I have had about enough of the 2KY problem. What? Is there too much KY Jelly in the South Beach area of Miami? I don’t think so! Is there going to be another Kentucky show up on the morning of January first? Whare (bad spelling on purpose) are they going to put it? There isn’t enough room for the one they have now. Maybe they could take over Arkansas and rename it. What would the state abbreviation be?

They say that there is going to be a problem with school computers crashing because they aren’t ready for 2000. Because of students hacking into the computers, the schools are probably in better shape than anyone else is. I don’t care so much about that, as long as the 900 number service still works. It took me a year to get them to allow 900 calls from my cell phone. I don’t always want to make those calls from home.

You know, they didn’t have this much trouble last time. I have been reading through my history books, and there is nothing about the Y1K problem. I can see where writing the date down as ’99 instead of 1999 saves some work, but at the turn of the previous century, ’99 didn’t save much as a contraction of 999.

I heard that the problem was much bigger for the Y0K rollover. Were there two year zeros? Zero BC followed by zero AD? Or was it a commonly shared year zero? What about teaching everyone to count forwards? Before Y0K everybody spent his or her whole lives counting backwards. In the year 3 BC did they write BC on their checks? Maybe they didn’t write the BC because they didn’t know it was BC until it was over?

Were the months backward too? Did the year start with December, November, October, September, August, July, June, May, April, March, February, January. That makes more sense. New Years Eve would be January 1st and the New Year would start December 31st. Numbering the days the other way around makes thing work out much better. You always know exactly how many days are left in each month. The extra day in February couldn’t sneak up on you; it would be right there at the start of the month where it belongs.

Was year zero a Leap Year? The rule is every four years, except if divisible by 100, unless divisible by 400. 1600 was a Leap Year. 1900 was not. 2000 is. Was zero?

24bit 96kHz

I am still not convinced that 96kHz is the way to go for digital multi-track recording. After recording a project on two machines simultaneously, one recording 24 bit 96kHz and the other one recording 24 bit 48kHz, and then mixing through the same digital console with the same automation moves, there was no difference between the final outputs. The final mix was 24 bit 96kHz stereo.

In the stereo domain there is just a small difference between the 24 bit 96kHz version and the 24 bit 44.1kHz version. The difference between 16 bit and 24 bit was very noticeable in both the multi-track and stereo mixes, but the 96kHz difference was not worth doubling the storage requirements. So for the time being I think that multi-track recording at 24 bit 48kHz. and mixing down to 24 bit 96kHz is the way I’m going to work.

Audio Storage

Remember that everything you record has to be stored somewhere for the long term. I get e-mail from people who have purchased inexpensive eight track hard disk recorders and never thought about what happens when the hard disk gets full. You can store it on removable Jazz drives, but they cost $100 for 2 Gigabytes. You can store it off on CD-Rs, but it takes forever to burn and verify the CDs. You can dump it off to an ADAT or Tascam, but you lose all of your edit points and most of the small eight track hard disk machines can only transfer two channels at a time in the digital domain.

It looks like a hard disk world out there right now, but things will really take off when you can plug in your media, record 24 tracks for awhile, unplug your media, plug in new media and record something else. You know, kind of like replacing a roll of tape. What if you had a recorder that had one roll of tape that couldn’t be removed? You could record on it until the tape got full, and then you would have to copy it off to some other machine and erase the built-in tape before you could record anything else. Let’s go Sony, where is our 100-Gigabyte Optical Disk cartridge with 4ms access time?

Time For the Wish List

Now that we have that problem all straightened out, I think it is time for my Christmas wish list. Remember that these items are things that I need. Some of them I already have, but I think you should have them too. Some of the Items have appeared on earlier lists. Some of them appear again because I think they are very COOL, and others because I still want them and Santa hasn’t brought me one yet.

1. The new Tascam MX-2424 24 track 24bit hard disk recorder. If Fords dropped their Mustang prices to under $5,000 would you still buy a Chevy? I don’t think so!

2. Pro Tools 5.0. This is a no-brainer. MIDI and digital audio finally merged together into an environment that can allow sample accurate editing of both audio and MIDI data.

3. Mackie Digital 8 Bus console. If you were watching the October issue of EQ, that was the D8B out by my pool. Now if Mackie could just make a waterproof enclosure for it so I could mix while floating with my umbrella drinks, then I’d be all set.

4. Waves C4 multi-band parametric processor plug-in for Pro Tools. And of course, you don’t really have a Pro Tools system unless you have the entire Waves Gold Bundle.

5. Z-Systems z-3src sample rate converter. Sample rates from 96kHz to 32kHz, 16 bits to 24 bits. The best of the best.

6. Antares Microphone Modeler plug-in for Pro Tools. Auto Tune v2.0 saved my life. I can’t wait to get ahold of the Microphone modeler.

7. TC-MasterX TDM plug-in. Before the MasterX, I had to go out of Pro Tools, through my Finalizer. Now I don’t have to leave the Pro Tools environment if I don’t want to.

8. Glyph Cobra fiber channel network supports up to six users connected simultaneously to a rack full of SCSI/LVD drives. Transfer rates of 100 Megabytes per second make audio transfers between workstations scream.

9. Hosa ODY-314 Optical Splitter. Finally. How many times have you wanted to send your optical signal to more than one place? Split the lightpipe from an ADAT deck and send it to your Pro Tools ADAT bridge and your Mackie D8B both at the same time.

10. Meyer X-10 speaker system. Two way amplified speakers flat from 16Hz to 20kHz. NASA technology. Still top secret? I wasn’t supposed to talk about them yet? Oh, sorry.

11. Alesis M-20 Professional ADAT. The ultimate ADAT machine. No longer is the line between MDM and professional digital multi-tracks blurred, it is gone.

12. A Fat Burger. I have been in Miami too long. There are no good hamburger places in Miami. Big, juicy, fresh ground beef (or close substitute) with big tomatoes and dill pickles… If you know of a place in Miami (or within 100 miles), let me know.

Well, I didn’t really want much this year. I am happy as a clam. Next month I will probably complain about all of the stuff I didn’t get, so maybe you should just skip the January issue.