[Les Cargill[_5_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 12/11/2020 11:23 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
If your Focusrite interface has died,
you have to buy a new one.

So that's by design. You only get a Focusrite interface if you promise
not to try to fix them. I had broken buttons on mine; I took
the plastic out and use a crochet needle to hit the switches.

I won't argue with success, but how did the buttons break? I don't
consider the Focusrite personal studio product line to be terribly
rugged, but, geez, how far did you have to drop it?


I transported it without a rack, and a mic stand rolled into them.

They are $500 or so. There's no reason to bother with repair. They're
disposable.

The manufacturers would like to thin so, but to a user who doesn't have
much money and bought the best interface he could afford, "disposable"
isn't a happy prospect.


Well... it's $500 and it lasts as long as lt lasts or what, %5,000 and
it lasts "forever" - long as you repair it.

Dave Morgan had Main Street, with a Mitsu DASH and a fricking nice
big D&R. The studio didn't survive the owner. It was like driving a
Cadillac except for the window-mount A/C unit.

It'd take a lot of experimentation between those to convince me
that it was better than a $500 Focusrite, REAPER and a Waves
Gold Bundle.

Work flow. Quality of life. Clients who feel good about analog signal
flow. The abiity to actually fix something that breaks, skip a noisy
channel and use the next one, or make a necessary or useful
modification. Stuff you can't really do on a box from Focusrite, or even
Apogee or Burl for ten times the price.


I don't see it that way. It looks cool, even is cool but it does not
preclude getting work done.

Just the space for a real console is kind of daunting.

A while back I broke the carafe of the best coffee maker I had. No
original replacement available from the maker, several aftermarket
supposed replacements but when you read the fine print, the dimensions
are way off and there's no guarantee that it will work with a specific
model coffee maker.

Y'see, there's this spring loaded valve on the bottom of the filter
holder assembly that opens when you put the carafe in place (so the
coffee will flow into the carafe) and closes when you remove the carafe
(so if there's still water in the reservoir, it won't drip out. If the
carafe isn't the correct height, it won't operate that valve, or won't
even fit under it.

I modified it by removing the valve and machining a "hole reducer" to
slow the flow rate through the filter to make up for the interference
from the valve. Now I have a semi-automatic coffee maker that sends the
coffee straight to a cup rather than a carafe (one less dish to wash)
and I'm getting good coffee again. But then, how many people would just
go out and buy another coffee maker for $29 and free shipping? Everyone
but me, I expect.

I have a Mackie 24-track hard disk recorder with many fixable or
replaceable parts, and a Soundcraft analog console that now needs more
maintenance than the time is worth to me, so I'm in the market for a new
console, but the new digital consoles, for me, are all obsolete because
they don't have enough inputs to have "tape" returns.



True that. It's a lot done "in the box" now.

--
Les Cargill