Impulse purchases have always been a bit of a weak spot of mine. While I like to think that before making any remotely big-ticket purchase, I do gobs of research, this is not always the case, at least when it comes to used gear.

Case in point: in my setup, I now have the following, all used:

• Mackie MS1402-VLZ 14 channel mixer (cost: $200)
• Yamaha FB-01 FM Tone Generator (cost: $10)
• Korg M1R workstation (cost: $80)

As for the mixer, I know I overpaid. The unit was already almost 10 years old (eBay), and I could have gotten at least a VLZ Pro (the second edition of this model) for possibly cheaper, and for $100 more I could have gotten a VLZ3 (the current and third edition). But oh well; I needed a mixer, badly.

The FB-01 was a steal by any standard. And even if it really wasn’t, it was still only $10. The cables to hook this goddamned thing up cost more than that. I actually like having this unit in my setup, even though sonically it still isn’t exactly a DX7. I picked this unit up from a guy on the East Side. Go craigslist. (at least its harmonium sound is pretty good, along with some cheesy 80s organs, whistles, and other weird patches…editing patches, however, requires one to hook it up to an amiga [the only machine for which I have a patch editor]).

Now the Korg M1R is a gem of mine. I bought this baby a few days ago at South County Music Exchange completely out of impulse. I was browsing the store after lunch with a friend, saw it on the shelf, hopped in the car and drove like hell to the bank to get the requisite cash, and came back to purchase it. It turns out (I hadn’t even realised this) that the parameter down button was missing (just the plastic keycap…the actual switch was still there) and the value pot was loose as all hell. I bought it anyway. When I got it home and turned it on, it also turns out that the cr2032 backup button cell in it was dead. I opened it up, tightened the pot, found the button cap just floating around under the front panel (I re-affixed it with some scotch tape for now), and put in a new CR2032 battery, and it works great. I had to reload the factory presets from a sysex file (including the ever-famous Universe patch), and I also am looking to get some cards for it. But I love this unit. I just wish I could find the M1R-EX upgrade (4Mb more multisounds, yay). Needless to say, my buyer’s remorse has completely subsided (and I remember how bad I felt after getting back in the car after purchasing it). Turns out this was quite a deal, seeing how these units sometimes fetch $200-$350 on eBay.

The big thing about the M1, however, are the sounds it has that are quite famous. Take the slap-bass from the Seinfeld theme song and bumpers. Guess what that is? Patch I46 – SlapBass. Not to mention I08 – Pan Flute being used in countless records. Or the near-perfect rendition I made of the ATC – Around the World riff using I15 – Vibes and the onboard sequencer.

So that’s it for the gear. I’m waiting for a lot of 8 15′ TRS cables to come in (I got a steal on them, $30 off ebay) along with a 2×8 MIDI merger box. Now I need a 76+ key MIDI controller. Eh heh heh.

Dan out.

Ok, so my birf-day is coming up at the end of the month, and I’ve decided that it’s time to replace my ailing 256MB Memorex metro flash MP3 player. Not being one to jump on the iPod bandwagon (because the iPod is clearly inferior to almost any other HDD-based player out there), I looked around a bit and have settled on the Cowon iAudio X5L 30GB player, which is currently going for $290 on NewEgg.

Of course, I do have good reason to have settled on this. Matt has the 20GB X5L and he loves it (he let me try it out for a day and I have reached the same conclusion). A couple members of my family have the iPod, and after using both, I can safely say that the iPod sucks dehydrated goat balls.

For me, the feature that had the most appeal at first (and quite frankly, is somewhat of a requirement for me) was the ability to play not only MP3s, but also Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files. I use Ogg heavily, and recently have taken to ripping all CDs to FLAC, so this is very nice. Also, the X5 has much much better sound quality than the iPod, which seems to very noticibly distort even before one reaches the halfway mark on the volume scale. (if you’re using something like the Griffin iTrip, this distortion is even more noticible).

Some say they dislike the X5′s interface. I find this to be the exact opposite. One thing I love about my Memorex is that fact that it uses a joystick. This is of immediate benefit to me because if you know how everything is laid out, you can navigate without looking at the screen (which is very useful when changing tracks when listening during class =]). This is near-impossible with the clickwheel of the iPod. Also, people say they dislike the fact that the X5 doesn’t use an ID3 database. I find this to be a very good thing, because you have to ability to lay out your music exactly how you like it. For me, I have a very organised collection, with all files having uniform naming conventions (Artist – Album – T# Title.ext), so writing a script to parse these names and generate a directory structure was trivial (I already did it in perl, and I don’t even own the bloody device yet!). The script will generate a tree that looks like {First letter of artist}/{Artist}/{Album}/{Tr#} {title}.{ext}. If you want it, let me know.

Not to mention that the X5 requires nothing of the host computer except USB mass storage (which on FreeBSD is handled by umass(4)) and FAT32 support, while the iPod and friends need some proprietary bullshit to generate the directory structure and ID3 databases (ever tried using gtkpod if you use Unix? Now there’s an exercise in masochism). I have already tried Matt’s X5 under FreeBSD and it works flawlessly.

Also good to note is that the X5 has an FM radio, while the iPod does not; a voice recorder, while the iPod does not; the ability to record an external source to disk using the line-in port, while the iPod does not; and absolutely fucking amazing battery life (the X5L, which has an advertised battery life of 35 hours, has been reported to survive 2 weeks without charging under normal use). I will admit that the X5 is somewhat lacking in the video and photo department (though the USB OTG feature is really cool if you’re going on a trip and need to copy stuff), I am primarily purchasing an audio player….if I want to watch videos I’ll use a television (and I can always use my Tungsten if I need to).

The X5 also sports cool features like a dynamic playlist, a nifty text file viewer, the ability to display lyrics (though it needs a windows application, LDB editor, but I’m sure it works fine under qemu if I really want it), and the ability to set an image as the background for the Now Playing screen. I’ll admit, the iPod’s album cover thing is cool, but this is nothing compared to all the other areas that the X5 just blows it away. And if I want to be trendy, I’ll steal procure a pair of iPod ear buds (which sound like complete and utter shit anyway) to use with this player. (I was looking at the Shure E2c in-ear buds, which have very good quality and isolation, but I’m probably going to get something else, since 1) they are $60, 2) they are a tad difficult to put in properly [a problem for me, where I need to take them out and put them at will if I'm at school], and 3) completely isolate you from the world around you [this can be a good thing, but for me it is very bad because I will have no idea if a teacher is trying to talk to me :)]).

So there you have it. I’m bored as hell and have a week of this ahead of me.

Dan out.

You heard me. I’m planning on purchasing that synth. When I get the money, that is.

It does a lot. Some on the synth groups on USENET claim that it isn’t good and hard to use. I think that they are full of shit. I tried it at Guitar Centre a few weeks ago and was very impressed. Editing is a breeze. Of course, an MS2000 would be nicer, but I don’t have that money. And it isn’t as portable.