Ken Wilber’s latest thoughts

He comments on the events of 9/11 + as always puts everything brilliantly in perspective. I ended up printing out his writings on paper as I still do not enjoy reading more than a few pages on a laptop or other screen. I also gladly admit that I had to read many passages more than once to understand them but when I was able to swallow the content it seemed to re-align my mental spine beautifully.

Egyptanos

I found out that the reason that the Romany, or Gitanos as they are called in Spain are called Gypsies is that people used to believe they originated in Egypt. I had no idea.

ProTools HD

The big recording studios must love this!

Digidesign has released their 24 bit/192,000 hz sampling rate recording system!

For your information, the Compact Disc delivers sound with only 16 bits and a 44100hz sampling rate.

For a few years home studios and little project studios have enjoyed the same sound that is available in a big professional recording studio. Of course most home studios don’t have a perfect room to record in and may not have the abundance of different microphones and selection of pre-amps a big studio has, but the event of ProTools 24/48 and similar digital recording devices have made it easier to record beautiful music than ever before.
Before this democratization of sound, recording quality simply equaled money – and lots of it. Ten years ago one needed at least a good 24 track 2 inch analog recorder ($15,000 – $45,000), a good analog mixing console (from $30,000 for a cheap console to $1,000,000 for an SSL with recall) and of course a person with the knowledge to take care of such complex mechanical devices. The analog recorder had to be tweaked, adjusted and cleaned all the time. And these machines were all huge and took up a lot of space. And when it came down to mixing money was helpful as well. A Lexington 448XL used to cost around $20,000 and, depending on the model delivered only one gorgeous stereo reverb. Accordingly only producers with the financial means were able to afford 5 or 6 of these devices to give different instruments or voices their own reverberation – which makes for greater clarity (listen to old Bryan Ferry CDs for that beautiful sound mixed by the great Bob Clearmountain).
What has happened over the last five years is that the digital revolution has made it easy and cheap to record music of great quality.
Now one can buy TC Megaverb software for under $1,000 which will deliver many more channels of beautiful reverberation than even a $30,000 machine delivered 20 years ago.
These days one can buy 24 bit/ 48Khz recorders which record at better than CD quality for a small fraction of the cost of analog machinery and they also take up very little space!!!

And now Digidesign delivers sound recorded at 24 bit/192,000 hz. That means not just double the information of 24/48 but quadruple. Which means that instead of tracks for an album taking up say 10 Gigabyte, one will need 40 Gigabyte. Which means that backing up one’s files will take many hours of one’s time, or one has to hire an assistant who does the backing up or one has to invest into a big Raid system, maybe one with robotic tape loaders so that the system can back itself up constantly. And then one has to take that undoubtably beautiful 24 bit/192k sound and squeeze it into 16 bit/44.1k so it can fit on a CD!

I remember getting personal loans from banks in the eighties to cover studio costs because recording at home was simply not an option then……and I also have a 24 track analog recorder and mixing console in my studio that I can’t seem to sell because EVERYONE including myself has gone digital…..

Hawaii + Picasso

I haven’t written in this diary for a while.
I spent the holidays in Hawaii. If you ever go to Kona on the Big Island, check out the Keei Cafe. Unassuming exterior + interior and great food!
I worked a lot in the studio, finishing up a couple of releases for 2002.
And I was wondering whether I should stop writing in this diary altogether.
Maybe I should let the music stand by itself without any of my comments on this or that subject. After all it’s the music that is most important to me and words, even in this this hidden place could serve to distract…..
Then I thought about that some more and decided that you, dear reader, are mature enough to seperate my music from my ramblings. After all we enjoy Picasso’s work without wondering about his social interactions.
With that in mind I aim to continue writing here…..