Studio Upgrade Nightmare

Tomorrow, I should have all the elements of my new studio in my possession. I should be excited, but I feel more like dread. I’ve already received a few pieces, and it’s always something.

First and foremost, I plunked down a very pretty penny buying these nifty in-ear headphones to give good quality playback to equal that of a good pair of closed over ear headphones. At nearly four times the cost, I justified it in my mind because when I wear over the ear phones, my TMJ begins to pain me.

Guess what? My TMJ is killing me anyway!

It all started when I read a very convincing article on being more productive  http://www.voiceoverxtra.com/article.htm?id=0jy4hlov and decided to take the plunge and upgade so I could punch and record on the fly. And with a PC, that seems to mean Pro Tools.

I had a sort of instinctive dread about using Pro Tools, seemingly baseless. I do like my Sony Sound Forge for ease of editing, but here was this vague resistance to the idea of Pro Tools. I squashed it, consulted with my honey and my sister and made the plunge. I bought an Mbox audio interface that came bundled with a Pro Tools, a new condenser microphone which will hopefully lessen my sound floor ( Mbox won’t work with my USB mic I already have. I’m betting it’s responsible for a lot of the hum I’ve been getting anyway) an XLR cable to connect the two, revered for it’s  oxygen-free copper construction meant to cancel out noise and interference, a portable hard drive to record to, as recommended by Pro Tools and various other resources, an HDMI cable to connect an external monitor (I have no idea how that will work) and my fancy-dancy headphones; all purchased late one night after a few days of researching on the internet.

That night I woke up in a panic because I realized I forgot about the fact that I need an external keyboard, all so I can place my laptop outside my studio (again, to keep the noise down) (and I may just do some quick research about using a gaming keyboard with programmable keys…) which was close followed by the thought of needing a hub to plug in all this shit.This was before I realized that Pro Tools requires me to plug up a USB port with a special dongle that gives me license to use Pro Tools.

No sooner did I unbox my Mbox did I realize I need a longer USB cable. Either that, or we need to poke a hole in the wall. That might not be a bad idea…What am I saying!?!?!?

My brain might be a little fried because of all the hoops I had to jump through to get Pro Tools to install. I wasted a day thinking that I had not received the activation code. I tore the box apart looking for it, I searched the cracks of my couch just in case it made a miraculous leap into there, I went through all the paper and bits and pieces and styrofoam and packing materials and was convinced I didn’t have it. So today a brilliant tech person calls me on the phone and helps me realize that yes, in fact I did have it all along. They had stuck it on a covert flap, a black card with a beautiful company logo stuck to a black background. If it was a snake, it would have bit me.

But okay, I very calmly followed the online guidance step by step to install Pro Tools. I got a few error messages, but still, I was dumbfounded as to why the program hadn’t downloaded. I searched online and read the readme file which said I should not plug the ilok key into a USB 3.0 port, just use a 2.0. Wait! What? My laptop only has USB 3.0 ports. What now?

I felt like crying, which I really need to get a clue means I am not thinking clearly. But I made a call to the lovely people at sweetwater.com and spoke to a guy who was baffled at my claim that the USB ports were incompatible. But he did some checking, and suggested I just plug the dongle into a USB 2.0 hub. I wasn’t real thrilled with that idea, because why hamper my ports like that, right?

My lovely guy lent me his hub and I went about reinstalling the program. I got some error messages, but I pressed on, telling Windows to ignore all that and Voila! program installed. I tried to launch the program and got an error message. So, I got wise and copied that error message into google. That’s when things started to turn around, but I wasn’t nearly out of the woods yet!

I was told to uninstall the program, but it didn’t seem like I could, so I told it to repair itself, and took careful note of all the errors it shot out at me.  Then I googled some more and found out that I needed to change the user account controls (google how to do that) and disable my virus protection (What?!?!? Had a bit of a nightmare googling that one. Found some really intricate esoteric advice that made no sense to me, but luckily kept scrolling, and found an easier solution with a little trial and error) Had to restart my computer. Finally figured out the right things to press to get the dang program to uninstall. Tried to re-install program and googled the first error message I encountered, found out I had to unzip the file first and then Voila! Program installed. Launched it and it looks good. At last. I didn’t even need to plug the dongle into the USB hub. Now to quickly change back the user account controls and get that virus protection back on!

Oh, and while all this was going on, I had to deal with continually running out of our download allowance and buying restore tokens so I could do all this stuff. I should have known the Coyote was out walking. The only reason we’re are short on our download allowance is because I had read another article and accompanying comments and was convinced to try BackBlaze https://www.backblaze.com/ in order to have a third backup in the cloud. Now backblaze is a really cool deal, a set it and forget it, affordable solution….that totally sucked down our download allowance without even fully backing up my computer. I don’t recommend it for you satellite internet users out there.

In any case, tomorrow I venture out into the world to purchase my keyboard and USB hub. Then I will come home and unbox my new mic and hard drive, hook up my laptop to my Mbox, plug my mic into the Mbox and my portable hard drive into my laptop. I’ll run the HDMI cable into the studio and hook up the monitor. I’ll hook up my keyboard and my ilok key to my USB hub then I’ll fire up Pro Tools. I’ll make sure it’s recording to the portable hard drive and then I’ll do the testing to get everything dialed in right. I’ll make a short test and listen in on myself doing it with my ungodly expensive headphones.

What am I forgetting? If it weren’t for needing another port for my external mouse, I wouldn’t need that hub, I don’t think. Ah well. I’m really starting to fantasize about cutting a hole in the wall…My head is spinning!