except that when i sat down to do it, the device had lost all the bass it was demonstrating all morning and sounded like i was listening to it through a tin can telephone.

i'm going to eat. and then i'm going to prepare to reinstall. i feel i have no other option. i feel at this point that even if it were to be functional when i finished eating it wouldn't last long enough to be useful.

i'll figure out the amp issue after i reinstall. i need a consistent signal, first.

fuck it. i'm mixing schizoid. i'll compensate later.

and, now the device is inconsistent again. ugh. i may actually have multiple inconsistencies. or i may be driving myself insane.

the nad is actually really not very flat. it has a very compressed sound that i recognize as a vacuum tube because i'm a guitarist and guitarists have this romantic notion of vacuum tubes. i can see why this would be perceived as a good thing in a variety of situations. and i could even see using it as a mastering device. but that's a very bad quality to work into mixing into a digital environment, as it's going to smooth over the rough parts. it's immediately obvious.

i remain left with very few useful conclusions. the cord *seemed* to make a difference, until the device got weird. it's hot in here, i should let it cool off...

i'm just going through so many possible combinations that i'm unable to rule out the possibility that i'm playing tricks on myself.

if you've been following this page, this isn't the first time i've gone through these gear crises, and they seem to resolve themselves randomly. i rarely figure out what the cause actually is before it dissipates.

are there psychological factors? temperature? air pressure? neither has been stable here this month; we're going through extreme swings in temperature and humidity, jumping from what seems like october and back into july. existential loss? finishing these tracks as instrumentals is something i've been putting off for 15 years. &etc.

even if i conclude it's psychological - and that's a hard thing to even consider when you're sure you're hearing dramatic differences - i'm still stuck until i can be certain of consistency.

but i know that, previously, when i've realized it might be psychological, it tends to evaporate.

one thing that i will say is that i've heard enough of these tracks in what seems like their proper state that i can conclude that i will not be remixing the first seven tracks.

i just wish i could understand why they don't sound the same way every time i listen to them. it's really something that shouldn't happen. ever. a recording should always sound the same on the same gear. this isn't quantum physics. there are wavefunctions. they're causal. it's repeatably demonstrable. i should have consistency.

dammit...

i should chill out and eat.

yup. it's the cord.

or at least interference. which explains the randomness, and why it seems to work better at night.

excuse me while i line the walls with aluminum foil...

it wasn't happening before, so i probably just knocked in a weird position or something.

i should be able to get it right by playing around with it.

hopefully.

if not, the other cable seems to work better. which is a little counter-intuitive. i was connecting with quasi-fancy gold plated rca cords. the ones that seem to work better are a step down. the thing's just gotta conduct, and it's not like i'm putting it under any pressure, so i can't imagine how it could have gotten damaged.

naw. that didn't do it either. but i am pretty convinced it's something to do with the amp - either the circuitry or the jack.

i happen to actually have a better amp :)

i've been using an old jvc, which is pretty consumer grade. it's just what that system has had connected to it since...2007? about that.

i mean, all i was looking for was a flat signal. the quality of the amp was only important in so much as it didn't interfere with the signal. and, it generally didn't. at least until now.

around 2009 or so, my dad gave me a much higher quality NAD receiver. it was out of request for a very flat receiver to act as a amplification system for my pod, because i'd learned that the pod tended to sound bad through guitar amps, because i was sending an amp sim through an amp and it was just getting all mucked up. he knew audio gear better than i did, so i let him figure that out and the nad is what i got. it's been sitting in a corner for years, waiting for me to use it in a live situation. i can state at this point that that's not likely to happen.

but, an extremely flat receiver sounds just about perfect right now.

if this doesn't work, it pretty much has to be the audio cable. i've worked in tech support. you're supposed to swap out the cables first. nobody does. i'm going to laugh for the next twenty years if it's a cable.

how's this for a novel cause? always the last thing you check. and, i can construct a chain of logic, too.

a few weeks ago, i noticed my mp3 headphones were shorting a little and i wasn't sure if it was the phones or the player so i checked them through the amp in the studio. the amp is a standard 1/4 jack. both my studio phones and my mp3 phones are 1/8. so, i need an 1.8th-->1/4 converter that sits in the amp. they're those big plugs, you've seen one around. i had to take the studio phones out of the converter to check.

as i was checking to make sure it's not the amp before i reinstalled by swapping the phones direct from the mixer, i noticed it was a little dirty.

cleaned it off, and it *finally* sounds crystal clear.

hopefully that holds. but, dammit. who'd have guessed that?

 (it was the player that was shorting, not the walking phones. it's an old sansa. and it's ultimately probably just dirty, too, but i'm going to need some kind of cleaner to get in there.)

ok.

i'm being very cautious with this, but i do believe that i've established enough consistency in sound that i can start remixing some of the tracks that i uploaded last week, and that ended up with warped mixes. i don't know what the solution was, but it seems to be ok. for now, anyways.

i'm going to have to be very slow with this, and i'm kind of paranoid, so i'll have to be constantly checking on the laptop, which i believe is at least a neutral system [even if the hardware is kind of crappy]. hopefully, i should get a mix or two up today.

but, i'm at my last straw. if i have any evidence of warped tone levels whatsoever, i'm going to immediately pull the plug and reinstall.

further confusion.

i just got through the whole record over asio out the m-audio and it's remaining consistent. finally. i don't really get it. but i'm happy. now, i need to check that it's holding for the mixer.