There seems to have been a surprising plot twist in my battle with ASIO drivers. It turns out that the ASIO drivers for the Echo products are VASTLY INFERIOR IN EVERY WAY IMAGINABLE to the WDM drivers. Nobody seems to like to talk about this fact much because the Mia manual doesn't mention it, Cubase doesn't offer up that information, and the net is all about the ASIO. With the ASIO drivers I could get the latency down low-ish, but there would be nasty erratic behavior. Last night while reading an old Sound on Sound article on latency, I found this suspicious closing remark:

In my follow-up to this feature I'm hoping to include some more feedback from manufacturers, and I'll also be looking more closely at the situation for musicians using Windows XP, since many are now moving across with the promise of lower latencies using WDM-format drivers inside Sonar and the release of the Windows 2000/XP-only Cubase SX.

What? Hello? WDM drivers? Lower latencies? Everyone everywhere forever has told me that ASIO drivers are what I should be insanely pursuing. I've actually been sitting around being pissed off that the WDM drivers work perfect but that the ASIO drivers are crappy and bad when those are the ones that I want because I have been told ASIO is utterly superior to everything. The Mia manual even specifically says you should use ASIO in Cubase and Reason.

But no. That is a lie. I switch to WDM and I can crank the buffers way down to 128 samples. 2ms latency. Everything is fantastic except that I feel kind of retarded.

So I'm going to give the Mia some more time, it seems. If it keeps making me feel dumb, I may return it just to keep what's left of my self esteem.

So I installed this new Echo Mia card and am of course having a really rough time with it. The ASIO drivers work more reliably for it than with the Darla24, but there's still a lot of erratic clicking and popping here and there. Using the virtual outputs to record from Reason to Sound Forge will cause a whole bunch of clicking and then usually it will crash the whole system.

The sound quality is a bit better than the Darla24, but I don't think it's $350 better. I was never that unhappy with the Darla's sound quality, just the stability when trying to push it to the limit with VSTis and also the lack of multi-channel support.

So unless something miraculous happens, I will probably be returning the Mia. I may try out a Delta 44 for the stupid hell of it. Failing that, I will quit music and become a clown.

I have purchased an Echo Mia. Now for the installation and then the aggravation and the frustration and the crying and the so on. If you haven't heard from me in a day, go on without me.

I officially concede defeat in my battle of mythic proportions against ASIO drivers. All I wanted is to shave a healthy 20ms latency off my VSTi usage and not have my audio be a world of random crashing and clicking -- is that really so much to ask? The answer, I now know, is totally yes definitely that was way too much to ask, Brad you ass. I wrote a nice email to Echo Audio support over a week ago and they haven't replied. Yet, I must note bitterly, their sales team is super quick when it comes to responding to my questions about where I might buy a Mia.

I'd even be happy if tech support would just write and say "Sorry, your card is a few years old and will always work like ass. Honestly, you got kind of hosed there. You win some you lose some. Please buy this new one from us and it will be fine." I would respect that and I'd do what they said. Because I am their monkey bitch puppet.

But no, nothing. Silence. Possibly, if you listen the right way, mocking silence; which I'm sure you'll agree is totally way worse.

Given his money and fame, I think I could be way more insane than Michael Jackson. I could crazy that sucker under the table.

Note to self: Winamp v2.81 hates my sound card drivers and wants it to die.

I have reinstalled Windows XP three times in the past 24 hours. You may think that's a pretty awesome thing to do, but trust me, it's not. Seriously kids: if you're thinking about reinstalling Windows XP three times inside 24 hours, maybe you should just go do some relaxing drugs instead. I've heard good things about them. I bought a new hard drive some weeks ago and wanted to use it as my main drive. Also, my Windows XP install has been falling apart and the new drivers for my sound card make it go crashy-crash. I do not know how this will turn out but I do know that it will be in darkness.

Somehow Monster Trucks managed to be really lame. What is up with that? Besides being kind of funny in its lameness at a couple of points and adhering to various Monster Truck cliches that I've seen on TV, it really had nothing going on despite its best efforts. I also felt bad for the announcer fellow who was trying his very best to rally the crowd into going absolutely nuts for nothing interesting. "Some pretty average looking vehicles are going to drive around the track! WE WANNA HEAR YOUR CHEERS!" Dude, like, no.

I am going to see monster trucks tonight for some reason.

Against all odds, there are now Brad Sucks forums. If you've got questions about audio hardware choices or music production, please post them there and I'll do my best to answer them as time permits. Even though I'm hilariously underqualified, I get a lot of email about that stuff and I have a hard time separating it from the rest of the cesspool that is my mailbox.

The horrible restrictions of physical reality are all that stand between myself and my impulse purchase of an Echo Mia card. I called my local music retailer yesterday and they said they're out of stock and won't get any for two weeks. I looked around for other stores and there seem to be none that stock queer pro audio cards. If I wanted a grand piano I could have it by now.

I looked on the net to see where I could mail order one from. Musician's Friend and Zzounds only ship to the United States, leaving my Canadian ass out in the cold.

I wish all this awful globalism stuff would speed up so I could buy shiny things faster.

After struggling with installing the new drivers for my Echo Darla24, I find myself once again revisiting my desire for a better semi-pro audio card. The money I got for my sampler is burning a hole in my pocket and if I'm not careful it could get spent on something stupid like bills or clothes or food or weapons of mass destruction. My options for a no-extra inputs or outputs card right now seem to be the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 and the Echo Mia.

The one thing that I've wanted for a while besides lower latency in Cubase and overall better performance is the ability to record from one software program to another. So I could load up Reason, hit record in Cubase and go to town. You can hook those two applications up with Rewire, but I find that a bit of an annoying hassle when I'm just messing around with stuff.

The two cards seem to be about the same price, but the Echo Mia offers "eight virtual outputs" which according to reviews I've read will let me record one audio application with another.

The down side is that Echo scares me. The Darla24, while a great sounding card, has had a tendency to be extremely moody depending on the latest drivers and my system configuration at any given time. I would probably pay more money to not have to deal with that crap.

The Audiophile however has similar complaints against it and then there's that whole Devil you know argument and so on.

I'm not sure which decision I'll make, but I'm pretty sure it will be impulsive.

The book is in the hiz-ouse. Looking very forward to reading it and harnessing the power of Cubase to promote further rocking.

In case any of you nice people out there are cataloging my retarded injuries, here's a much needed update: I had a swollen, painful toe. I thought it was an ingrown toenail. Everyone told me to go to a doctor so he could butcher it and fix it. I went to the doctor this morning. It's not an ingrown toenail, it's frostbite! How dumb is that? That'll have to go in my Behind the Music episode. "In 2003 Brad was sidelined while struggling with mild tendinitis of the right arm, frostbite of the big toe and his braces kind of hurt his mouth a little bit too, like he got all these little annoying cuts from the brackets and damn it sucked. But things were about to take a turn for the worse..."

Over the weekend I picked up a couple of things. One was this super wicked awesome bright yellow Mahalo soprana ukulele:

Which kicks ass and was only $26. Then I got a carpal tunnel wrist brace to maybe help ease some of the constant throbbing arm pain I've been experiencing lately:

It was $34. More expensive than the ukulele and way less fun so far. It's also a gross beige colour. I could definitely go for a way more awesome looking one that possibly shoots lasers or something out of it to smite the people who will inevitably call me a wuss for wearing it.

I got an email yesterday asking me if I wanted to participate in a compilation called "Il Programma Di Religione" at boyarm.com. The compilation is 265 songs about Popes that are less than or equal to (<=) 15 seconds in length. It seemed like an interesting challenge; I've never tried to write a 15 second song before. I asked if I was going to be assigned a Pope or if I choose a Pope or what the deal was with the Pope selection. I was told that I just submit some music and they name it after a Pope and that most of the songs don't have lyrics.

Because I am a total jerk to myself, I immediately decided I wanted to make something with lyrics, that would apply to almost any Pope and, as another added challenge: be kind of sad and reflective.

You can check out my 15 second Pope Song right here baby. I recommend looping it until it gets on your nerves. It goes by pretty quick.

It was really difficult trying to cram everything I wanted in to 15 seconds and I wound up chopping the original ending off and cranking the speed up by about 30bpm in the end. But oh well. I'm not sure when the compilation will come out, but dammit there'll be some Brad Sucks on it when it does.

Pope Song This is the Brad Sucks submission to the Il Programma Di Religione compilation at boyarm.com. The submissions had to be about a pope or popes in general and be no greater than 15 seconds in length.

So yesterday kicked ass. I'm like totally going to get a huge rock star ego now and OD or at least auto-erotically asphyxiate myself. You know... eventually. Down the line, I mean. Thanks to everyone who signed up for the notification list. You won't get a confirmation email back because I don't even have mailing list software installed or anything, so just assume everything worked fine.

More news in a moment.

Hello kabillions of visitors from Penny Arcade! Welcome to my humble little music site. The songs are on the right sidebar and if you want to be notified when I get off my lazy ass and make more, you can sign up for that notification list over there. You won't get any spam or anything retarded like that, just a simple email when there's a new song online. Thanks to everyone who has sent me kind feedback so far. You rule ass!

My sampler auction closed last night at $275 US, which works out to about $422 Canadian. That's pretty awesome. There was an all-out bidding war and everything, it was great. I'm trying to think of other things I could auction off just because it was so much fun. Anyhow, now I must ship this thing and then think about what gear I'm going to blow all that sweet, sweet money on.