Using an Audio Input Aggregator for Recording in Mac OS X

08 Aug 2010 at 14:09

Dave VanderWall

Computers, Macintosh, Music, Recording

1 Comment

I may have just fallen off the proverbial turnip truck on this one, but until yesterday I had no idea it was possible to combine audio devices in OS X so that my recording software would see all of the various audio inputs as one device. Why is this useful? I’m using Propellerhead Record with an Apogee Duet and POD XT Live device. I used to just plug the XT Live into the Duet’s audio input — it turns out I don’t have to do that, I can record the audio from the XT Live directly. Here’s how:

Open up the Applications folder and the Utilities folder in there. Launch the Audio MIDI Setup program.

Click the + sign in the lower left corner. This creates a new Aggregate Device and you can select which devices to use on the right hand side. In the screen grab below you can see I have selected the Duet, XT Live, and Novation X-Station (three 2-channel devices for a total of six inputs)…

Audio Devices

You can double-click and rename the Aggregate Device if you choose. Next, using Record as an example, launch your recording software and go to the audio preferences. Select your new device. Here I have renamed mine Duet+XSta+XTLive.

Reason Audio Preferences

You can see there are 6 of 6 audio inputs active. You may need to select the Channels button and check off all of the audio inputs you want to use.

Select Active Channels

Now when you create a new audio track in Record, you will have six different input channels to choose from.

Selecting an input channel

That’s it! No more plugging and unplugging! Hooray!

Found: DVD Girl Stock Photo

05 Aug 2010 at 14:53

Dave VanderWall

Humor, Miscellaneous, Recording

1 Comment

Call me crazy, but I enjoy identifying stock photos and remembering where else I saw them. I ran into some display signage for a keyboard at Guitar Center and remembered where I saw it before:

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This girl is known to me as “DVD Girl” because she also appears on a box for an I/O Magic DVD burner that I bought way back when. (At Comp USA! And I even blogged about it!)

Here’s the box:

DVD burner box

And the closeup:

DVD Girl closeup

And here’s what I was buying at Guitar Center:

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Long Overdue Health Update

25 May 2010 at 19:50

Dave VanderWall

Health

2 Comments

I’m not sure why I am thinking about it, but I just realized that it’s been a long time since I’ve updated my blog, and that I kind of left things hanging with the whole physical therapy thing. It won’t be easy to recap everything … Here’s the short version:

  • Physical therapy was cancelled
  • The chest CT was inconclusive and I’m probably fine
  • I briefly started smoking again
  • I developed a blood clot in my arm
  • I quit smoking again
  • I was on blood thinners which required me to inject myself in the stomach twice per day
  • I currently have to go in about twice per week for a blood test so the doctor can adjust the blood thinners (pills) to a therapeutic dosage
  • I recently had a follow up CT scan just to be sure there is still nothing there

    • That’s the very brief rundown. I feel good and everything should be fine, but the whole thing has been a minor inconvenience to say the least. Right now I’m just waiting to hear back from the doctor regarding the scan.

    Now you know pretty much what I know.

Blogging from the iPad

03 Apr 2010 at 10:20

Dave VanderWall

Computers, iPad

No Comments

Like quite a few others I imagine, I received an iPad this morning. I believe the UPS driver’s exact words were, “Enjoy your iPad.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vandypants/4486246761/

Mostly what I’m doing right now is checking out the typing, and the WordPress app. (Oh! I’m super impressed with the Pages app, by the way.)

Physical Therapy – Day 1

29 Mar 2010 at 08:51

Dave VanderWall

Health

No Comments

I have this pain in my shoulder/back that’s been there for a long time and for whatever reason started bothering me recently. The therapist thinks that it may be mostly neck related and suggested the following exercises:

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So we’ll see how all that goes.

UPDATE: My doctor called today and said to forget about the physical therapy. A CT scan revealed the following …

“FINDINGS: Lung parenchyma is showing discoid atelectatic changes and focal areas of infiltrate affecting right lower lobe, right upper peripheral lung, anterior apical, left posterior parahilar region, and lateral left lower lobe. Mediastinum demonstrates peritracheal, aortopulmonic, and bilateral hilar adenopathy. Cardiac size, shape and pericardium appear normal. Visualized parts of the upper abdomen appear unremarkable.

“CONCLUSION: Patchy bilateral multifocal areas of infiltrative and atelectatic process. This is associated with mediastinal adenopathy. Differential would include infection, septic emboli, metastatic disease, or conceivably sarcoid. Clinical correlation is needed.”

!!!

That doesn’t sound good! I see a pulmonologist tomorrow.

What Is This Morning Thing Of Which You Speak?

18 Mar 2010 at 06:12

Dave VanderWall

Miscellaneous

No Comments

Why am I now (typically!) up before the sun? Does not compute!

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Quitting Smoking – Day 16

15 Mar 2010 at 22:19

Dave VanderWall

Health

No Comments

I recently ready the book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr, and I have to admit that I agree with lots of what he says. A big ol’ point this book makes is that one needs to give up the nicotine habit as soon as possible. Mr. Carr does not recommend any substitutes (mints, gum, etc.) and especially does not recommend nicotine replacement therapy such as Nicorette™ gum. He also says that the withdrawal symptoms from quitting nicotine are greatly exaggerated.

So I took him up on it yesterday and stopped chewing the gum. So far, so good. I went the entire day today without any cravings.

Keep in mind that there are a number of other things you probably need to do in order to successfully quit smoking and not be all pissed off about it. The book goes in to (repetitive) detail about these things. I highly recommend it.

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Link to Amazon

On an unrelated note …

Why? Why does that link above not work? Here’s the code:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Way-Stop-Smoking-Non-Smokers/dp/1402718616">Link to Amazon</a>

Why does that not work? What part of that points to this blog?

Sigh … Just go search for it on Amazon.

Quitting Smoking – Day 10

09 Mar 2010 at 22:37

Dave VanderWall

Health, Miscellaneous, Travel

No Comments

Tonight I went out for dinner with a fellow employee and a couple of customers. It turned out that the fellow employee and one of the customers were both smokers. (I could totally smell it on them from the get-go, which is a new thing for me.) It felt pretty good to sit there and chat with the remaining customer while the other two excused themselves multiple times to go smoke cigarettes. And, although I’m writing a little blurb about it now, I saw no need to mention that I had just quit smoking. I think the assumption was that I don’t smoke. It was cool.

Unrelated: Taking a GPS along on a business trip is an excellent idea.

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Quitting Smoking – Day 9

08 Mar 2010 at 23:18

Dave VanderWall

Food & Drink, Health, Miscellaneous

No Comments

Today I travelled on business as a non-smoker for the first time in my 14-year career! I’ve got to say it was quite enjoyable (although the exit row aisle seating probably helped) in the sense that I wasn’t out huffing down three cigarettes while cutting things too close before takeoff so as to spend as little time as possible in the (gasp!) place-of-no-smoking-we-call-an-airport. No, it was nothing like that at all. I slept well (I’ve been sleeping much better), arrived at the airport early, got to the gate with plenty of time to spare, and didn’t fret one bit as we all sat there waiting for takeoff. When I arrived I didn’t sprint for the exit to get a fix. I strolled directly to the waiting rental car (Hertz Club Gold FTW) and drove to the completely smoke-free Hilton.

It’s these little things that are fun and interesting to me right now.

Tonight I ate an incredibly overpriced meal at the hotel restaurant, but I was able to taste it. I had alcohol for only the second time since quitting (the first time was Sunday when I had sushi and sake with a friend) – the wine tasted good and the scotch after dinner was really good.

Time for bed. Here’s the steak:

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MacJournal Testing

06 Mar 2010 at 11:14

Dave VanderWall

Macintosh, Products, software, Writing

No Comments

So I got this new Macheist nano bundle thingy and it came with an application called MacJournal from Mariner Software. This is a $39 piece of software that I had looked at earlier when browsing around for some journaling software, so I spent $20 and picked up a copy.

The purpose of this post is to test MacJournal and see how well it integrates with WordPress.

Here’s a fancy picture:

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Scrivener is still my favorite writing software, but I do like the integrated calendar in MacJournal. Perhaps they will both find their place.

Edit: This actually works well. I downloaded all of my blog entries into a new journal and will use it going forward.

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