Moving house is a tiresome affair at the best of times, but takes a whole new level of energy when you are basically something of a geek. When you have a room converted into a studio and most rooms in your house or apartment contain at least some element of gadgetry spilling out with a mess of chargers, documentation, manuals or interfaces then you probably don’t want to move often. Or at all. Much like learning the tooth fairy is not real (sorry) or realising that Sony has nothing but contempt for its customers (blackhat) it is an inevitability. It will happen. When it does, consider some of these tips that I have found useful in my own recent moving.

1. Keeper of boxes

Keep boxes for your studio visual monitors - such as LCD screens - and your studio audio monitors - such as reference speakers. For sake of shipping for repairs or warranty claims, and given their delicacy, it pays to keep the boxes for your studio monitor speakers in any case. This stuff is the most difficult to do without should something happen to it, so more than most other items you should consider packing down and storing these boxes where possible.

2. Plastic storage treasure

Plastic storage containers are much better then cardboard boxes for cables and electronic gear that might be affected by moisture and dust, or require some greater protection from clumsy handling. With the clip-on lids it only takes a small band of packing tape over the handles to secure, and they can be stacked for storage afterward. If they are unpacked after the move, they fit neatly enough inside each other for storage, and are always useful for shepherding gear around where sherpas are rare.

3. Pull the power

If you are like me you will have packed the bedroom, bathrooms, kitchen and lounge room well before you will even have moved one item from the studio or studio space. There are always so many projects to work on, so many great sites to read, and so much internet to download. You are addicted to being awesome. Go cold turkey. Pull the power to your computers, unplug the studio monitors, turn the modem/router off and disengage. Commit to the move and the hunger to get precious interwebz and megahurtz again will motivate you to hurry up and finish the process!

Electronic musician BT recently had US$150,000 in gear stolen from his studio, including his primary show computer with the entire This Binary Universe show on it and rigs for two other live shows and recording. He doesn’t just want to get his stuff back, though: he also wants to help musicians protect themselves from a similar fate. Few of us have studios worth anywhere near that amount, but losing your whole rig: priceless.

Among the loot: a Dave Smith PolyEvolver, serial #271, a Hartmann Neuron with BT’s patches, and a loaded Apple Mac Pro with This Binary Universe. All pretty priceless; the Neuron and PolyEvolver would be tough to replace and the Mac Pro has a whole show on it. To get them back, BT is offering a $20,000 reward or equivalent time as a producer to anyone with a name and address.

BT Theft Announcement and Proposals on MySpace

Via electronic music site Filter 27

And this would just be another painful gear theft story, except BT wants to go further:

1. Protecting gear from theft: He wants to start a simple subscription service to register and thumbprint gear, so it can be easily traced to retailers and online auction sites. (Note that New York’s Sam Ash, for instance, does just this for used gear and coordinates with the NYPD, but with online sites, tracking just got a lot harder.)
2. Giving music tech gear to the needy: He wants to collect new and user gear to give to musicians and producers who can’t afford it.

While the second one is an interesting idea, I’m not exactly sure how it would work here — and there are other, worthy organizations dedicated to this idea. But helping protect gear from theft sounds ideal. BT is looking for lawyers, musicians, and vendors to donate.

Know of similar initiatives? Or think you might be able to help with this? Let us know in comments. Know where BT’s gear is? Email gear@binaryacoustics.com

Love your audio gear so much you wish you could wear it around your neck, but a loudspeaker on your throat would a) strangle you and b) make you look like too much of a dork to attend high-society functions? Complete Technique jewelers feels you.

From sterling silver turntable cartridges plated in gold with embedded cubic zirconia to tiny silver pendants of speakers, CT manages to say both bling and audio geek at once. (Prices hover at just over US$200 to start.) Their custom pieces are when things start to get really interesting, however. Via the always-hilarious Don’t Believe the Hype Beast, we learn they’ve created a custom pendant of the Akai MPC 3000 sampler for producer Hi-Tek.

Complete Technique Custom Audio Jewelry

For a real custom job, I’d like a tiny pendant that actually functions as an audio device. In the meantime, you can part yourself with your hard-earned cash for non-functional personal adornment, if you feel so moved. (Sadly, the engagement ring does not keep with the audio theme — I was imagining two lovely young synth geeks, bound together in their eternal love of each other and the Minimoog.)

Along these same lines, don’t forget the brilliant MIDI bracelets, pictured here, by producer - Chicago music scenester - electronic musician - jeweler Liz McLean Knight, aka Quantazelle. Anyone got more resources? We could have a whole audio technology lover’s Tiffany’s.

More photos after the break, including my favorite which has nothing to do with music.

Film/TV composers have a particular interest here on CDM in that they tend to think creatively about style, instrumentation, and sound in their work and have to meld one technology (music) with another (film). It’s Friday night, so having resisted this long, I can no longer avoid mentioning Galactica. Composer Bear McCreary, who has scored the Battlestar Galactica TV series, has a blog going in which he talks about his music and some of the instruments featured in the show’s eclectic (and often surprisingly ethnic) sound textures:

For tonight’s episode, McCreary blogs his featured violinist, Paul Cartwright, whose electric violin is largely responsible for the signature sound of the show. CDM readers I think will especially like his bag o’ covet-worthy gear, including a tube amp and set of stompboxes any guitarist would love to have, let alone a violinist. The small tube amp is especially interesting to me, because one of the challenges of electric violin is softening out the tone, both to distinguish it from just sounding like a guitar or, at the opposite extreme, being too harsh. I love the analog approach, and there’s still plenty to be learned if you’re a computer-toting violinist (and, of course, I wouldn’t be the person I am if I didn’t point out computers can be great fun with violins, too).

Bear McCreary blog (erm, blog in a sort of mid-90s, stuck in frames sense — no RSS — but well worth reading!)

Bear McCreary is an interesting composer in general, a young, rising star in a hyper-competitive field.

The good folks at The Smoking Gun are infamous for breaking confidentiality rules and leaking the surreal world of major artist tour rider documents to the world. Hilarity ensues, such as when Christina Aguilera demands “Soy cheese and Oreos. Flintstones chewables and votive candles. Nesquick and dried cranberries.” and rival Britney Spears chows on Doritos and International Foods coffees (hopefully not at the same time). The world laughed. The world vomited.

Iggy Pop is different, taking each legal item as an opportunity to add jokes — all while subtly threatening all on the tour who would deny them a properly-working gig. Smart. The whole thing is worth a read, but this being CDM, we’ll skip straight to the gear stuff.

First, I proudly present CDM’s slogan / t-shirt moniker of the week:

1 x KORG 2000 DIGITAL RACK TUNER. Digital in the sense that it works via an electronically generated number system, not digital because it only works if someone holds it together with their fingers.

And then it goes on …

3 x MARSHALL VBA BASS AMPLIFIERS Make sure they’re good ones or we’ll all end up as wormlike web-based life forms in the bass player’s online literary diahorrea. Honestly. He’s like a sort of internet Pepys or Boswell, except without the gout and the syphilis. For all I know.

And on …

We need: one(1) monitor man who speaks good English and is not afraid of death.
… in Galicia in Northern Spain, they appear to think - if they just ignore riders like this, then supply a fat, beared hippy with a digital monitor desk (doh!) who doesn’t know shit about eq-ing, and monitor wedges that would be better suited to wedging doors open, and a load of stage managers and PA geezers and promoters reps who shout a lot - that this is the same as actually providing what a band needs in order to do a gig to the best of their ability. And that if they deny that their gear is no good, it will suddenly, mysteriously, become good. I’d just like to say that the next time the Stooges get booked for their festival, I’m going to turn up with some pickled eggs, a small blue vibrator with a jelly dolphin balanced on the shaft, a set of dog-eared encyclopedias with the volumes E-G missing, and a screwdriver that’s been accidentally dropped in a toilet.

… and on and on, and I expect you’ll be reading this thing all day and laughing and not getting any work done.

Iggy Pop’s concert rider funniest in rock history? [The Smoking Gun; thanks, Jaymis!]

Feel free to add your favorite bits in comments.

SM Pro has released a “passive summing mixer” that mixes eight analog audio channels to two. The idea is that digital summing, as performed in software, will cancel certain sound components and result in a less detailed mix after mixdown. The PM8 passive summing mixer does this for you in the analog domain, theoretically resulting in a better mix.

Here’s an excerpt from the marketing materials: “The summing and mixing features built into the PM8 allow users to avoid unnecessary A/D & D/A conversions commonly found in digital studios and thus attain extremely detailed mixes with superb stereo imaging and punch.”

PR is actually mixing metaphors here. Summing in software has nothing to do with A/D or D/A conversions. What I think they mean is that, by connecting analog inputs directly to this mixer instead of routing through your software, you won’t have to go through additional conversions; that much is true.

The manufacturer also claims that the mixer “Achieves better stereo imaging” and “Creates exceptionally detailed mixes with clarity and punch.”

PM8 Product Page [SM Pro Audio]

I’d sure like to hear an A/B test of digital summing in music software with analog summing, with all other variables minimized as much as possible. Mostly what I hear is people arguing over this based on these issues based on hearsay or theory. Certainly, a good passive mixer will have uses in studios, for those who can afford / actually need them. But my question is, does digital summing really deserve all the flak it gets? (My mixes aside; I don’t think you need fancy equipment to hear more detail in my mixdown as I’m no engineer!)

Maybe Bob Dylan will want one?

Thomas Dolby’s blog continues to induce rabid gear lust. After drooling over Mr. Dolby’s live rig and repurposed vintage MIDI controller, we now get a glimpse at Johnny DeKam’s live video rig. (Kevin Johnsrude caught this one, and reminds us that “envy is one of the seven deadly sins.” Better keep that in mind.)

Actually, we can divide this into “things to envy” and “things to note.”

Thomas Dolby is on the road again after 15 years. And how times have changed: unlike the year 1991, the year 2006 means he can blog the whole tour. For starters, he’s posted the gory details of his performance rig “for the geeks and musicians out there.” (You called?)

1. Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 GHz, to be replaced with a MacBook Pro when everything gets ported to Intel
2. MUSE Receptor for still more plug-in hosting
3. Logic Pro 7.2 acts as a MIDI host (for outboard hardware synths and plug-ins), plug-in host, and (primarily) playback device for presequenced backup tracks
4. Stylus-RMX plug-in for loops, thanks to the fact that you can queue up irregular loops
5. Built-in Logic plugs, plus more: Arturia’s MiniMoog, RMIV drums, Slayer2 guitars, UltraFocus, Camelspace gating effect, T-racks mastering.
6. Rack: UPS power backup, PreSonus Firepod FireWire audio interface, MOTU MIDI interface, Nord 3 racked synth
7. Keyboard controllers: Three of them, no less: CME Pro 7 (now distributed by Yamaha), Novation ReMote SL25 (which automaps nicely to Logic), and the Virus TI Polar. The Virus is the only sound source.
8. M-Audio Trigger Finger for drums, samples, muting and unmuting tracks.
9. Vintage gear retrofitted for MIDI: Knobs on old oscilloscopes and signal generators controlling soft synth parameters? Now, that’s cool. (Wouldn’t you do something like that if you were Thomas Dolby?)