Trionce Tech

That's not a MIDI controller! That's a controller for a Vox amp. The VSF5, to be exact. You're correct...sort of. It WAS the VSF5, now it is something rather different. The goal of this project was to allow the worship leader I work with to be able to trigger his tracks through MIDI. The functionality is very, very simple in that there are two banks, selectable by the bank switch, and each bank has 4 channels. Each of the 8 total channels is assigned a unique MIDI note that can be mapped to whatever in the software. Pretty cool. So why did I destroy a perfectly good VSF5? Because I don't own any amp that this works with and have no idea how I came to own it. Having no use for it but finding it too cool to get rid of, I found a new use for it. First step was to rip everything out and drill holes in the back for a MIDI connector and USB cable. Stepper bits are invaluable for this sort of work. I highly recommend getting your hands on some.  Once h...

Recently, I FINALLY picked up a soldering iron that wasn't the $3 one from Walmart. This has already been a blessing as the tip doesn't instantly corrode, I can control the temperature, and I don't have to buy a new one every month (extremely common problems in cheap irons). And it just all around has a FAR superior build quality. Now, this is an audio tech blog. You may be wondering why I'm talking about a soldering iron. Well, firstly, I'm studying electrical engineering and it's my blog, so ha! But, on a more serious note, as commercialization of microcontrollers and 'hobby' electronics become more and more common, we will more and more often see DIY-based audio gear. In fact, in the extremely near future, you'll see my DIY rat's nest of a MIDI controller. So, as a tool to assist in both the creation and the repair of audio tech, I think this is an extremely pertinent product type to cover. This is the Hakko FX888D. The package I bought ...

It's summer here in our college town which means, among many other things, that there's a lack of musicians around. So, church starts to look a lot more acoustic than it might normally otherwise. Consequentially, that means no drums. We've had cajon a few times but no one has touched the kit in well over a month. So, without much thought, we decided to swap out the trusty SM57 for one of our drum overheads, the Audix ADX51, on cello and subsequently forgot about it. Then, one of the other techs started asking me what it was that I had done to the cello's channel settings to make it sound, well, magical. I'd love to take credit for it but I had no idea. I had noticed it too, though. The cello sounded fuller; I could get its lows to emulate the bass guitar and could get the growls to really shine through the mix. But, I hadn't actually changed much of anything. So what was different? Now, believe it or not, we're not complete morons. Keep in mind that ...

Today I received an eBay purchase of a Behringer ECM8000. I'm pretty excited about this mic because it's what's called a 'reference mic'; meaning that, in theory, it has a completely flat frequency response. Typically, something like this would be used to tune a room but there's really no reason why it couldn't be used like a normal mic. In fact, as I was reading up on it, I discovered that plenty of people love these things for certain recording applications purely because of how precisely they reproduce the sound source. I fully intend on tuning some rooms with it at some point, but my current purpose for this mic will be to compare it's response to that of a microphone I'm reviewing to see for myself the frequency response and then compare that to what the manufacturer says. An arguably pointless endeavor but I'm convinced it will, if nothing else, be fun. In any case, I'm excited to add another microphone to the mic locker and wil...

I am the proud owner of a Yamaha GA32/12. I'll have to do a detailed overview of it one day but, for now, it lives under a bed at my parents' house while I make my way through college. A genuine tragedy. My journey to owning this thing started probably five or six years ago, in probably my junior year of high school (or so). The group of guys I had put together to be my church's youth band ended up being a phenomenal group. I'll never get over how fun it was to play with those guys and the four (and sometimes more) of us were pretty confident we would be able to be a full-time worship band. Well, life happens and that just didn't play out. But, all that to say, I wanted us to be able to control our own mixes from the stage with our own equipment. So my idea was to split the output of every instrument; one send to the front of house, and one to our monitoring system. Terribly inefficient, I know, but I've learned a lot since then! So I concluded that what I n...

So a problem that I'm sure many of us run into is being somewhere random and finding a cool sound to record, but not having anything but our phones with us to record. Now, sometimes, a phone isn't the worst thing in the world and is certainly better than nothing. But, what if I go to my parents' house, like I am this weekend, and find that the front door suddenly makes a cool noise that I want to record? Again, could just use the phone. And ideally, I'd have all of my gear there with me to record it but lugging around a rack mount is hardly practical. So, I decided that I would have a recording 'go-bag'. Criteria 1: Said bag needs to be very small, like a small lunchbox or so in size. Criteria 2: I don't want to spend any money on it. At least, not right now. Criteria 3: Any gear I put in here is dedicated to this setup and must stay in the bag at all times. So here's what I came up with: Scoff all you want, remember Criteria 2. This ...