Category Archives: Uncategorized

Scaling Jack (and Jacktrip?) by using section-routing

This is really fast/early draft stuff.

The puzzler:  Building a 20-person mix-delete audio routing template in my Pretty Good Jacktrip Toolkit crashes (moderately-sized) Linode servers.  They seem to crash when automating large numbers of Jack-connection adds or deletes — issuing a delete-all with JMESS for example.

The hypothesis: Jack works OK, it’s the number of connections per endpoint that’s causing the trouble.

The idea to get around this (so far): split the mix-minus routing in two by putting players in sections.

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PerformaX 16×32 sander – reduce burning – improve airflow

Clogged sandpaper leading to burns in the wood has always been a big problem with my PerformaX (JET) 16-32 drum sander.  I’m hopeful that this is the fix — replacing the cover to provide a connection for a 4″ dust collection hose (from the current model) rather than the original one which connected a 2.5″ hose.  Here are the pictures — which started just before COVID and end…  today, almost a year and a half later.

Starting point — March 1st, 2020 — the old cover

The new cover arrives – March 7 2020

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Loopback: routing Jacktrip audio

UPDATE: September 2023

This post is for a person using command-line connection to Jacktrip and Qjackctl to manage Jack (which is the way we did it back in March of 2021).  It creates a single virtual device to route audio to and from Jacktrip.  This makes Qjackctl a lot easier to manage by providing a single interface that can be used for both input and output.

These days JackTrip has a terrific graphic user interface (GUI) that can manage audio input and output devices directly through RT Audio (eliminating the need to use Qjackctl).  In that case I would suggest creating a separate Loopback devices for audio being sent to Jacktrip and audio being received from Jacktrip.  It’s much easier to keep things straight and just as flexible.


Here’s a step-by-step post about routing Jacktrip audio using Rogue Amoeba’s Loopback software.  Loopback is a for-money successor to Soundflower and similar to BlackHole.  I like it because it is more visual and does more stuff.

The goal of this post is to get a person with a 2×2 interface going with a setup that will let them join a Jacktrip session reliably, without having to “rewire” things each time.  It also covers things like routing audio into and out of other audio software like Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Max and Zoom.

Alas, this is for Mac folks only.  Windows audio puzzles me.  I don’t have a clue how to do this on a Windows machine.

There are links to short videos that “animate” each of these steps and examples.   Click on the pictures to embiggify and read them.

Step 0: Assumptions – Click here for video
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WORT memories — for the 45th anniversary

dear WORT.

happy 45th!

many thanks for the invitation to throw a few words into the virtual gathering.  here’s a collection of WORT memory-jogger photos, starting off with a few pages from early program guides, that tell a lot of the story of the early days.  clicking on the newsletter-page photos brings up bigger versions.

. . . .

here’s Numero Uno – volume 1 number 1.  my writing style in those days was a completely-hopeless attempt, by an illiterate geek,  to emulate my hero Lorenzo Milam.  Milam was guiding light for a gaggle of us who started stations all over the country — we lost him this year (2020), along with so many others.

a pretty good exposition about why most of us did all that work – it was fun, we made lots of good friends and we kinda took care of each other.  Jeff Lange did a lot of the graphics for the first-generation newsletters including everything on this page (i think). Continue reading

JackTrip — Hub-Mode server options

Here’s a scratchpad on how Jacktrip Hub Mode does audio routing as of early September 2020.

Starting the server in Hub Mode (capital-S instead of lower-case S) with the “-p” option offers four ways to configure the server.  Here’s an example launch string that would fire up a server in Mode 2:

jacktrip -S -p2

Mode – 0 (the default – my machine hears everybody and everybody hears the mix that I send them)

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Origin of the “Waumandee” in Waumandee Creek

We here at Prairie Haven live on Little Waumandee Creek in Buffalo County, Wisconsin.  We’ve always wondered about where the word “Waumandee” comes from and what it means.

Listen to these blackbirds and see if you hear them saying “waumandee!” the way I do.  Maybe that’s where the word comes from?

 

Battery power-storage system

This is a scratchpad post about the battery power-storage system. Another in the “Prairie Haven Operator’s Manual” series of posts.

Right now there are just a series of documentation diagrams that I made — I’ll add explanations as time permits.

Just for fun — here’s a picture of the Submarine Control Room Command Console that shows off the three inverters at the heart of the system. Continue reading

Soundscapes — audio recorders compared

I decided to compare some digital recorders for the purposes of recording soundscapes here at Prairie Haven.  I’ve got two of them, bought at different times for different purposes and I was curious to see how much different they were and whether it was worth carrying one of them instead just using my phone.  The nice thing about the phone is that it’s with me all the time, but I’d start carrying one of the others if they were better. Continue reading

Are projections of registration growth in generic top-level domains realistic?

Intro

Exactly five years ago today, I published this little rant about the growth rates projected for the new “generic top level domains” that were being introduced by ICANN at the time.  You know, domain names that end in things like .run or .lol or .bot (yep, those are all real alternatives to .com or .org if you’d like to strike out into new territory).

I decided to update it with the way things have turned out. Continue reading

Wide tires on a Polaris Ranger EV

We’ve been noticing that the Ranger has been pretty tough on our trails here at Prairie Haven.  Our pet theory is that the EV (plug in electric) version of the Ranger is quite a bit heavier than a normal one and that the standard (narrow, aggressive-tread) tires add to the problem.

The Mission: wider tires for the Ranger EV

We’ve just mounted four Carlysle 25x11x12 Multi-Trac (574369) turf tires .  These are a little wider than the standard tires and have a much less aggressive tread pattern.  Here’s Marcie on her test drive — early returns are positive.

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Push custom light guides and knobs from Kontakt to Komplete Kontrol

A scratchpad post to remind myself how to configure a Kontakt instrument so that light guides and knobs will show up correctly in Komplete Kontrol.  There’s a video walkthrough at the end of this post.

Here’s a picture of the destination – the light guides appear on the keyboard and Komplete Kontrol knobs are mapped to the patch in two banks.

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