Reading · Cookie’s Corner

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Suggested listening - Track 07 - Firecracker - Tony Furtado - Firecracker
https://bluecoastmusic.com/tony-furtado/firecracker

If you oIf you own a computer, cellphone, touchpad or downloaded apps in the last 2 years, you’ve probably experienced an incompatibility where old or new apps fail with your current operating system. It worked last year but suddenly a reliable app starts acting bizarrely for no reason.

Most of us in professional audio have learned to take our digital audio workstations “off the grid” (the internet) to prevent automatic updates of any kind. We have five digital audio workstations: 3 off the internet and 2 on the internet (with duplicat systems on the internet for convenience with other use).

We have both Windows and Apple legacy systems and they work great…. until they don’t. About 2 years ago I discovered a Windows update that “normalized” all audio. It took a while to figure out why mixes and playback of music I knew suddenly sounded WRONG!

I’ve since learned to check all computers every quarter for any unauthorized “normalizing” on my systems and on my streaming services. They hide these things and move them around, but it’s good to check.

Consumer electronics often get hit because consumers seem to favor “convenience over quality”…. at least that’s what the computer companies think. My guess is we’d all prefer a little inconvenience in favor of equipment that works.

For 15 years we’ve had a stable system for digital mastering. It didn’t seem bothered by Windows updates so we got lazy and let it live on the grid. Until today.

Suddenly, every time we opened a file, a track would be corrupted. A file that we had heard many times in the past without errors. Of course it was random so finding the problem was hard. We had the computer rebuilt with a new power supply, motherboards, etc. All was fine until…..

Yesterday. More corrupted files in mastering. The main computer shut down, requiring a 24-hour rest period before it turned on again. We spent the morning troubleshooting to find the culprit.

We discovered an update had happened recently that mysteriously adjusts the ‘startup time,’ making it faster. I’m not sure why we needed to start up the computer faster since we leave it on all the time but I guess if you’re the kind of user that has a lot of applications on when you start things up, maybe it makes sense? That definitely doesn’t describe our use. We keep as few necessary apps open when we’re working.

We went through the task of finding the updates and turning off the startup speed updates. It worked so well, I went through all the office computers and laptops and turned that update off.

I noticed that the audio coming off all the speakers associated with a computer has more frequency response. Suddenly, my speakers were playing back the way I remembered these songs sounding. Fortunately, it didn’t affect the recordings. We went through a methodical process of checking all the files.

And now we wait…. hoping this and some of the other things we did will last for many more years.

Moral of the story… if you don’t have a dedicated system for audio… maybe it’s time to think about getting one. It’s making the return of CDs really attractive right now!

For your listening… enjoy a playlist of music that I’ve recorded, mixed or mastered over the decades.

Qobuz -
https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/24982748

Tidal -
https://tidal.com/playlist/40012258-926a-4130-9364-5cc7b3ed2661

Youtube -
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiWDrjNeis2Wb5DNSwFkESHFCCEV64gKm

Thanks for reading and
Enjoy your listening!

Cookie Marenco
Founder and Producer Blue Coast Records and Music

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