Author Archives: Mike O'Connor

X/Y Pal notes

A quick post about getting X/Y Pal connected between an iPhone 15 and an M1 Mac Ultra.

Connecting over the wire (USB in the documentation) didn’t work, but using a Network MIDI connection did — with the advantage of not having to be tethered to the Mac.  Here’s a 45 second video that shows the following steps:

Open Audio Midi Setup and show the MIDI Studio window

Click open the Configure Network Driver window (the little globe in the top menu bar)

Enter and enable a Session (which defaults to Session 1 on both the Mac and the phone — confusing — this is the Mac Session 1)

“Network Session 1” should now be available in ShowMIDI

Head over to X/Y Pal on the phone and select a preset — “mike’s demo” in my case

Edit each device so that it points to the phone’s “Network Session 1”  (confusing, sorry)

Go back to the MIDI Network Setup window, select the phone and click Connect

That’s what I did to get X/Y Pal to talk to my Mac over WiFi.

Here’s a 45 second video of all that.  Click the pop-out icon to put it in its own window or just go full screen to really embiggen it.

 

 

Big Improvements in the late ’70’s

Document wish list:

  • NTIA funding – both power increase and Bedford St. move
  • CPB-qualification
  • Bedford St. deal
  • Board minutes from that period

Significant Events

  • Applying FCC approval to change frequency and transition to vastly upgraded transmitter power and antenna facility on the west side of town.  Joan Rubel and Vinnie Curren worked on that, Steve Lewis and Ben Dawson assisted.
  • Applying for and getting the NTIA grant.  We had NTIA funding for the power increase / move to WMTV’s tower and for the build-out of the new facility on Bedford Street.  Memories are currently vague about whether it was one grant or two, but funding was critical.
  • Getting CPB qualified, with the Community Service Grant then rolling in to help subsidize operations.  Joan Rubel did all of that.
  • Managing to buy the Bedford St building from STASH at a time when interest rates were 18%.  Joan Rubel and Mark Fuerst pulled that miracle off.

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WORT — the first few years — for the 50th Anniversary

This is a scratchpad post to collect “stuff” for the upcoming 50th anniversary of WORT.  Cautionary notes: the newsletters and other documents behind the “click here” links are hosted here on my site.  Also — this is still under heavy editing/development (I’ll take this warning down when I feel like it’s close to done).

My interest is in the first two and a half years of Back Porch Radio — from a few months before it was incorporated until the station went on the air.  If anybody has any tips or info, please let me know.

Wishlist of documents

  • Initial application for the FCC license (locations -FCC archives (Engineering File in hand, still looking for non-engineering exhibits)

Key Dates leading up to going on the air

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Reset IFS variable in Mac OSX

I know, nobody could be so stupid as to set IFS directly from the command-line on their Mac whilst following a tutorial to learn how to split variables.

But just in case you’re just as stupid as me and you want to set it back to the Mac OSX default, here’s what I did.

First handy item – a command-line to display exactly what IFS is currently set to Continue reading

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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Configuring, starting and running a multi-client Jacktrip server with per-channel mixing

This post is intended for several audiences.  It’s a checklist for me when I want to host several people in a multi-client Jacktrip session and provide them with mixing, both to the final feed and among themselves.  It attempts to be clear enough that it might provide an example for others.  And it’s a demonstration of many aspects of this approach that could be improved with revisions to software and hardware

These examples are configured for an eight-way session between the host and seven remote participants.  It provides a separate mix for each participant (in this case deleting them from the mix they’re monitoring — but with the option to be added back in if they choose). Continue reading

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?