all like they were pokemon!

so far i have acquired the black dmg 001, yesterday i won a clear dmg 001 on ebay, my collection is growing! last night my wife asked how many different colors i need? well that's easy, all of them! i am not a racist, i gladly welcome gameboy dmg 001s of all colors!

i am into using the gameboys for music making purposes, once the clear one arrives i will be doing a simple modification to make the sound louder, less noisey (as in line noise, which is bad...usually), and the bass a bit thicker. some people call this a pro sound mod, some bitch and complain when they hear it called that, i'll just say it's the "gameboy sounds mo' phatta" mod.

this site has an excellent and thorough comparison of gameboy models, as well as comparisons of the gameboys after a sounds mo phatta' mod:
http://www.herbertweixelbaum.com/comparison.htm

chip tune is fun, but i prefer to use the gameboys as sound sources which get mixed in along other instruments as well. lately it has been more of a techno live pa with a bit of acid filtering. i sync the gameboys up to my other equipment using a low gain audio lsdjmc2 gameboy midi converter box, in my genius i thought the low gain audio device was messed up as i couldn't get sync to work properly, i discovered this amazing nanoloop feature by reading the manual, the feature turns turns on external sync! hahaha @ me, holy crap i thought the lsdjmc2 was broken at first, but once i discovered this and popped nanoloop into external sync mode, the gameboy stayed locked on to my midi clock for hours on end without missing a beat! hooray!!

here is a really tacky ad for the nintendo gameboy play it loud series:


for more info on the gameboy timeline, check out this awesome chart