I have been helping out at Cuyahoga Community College’s Recording Arts and Technology department since my graduation and have found myself alone with my PC in a world of Mac computers.  90% of our computer labs are outfitted with completely brand new Mac G5 Pros and only one of the small labs consists of Core 2 Duo PCs.  Also, almost all of the instructors and any student with a laptop are carrying around shiny new Macs, while I carry my Core 2 Duo (Thanks MusicXPC) PC.  It has been quite a struggle to crossover any large amount of information from my PC to everyone elses’ Mac.

I know there is a huge OS war on the ‘internets’ but I will leave that for much more educated (read non-educated) people to fight that out.  However,  I am a firm believer that an operating system choice should be made by deciding what applications you will be working with.  I feel that applications strongly define how an operating system feels to a user.  An OS choice also depends on what is standard in the particular field you are looking to use your computer in.  This brings me to why it is difficult for me at times to collaborate with my PC and everyones Mac.

If I have a PC, I can’t readily, out of the box, read or write to any Mac formatted (HFS+) drive.  With a Mac, I can read but not write to a Windows formatted (NTFS) out of the box.  Over the last few years with Macs becoming much  more popular in both the public and in artistic fields, a lot of development has gone into crossing the two platforms.  Unfortunately the speed at which these two platforms are groing is quicker than the development of crossing applications.  As soon as someone has figured out a way to link the two devices together, that platform releases something completely new and unsupported.  For example, newer Leopard Macs now feature an optional and brand new file system developed by Sun Microsystems.  I can’t imagine that someone has already thought of a way for PCs to read this file structer for customers right now.

As of right now, there are a few ways to work around this cross platform dilema:

Read on for the work arounds…

(more…)

Here is an update of whats been going on for the beginning of summer 2008!

Just recorded mixed three songs for a friend of mine and his new project Underdogs of Nipomo. Everything was recorded in my living room using my Presonus Firepod and a PC into Cubase SX3. I will also be mastering the songs for their upcoming release as soon we finish recording and mixing the rest of their songs. You can hear the mixed versions of the songs over on there myspace: http://www.myspace.com/underdogsof. You can also check them out live at BereaFest on July 19th.

Speaking of BereaFest, 80HD will also be playing on the July 18th date. (more…)