shinyhappyrainbows

Updated 13/02/2025 Among my many happy follies, I've started setting up to make some electronic music. I've been an electric musician for most of my life, but EDM isn't something I've dabbled in a lot, despite loving the sheer power of it. In all modern genre's, the synth reigns supreme! I'm particularly interest in trying it live and without a computer as my digital audio workstation, a technique known as "DAWless." It's more performative than using Logic Pro on my Mac, the latter a process that feels like being back at work, sometimes. Using drum machines, sequencers and synths is mostly just a matter of turning on the power and pushing a few buttons. That's the theory, anyway. The trouble is, I'd also like to record the good performances, too, but also still have the ability to tweak the knobs on the front panels in a way that fundamentally changes the tonal qualities of the sounds. Not just volume, EQ and pan, but timbre, voicings an...

The linear rails modified Ender-3 has its new, high flow, high heat hot end and printed lift feet for the new telly. No new land speed records, like what killed the cheap nasty hotend, but this was a cosmetic print, anyway. But seriously, these machines are like an abusive partner we keep going back to. They rarely fail at the start of a print or, if they do, it's your fault for not setting it up right. No, most of the time, they'll fail ten minutes from the end and waste most of the roll of your most expensive, least recyclable filament. Still, we makers keep patching up the beast in what looks, from the outside, like a bad case of sunk cost fallacy. Today, this "grandfather's axe" of a machine delivered. I must have modded it enough to have doubled its AU$300 ticket price, so it bloody well ought to deliver, but it really delivered. It's only a practical print, the new telly doesn't quite have enough clearence underneath its stumpy by elegant legs for ...

Matrix (or Grid) switchers have fascinated me since I was a kid. You have a panel full of holes, inputs up the left, outputs along the top. (Or right and bottom, or both.) By sticking a pin, or shorted jack plug or throwing a switch, you can parallel, mix, match and repatch a synth or a mixing desk, etc, almost any way you want it configured. A friend in senior secondary school built an ETI 5600 from discrete parts and the pin-patchbay amazed me! Anyway, cut to the 21st century, and I want one that's logic controlled. And flexible. Like a Lego matrix switcher. I have a Zoom L-12 mixer/recorder and the monitor busses seem to me to be just perfect for mix groups. With this I want a switcher that can select my regular mic and instrument inputs and patch them through to my 12 lin-ins, or select my B, C, D and E monitor outs (via appropriate headphone to line matching), to give my studio greater flexibility. I could make a matrix switcher out of SPDT toggle switches, but that'd ...