Recording winter woes: Furnance has no place in an audio studio

Heat or Audio

Ok, I was in a recording mood this evening and wanted to record a few tracks . It's cold out, so I had a gas furnace chugging away keeping my room temp at around 65 degrees. I had just rearranged my studio only to discover that when my furnace would turn on and off and with it,my spdif digital connection from recorder to PC. Basically it would reset my recorder and anything I was recording was gone and of course this happened during an inspired recording where at was at my best playing wise. Darn it!! Robbed of my musical moment of glory!!

I think I am pushing my electrical limits for the house wiring with the furnace , water heater, refrigerator, and all my recording gear throughout the house. so my solutions are to call an electrician and his $150/hr sidekick who watches him work or turn off the furnace before and after I play or perhaps I could rearrange where I plug things in to avoid this. I am on the same circuit as the furnace so this wont do. I suppose I could turn it off before I record as my sessions last an hour or two at most that might work well too. Well, we will see. I guess its part of the trials and tribulations of recording in a home studio.

I am lucky that I did capture about ten minutes of good quality recording before the abrupt cut off. I am very pleased with the recording that I did capture. but I also lost some of the best material. So I have to figure out a solution eventually.

mackie 32x8x2 console in recording
I thought it would be a good idea to turn off the mackie mixing console while I was away to conserve the wear and tear on the board, power supply and conserve electricity. Well, this was a big mistake I have found, in that it seems for the board needs a little time to "warm up" to get the best sound , perhaps having it on will avoid any cold solder joints if there are any, in any case, after 15 minutes to a 1/2 hour the sound I really liked from that board came back. I think I will leave it on 24/7, yes it will perhaps shorten the life of the board and the power supply, but I could also see where turning it off and on all the time could be hard on both units as well and then there is the sound. Also,I have lost a lot of pc and guitar gear this way , in an way turning on a unit shoots a lot of electricity at one time rather than a constant flow of electricity. In fact, recently an ADAT recorder suffered from a damaged power supply because of turning it on suddenly. Lesson learned.

Agenda
WEll, I have a lot to do musically.Gear wise, i have to restring and setup 2 guitars and restring the parker guitar. Eventually I need to order a new kahler bridge for my schecter guitar but they are pricey (about $300) ouch.Also, there is this rackmount tube amp that needs a new fan badly. Then I need to send back stuff that broke (see below). also most importantly, I need to send some of my new albums to amazon.com/createspace for them to sell online. I was able to upload an album but it was always a delicate way to do things. Many times the transfer would get interrupted and the fles would not come out correctly. So I have to end them the audio cd's to transfer.In particular, albums 121,125 and vol.127. vol.127 is completed and I tried to upload it several times and each time when i got the proof back it has blank spaces and things. so I need to send it instead. i addition, I need t edit a coupe of tracks on vol.121 and vol.125. After that i need to send them both old vol's 5 to 115 or so and new ones vol.128 and vol.129 which i am completing now. Also, I need to rearrange my studio now that i have an idea of how the mackie board works in my setup and I am still fighting with my rackmount music PC which is so noisy I drilled a hole through my wall to put it in the next room, but the cable s the cables!!! DAMN those cables!!! haha, I ordered cables , as long as I could get them and they are still to short, I mean a spdif cable is 12ft and needs to be 20-50 ft and on and on , so I need to figure that out as well. In addition, I need to put a new 500gb ide drive into my PC as 1 of the 80gb's is almost filled up. so its remove the 80 gb or remove one of the cd-r drives. Audio over the network and from ext drives is a bit too slow for me. Also, I need to incorpo9rate my tube amps into my guitar setup. I need more cables,but they cost a lot really locally, like $10 a cable ouch. Then I need to update my music website and that will take time too. In any case, besides all that I need to play a and record and promote my music as well. So, I chip away at these things a little bit each evening.


Furman power distribution unit rackmount
Then I need to send back this furman rackmount power distribution unit which has had a faulty switch. Its an illuminated switch so it s a pain. In any case, I contacted furman and they were very reluctant to work on it. They preferred to just send me the switch, but I also wanted the unit checked out because it may have been a surge that caused the switch to go out. Anyway, we will see what happens. I will contact them to get an rma number to send t back for repair. It was an expensive unit new (of course I bought it used with the bad switch...haha), so it would be worthwhile to pursue. Speaking of:

Fender Cables
I bought a bunch of fender California 1/4" instrument cables because they are cheap and have a life time warranty. Well, over the years, 1/2 of these cables went bad from wear and tear or just over time,not sure. Well, one day I want to send Fender all the bad cables I have bought; I probably have ten or twenty cables. Would they replace them under the lifetime warranty ? well, I don't know but if they would it would be worthwhile. Maybe one weekend I will gather them up and send them out.

new metallica album
my coworker lent me the new metallica CD, they are very metal for me, but I can appreciate the guitar work, this album was produced by ric rubin and I found it really aggressive and percussive,even the guitar parts (much like their old "battery" song period). Also, they seemed to mix in some acoustic bits like the black album and ride the lightning albums, but to me it falls a bit short as it is just not as musical as the ride lightning acoustic bits and is closer to the acoustic bits in the black album.Anyway, it was fun to listen too and it I think they turned out a really good Metallica album. I could absolutely hear some of the production techniques they used in the studio as far as overdubs and so on. Interesting.

My music

Ok, been listening to the music I did record this evening and in it there are two tracks I want to keep. The first was more of a guitar riff orientated instrumental and the other is my favorite rock/atmospheric instrumental. SO I will master these tonight on my pc for an album either vol.129 or vol130 depending on how they fit. Wow that second track is definitely one I want to keep.