Update - Sound Booth Computer Under Construction

chicocarlucci · Post by **chicocarlucci** » October 14th, 2006, 7:57 pm

Hey guys.
I had mentioned this to a few of you already but I just wanted to make it known to all:

I am presently in the process of cleaning up and organizing the sound-booth computer.
It's pretty slow, but thanks to Bob Apthorpe, I'll probably be able to get the extra parts to make it run a lot faster.

The second thing I am doing is taking all the music and sound effect and audio files that are on the machine and using Itunes to categorize everything.

The reason I am telling you this is because I am currently only about 10% of the way through what I want to do, so if you have stuff on that machine and you're wondering where it is, email me and I'll help you find it and organize it. But in the meantime, bear with me and I promise the new system will be easily cross-referenced, organized and expansive.

After everything is said and done, all audio will be displayed in Itunes by a series of folders and playlists that relate to Event, Genre, Mood, Troupe, or Sound Effect. Music will be listed across multiple folders and playlists, all without copying the actual audio file. If any of you have ever used Itunes, you know what I'm talking about.

Ok, again. Thanks for your patience.

-eric

kbadr · Post by **kbadr** » October 14th, 2006, 8:30 pm

I tried to do this a year ago and use it in Maestro but I was told it was to obtrusive. I used an app called Mr Voice, that was designed specifically for this.

It was fun.

Everyone else can rot in hell!

ChrisTrew.Com · Post by **ChrisTrew.Com** » October 14th, 2006, 9:47 pm

All hail this idea!

Wesley · Post by **Wesley** » October 15th, 2006, 3:31 am

Yes, I remember Kareem's attempt well! The man was merely ahead of his time.

I like iTunes for two reasons.
First, most everyone has used it so they are comfortable in the environment. Plus it is easy to categorize AND make new playlists on the fly (like if someone decided to do a themed show, they could go up 10 mins beforehand and make a playlist) and
Second, it will allow people to bring in iPods with pre-made playlists and hook them in and use them seemlessly (a dedicated iPod cable would be a nice booth addition). I've used my iPod for several shows, but it was always at the expense of unplugging the CD player or computer.

Huzzah for organization and improved sound engineering!

Brian Boyko · Post by **Brian Boyko** » October 15th, 2006, 4:12 am

ITunes is great - was using it in the booth tonight, and I think it really helped with the blank show, but the thing about it is that I'm missing comedy beats in the 30 second load times. That extra RAM is sorely needed, otherwise it might be best just to switch back to VLC...

chicocarlucci · Post by **chicocarlucci** » October 19th, 2006, 1:18 pm

Holy good christ this things a piece.
Ok, After being a dumbass and rushing in headlong, I finally found out that not only is the Hideout computer possessed, it is not nearly powerful enough for Itunes anyway.
Do not fret fellow improvisers. James Roberts has graciously donated his old piece of junk computer that looks to be marginally better. So I will use that. Unfortunately, the computer will probably be down until I can get to it on Sat. Sorry about that folks.
I will keep you posted as things progress.

-eric

kbadr · Post by **kbadr** » October 19th, 2006, 1:37 pm

Just make sure you salvage the 80+ gig harddrive that's in the current POS booth computer.

erikamay · Post by **erikamay** » October 19th, 2006, 1:51 pm

thanks for the update and chutzpah eric.

how will the computer being down affect the ability to use the sound and light board? or will it have no bearing what so ever?

ps. you rock

pps. why chiccocarlucci?

chicocarlucci · Post by **chicocarlucci** » October 19th, 2006, 5:55 pm

kbadr wrote:Just make sure you salvage the 80+ gig harddrive that's in the current POS booth computer.

Oh absolutely. Have to. It has all the data that I have setup on the current machine. It's just it wont' friggin bootup now and it's pissing me off.

chicocarlucci · Post by **chicocarlucci** » October 19th, 2006, 5:58 pm

erikamay wrote:thanks for the update and chutzpah eric.

how will the computer being down affect the ability to use the sound and light board? or will it have no bearing what so ever?

ps. you rock

pps. why chiccocarlucci?

Wont' effect anything else. That computer was only meant for playing MP3s. It didn't have enough power to do anything else.

Why Carlucci?
http://mojotainment.com/Behind.htm
http://mojonation.com

..A long time ago and it stuck.

-eric

Brian Boyko · Post by **Brian Boyko** » October 19th, 2006, 11:20 pm

Eric: If you're interested, I have a 1.4 ghz Athlon XP laptop with 20 g. hard drive, 256 MB ram (but that's the end of it's upgrade cycle) 14 in. screen. We could get an enclosure, to take the ATAPI drive out of the old computer, and connect it via USB or firewire to the new one. My laptop only has USB 1.1 however, so there may be some stuttering delay if it tries to play video off the USB drive. This could work as an interim solution.

Alternatively, we could just, y'know, switch back to VLC/WinAmp, but do a complete hard drive reformat to get the junk out, and actually organize the MP3 files needed into seperate folders and M3U playlists.

We may also want to try to find a copy of ITunes 6.0; the 7.0 is a memory hog and resource intensive.

What type of processor are we talking about, and why can't we just jam some RAM in there?

chicocarlucci · Post by **chicocarlucci** » October 22nd, 2006, 1:52 pm

Brian Boyko wrote: What type of processor are we talking about, and why can't we just jam some RAM in there?

Man I should check the forums more often..
I just jammed some memory in there but the CPU requirements for Itunes is a 500Mhz processor. The present machine is a 300Mhz. Blech.

Fortunately, another friend of mine just donated an Athlon 650Mhz which should more than do the trick. WE now also have 384MB of memory so we're doing good. I'm just putting the finishing touches on it now.
But thanks for the laptop offer, B! I appreciate it!

The only thing I'm worried about now is that the hard drive has 96K of bad sectors on it. THat's not an issue usually, but with todays fast read-head low-tolerance drives a bad sector could spell impending doom.
Maybe once we're up and running we can get someone to copy some of the more important data to DVD or something to backup.

-eric

Brian Boyko · Post by **Brian Boyko** » October 22nd, 2006, 2:47 pm

A hard drive, you can just -buy- these days for a song. Just let me know if it's ATAPI/IDE or SCSI (Most likely Atapi at 600mhz.)

I'd also recommend trying out Songbird as an alternative to iTunes... it's open source and I think there's going to be fewer problems with memory or processor speed that way.

arclight · Post by **arclight** » October 23rd, 2006, 4:08 am

chicocarlucci wrote:Fortunately, another friend of mine just donated an Athlon 650Mhz which should more than do the trick. WE now also have 384MB of memory so we're doing good. I'm just putting the finishing touches on it now.

I need to check the forums more often. I have a 700MHz machine I was going to donate, provided someone could help me resuscitate the BIOS I killed tonight trying to revive a replacement machine. Stupid BIOS...

The only thing I'm worried about now is that the hard drive has 96K of bad sectors on it. THat's not an issue usually, but with todays fast read-head low-tolerance drives a bad sector could spell impending doom.

Yeah, modern drives are smart enough to shuffle bad sectors around in the back ground so usually by the time you see bad sectors, the drive is about to totally crap out. Fire up a Knoppix disk and run smartctl against the suspect drive to get some diagnostics.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » October 23rd, 2006, 3:33 pm

Does anyone have a copy of Madonna's Ray of Light?... That's where I was pulling TNA's theme song every week from.

Austin Improv

Update - Sound Booth Computer Under Construction

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