DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I needn’t have climbed the roof to determine whether the PV array has a shading problem. The kWh meter on the inverter makes it plain; on a sunny day, output drops from 1500 watts to 50 in the space of 40 minutes.

Unfortunately, this happens around 5:00 PM, so there’s over an hour of the daily peak period during which we’re not only not selling power to PG&E at 3x market rate, but in many cases we’re buying power at that rate. Ouch.

I met with an arborist today. He said he could prune the eucalyptus and birch trees that are shading the PV array, but not until December — cutting them now could damage them, and in the case of the birch, possibly kill it. So, we wait.

Unfortunately, the summer rate season lasts until October 31, and I expect the shade to impinge on production progressively earlier in the day (until the Winter Solstice). So we’re going to take a big hit in production this year.

I managed to reduce our peak-period consumption slightly this week — I found that the thermostat on the attic fan was set way too low, to 85° or something, which meant the fan ran for most of the afternoon and into the evening on warm days. I dialed it up to 110°, reducing the runtime by hours per day. A small but welcome victory.

Dirk E. sent a brief note to accompany the photo of a concert ticket stub I recognize:

I thought you might find this remnant from my first major concert experience interesting ;)

Why do I recognize it? Because 25 years and a couple of months ago I was sitting maybe 200 feet away from him. Although it looks like Dirk had better seats.

In related news, I just ordered a copy of the new RUSH tribute concert DVD, Cygnus and the Sea Monsters, something I’ve been looking forward to since reading about the show in Sean Malone’s blog last Fall. (Here’s a preview.)

And don’t miss the pictures of the replica Neil Peart drum kit Tama put together for the show. (This surprised me, because Peart is a DW endorsee now. On the other hand, Portnoy is a Tama endorsee, so I guess it makes sense.)

And the concert stills under August 13.

What are you still doing here? That’s all you get. Now go order the DVD.

When I took down my studio last September, I published a shopping list of upgrades for the next session. I bought nearly everything I’d hoped for:

• Hypercardioid Oktava MK-012, check. I actually bartered some SEO advice for this mic.
• Large-diaphragm condenser, check. I have one of the inexpensive Audio-Technica AT2020 as well as a hot-rodded Oktava MK-219 from Michael Joly. The latter was used as a room mic for my summer sessions.
• I didn’t get a Really Nice Preamp. I’m eyeing a couple of two-channel tube pre’s with S/PDIF outs for next time, though.
• I tested an Onyx 800R (samples to come, someday soon) and liked it, but opted to buy a different solid-state digital audio preamp, the Focusrite Octopre LE, which is a couple hundred dollars cheaper and to my ear sounds a little better.

I tuned up my good snare for this session. At 92 psi per lug, it sings. In fact it sings for days; I have to use a “zerOring” because it sings too much. It was miked on top with a Beyerdynamic M422, a supercardioid dynamic, through the Octopre, compressed via RNC, patched back through the Octopre and then into the Digi-002. The bottom mic was an Audix D1, a hypercardioid dynamic, positioned with the capsule 180° from the kick drum to minimize low-end bleed. I compressed it with a DBX 266XL, then patched it into the Digi-002.

Toms were miked individually with Audix D2 and D4 via the four mic pre’s in the Digi-002. I’m still using rim clips for these mics, which is convenient but arguably problematic at mix time.

I miked the hi-hat separately with my new MK-012 hypercardioid. It took some time to find a position that minimized snare bleed without getting the capsule so close to the hats that they sounded like gongs (due to proximity effect). We’ll still need to EQ the high-end; the hats lack the crystalline highs I’d like to hear.

The kick was handled as previously, although this time I was able to record the two mics’ signals separately rather than combining them. This allows the mix engineer to vary the signal, from the D112 inside the drum (lots of attack) to the M380 outside the resonant head (tons of bass and sustain). I added an Earthworks “KickPad” inline filter on the D112 signal, which has sounded great in my rough mixes. The D112 was compressed during tracking via the second RNC. The M380 was not compressed, because bass-heavy signals sound distorted through the RNC.

Overheads were MK-012s, as previously, using the Octopre pre-amps.

I recorded two room mics, but not stereo. I thought I’d get more-interesting results by recording two radically different mics. The idea is to vary the gain of each signal across songs or sections of songs to subtly alter the feel. To that end, I put the Oktava MK219 in front of the kit, about 5' off the ground. The second mic was an omni dynamic, the EV 635a, high in a corner of the room behind the kit.

All together this comes to 13 tracks of drums. It’s a ridiculous amount of channels, yes. On the other hand, the Digi-002 has five inputs I haven’t used yet.

My old Powerbook G4 (667 MHz) was not able to consistently process 13 channels of audio at 24 bit, 44.1 kHz. Some days, I could record an entire song; other days the laptop would puke halfway through. I got in the habit of shutting down nonessential services and killing off hidden daemons (iTunes helper?) to maximize the available CPU, but even then I’d get occasional errors. I upgraded to a Macbook Pro before final tracking; it worked perfectly, and didn’t kick its fan into overdrive as the G4 does.

Mic preamp summary (for my future reference):

• Octopre LE
  1. Kick external
  2. Hi-hat
  3. Snare top (dry)
  4. Snare top (wet)
  5. Ambient 1
  6. Ambient 2
  7. OH (L)
  8. OH (R)

• Mackie 1604
  1. Kick internal (insert: RNC)
  2. Snare bottom (insert: DBX 266XL)

• Digi-002
  1. Tom 1
  2. Tom 2
  3. Tom 3
  4. Tom 4

(It adds up to 14, but I didn’t record the dry snare signal.)

In an article titled Marketing Comes Out Of The Closet, Carolyn Said of the SF Chronicle writes:

It seems breathtakingly obvious that companies wooing gay and lesbian customers should use gay-themed imagery and content.

Which I guess explains the enormous happy phallus with airplane windows and a Delta logo painted on the side pictured on the front of the Chronicle’s business section a couple months ago. (another view, from Flickr)

Are those white things around the base are supposed to be clouds? Or teeth?

Like drunks can’t think of an easier way to get another drink than ordering wine from UPS?

The funny thing is, despite the label’s admonition to the contrary, the UPS driver set this on the porch and called out cheerfully, “I’ve signed it for you already!”

And then, I swear to God, he hiccuped.