Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

Eeek! I can’t hardly believe I’m saying this. Take a look at Napster. Since I am rather a music connoisseur a friend suggested I do just that.

I remember when Napster was the bane of the internet, Attorneys General salivating at the concept of a class action. PC’s infected by that horrid peer2peer music sharing software. So it took a while for me to get over those memories and actually visit their site (McAfee SiteAdvisor gives them a green rating!).

Well, sometimes, all things happen for the best. I’m not sure the folks at Napster were thinking that many years ago when the RIAA music industry people were threatening lawsuits etc for helping people illegally share music.

But look what happened. Napster has now become one of the premier legitimate sources of music; including not just MP3’s but commercial free online radio stations as well.

Who’d have thunk?

So do yourself a favor and take a look at the new Napster, you might be surprised. I sure was. They have a 7 day free trial (which should be 14 day IMHO) and an optional offer that gets you a free MP3 player.

Continuing our MBox 2 Pro and ProTools software discussion, my laptop configuration is a Pentium M 1.7Ghz with 1.5GB RAM and a 100GB 7200rpm hard drive.

The MBox tech support rep had me turn off several devices in order to get the software to run reliably. Naturally, it made sense to setup a hardware profile for MBox recording.

Such devices as network card, wireless adapter, and the Sigma-Tel sound card are all disabled. Then, rather than having to manually unload the Trend Micro anti virus I went into the services applet and disabled the Trend Micro services for the MBox profile under the “LogOn” tab.

That leaves me to manually shut down the BOClean anti trojan software, the Second Copy software and couple others like that, and then we’re ready to start recording.

Simplifies the boot process and helps make sure we don’t forget to shut something down and have recording crash - right near the end, of course.

Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro Factory Bundle is what we bought.

We have been using our new MBox 2 Pro (Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro Factory Bundle)a little bit, and for the most part we are pretty impressed. The Pro Tools Software is where the rub comes in, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Since I have a BUNCH of old albums that I would like to hear as MP3, I was thrilled to see that the MBox 2 Pro has a hookup right on the back for a turntable. Record into Pro Tools and then either export direct to MP3 if you own the addin (extra cost) or, since we don’t, it creates a .wav file that we then convert to MP3 with Adobe Audition, that we happen to own. Keep in mind, if you really value your time, you might be able to buy the CD’s (or individual MP3’s) online and maybe come out ahead. For me, I’m kinda cheap, so record away!

We also have mic’d some instruments and been pretty impressed. So far a piano, drums and guitar (acoustic, the electric plugs right into the MBox).

The Pro Tools software is not something you will just install and then get running intuitively. For us, we got it running on my laptop but after a few hours gave us problems. Well, read the directions which may great reference to the hardware compatibility guide. My laptop had 1.5GB of RAM, but you need to shut down most extraneous services - including the sound card, believe it or not, to really get it to run well and reliably.

Pro Tools has an 800 page PDF manual, but who has time to read all of that? A call to tech support (be prepared to hold) did answer a few questions and help get us up and running. I know there is a ton more we can do with it once we learn more about it.

I’ll try to keep you updated.

Neuros OSD Media Center. This is a set top box that treats you like an owner. I like that.

I found out about it in a Post on BoingBoing.net

If you like it as much as I do, buy it here

Hey! Any musicians (aspiring or otherwise) out there?

The musicians in my house just got set up with an MBox 2 Pro (Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro Factory Bundle) for recording their music to the PC via Pro Tools software.

If you are interested in finding out how this turns out, drop me a line or leave a comment and I’ll keep you up to date.

We are also going to use it to turn my old Music LP’s (any of you remember those?) into MP3.