AA - week 3 - Sudio2

This weeks lecture concerned the correct procedure for getting studio 2 up and running, then closing it down again afterwards. It featured correct power up procedures, most importantly to turn on the amp/speakers last to prevent other powering on sounds (clicks and spikes) damaging these or your hearing. Also important is the neutralising of the equipment afterwards, clearing the patchbay, taking the desk to a clear state, and packing away all other equipment used.

Follows is my actual experience.

Studio 2, an adventure.

"Oh no!! I've turned everything on and it's not on !!". [1]
I had turned the switch on the left of the power conditioner on, not the main power switch – what actually does that switch do i wonder ?
It caused me a few minutes of consternation – especially as i was in there directly after our lecture when everything had worked fine.

That fixed, i then had to get a signal to ProTools, mmm.

Definitely a signal at the desk, and the ProTools interface had flashing lights on the top section so there was a signal....
A few minutes of wandering up and down the signal path, I finally tracked the problem down to the track input.. I had already looked at it, but unfamiliar with the equipment, none of the possibilities looked promising. But minutes later, back again, I got it all to work !! Huzzah!!

OK.

Spent about 30 minutes playing with ProTools (the longest session yet), then came the saving...
"UH-OH !! it won't write to my flash drive!!" [2] (I'd already some weird problems with trying to write in the Windows lab but I won't go into that except to say it seemed familiar territory). [3]
I could read from my drive but not write to it.
More messing about, although this time with the Finder (all good experience for the new Mac world that I've become a part of ), and it seems I didn't have writing privilege to my drive !!?? So I decided to zip it up and e-mail it to myself. [4]

All finished, although I've yet to hear the results from my first session again (see below).

[1] [2] dramatised quotes from myself during my first session in Studio 2. 13 March 2007.

[3] Have since worked out the writing privilege has got to do with the file system on the drive, previously NTFS – good for Windows, bad for Mac... now FAT32, slow but it'll have to do for now.

[4] Of course this 12 Mb file had then put me over the apparent 25 Mb limit we have on the real world internet (which seems rather small when considering we have to post to an external website, and look at fellow students site, and do research). And problems with download at home have prevented me from using this file.