Turns out my first choice of cheap replacement mixer, the Behringer Eurorack MX1604A for $220, has been discontinued.

I was told the new equivalent unit is the Behringer UB1204-PRO for $264.

I'm not sure what the hell the 12 in UB1204 is supposed to stand for because while I'm no mathematician, I only see eight inputs on there. Unless you're being retarded and counting the XLR inputs as an additional 4 inputs, which as I mentioned in the beginning of this sentence would be retarded. But the channel numbers on the board only go up to 8 so I don't even know if I buy that explanation. Dumb.

It also only has two stereo pair inputs which is right on the line of adequacy for me. I'd happily give up two of those preamp mono ins for one more stereo pair.

Just buy a mixer with more inputs, you might say to me. Okay no problem, but the next model up is the Eurorack UB1622FX-PRO which while having two extra stereo inputs and channel inserts also has all this effects crap I don't want on my mixer at all.

Getting back to complaining about the UB1204 -- the assumption seems to be that I, Brad extreme budget musician, am going to be doing a whole hell of a lot of microphone work -- up to four at once even. I've never used more than one microphone at a time and I don't see it happening any time soon. I'm not all that different from your average cheap-ass geek musician. Less micing is going on and way, way more DI. Why aren't mixing boards reflecting this?

The other annoying aspect is this all-in-one preamp and mixer business. Honestly after having my Mackie die I'd like a less expensive mixer that has all the same features (clean signal, ALT-3-4, mute buttons, simple EQ) but didn't bother with preamps. It seems like it would cut the price down considerably and you could go off and blow your money on a nice preamp. And when one of the two died you could save a bit of money just replacing that part. But there doesn't seem to be any option for that either.

So it looks like unless some better option turns up I'll probably grudgingly (and desperately) pick one of these UB1204's up on the weekend and hope I can live with the input situation.

The right channel on my mixing board has been wacky for a couple of months now. Whenever I turned it off for a while and then turned it back on, the right channel wouldn't work. After leaving it on for a while and playing at loud volumes it would eventually come back. I decided to never turn my mixing board off again.

This worked well until yesterday when the power company replaced three hydro poles outside. The power went off for an hour and a half and since it came back my mixing board has been much worse than before, cutting out randomly no matter what I do. That is what we call lame.

It would probably cost about $150 Canadian to get it repaired and I'd have to ship it to Montreal and the knobs are all wearing out too and bleah, and it would cost $500+ for a new one. Or I could go with one of these small Behringer Eurorack things (or any one of the other models, I'm not sure which ones right for me).

Or I don't know what. I feel I am at a crossroads. A very stupid crossroads.

Dirt BagGenre: Rock/Hip Hop Length: 3:45 Date: 04/09/2003 Album: Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing

Here's another one of my diddly damn songs. I'm not really sure how this one turned out, but online it goes regardless of quality control. I was very pleased with myself up until about about the eight millionth listen. I hope you enjoy it.

Holy Jesus hell, I finally put together an Extras section for miscellaneous Brad Sucks items. I apparently only had two things to throw in there, but at least it's done and when all y'all send in your drawings, graffiti photos and garage remixes I'll have a place to put them. I also finally updated the little faq thing with information about the gear I use, which seems to be of interest to some people.

Apparently the auditions went well and the video is going to be shot on April 18th. I am a curious little kitten re: how it will turn out.

Apparently auditions for an Overreacting video are happening this weekend, which is a neat and exciting thing to think about. I'm really interested to see what comes of it.

Brad Sucks seems to be the pick of the day on www.coolstop.com for some reason. That's pretty cool. Thanks to everybody who has linked to me, by the way. It makes me feel all nice in my soul.

I got my braces off yesterday. Holy cow. If you want to enjoy your mouth, try sticking some metal and wire in there for a year and a half and then just take it out. More Brad dentistry news as it happens.

I had been noticing lately that my acoustic guitar is hard to play. It's the only one I play so I don't really know. I'm also left handed so I don't really try out other people's guitars at all. I got what I got and I try to make the most of it. What with my arm being destroyed I started wondering if maybe I should investigate having mine adjusted. I took it to a local guitar store and was told that the neck was warped and the action is horrible, the strings are way off the neck. This probably got worse gradually so I didn't notice it.

He dropped the strings down and adjusted the neck for $40 (including new strings) and I got the guitar back inside one day. It's amazingly easier to play now. I'm not really much of a guitar geek so this is all surprising and bewildering to me. Very, very happy with it.

Fixing My BrainGenre: Ballad Time: 4:14 Date: 03/25/2003 Album: Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing

This is some song I did. It's kind of different than most of my other stuff, I think. I paid a lot of attention to the mix and then encoded it at 128k which makes it sound extra assy. Maybe I'll think of something interesting to say about it one day, but not to-day.

CafePress.com has launched its CD service. This is definitely very interesting seeing as though I've already used CafePress a bunch for Stripcreator merchandise. Very neat stuff, this future of ours.

I've been playing around with XML RSS aggregators once again and changed the feed here on bradsucks.net to contain the entire entries instead of just a little excerpt. So if you've got a decent aggregator, you never have to visit this site again. Hooray for the Internet!

With the theory that it will make my final mixes better and easier, I've been trying to put more of an effort in to pay close attention to the sound quality of my recordings. As I recorded vocals for a song yesterday I experimented with my two microphones. I posted a question about this to the home recording BBS:

I own both of these microphones. I bought them when I knew absolutely nothing about recording (I know only slightly more now). I'm running them both through my Mackie 1202 VLZ and am monitoring on Event 20/20bas monitors.

When I record my voice using them, I swear I prefer the sound of my cheap Shure SM48 over the vastly more expensive and critically acclaimed MXL V67.

The V67 sounds a bit fuller but at the same time kind of muddier and it's harder getting it to sit in a mix properly.

Is this possible or am I just crazy? Maybe my voice is naturally muddy or something.

I received a lot of helpful replies which you can read over there if you're so inclined.

While trying to get my retarded arm working again, I decided to blow some money on books. Ordered them last week and received them late last week. Here they is: Set Your Voice Free by Roger Love

The Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski

Behind the Glass: Top Record Producers Tell How They Craft the Hits by Howard Massey

Basic Mixing Techniques by Paul White

So far I've mostly read the Mixing Engineer's Handbook and Behind the Glass and they're both very interesting. Behind the Glass is all interviews and the Handbook is about 70% interviews. It can definitely get annoying to read so many engineers and producers contradict each other. One interview will be all "You gotta use tons of compression, man. If you don't, your records are shit and I stake my entire illustrious career and in fact my very life on it!" and the next one will denounce compression as the downfall of Western civilization. Which I might be OK with. It's all horribly subjective is what I'm saying.

Maybe I'll write reviews of them later. I meant to review Cubase SX Power! but I plum forgot about it.

On Friday they shot my arm up with cortisone. My arm freaked out and went all batty for most of Friday, then after that it was just sore. Now I'm pretty much back to where I was before the shot except that my hand cramps up a little easily and my elbow is all bruised where they stuck the needle in. The needle really wasn't anything extra scary or anything, much to the dismay of my enemies. Pretty much your average injection.

My doctor told me to get in touch if the arm still hurt in two weeks.

Due to my mental retardation, the cortisone shot is postponed until this Friday. Ah yes, the needles, how I love to anticipate them...

X-ray results came back today and showed nothing of interest apparently. The doctor has prescribed a lovely injection of cortisone into my stupid arm at 9:10am EST on this coming Friday. Stay tuned for the hopeful conclusion to this really wussy and pointless injury that buy's me no tough guy cred whatsoever with anyone ever.

My last sound card related entry in this journal ended on a hopeful note. That was a lie sent to me by God to destroy my mind and soul. In the end it turned out that 12ms was the latency I could use without it clicking, which was about what I was getting on my Darla24 with WDM drivers. So then I decided to try the SPDIF from my Boss GT-6 to the Mia, hoping that digital audio would provide more awesome clarity and thereby justify keeping the Mia. Sure, about the same latency, same driver issues, but hey, SPDIF. I hooked it all up and not only was the sound quality not really significantly better in my opinion, but there were tiny little clicks recorded with the audio.

I had had just about enough clicking. I tried to isolate the problem, failed, decided to be done with all of this bullshit and return it. On Saturday I returned the card and found out I could only get store credit, which is something I had suspected. So I ask them to recommend me another card to try out and they suggest the Audiophile 2496. It was $50 cheaper, so I took a chance on it.

I brought it home, installed it. First of all, I noticed no real significant sound quality difference other than that the inputs seem much louder than the Darla's. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or what.

The ASIO drivers that come with it actually work, which is kind of cool. The on card MIDI port is emulated, which is something Cubase SX tells me is bad and wrong.

When Cubase loses sync on the Darla24, there's usually an audio dropout (click and silence) while it gets its bearings. On the Audiophile there's a harsh, very loud buzzing noise during this drop-out period. That is stupid and annoying.

So my hopefully final decision is to return the Audiophile and be happy with what I have until the next generation of cards that promise things like stability and general awesomeness come out.

In the end, I don't know how much of this is my fault and how much is the card's fault. My system is a pretty standard setup with not too much strangeness, but other people claim to be running happily with these cards. I also may be demanding a bit more than the average user, but there doesn't seem to be any higher-end option that isn't just the same thing but with more outputs and breakout boxes tacked on.

But whatever. I'm done with all this crap and am now trying to figure out what else to blow my $300 music store credit on.

They don't have the results from my elbow x-ray yet. I don't think I'm at the stage in my career where they're worth stealing yet, so hopefully they'll turn up on Monday. Working on various songs. Yadda yadda. Harder with a bad arm, etc, etc.

I went to the doctor today about my gimp arm. Then I went to the hospital and had my elbow x-rayed. In two days I should have the results. Then maybe one day I'll be able to play guitar again. Mmm.