Important advices from Newbie to Newbie to mastering music.

Mastering music it is a science, a skill and a art.  It is one of the few disciplines where you will have to:

• ·         Educate yourself.
• ·         Practice.
• ·         Develop skills
• ·         Learn Music Theory.

And still it is not enough many times, because you have to spend in equipment, book, software,  and at the end music like any form of art is subjective.

 As I am learning from scratch, from my own experience I have found a lot of misconceptions, that had lead me to waste a lot of time, and money trying to find that vst tool, or that magic piece of equipment that will make my music sound professional. 

I’ve follow historic threads about digital vs analog,  what monitor speakers to use, what is the best daw, can you use headphones to record audio, is thre a magic filter or effect that professional uses? What is the best synthetizer.  You can expend so much time trying to address these and more questions and it is a lot simpler than what you think

The best advices I’ve seen all over the net at the end focuses on a few fundamental principles you have to follow in order to be successful when post producing and mastering audio, it’s around not expend money, but about, knowing your tools, and using your best judgement as to what workflow, processes and settings you are to use.

 GAS.  Gear Adquisition Syndrome.  There is new hardware better than old hardware everyday, but only buy what you really need and stick to it.  famous production studio only have the tools for the engineers to work.  All you need is to know your tools.

LIM.  Less is more. If you think you need to add more sounds because a session does not sound correct, many times the through is not that you need to add more instruments, and grow your music project vertically.  In must cases you have no chosen the best sounds, or you need to

The best monitor speaker.  For someone in a budget the best monitoring speakers are the speakers you like.  A pair speakers you know well, can pretty much help you, see imperfections. 

The rule number one.  There is no predefined rules to accomplish a task within a project in music production.  Your guide will always be your ears, and always use your tools towards the goal of making the items you are working with, sound right.

You can't mix with headphones.  this is pure myth.  Headphones have better dynanic response than speakers, and can be used to make minor adjustments, or for fixing issues with equalization.  But my recommendation, is to try your mixes on as many speakers as you can, so you can achieve a good sounding track, on many different environments.

The tools, the engineer uses, weather al free or expensive, are ways to get your recording to sound good.  Many times the expensive equipment, or software help you get there easier.  Other times, the free tools can work.  In a professional environment it is very expensive to spend time unnecessarily troubleshooting glitches, learning, or because of the acoustic limitations in your room.  Two important pieces of advice you want to take with  you is:

• Know first the tools you already have really well.  So you can efficiently know whithin your capabilities what to do, and when to do it.
• Do whatever you it takes to get your track to sound right to your ears.  If you have a decent monitor, or headphones, you should

Setup your own VM for surving the internet.

I've bee having an issue with my computer where a number of viruses has corrupted my VPN client.  In order to resolve this issue, I have resulted in using VMware player, and create a virutal machine I can use for surfing the net.

n order to do that, I will use the instructions in the setting up a minimal virtual machine for surving.  this tells you to use the minimal installer for ubuntu, which will lead you to wasting  lots of time, doing configuraitions.

You can also use the following:

Download the ubuntu mini remix then add additoinal packages using the ubuntu, custimization kit. With this two, you can have a live CD you can use, to browse the internet, but it can be installed in a virtual machine.

My aim, is to have an internet ready with:

• 
  
• Firefox.
• torrent client.
• newsgroup client /nzb downloader.

The instructions to use ubuntu customization kit is here: rol your own custom live cd.  It also has information how to do the same using suse as the base install.

The third options is to download an web surving appliance.  The VMWARE website has a few.  But these are 3 GB in size.

Installing Tablet as a replacement to car receiver. In Progress....

Introduction.

You can add to your car the following features:

• Navigation.
• Stream music from Internet (pandora, spotify, etc).
• Music MP3 player.
• Media device.
• Rear View Camera.
• GPS Locator to your car.
• Torque App.  Displays diagnostics, speed, how gas is consume and a lot of nice goodies.

I am going to addres each of the challanges, but the information wil be based on the Nexus 7, 2002.  I will put information on the new nexus as well.

Mounting the device.

This is the most challanging of all the steps, as this requires you to think about it.  The first how you want to use your device and also, how you pas the cabling.

To make a permanent mount you will have to use a 2DIN cable.  But your radio receiver, will have to be located somewhere else.

Metra makes mounti kits for virtually all radio systems.  it happens that the DN2 standard is about the same size as the tablet.

If you have amplifiers one popular way to connect the tablet if by the use of a signal processor, or pre-amp like the Clarion EQ746.  But you will need to find a location for it.

You can use your stereo, but you will also need to find a location for it.  I am not covering this because, I am not mounting permanently my tablet.

Mounting the tablet can be done by using your preffer way of mounting the device.  I will be using for now, velcro tape.

I will be using a magnet, and place my tablet somewhere.

There is a metal called Neodymium, this is a very strong magnet.  You can buy these on Ebay. 

This project is an example of a very good solution:

Mountkek.com
This Open source as well.

I probably wil  do my own by buying magnets.

You can use a CD mount:

You can use a seat rail mount.

this one is a Akron Seat Bolt, sells in Walmart for a little over $30.  Amazon has many other options.

I will go with one like this:

Installling Timur:Not an option...

Root tablet.
Download flashify.
copy the zip of the image to root of sdcard.
You can use also ROMManager.


 Kangaroo and slimkat: 
.

Cell Phones, Tablets, PC in a Card, lead to a new breed of supre cheap fast devices.

The fact that Smart phones are so capable, has driven a new market.  The tablets which are based on the eletronics of smarts phones.

These two has driven the PC market to evolve at a very fast pace.

We have seen the follwoing:

ChromeBooks, are low cost computers that can run Chrome OS and are fast, with very cheap hardware as requirements for this os is low.  The Chrome first a fast Browser integrated with Google's Ecosystem, now also an operating system for embeded devices, and of course computers.

Chrome Logo, driving the market.

Google is starting to use servers using low price CPUs, by Qualcom, and other manufacturers.

The introduction of small factor pcs in a chip such as the Raspberry Pi, was the beginning of the development of PC on a chip that has apurr a big community, and actually many projects, including games console are coming down the piple via open source market.

The Raspberry Pi PC in a Chip.

Then we have small countries people are using their cellular phone and tablets are replacements to their Desktop computer.  Because with a lower cost they can do most of the things they do on a computer.

During all this races and evolution, Microsoft and intel stayed behind.  Microsoft bought Nokia, and developed a mobile version of Windows.  At the same time, Intel developed cheaper chips,and it is in lline to come up with the Edison, a chip for wearable computers.

De fact that Chrome OS can be run on any arm computer, also, enter the stalishment of a new market to devices that can make TV smarts.  This is an evolution of the apple tv, but now you can get Android based devises that are fast for under $30 dollars.

Microsoft failed to compete with Apple with their line of Surface.  Which ad a version of Windows 8.0 stripped, lacked in number of native applications compared to Androids or IOS.  Also, the operating system was not really designed for a good touch experience.  Additionally the hardware was expensive to put together.  it is not easy to come up and compete at the level of Apple when apple demans so many millions devices in sales, and can drive its suppliers, to give htem low price, or they caan develop their own parts from scratch.  But this is another story in itself.

There is a series of events that might change the complete computing device arena for years to come:

Microsoft is giving away their Windows 8.1 for free to low end computer manufacturers.
Intel reduced prices of of the baytrail, or Atom platform which is a system in a chip.  These are quad chore devices with pretty good graphics capabilities and low battery conpsumption that enable the surgence of a new market of low end devices starting with:

The fact that now, capable hardware is available for cheap, and the platform can run a full blown version of Windows, and leverage the already mature R&D under the x86 microcode, including Android itself for x86 which came out last year we have.


Android based tablets that  are cheaper and faster than the Arm based ones.like the Asus Memo pad, the Dell Venue, and meno other players.

Transformer laptop/tablets running windows 8.1.

Asus transformer

7, 8, and 10 inches tablets running windows 8.1.

These all includes Office 360, 1 TB of storage in cloud.  But I have tried them and the performance rivals fast laptops.

I got the Winbook 7 to play around, and it has become my book, and multimedia box.  Since I can connect a USB keyboard, it has a micro hdmi connector, I can use it a s a HTPC or a desktop.

My only concern is over time with the windows updates, the 8 GB of storage will probe to be too low.  I can expand with sd card, and also sb drives, but the OS has to be on the drive c.  Still looking for an answer for that, but if you want to have one of these long term, you must have the 32GB versions of these devices.  Some come with a hardrive.

Wallmart sells this laptop/tablet for $179. 

I will update this post with more.  For now, this is the fist issue.

Since this is a full blown 32bit/486 architecture you can load stuff like Linux.  Follow the following instructions to boot from USB:  How to boot from USB:

Intel introducing the HDMI Stick PC.

  This stick is $150 and it is a full blown pc.

Current Wireless phone service deals, and other opportunities to save money.

Unlimited voice, text data on tmobile for $10 bucks.  

If you have a gsm unlocked phone or tmobile phone you can take advantage of it.

Samsung S3 unlocked.

The verizon Samsung S3 which sells about $100 model  SCH-I535 is a dual mode phone and comes unlocked for GSM Network.

You can use either Ebay or swappa.com

Fatwallet Staples Clearance Threat.

This is a threat from the best forum specializing in sales, and opportunities.  Good to check of you are heading for stapples.  Staples is known for good unadvertised opportunities to get stuff at dirt cheap prices.

RingPlus, and Ting.

If you own a sprint phone you may want to use any of this services with rates starting at $6 dollars.

Short interesting thing from all over the internet.

Quickies.

I constantly find locations that are worth trying, and this is the place where I will put them.  They eventually, I will organize them, tabulate them, but now, it is just a list that will be growing.

Liliputing.
This is a very interesting blog with sales, and information for those who want to try new things.

Virtual Clone Drive.  Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.


This USBAudioREcorderPro is a set of drivers so you can add a DAC to android hardware.  This has been probeen with the Motorola G 2nd generation and the nexus 7.  The Mtorola G 2nd generation can do fast charging out of the box, meaning that you can attach a OTG USB drive, and also, charge at the same time.  More on that later.  The Nexus 7 has very bad sound out of its audio jack, and there is no support to APT-X.  I am still going to test how the USB sound is for the nexus.

 These are videos how to make your own tablet stand.  I was intrigued with the one you can use something like a metro card, and keep it in your wallet. :)

Make a quick phone/tablet stand You can use a CD spindle, and even a DVD case.  I have a small Winbook, this tablet costs $59.00 at microcenter and can do full blown Windows 8, and it is faster than a laptop I had bought some time ago.  The only oncern here is if you want it for more than just simple tasks, you will run out of diskspace because windows 8.1 won't let you save applications on any other media than the 16 GB disk drive.

Library MSDOS Games.  This is a library of old games you can play from your browser.

Bunch of PDFs interesting about ayahuasca, MDT etc.  http://psychonautdocs.com/

Program Archade Games in Python is a very interesting website, the best tutorial in pythong I've seen.  It is a complete course with laboratories, and each chapter enlighten each concept, using a lot of background information.  Reading through this course is a refresher. 

Changing the suck resolution of the Lenobo t420.

The Lenovo t420 is capable of HD resolutions.  Unfotunately, the LCD is low resolution.  Here is an article how to change the screen.   You will need a new LCD and connector cable.
 This is the link.

Interesting Stuff Wireless phone.

I spend time looking for cool stuff that can make my experience on my phone more efficient, and also utilitarian.

On this blog you will find the tip, tutorials that might be of interest to you.  Unfortunately, it will be many times limited to what I own, in the android domain, but it can change.