I have installed the audiophile 2496 on my production PC, and I ABSOLUTELY love it!!! Everything is connected JUST the way I want. Music flows from one sound source to one mixer than into my PC which can also be routed back out to the mixer, etc... Yeah, it sounds convoluted, but it's beautiful!! :) I also got my Edirol PCR-30 MIDI controller as well! Ah... My lovely home studio. I just need to save up for a decent pair of studio monitors, now. Man, I'm broke...

Well, so get this... I was all excited about my new sound card, and went all out in configuring all my apps to use the new sound card for audio output and did the whole sound latency buffering configurations, midi congifurations, etc... the whole nine yards.. Then I wanted to work a lil bit on the DS remix of my LG remix (yeah, remix of a remix... heh heh) to see how all the interworkings of my setup behaved. So I launch acid to work on one beatmapped segment... I drop in my wav file... *KAPUT* No wave form is shown on the track.. I'm like... "huh???" Did my Acid just toally lose its mind??? I go through the beat map wizzard again to make sure it's all good... the track wave form shows up in the wizard, I beat map it... all good... then back to the screen... Still nothing on the track... I try duplicating the track.... I apply the latest Acid patch... Nothing seems to do anything... It takes me like 30 minutes in this bizarre state of panic (not sure to laugh or to cry) thinking to myself that i may have to manually beat map my sound sources... Then *BAM* I realize what's wrong and of course I feel like a TOTAL IDIOT... In Acid, once you drop your wav file, you have to use the pencil tool to draw how much of the wav form to use... I remember when I first used Acid this wasn't obvious to me, but I had used Acid extensively for my LG remix this year... Hmm.. should I blame this on usability or user stupidity? *SMIRK*

The weather is lovely and there is not a sign of cloud in the sky. It just spells C.A.R.N.I.V.A.L, doesn't it??? ^^ So went down to CMU to check out the carnival concert. Lil Egypt and Dooley O were ok... Actually, Dooley O sucked, in my opinion... -.-;; Of course Jurassic 5 was awesome! :) Too bad Nu-Mark couldn't be there... I missed the DJ duo's crazy sets... I'm not a big fan of the tracks that they produce, but I do like the turntablist wizardry they possess. Of course what makes Jurassic 5 shine is the MCs. The rhymes were pretty tight, and the live performance efforts put forth by Cut Chemist was prety cool, too. They try to put all sorts of different music gear into the show. Interesting DJs, I must say. Props!

Finally found an awesome deal for the audiophile 2496 so I grabbed it!!! Looks like my ultimate audio routing goals will be met!! This is awesome!! Also, with the money I made selling my previous battle mixer, Stanton SK-2F, I bought the Edirol PCR-30 MIDI controller which is going to make my production efforts less mouse-intensive and a lot more hands-on (Don't you just hate doing automations with your mouse???) Now once final scratch gets released for the Macintosh I'm going to have to sell my CDJs to get it... But, only if it performs pretty well on my ibook. Ah... Tis a lovely age for digital musicians...

Speaking of Final Scratch, apparently they have released the driver source for it under GPL... Hmm... Very interesting...