real vs fake shure sm58s mic

 i recently bought a $100 shure sm58s mic from amazon, then right afterward i saw one on ebay for $30. i bought it & did a deep comparison when it arrived, & found it was an obvious counterfeit.

here is all the evidence for your perusal:

its funny that the counterfeit strap is actually nicer.

the mount is totally functional, & the solid inner wall seems to be better design.

shure actually gives us a lower quality sticker

now for the actual mic

older counterfeits used red & black, but these days they use yellow & green. however, shure is now using 4 wires. i have previously also bought a used shure mic from guitar center for $80 that had the correct switch (not red pcb) but it also only had 2 wires. 

im upset that the counterfeit actually has better body construction.

i did actually also test them in studio one too.

it seems that theres a good reason for the real mic to not actually have a true off switch, something about avoiding speaker pops etc when switching.

however, i think shure should have a better design to acutally silence the input without risking pops.

ironically, when switching the fake mic on/off, there was no response from the interface, but when i switched the real mic on/off, i did hear an audible thump/bassy pop, so it sort of defeats the fucking purpose.

if the high-mids werent so harsh on the fake i would prefer it to the real one, 

however, the smoother sound is worth putting up with the lazier body machining but borderline is not worth the switch noise. if you still have to turn off the interface volume to avoid pops when using the switch, the switch is fucking pointless.

synth battlestation

 after being blessed with a surprise medical setback (thanks god), im finally back to learning vst instruments & setting up my daw workstation.

im pretty happy with this setup, even though i went over my budget. 

i did alot of research & decided on:

  Omen16slim for my portable machine, plenty of ram & on win11 for future proofing.

  minilab3 25key & smk37 37key for the controllers, instead of a longer piano i chose to use the 25 for a lower register bass synth & the 37 for higher lead or pad synth, which can be active at the same time on different tracks. it still also has the flexibility to shift the 25 down 1 octave, raise the 37 up 1 octave, & combine them into 1 long piano. the only setback i found is that the smk doesnt have a Hold button like the minilab does, but the minilab doesnt have the super nice oled display that shows you every note AND chord you play like the smk has.

  i ended up choosing Studio One Pro 7 sort of by default. i preferred Cakewalk, but ill never support the subscription only model, & they werent interested in that feedback at any capacity. Cubase i thought was just wildly overpriced for a one time purchase that doesnt update & also for a piece of software that can be infinitely replicated & theyve made their investment back on about 20 years ago. i think theyre just greedy & the activation/licensing software/procedures are a big fucking headache to manage for me. i tried reaper, & while i loved that it still has full compatability with older vsts, it just lacks the gui polish that i didnt have the energy to even attempt to modify myself. Studio One went on sale for $140 & that was a good enough deal for me, it has some very obvious things i wouldve changed, namely Macro custom placement like moving the Undo button somewhere else or making Routing more visual & intuitive like FLstudio or Ableton. Overall, after some sweat & cussing, ive boiled down & figured out most of the things i needed to have work for me.

  i really liked some of cubases & cakewalks instruments, & its a bummer i cant add those to my arsenal, but arturia (minilab) makes some really cool stuff & i ended up getting the V Collection & Pigments. really excited to delve into those. even studio one still has the built in presonus instrument suite that is no slouch collection too.

  i also got Serum2 from Xfer, equally excited to delve into that too.

  even with the knobs on the controllers, i wasnt able to map to all the parameters i wanted to control on any given instrument, & if i could, i wouldnt be able to label them or remember which is what. i found an expensive solution but after setup & some jamming, i feel vindicated with the result. i bought a double touchscreen monitor that can hold 1 instrument each & i can literally move any parameter with a finger like theyre on a rack in front of me. the 2 main things i wish i wouldve been able to get a google answer for quickly were: keeping 2 instruments open simultaneously is possible by activating the pushpin icon on the top right of the instrument windows. & reactivating the laptop touchpad in windows bluetooth/device settings because the touchscreen monitors are recognized as external mouse devices & tells windows to shut off the touchpad. i have to make a custom tilt mount (likely out of wood) because i cant get the angles i want with the imbedded kickstand, but thats going to be a cool project to make custom too, & save like $150 vs buying some aluminum tilt stand.

  im still using my old gen 2 2i2 focusrite interface for monitoring the daw, but also for connecting guitar & bass. i cant believe how worn the frets are on both & i got a japanese fret tool to even/round them out again when i get a chance, & i have to somehow repair/replace the damaged jack on my guitar, but im stoked to finally have a better daw than audacity with way better effects/plugins than my old Pedalboard program was using, & i still have all my old flagship pedals i cant wait to break out again.

  i havnt gotten around to setting up the td27 drumset in studioone yet, but im super happy with the state of the kit right now, & i already have the driver installed & it goes in via usb so it wont crowd anything out.

ive still got a little more to research, learn, & practice before im confident enough to put it all together & write/record, but my plan is to eventually write some bg/soundtrack music for HoA, & use the art as a backdrop or video.

VST instruments; Saxophones

 After spiraling into darkness under the crushing weight of utter failure, i once again blindly nibble around the edges of the pit of despair for some levitous distraction from my aimless existence.

so im learning about vst's now, & midi & stuff. also actual DAWs, not just Audacity & Wavepad.

I got a MiniLab3 keyboard, & an SMK37, using them with CakewalkSonar, & i was looking around for free instrument plugins, namely sax plugins, because the included Analog Lab V software, while impressive, falls short with their selection of Winds/Brass.

I found some notable (free of course) ones that i feel compelled to share:

Iowa Alto Sax

DSK Saxophones

& i struck gold with:

Monster Sax , which incredibly comes from a free family of nearly 32gb of "Monster" brand instrument vst's & accompanying mse's.

while some of them are disappointing, like the very limited guitars, & 2 note ukuleles, some of them are just bizarre like the keyz v2, "toys", & octachord, & a few of them are just glitchy, like the voxana & whistle plugins that for some reason open up the golden piano plugin but allow you to cycle through ALL the plugins until you find the actual vox sounds or whistle sounds, for the most part, the instruments are pretty good & definitely fun to mess around with if youre an audiophile & like ill be doing, you can just delete the shitty ones.

ill update this if i find more.

Heirs of Ashuradō ch03 has begun

 the 1st draft script is complete for hoa ch03!

All indie comic anthology book 04

 Tiny Power Comics latest All Indie Comic Anthology book is available now! 112 pages, 5 comics!

Check it out at TinyPowerComics.com

exfat partition extending & android file compatibility

 im just posting this for posterity because it was a pain to google for a clear answer, & maybe this will help someone else in the future.

i was trying to figure out why a 4tb external ssd i bought would be discoverable on my pc but not my phone or tablet.

some searching told me that it was either incompatible file system, or lack of power.

i bought a powered hub & was able to discover the 4tb ssd (formatted as ntfs) on my tablet. without the hub, it would cause constant restarting of the tablet due to power draw overload.

i also had a new 1tb sd card that i wanted to clone onto, & discovered that while the tablet can read an external ntfs drive, the sd card formatted to ntfs was deemed unacceptable & prompts a reformat dialogue, inviting a change to exfat.

i found that new sd cards inserted into the tablet first were automatically formatted to exfat.

my pc had no problem reading either exfat or ntfs sd card as flash storage.

i also found that new sd cards come with an unallocated partition proportionate to the drive size, i.e. 1tb had a 64mb unallocated partition, 512gb had a 32mb unallocated partition. apparently  this is meant as a sort of ram or temp storage for the card in the event that the main partition is completely filled.

Samsung Notes File Management Nightmare

 i thought this needed its own post, but it goes along with the previous post about android migration.

i had over 600 notes in the samsung notes app v.2 from 2019, i intentionally never updated my phone for 5 years because EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME SOME DIPSHIT DEVS ROLL OUT UPDATES IT FUCKS EVERYTHING. 

for 5 years i had flawless function, clean & intuitive but practical & unobstructive interface. no unnecessary permissions or mandatory privacy invasions or straight up data larceny.

then when my phone was clearly at the end of its rope, i went through the process of migrating to a new device. most hurdles were surmountable, but when it came to samsung notes, .....another story.

i was able to back up to samsung cloud, but then couldnt import, THEN COULDNT DELETE FROM THE CLOUD & SAMSUNG CUSTOMER SERVICE DIDNT HAVE THE FIRST CLUE OF HOW THEIR SOFTWARE WORKS. probably because the dipshits update the fucking thing every 3 hours.

then i was able to export as pdfs, but it obliterated my carefully curated notes folder system & discarded all my notes titles.

then when i went back to my old phone to explore other options, the samsung notes app had somehow force updated COMPLETELY ON ITS OWN! 

that meant that now all my notes were not compatible with the new app without converting.

i was able to create backups in the form of .sdoc files, but literally NO OTHER SOFTWARE can open these. i converted one to a .zip as a test, which revealed the binary .dat files that make up the .sdoc, but no other program can translate those .dat files besides the fucking OLD VERSION of samsung notes.

i then tried to uninstall the new samsung app offline & install a backup .apk i made of the original samsung notes, but the app update planted some bug in my old phone that restricts it from installing the old app again...........

FUCK SAMSUNG SO MUCH. ill never use samsung notes again.

i have to sit & convert AND RELABEL all my PDF backed up notes, one by one on PC, but after that ill only be taking notes in .odt or .docx format on Collabora Office or Dark Note for the foreseeable future, the only non-data collecting non-ad spewing free office/notes apps ive found these days that support clear custom destination file exports.

Android to Android new phone transfer experience

 I've had maybe 4 phones in my life, the first was a TracFone, the next x2 I just went to the dealer for, paying for a new phone + activation fee.

My latest phone is a Samsung a15, coming from a Samsung j7.

After chasing a red herring concerning microsim vs nanosim, I realized that the j7 was switched to nanosim in its last 2 years of production, when I bought one. I kept reading that I would need to obtain a nanosim when I already had one, since most or maybe all typical modern phones use nano.

I'll mention I briefly tried to use a tcl 10l first, but it had shutter lag, & wouldn't let me save a pro photo setting template. To top it off, it was not fully compatible with MetroPCS. So I diverted to the Blu g84. The blu g84 did not have flash available during pro photo mode, & also would not allow split screen ratio adjustment in landscape mode. it also had some weird bug where it wouldnt accept my sd card as formatted, making me back it up, reformat, then repopulate (more on that in a second). pain in the ass. obviously it also wouldnt run samsung apps so i impetuously deleted all 600 of my samsung notes after backing up to pdf, only to realize it didnt save the titles of the fucking notes so i now have 600 untitled notes & i ended up using a samsung device anyway so none of it was necessary. 

The first hurdle was getting apps/data to transfer. I tried Bluetooth tether, cord tether, wifi direct tether, quick share tether, NFC tether, Samsung backup, Google one backup, Google drive backup, (ill never use Microsoft OneDrive). They were all failures.

What finally worked for me is using the file manager app from playstore to manually make an APK portable of each app I wanted. many of my favorite apps like hancom office & wavepad are incompatible with new phones.

To get my contacts & SMS i used dropbox backup but I had to use a specific backup & restore app from playstore on both phones.

Then another hurdle, when I tried to insert my old SD...the newer android couldn't run it & asks me to FORMAT IT.

I managed to not accidentally delete everything & made a basic image file + copy/paste clone of the SD. I used macrium reflect & it worked great & it was easy.

Then I formatted the SD in the phone, popped it back out & brought back over the files that weren't system files. (this was for the blu g84, i could have skipped this entire problem if i had just gone for the samsung a15 off the bat).

Finally, I bypassed the activation fee by going on mymetro & manually entering the new IMEI code from the new phone.

I also picked up a handy tip, at one point early on, I was stuck on a frozen boot & learned that holding power+volume up for a long time bypasses the freeze & opens the reboot/reset menu.

 

I had to find other new essential apps, Openweather for live weather, 

VLC for mp4 & mp3, 

Collabora office for Rtf, Docx, Word, & Pdf reading/editing, 

& Dark Note as a better version of samsung notes with actual export tools & dynamic/intuitive visual organization. No ads, no iaps, doesn't send or collect your data & they're free. That's fuckin hard to find.

Also, fuck Microsoft so hard & their subscription scams.

A major fucking annoying afterthought about the samsung a15, & apparently all the new samsung stuff, is that you cant shut off the camera shutter sound or assign a different sound like you used to be able to. a fucking basic function once again fucked up by dipshit devs.

i found a workaround by creating a mode/routine where the entire phone is set to silent during camera use. 

a fucking pain in the ass again to do something that should have just been a single button option in the camera settings. not to mention no other camera app is compatible even if you completely remove the current camera through an adb editor.

bionic hand poseable artists model

 apparently there is a knockoff version of this hand model being produced with really no marketing divisor. 

searching on aliexpress i bought the knockoff because it was cheaper by half, but realized when i received it that the palm was out of proportion to the larger fingers.

i looked a little closer & ordered the more expensive one for a side by side comparison which noone else has done.

its easier to make a fist with the knockoff but the original could be remedied by shaving a bit of plastic off of the index pad (havnt done yet, picture is the unmodified version).

the original has a sturdier, heavier base.

the knockoff base mount falls out of the wrist seemingly by design intentionally or otherwise.

the knockoff has more exaggerated lateral palm flex, but that could be incidental due to missing linkage of the thumb crotch & pinky pad.

the original has better, unrestricted wrist movement.

in the end i decided to keep both because the knockoff looks like it could be a more feminine hand while the original seems more masculine, both could have their uses.

Dual zone piezos for edrums

 The ekit i bought a while back was made from a chopped up acoustic kit. I had originally made some placement mods since some of the toms werent loud enough & the piezo just wanted to be further from the rim.

When i bought them, the triggers looked like this, x2 of them still do:

Literally just an L bracket, with a big washer screwed on it. The foam pad underneath the piezo oversized, the top foam just a chunk of what looks like backer rod. The rim piezo duct taped to the bottom of the drum (lifting tape with a screwdriver tip there),

& It works... It still works, i only opened them again because i thought i heard a loose washer or something buzzing on hits.

Im planning on relocating these further counter clockwise & further away from the rim toward the center like these older mods i did.

These are also fine, but i though since i was in the neighborhood, i might take another pass to see if i could improve/simplify the bracket design, maybe replace the top foam.

I saw someone use a round makeup applicator, i thought that was sorta clever.

This is the 1st attempt on a tom , not sure why i didnt just get a longer L bracket. I think i just wanted to use up some old aluminum or maybe didnt wanna spend any cash:

Theres not really a reason why it should go all the way across... It dips in the middle because i had limited foam i was using for bottom support. 

This was my 2nd attempt on another tom:

I still got the placement i was after, i shave a piece of foam to adjust height but it cant go higher without stacking. But ideally it should never have to adjust. I guess maybe if the top foam compresses with time but this backer rod foam is so porous i dont think it has enough mass to even register compression until youre like, half crushing it.

I set the height approx 2mm above the rims:

I performed a dissection on one of my roland pdx100 pads. 

First off, fuck roland for selling this for nearly $300...the internals are less than $20 & this shell is injection molded plastic probably $2 at most & the mesh head is probably another $20. Youve made your money back on the initial plastic body cad design after selling like x5 of these at their retail price...anything after that is just insulting the consumer.

A fucking cell phone only costs like $80 & has way more technology & uses than this thing.

Anyway, i wanted to compare the wiring to the custom toms i had & upload decent pics for posterity since i had a hard time finding any online.

         

Roland uses a pcb jack but it doesnt appear to have any additional resistors or caps etc, there are only x3 pins coming through the pcb & i have to expect those to be the sleeve, ring, & tip pins.

Not even a nice bevel jack...

Theres no markings on any of it besides the part number which brings up no results online. I found a similar pcb jack from goedrum & their schematic looks almost intentionally confusing... 

In summary, both piezo brass backing wires go together on one pin, im not sure which pin but its probably the sleeve. I dont know a reason why they would share a ring or tip pin.

The x2 ceramic wires go to seperate pins. Im not sure which, but i think these would be ring & tip, but i have less of a clue to which is which. If i had to guess id say the head piezo ceramic is on the tip.

I already cant trust the diagrams i found online because they show the brass of one piezo sharing a pin with the ceramic of the 2nd piezo...clearly that isnt the case here, so either the diagrams are wrong, or someone at roland fucked up my wiring even though the pad still works...

The alesis wiring is actually a closer fit, they show the brasses sharing a pin. Are alesis making pads for roland now or what?

So i remembered why i made those funky aluminum "brackets" back then, i couldnt find any slotted brackets at any hardware store & the snobby douchebags that work there told me they dont exist.

I was doing idle research when i found these, vertical blind headrail brackets. 

The screw spread is approx 3/4"-1" (bottom) hole is slotted. 

That would leave it approx 1/8" lower than the aluminum brackets i custom cut/installed, so basically perfect, i could make up that difference with the foam at the top or bottom.