Show 155 – Pro Audio Backup and more

This week we talk about data loss and how to prevent it. Our guest this week is Andrew Reinfeld from Gobbler.
In Rapid Fire we cover – how we approach song writing; last thing that broke in our studios; and first thing we think of when we hear ‘Gobbler’.

This episode is sponsored by TC-Helicon. They make very cool vocal processors for live and studio use, find out more at TC-Helicon.com

Download Show #155


LINKS
Gobbler

14 thoughts on “Show 155 – Pro Audio Backup and more

  1. Signing up for the free gobbler thing. I’ve done the DIY remote back up stuff with FTP and it works pretty well, but its a bit tedious.
    … last thing that broke in my ‘studio’ was actually a hard drive and i had not done my FTP back up recent enough… luckily only lost a little bit but it has got me thinking about online back up systems.

    Glad to see the sponsorship! one day i will quit being such a broke schmuck and donate more regularly. maybe ill look back into soliciting sheep

    gobbler reminds me of office space. “those cock gobblers”

    ride the chicken

  2. Congratulations on the sponsorship!! Now, for the important stuff.. Ive finally finished listening to every single HRS episode. For the sake of redundancy, I wont make a D112 joke, although I do have one question.. Wheres my diploma? Thats some serious credibility there. 🙂

    dan

  3. Didn’t hear the first minutes of the show and missed out when you presented your guest.
    But I soon understood who it was.

    But next time you invite Dracula tell him to not be in his castle hall while recording the podcast.
    Maybe treat a tower or something and record there.

    Sorry guys.
    Great show and great guest as usual.

  4. Request for help from the listeners! Does anyone have a complete set of HRS which they could let me have? Due to an iTunes problem I’ve lost probably half the shows. I listen to the old ones a lot. I know I can download them from the site but it will take forever to download a hundred shows. If someone could stick ’em on a DVD for me I’d be really grateful!

  5. To Jon, Ryan, and Guests… thank you. To all those who just listened through the archive once… good job… now get to work, I’ve listened to each episode three times… and consider myself a novice — I still don’t have a diploma…. buck up and donate if you want the class credit.

    But seriously, all the previous talk of guitar mods left me wanting to share a few items. I have a 30 year old Guild S-25, I’ve had it for 21 years, bought it used at Subway Guitars in Berkeley in 1991. It was wired wrong when I got it. I didn’t find that out for a few years. The jack was jacked, the pots were off, the humbuckers criss crossed… but hey… that’s punk. I played it through a solid state Rickenbacher amp in a 4×10 cab with at Rat pedal for a preamp… it sounded like airplanes taking off… and that was good.

    So a little over a year ago, preparing to move with my wife and our menagerie of animals, my petulant teenage boy cat decided that dropping a potted plant off the mantle and onto the guitar was a good thing to do… and then I had a guitar without knobs, they had been sheared off completely.

    What a diy opportunity!

    I gutted the guitar. Took all the electronics out and got a heat gun fired up and cooked off the trashed finish. This was going to be my guitar until death do us part, no need for keeping any resale value. I stripped it, sanded it, and then went through the process of actually French polishing it… why? That’s what they do to fine wood acoustic instruments… the lacquer tightens with age and compressed the wood and forces its best tone out into the world… so be it.

    Then I redid the wiring entirely. Two Seymour Duncan p-rails pick ups with full switching options. This gives me the choice of P-90s, Single Coil, PAF, or heavy humbuckers at each of two pickup positions… with new volume and tone pots of quality so each degree of knob turn yields tone change… always in a good way. I put a Mallory .022 capacitor across the tone pot… it is fat and punchy and cheap.

    I am trying to get a tone sampler segment together to share with the HRS crew, just trying to think of how to get it interesting and informative. In the meantime know that the process of learning how to solder and properly wire a guitar was not necessarily a simple process, but it is one of love and as such, it has a pay off that is larger than it’s sum of components. The ability to use every miniscule turn of the tone knob is revelatory! The ability to switch theoretically from a Les Paul to a Strat with the push/ pull of a knob is pure freedom.

    Go get your soldering iron and some schematics and get to work, it is well worth it. Now, for me I need to step up to the plate and approach some of these mic pre/ compressor building projects.

    HRS crew, thanks for the inspiration!

    All the love,
    Kim Thayil

    …. uh, I mean, Unknown Mike

  6. Thanks for an amazing show. Started listening it from the beginning about two months ago, just caught up. I live in Finland and I’m in an apprenticeship to become an audio engineer, both live and studio. I’ve been playing guitar and synths, and making songs for a long time, but got interested in recording/audio engineering/riding the lightning about a year ago and I have been reading, watching and listening anything related to the subject I could get my hands on. The two most important sources of information outside of the apprenticeship I started last fall have been this show and this long and in depth thread in the Reaper forums, http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=29283 , it would be awesome if you could somehow get the writer of the thread in the show for an interview.

    I started with Audacity, then moved on to Ableton Live Lite and an old version of Cubase, but I always hated the way Cubase works and Ableton Live sucks as a recording program, even for simple one track stuff like vocals. So, I’ve started to learn and move all of my stuff over to Reaper. I bought it a bit earlier just for recording, but Jon really encouraged me to start using it more. It is working really well for me, I record, do midi stuff with virtual synths and my microKorg XL. I also write music and mix in it, Live is still a bit better for writing but I’d rather not deal with the hassle of using two programs at once.

    Just a couple of suggestions for topics, a comparison of a couple of good free plugins (Variety of Sound stuff?) versus good paid ones would be interesting. Also would be interesting to have someone talk a bit about synths more, since this show has mostly been dealing with the traditional rock n’ roll instruments. Sorry for the long post. Anyway, thanks again for the show, I’m looking forward to all the future episodes.

  7. I’m a little surprised that Crashplan wasn’t mentioned. This is a cross platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) backup program that is simple and free. It will automatically backup to a second hard drive, to a friend across the Internet, or to a paid account in the cloud.

    You can do different sets of files/folders at different intervals, and it will keep revisions and deleted files (if you want). Swap a large drive with a buddy and back up to each other for free – all files are encrypted, so there’s no snooping.

    If you don’t have someone to swap drives with, pay $5 a month for unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space to Crashplan’s servers. Full archive – never worry about filling it up or being charged for overages.

    When on the road you can restore files from their website, or even with an Android or iPhone app.

    I’m not affiliated with Crashplan, just love the product. I pay $10 a month for unlimited backup of 10 computers so that the wife, kids, and my project studio have full archives of everything we’ve ever done (about 3 terabytes) without thinking about it.

    All of our documents, movies, mp3s, programs, plugins, sample libraries.. doesn’t matter what. One copy is on a big external drive attached to my server, and one copy is in Crashplan’s cloud.

    Keep rockin’ the mic,
    Chooch

  8. Hi there!

    I am organizing my “studio” after a voiceover session, and I couldn’t help asking you… How the hell do you organize your headphones??? I have six pairs lying around, and they are in the middle of everything.

    I bet someone has a clever idea to short this out.

    Thanks!!!!

    Victor

  9. Regarding headphones. A screw, nail, hook, or peg in the wall or nearby furniture works well to have headphones accessible to everyone. I have a small end table in my drum room all the time, right to the right of the throne with a nail to hang the headphones. The table can also hold a headphone amp/mixer, notes, water bottles etc.

    If you have multiple headphones that you want to store together, a row of nails or whatever would work. Also you could have a dedicated headphone drawer/shelf in your mic cabinet.

  10. Hi Guy’s

    Thought I would add a late comment. I use multiple methods for backups and all to ensure I have at least one method safe and secure somewhere.
    I am on a MAC

    1/ Good old OSX Time Machine Works great and is ideal for my local quick retrieval backup/restore. Never really failed me yet.
    2/ I also write “Critical” audio etc projects to a CD or DVD as a 2nd local backup here And I put those in a small fireproof safe I have. Just in case.
    3/ Gobbler.. I use that to back up all my audio stuff (and a few videos etc) off site. Works well and restoration and sharing is a breeze. I like it.. Gobbler also backs up other stuff like video etc if I wish.
    4/ Carbonite – Another offsite backup option.. Runs in the background.. Backs up whatever folders etc I choose and does so with no intervention from me. Because I choose the folders it will back up any data I need not just audio so I also use if for documents etc. The first backup is huge and takes ages (** uses a lot of internet bandwidth & tie etc as it does the first backup) but from then on most backups are smallish and so just works seamlessly and quietly in the background. It is always watching but it “runs” more or less when the computer is idle so is only actually backing up etc at times I am not working on the computer ala during coffee breaks, lunch, night time etc. It “gets out of the way” when I am working the MAC hard so as not to clog up CPU when I need the CPU s cycles for my audio etc. It is available for Windows, Mac, also has Apple iOS tools and Android tools for phones and iPads etc. I pay an annual subscription (from memory about US$50 per year) and the space is pretty well unlimited.

    Using all 4 methods pretty well has me covered for any eventuality and need including file sharing.

    I also have Dropbox which I manually use to put Work In progress etc stuff in when I need to. That is also useful for quickly moving data between computer or working locations. I wouldn’t call this a real backup however I guess in many ways I use it to back up current stuff as well so in some ways it is a 5th backup process I use.

  11. Belated comment:

    Cooch: Yes, Crashplan RULES! That’s what I use for all of the computers in my house. Crashplan is the ultimate solution for users who want a ton of nerdy control over their backups. CPU usage regulation, separate backup sets, bandwidth regulation, Mac and PC compatible, plus more. I absolutely love this software.

    Mozy and Carbonite is geared towards users who aren’t super technical and just want their files backed up. It’s very simple and doesn’t come with all the extra bells and whistles that Crashplan has. However, Crashplan is still very easy to use.

    P.S. Thanks for the quick shout out Jon. And I’m glad to hear that you’re happy with Crashplan, Ryan!

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