RANDOM STUFF THAT NEEDS A PLACE TO BE

I have loads of info that I would like to put somewhere, but it doesn't really fit. So, here it is, warts and all.

On Writing a VST. Writing code is faster than building a tube amp prototype

    No one cares
  • Building Tube Amps / Writing About Them:
    • I have a lot of stuff written on how I would build a tube amp, so it wouldn't take long to complete and really publish. It originally was part of the Cigar Box Guitar Amplifier Notebook but I didn't feel comfortable with letting that information out.
    • I did use the tube test harnesses to dial in a really nice, totally unique, Class A tube amp. But, I want to make it better. If I'm going to write a book about it, it needs to be better.
    • I was looking at building a bunch of the tube test harnesses when I remembered an old idea. Rather than build a bunch of identical hardware components, I thought to put each test harness in a VST. I understood the math now and I think it will work.
      cigar box prototypes
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  • Hacking Amplitube / ReValver:
    • Early versions of ReValver advertised that you could edit the amp at the component level. I originally thought I could modify a schematic in the software, press a button, and magically be able to hear examples of these different circuits I had drawn out. Sadly, ReValver never worked as a design tool to build new amps. Not at that level. You were simply meant to accept designs that were built into the software and tweak them a little bit. It was the mid-90s and perhaps computer power just was not there to deliver this kind of capability yet. I never gave up on that original idea though.
    • Amplitube is another guitar amp sim / modeler in VST form. I do not recall much more about it other than it worked on my limited computer at the time and it sounded nice blasting through the equally limited 1-inch computer speakers. I did enjoy the fact that I could click on a few things and twiddle virtual knobs to make changes in real-time. But there was still no way (as far as I could see) for me to create something from one of my own designs.
    • If I could not change the amplifiers in ReValver or AmpliTube directly, I could hack into them, decode what was needed to emulate an amp, hack those emulations, and even write a tool to encode my own amp designs for fun. I thought about this for a long time but never got beyond sifting through the object code.
    • Writing a couple of VSTs to emulate each module in an amplifier is more realistic and more in line with designing an amp from the ground up.
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  • Development Environment:
    • My old Core i5 laptop is getting older and slower every day. While a few test programs proved that this was feasible, it was not going to happen on that old PC. Time to upgrade.
    • First Try... Macbook Pro...
      • They're fast, small, damn good looking machines. OMG, it's so much faster.
      • MacOS... AU... XCode... - No. I tried it again after a couple of decades. I don't care if it's a superior platform, architecture, development environment. I've gone back and forth between UNIX, LINUX, Windows enough that my time is better spent just sticking with the clunky and often frustrating update cycles that Microsoft forces me to accept. Pi-hole may be the solution to that problem.
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    • Second try... 10x the machine I have now... Upgrade...
      • Windows... I love it and hate it. But, I can get to the goal faster by just working with what I have and what I know.
      • VisualStudio is a necessary evil for VST development. I still don't like it. VST development might work in Eclipse for some people, but it quickly gets too dificult so it's better to just punt and go with VisualStudio.
      • Migrating EVERYTHING from my old PC is very difficult, but made somewhat easier with the help of EaseUS Todo PCTrans which is probably the singular worst name for such a helpful program. There's a free version that you can try (my experience was NOT good with the free version). I bought the lifetime version and successfully moved dozens of old programs that I still use and no longer have the installation disks for. It actually FIXED a bug in PaintShop Pro 8 when it was moved to the new machine.
      • MS Office was the hardest nut to crack. I reverted to Office Pro 2010 because I had the installation disks and it still works. My important documents are still compatible, but there's some funky things going on with the formatting and fonts. My previously published books get repaginated. As long as I don't have to make a correction, I'm okay.
      • I needed to make a correction to a PDF for one of my published books. It was safer to directly edit the PDF than to jump though all the MS Office hoops. I am currently using PDF XChange Editor, PDFsam Basic, and PDFsam Enhanced 7 to make these changes.
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