and so i decided to take the plunge and update my daw to the latest version. this was a relatively quick and easy process, and thankfully cost me very little in time and money.
however, doing this in the middle of my current dubtronica experiments wasn’t the best time. it seems that some of my most cherished plug-ins are 32-bit only, and won’t work in the new 64-bit version of the daw. plus the upgrade scrambled all my device settings, so i had to re-learn a bunch of things i hardly ever touch.
thankfully, i managed to pick up pretty much where i left off, and even got a few new instruments too – another yummy filter from ohm force and the sweet amp sim amplitube. thanks go out to the support desk at sonar for their quick response – even if my issues are not truly resolved.
i managed to get a few samples from some of my recent ebay finds, and i created a very deep bass patch on my bass station. with a tender bit of eq i managed to get this balanced with some plinky stabs and a trademark dub delay. with a funky drum backing and some decent sounds created, i can now proceed with some kind of arrangement – demo on the way soon!
the stuff about upgrading my music software got me thinking about the amount of data pissed away every day by continuous software updates. it’s a very “first world issue” but a waste is still a waste …
if i just think about the updates that beam their way to the devices in my house (e.g. an ipod, a couple of android phones, a pc, a playstation etc.), then the “smart” devices are the worst.
if there are 10 apps on each of my 3 devices, and each of those updates 33MB once per week, then i am pissing away 1GB of data download every month without even doing anything. and do i notice any difference after an update? er, no. nothing.
the biggest offender here seems to be the 100MB leviathan that is facebook, bless ’em. how many copies of the works of shakespeare would fit into that? my head is filled with images of an infinite amount of code monkeys writing an infinite amount of code …
the sad fact is that whilst developers may work tirelessly to introduce new features, for every new feature they will inevitably introduce a bunch of bugs. from a user’s perspective, the new features are largely invisible – so all we see is developers frantically bashing out code in ever decreasing circles. word to the management: SLOW DOWN and CHILL OUT!