Digital Clef

  Happy New Year! This article was supposed to be published before Christmas, but it slipped my mind... - It's December, it's the season of giving, and my audio interface decided to give me problems. Lovely. Over the last few months, my main audio interface - a PreSonus AudioBox iOne - started to show some signs of fatigue. It started by cutting out the first half-a-second of any sound played after it was silent for more than a few minutes. Then, the mic preamp started to not be as loud as it was originally, to the point where I have to max out the gain for my condenser mic to be loud enough to be heard. Finally, it sometimes decides to just not be detected when plugged in. All these issues started to get me slightly irritated, so I started to look for a potential replacement. The idea was not to buy one ASAP, but you know...  sales happened . Out with the old: PreSonus AudioBox iOne The interface I was using until December 1st, 2023 was purchased over five years ago, in Septem

  Life has been hectic lately (as usual), and I don't really have the time to properly deep-dive in a piece of gear and record a full demo. Since I didn't publish anything in a while, let's go with something simple, for a change: Gear I Tried And Didn't Buy (Yet)™. Without further ado, let's dive right in! Electro-Harmonix Micro POG The POG, or Polyphonic Octave Generator is one of the best octave generator available on the market. It does sub octave and octave up simultaneously, and it does it really well. The original POG pedal was discontinued in 2009 and replaced by the POG2 that offer the same level of control. The POG and POG2 offer 2 extra octaves in either direction, along with a detune, a low-pass filter, and an attack control. The Micro POG is the smaller brother that offers only one sub octave and one octave up, along with the dry signal level. It's pretty bare-bones and simple to work with, having only 3 knobs. I tested it on bass and it sounds great

  It seems that every year, around the end of July, I end up making a ridiculous purchase. This year is no exception. It all started by trying out a used bass cab at Long & McQuade on an all-tube amp head, which left me with more questions than answers. That little experience sent me on a quest to find the ideal amp and cab combo for my use-case: playing in front of a large audience (the cat) in a gigantic venue (my office). For the inquiring minds, the manatee on top of the stack is named Manny the Manatee and no, the delay was not part of the deal (I already owned it).  The requirements There are few requirements the setup must fulfill: Not take that much real-estate Be more powerful than my practice amp Have lots of headroom Be easy to tone-shape Have a tube preamp Must be able to get vintage and modern sounds Nice-to-have: Have an effects loop Have a post-preamp DI out Finding the cab was the easiest part. The amp required a lot more effort to figure out. The speaker cabinet Du