Hope everyone is doing ok in this situation

[aron]

I am like most of you, all gigs canceled. No concerts in the near future.
What bothers me the most is that the technology to do a simple thing like play at the same time in real-time is impossible for the normal person.
LATENCY is the killer and you cannot play with someone delayed by a sixteenth or eight note. It's horrible.
Which brings me to pedals. Musicians are incredibly sensitive. We can tell if our recording is delayed by a fraction of a second. We feel it.
Same with our pedals. One capacitor can make the difference between a midrange boost and a more even EQ.
Therein lies the beauty of modding and building your own pedal. One diode string change or op amp tweak and it's like a new pedal.
Keep creative guys! We will get out of this mess at some point. I just hope it's sooner than later.
In the meantime, thanks for being on the forum!

[bean]

We've been using the NINJAM plugin (free) for Reaper (kinda free) with great success. It just works. Me in TN, one guy in Austin, one guy in Chicago and one in the UK. The only caveat is for video we use a separate device to talk to one another. But the audio through Reaper syncs great.

[bluebunny]

LATENCY is the killer and you cannot play with someone delayed by a sixteenth or eight note. It's horrible.

It's syncopation!   

Kidding... 

In the meantime, thanks for being on the forum!

Thank you, Aron, for providing such a neat place to hang out!  BTW, is it my imagination, or do we have lots more new members in these past few weeks?  I guess people have more time on their hands and are (re-)igniting new/old hobbies.  Perhaps we need a "Welcome" button, next to the "Like" button?   

[aron]

Bean, but Ninjam is always playing with the previous iteration right?

[aron]

Thanks Marc!

[patrick398]

BTW, is it my imagination, or do we have lots more new members in these past few weeks?  I guess people have more time on their hands and are (re-)igniting new/old hobbies.  Perhaps we need a "Welcome" button, next to the "Like" button?   

I've definitely noticed that too

[antonis]

Just duplicate Marc's post..

WE thank YOU Aron..!!

[Ben N]

Hey, Aron, thanks for asking. Doing fine here in Israel -- except that my last couple of parts orders are stuck in the US, with no horizon on when I can get them. So my desk  is the land of the 3/4 populated board. But this is all the small stuff. Thank God the family is ok, and we're hanging on. As for latency -- I experience that with getting up in the morning. I'll be happy when I get a chance to play with anyone again in the flesh.

[EBK]

I'm not doing ok here, but I have learned that is is ok to not be doing ok when the world is on fire.  Trying to be ok all of the time can be exhausting. 

There is a pre-guitar-solo line in Red House by Hendrix that makes me smile a bit right now though:

That's alright.  I still got my guitar.  Look out now.

[italianguy63]

Doing great here... nothing going on... just working on projects around the house.  Don't remember what day it is, nor when was the last time I shaved. 

Otherwise, no issues.. eating well.  Wife is working from home.  I didn't work anyway, so life is pretty normal (other than boring).

Best wishes to all.

MC

[Digital Larry]

I'm hanging in, with occasional bumps.  My wife is retired (again) and I've worked mostly remotely for about 5 years anyway.  As I say frequently I don't build things very much but I've gotten into messing with a new DSP board, and sharpening my Faust skills, and learning about RTOS.  Biggest issue is that the kids aren't adjusting to "distance learning" so well and even though they are connected online to most of their friends, I'm sure that not going to school is having a negative impact on them socially.

I gave myself a buzz cut, growing a beard, eating more, exercising more (eating is winning though).

I too appreciate this place a lot, been hanging here for something like 8 years now (just checked - 10 actually), and I built... uhhh... 3 or 4 pedals in that whole time!  I hope everyone stays safe.

DL

[Mark Hammer]

Probably a good time to take out that Ted Greene book and finally learn all those "weird" chords.

I took a few minutes to sort through a "hell drawer" of caps that had been pulled from things or were simply lying around on the bench and I had swept them into a drawer for a quick benchtop cleanup, without sorting them.  And in that batch of unsorted were some big old ceramic discs that made me smile.  Probably from a 40 year-old grab-bag of caps from Radio Shack or else a visit to a surplus shop that doesn't exist anymore.  Ah, the good old days!

[Phend]

Doing well here in the woods of Vermont, got the sap buckets in. Everyone's bench should have a small drawer for "Dead Flys". Got that idea from the electronics lab at work where someone with a good sense of humor found a bunch of dead flys on the window sill and put them in an empty drawer and labeled it. Being new at this site, being kind of new at building my own effects and asking questions, you are putting up with my "none standard" boxes and board less circuit(s). Anyway, thanks to all and especially Aron. Be smart and avoid the "bug" unless you find them dead on a window sill, put em in a drawer, guaranteed chuckle.

[garcho]

Thanks for keeping the forum up Aron, building stuff is the only thing not breaking my heart and soul right now. Everything I do is gone. Gigs, tours, sessions, grants, lessons, festivals, repairs, studio gear, events...

I'm trying to keep my head up. Maybe the legion of crappy bars pretending to be venues, making money off of mediocre bands and their friends buying drugs, oops, I mean alcohol, will belly up out of here. Maybe the multitude of uninspired, unremarkable bands that fill those pseudo venues every night of the week will go back to the garage and go back to having fun, instead of being depressed by the impossibility of their rock 'n' roll aspirations, as they play too loud for no one at a bar they would never hang out at otherwise. Maybe we'll even go back to having actual folk music, you know, playing at home for yourself and family and friends and neighbors like we used for a million years. Maybe we'll start singing together again, like we used to for a million years. Ever sing with your friends? It's wonderful.
Maybe the days of 10,000 20 year olds puking in music festival BFIs will be over, maybe music festivals will be over, they're lousy with fluff and filler anyway. Maybe we'll make festivals about having fun, and they'll just happen to have music, instead of have corporate music festivals that are only about making a few Top 40 headliners money.
Maybe Behringer will go out of business. Maybe the DIY guitar pedal scene will go back to being about making stuff, instead of selling stuff. Maybe Guitar Center will go back to being a special place, instead of a place that reeks with the carrion of dead dreams, a rotten music "industry", and exploited international labor market. And Behringer.
Maybe the trust fund kids flooding the market with studios, labels, boutique guitar pedals, and modular synths will run out of patience and go back to yachts and sports cars instead of pretending to be interested in Buchlas and Neumanns. Maybe this will "thin the herd", maybe talented people will be in demand again.
Then again, maybe the only thing left standing after all this will be Drake, Coachella, and dentists with guitar collections. And Behringer.

[vigilante397]

I'm doing great. I'm lucky enough to be able to work from home, which means more time with my kids. Plus the weather is starting to warm up, we're planning a trip to the lake for some social distancing with jetskis I've also used my extra free time to get back into SolidWorks and 3D printing, it's nice to be able to do custom mechanical designs for my custom electronic designs.

And to echo everyone else, thanks for keeping the forum up and giving us all a place to spend our time!

[bluebunny]

I'm not doing ok here

Anything we can do, Eric?  (PM if you want!)  Perhaps it's time some of us adopted some of this new-fangled tech the younglings use and do web chatz an' sh!t?  (Need a "young-dude" emoji.  Or an "old-dude-pretending-desperately-to-be-a-young-dude" emoji... )

[bluebunny]

we're planning a trip to the lake for some social distancing

Nice idea.  Doesn't work here.  We're not allowed to drive to do social distancing.  Gotta stay local.^*   

___
^* Other than bona fide commuting.  But you gotta be able to convince the feds, or they send you home...

[vigilante397]

Nice idea.  Doesn't work here.  We're not allowed to drive to do social distancing.  Gotta stay local.^*   

___
^* Other than bona fide commuting.  But you gotta be able to convince the feds, or they send you home...

They aren't very strictly enforcing no traveling here (California), but I work for the federal government so if I want to go more than 75 miles away from town I need permission from my boss's boss's boss, and they don't give it freely.

Also our town is in the middle of nowhere, so 75 miles doesn't even get me anywhere besides lakes or mountains

[garcho]

75 miles doesn't even get me anywhere besides lakes or mountains

lovely

[cloudscapes]

I cought C19 (presumed case, untested, because at the time I spoke to some professionals, they couldn't spare the tests) early-mid march, which wasn't fun. It was actually pretty brutal. Self-quarantine isn't fun either but necessary especially because I live in a pretty dense city.

Much better now, major symptoms mostly gone, aside from some lingering effects on my lungs, sense of taste/smell, some other small stuff. Have been working from home for a bit. Pretty crazy that my workplace managed to transition ~4000 employees to remote desktop/citrix in just a couple weeks!

Personal project-wise, have been working on making a modular lunetta synth!