I did a lot of research on what might cause this sort of a problem.  A few other people had had similar issues in the forums, and responding posters had suggested that the problems might be related to one of the plug-ins they had running. I went into C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins and removed all of my plugins, storing them in a folder on my desktop.

I started up Cubase, I loaded my project, and presto, it loaded up almost immediately.

One by one, I added the plugins back in. Each time I did, I would close Cubase, copy the plug-in back to the VstPlugins folder, and relaunch Cubase (ugh). Then I would open the project to see if it loaded.

Finally, when I got to Wurr Audio‘s fantastic TubeBooster plug-in the program began to hang. Uh oh. This plug-in is used *everywhere* in my projects. Like, maybe in every single project I’ve done for the past two or three years. It’s central to my vocal sound. I tried fooling with the settings in Cubase’s *Plug-in Information* window (the ones with names like “Old Host Behavior” and “Lock VST Automation”), but nothing worked.

Finally, after reading about people who had problems with running 32-bit plug-ins on 64-bit hosts, I discovered jBridge. jBridge is a program that allows you to run 32-bit plugins on 64-bit hosts and vice-versa. It does this by “wrapping” the plug-in in another plug-in. Now, bear in mind that while I am running 64-bit operating system, I am running a 32-bit version of Cubase and a 32-bit version of this plug-in. This should not be an issue. And yet…

I downloaded jBridge, wrapped TubeBooster, and it worked! My project loaded like charm. All the settings I had in TubeBooster were preserved as well. Without hesitation I paid the 15 euro fee for the full version jBridge.

Hope this helps somebody out there.

Cross-posted on dhilowitz.tumblr.com

One of the first things I set out to do was make a disk image of my new server, so that if something goes awry, I can restore things later on.

Here’s what I did:

First, I plugged my external drive into the USB port. This got assigned to /dev/sdb.   I mounted the drive.

 sudo mkdir /media/backup_04 sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/backup_04 -t ntfs sudo mkdir /media/backup_04/portege-linux-backups

Next,  I installed dcfldd. This is just like dd, which comes with most Linux distributions, except that it can output time remaining (among other things).

 apt-get install dcfldd 

Finally, I started the backup:

 dcfldd if=/dev/sda of=/media/backup_04/portege-linux-backups/2011_11_28.img sizeprobe=if 

This produces an output that looks like this:

 [16% of 28615Mb] 155136 blocks (4848Mb) written. 01:17:37 remaining. 

–David

2. Install MacPorts.

3. Test MacPorts by installing joe. Type:

sudo bash

port install joe. Enter your password.

4. A bunch of things will be preinstalled with the wrong architecture. We’re trying to get ruby as an x86_64 architecture. So…uninstall libiconv and zlib (you may have to tinker with this a bit because it will ask you which version you want to uninstall — the answer is “all of them”)

sudo port uninstall -f libiconv @1.13.1_0
sudo port uninstall -f libiconv @1.14_0
sudo port uninstall -f zlib
port uninstall -f readline
port uninstall -f openssl
port uninstall -f ncurses @5.8_1
port uninstall -f ncurses @5.9_0
port uninstall -f ncurses @5.9_1
port uninstall -f gdbm

5 Install ruby by doing:

port install ruby

7. Update your gems:

gem update —system

8. And, finally, install Rails:

gem install rails —pre

Useful links:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2916229/how-can-i-install-ruby-on-rails-3-on-osx

http://beginrescueend.com/rvm/install/

Roll trims are my bread and butter. Here’s how to eat faster. Select an edit point. Put your playhead where you want the selected edit point to move and press E. The selected edit point jumps to the position of the playhead—provided you have asufficient handles in your media.

This is essentially a Roll trim in real time.

<a href=”http://books.google.com/books?id=-Jlc5OJ44psC&amp;lpg=PA118&amp;ots=6n8-MWmHVT&amp;dq=roll%20edit%20key%20combination%20final%20cut&amp;pg=PA118#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false”>http://books.google.com/books?id=-Jlc5OJ44psC&amp;lpg=PA118&amp;ots=6n8-MWmHVT&amp;dq=roll%20edit%20key%20combination%20final%20cut&amp;pg=PA118#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false</a>

To make .htaccess files work as expected, you need to edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. Look for a section that looks like this:

        <Directory /var/www/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
                # Uncomment this directive is you want to see apache2's
                # default start page (in /apache2-default) when you go to /
                #RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/
        </Directory>

You need to modify the line containing AllowOverride None to read AllowOverride All. This tells Apache that it’s okay to allow.htaccess files to over-ride previous directives. You must reload Apache before this change will have an effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

I wanted to introduce the first of what I hope will be several Chrome Experiments (prediction: all HTML5, and all music-related). It’s called Tito, and you can play with it here.

What is it? It’s an early prototype for a musical instrument that uses a bouncing ball gravity model to trigger and manipulate audio samples. It’s an instrument that designed to be played as chord accompaniment for a lead instrument. You “play” the instrument by  clicking the chord buttons on the right. Note for music geeks: 7ths and Dim notes are provided with each chord, but muted by default. Click on the notes at the bottom of the bouncing ball graphs to enable them.

Requirements: Tito requires Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Also, Tito requires Flash as the audio portion is still being done in Flash (Currently Firefox 4 is the only browser to have an HTML5 spec for audio data, alas.)

Here are the new features I’m working on for the next version:

• Ability to choose between multiple different sample sets.
• Option to retrigger all the balls on each chord change.
• Ability to position falling balls by clicking on them and letting go. Done! 10/21/10.
• Sliders for changing gravity settings.
• And finally, whatever features you want. @reply me on twitter (@dhilowitz).
• Ability to mute specific balls. Done! 10/19/2010.
• Ability to change chords. Done! 10/1/2010.

Please enjoy!

–David

This is the coolest thing ever.