Bill Roper's Journal

The studio computer had to have Windows 11 completely reinstalled on it and that's what I did this afternoon. I then installed just the Universal Audio software which proceeded to fail in *exactly* the same way that it had before the system croaked, hanging the system hard when I tried to move the new Apollo Twin X Gen 2 to the top of the list in the UA Console application. This was with a fresh install of Windows 11, updated BIOS for the motherboard, and updated drivers elsewhere, so there's a real shortage of things to blame at this point other than the UA software. At some point, I will explain this to the tech who says "this is working everywhere in the world", because I am pretty sure that it doesn't work depending on the exact vintage of the various Apollo units in the chain.

(I found someone with a similar Windows problem two years ago and the tech dismissed it as "old drivers, different OS", although the differences between Windows 11 and Windows 10 are really vanishingly small other than cosmetics.)

I can still use this setup -- I just have to monitor through the Apollo 8. That's not terrible, just annoying.

I am now copying all of the files back from the backup on the NAS. This has eight or so hours to go, which means that I should be able to start reinstalling the rest of the software in the morning.

And then I should have a studio again...

Last week, a Windows update showed up on the studio computer and brought along with it a new form of the Blue Screen of Death -- which is not *blue* any more, but which has all of the same miserable effects. In this case, I am getting a message that there is a driver problem. There's no telling *what* driver is the problem, of course, because that would be too simple. Anyway, I managed to revert the Windows update and get things working again.

Meanwhile, I've been dealing with support at Universal Audio, as they are convinced (unlike my studio computer, which crashes every time that I try it) that I should be able to put my new Apollo Twin X as the first unit in the UA Console and do my monitoring through it. I am currently trying all of the things that the tech suggested, including updating my BIOS.

It was about this time that the Windows update showed up again and took out the studio computer the same way that it had failed before. This lovely error is DRIVER_VERIFIER_DMA_VIOLATION. All attempts to fix it have failed.

In an effort to increase the joy in my life, each time that the computer fails to boot, Microsoft requires to enter a *48* digit recovery value for Bitlocker which *I am not even using on this machine*. I have now saved a copy of this on my phone so that I can stop having to look it up. It is just a *bit* too long to memorize.

I messed around with this for several hours this afternoon and into the early evening before giving up. It is likely that the only way around this is going to be to reinstall Windows 11.

Oh, joy. Time to make a new USB stick...

In better news, the White Sox beat the Astros and are advancing to the ALDS.

We are not currently talking about the Cubs. The game is not over yet.

Today, Sam came by to help me wire my new piece of gear into the studio in the basement. I'm replacing my aging Mackie Big Knob with a UA Apollo Twin X. The new gear should give me a cleaner signal once it is working properly and will add some new capabilities to the studio, including auto gain which will be really handy when doing solo recording down there.

The rewiring exercise resulted in removing six balanced 1/4 inch cables from the mess under the console, which was a good thing. Sam spent most of his time on the floor passing cables up to me and untangling the mess. I then went underneath once he was done to fix the various things that had become disconnected during the entertainment. It was all good.

Except that things aren't working. I know that the Twin is receiving and passing signal, because the monitor speakers have made an annoying BLAAAT sound a couple of times, but something is going wrong with the configuration. The Windows OS has thrown several errors, I have pulled one piece of gear out of the daisy chain, and confusion is still reigning.

I am considering retreating to the previous version of the drivers, as I loaded new drivers today as part of the gear install, and seeing if that improves the situation. This is tomorrow's exercise, because tomorrow is also laundry day and I will have plenty of excuses for being in the basement.

Wish me luck!

Someone has now written an AI-driven wiki dedicated to hallucinating on various subjects. Yes, this is of absolutely no use, save for entertainment.

Here, for example, is the article on The Great Filking Schism of 1799.

The new heatsink for Julie's computer arrived today (a day earlier than forecast, probably because the part was already in the Chicago area), so I installed it tonight around dinner. This was a little bit of a challenge, because the design has changed a bit with the newer model of the heatsink, but I eventually interpreted all of the pictures correctly and got it tucked into place.

The computer is now back in its place in the basement and substantially quieter than it was with the stock heatsink from Intel. :)

Julie got to observe the process, because it is good to learn how to fix your own computer.

I went upstairs to do some light cleaning and putting things away. Part of this was making a box of dead electronics to go to recycling. As I was tossing things into that box, I found my old laptop that I had given to K and that she had given back to me well before she left for college. The power brick was with it, so I figured I'd plug it in and see what shape it was in.

Happily, it powered up and took a charge, so that was a good start. But it turns out this laptop is just a wee bit too old to be upgraded to Windows 11 and with only 8 GB of RAM and no further expansion capabilities, probably not worth fighting to upgrade. It is, however, a perfectly fine machine for certain purposes.

So I have installed Linux Mint on it, which is my first time doing this. (I have Zorin OS on a much older laptop that I mostly haven't touched in years. I looked at Zorin first and decided that Mint would be a better choice.)

The install was easy, although I had to use a different tool than the one they had suggested to make the bootable USB stick for the install. Happily, Rufus works for this.

And now, everything is up and running and I'm able to access the Internet and even post updates.

Like this one. :)

So it went like this...

The new baby gate arrived this morning. I dropped the old baby gate off at UPS over lunch and it is on its way back to Amazon. After work, I decided that I would see if I could quickly install the new gate and it turned out that I *could*, having figured out all of the problematic parts with the previous gate. The gate is now installed on the stairs and should, I think, prevent Calvin from coming upstairs. It does not *seem* to prevent Gretchen from coming upstairs, although it doesn't make the whole process any more pleasant. And Julie needs to see how to operate the gate so that she does not tear it down accidentally. I have called Julie and suggested a demonstration, which she has declined. I worry about this.

Meanwhile, the new Thunderbolt 3 adapter card for the Apollo 8 unit that I bought arrived from Sweetwater. It had come via USPS and the notice said that it was in the mailbox. This seemed unlikely and it was, as all of the mail had been left on the porch, because that box had no hope of fitting in the mailbox. I brought everything in and it was now time for dinner.

We have been keeping Calvin on an extra-long leash to keep him in the family room when he is not in his kennel, but after dinner, I decided we should let him roam free on the first floor and determine whether the new baby gate would keep him off the second floor. This cost us one wooden cooking spoon that had been used for dinner and which Calvin found while counter surfing. Ruby took it from Calvin and it died while I tried to take it away from Ruby without breaking it.

And then a little while later, Calvin went and laid an enormous load in the middle of the living room where he has been previously guilty of doing so. Great.

By now, I am *really* unhappy. I head back into the living room to turn on the lights and clean up the mess.

And I trip on Julie's suitcase, which is still sitting in the passage between the hallway and the living room where it has been for over a week since Windycon. I had been thinking that this stupid thing really needed to go upstairs. I had thought correctly.

Trips to the floor: one.

Swearing and shouting ensued, because I was unhappy with pretty much everyone in the house at this point, including myself. Happily, I don't seem have done any major damage to anything, so I was able to pull myself up on the stairs, get up, and clean up the pile of poop. In multiple trips to the toilet, but no more trips to the floor.

I had thought to drag Calvin to the living room and rub his nose in it, but he was having none of this, so I exiled him to his kennel. Then when I was done cleaning things up, I dragged the kennel full of Calvin to the living room, where he will remain until morning in exile there.

And then Gretchen and I finished watching our TV show. After that, I went to the basement to install the new Thunderbolt 3 adapter into the Apollo 8 unit. This is easier when the unit has not already been installed into the rack so that it can only be accessed from the floor.

Trips to the floor: two, but with more planning this time.

Taking the card out requires a lot of playing with a teeny, tiny Allen wrench (which I only dropped once). Then I discovered I couldn't lever it out with my fingernails, but I got Julie to come in and hand me the bit of metal that had once covered a expansion card slot in the back of a computer. That tool did the job nicely. The new card was installed, the screws put back in, the Thunderbolt cable that needed to go to the computer which I had carefully identified and rerouted was plugged into the Apollo 8, and -- as long as I was on the floor already -- I moved the rest of the cables on the assumption that this was all going to work.

I levered myself off the floor, walked through the procedure for registering the used Apollo 8 unit to my account, and all of that worked. Now, the only thing that needed to be done was to use the new, short Thunderbolt cable to connect the Apollo 8 unit to the Apollo Silver unit.

I called Julie to do this, because it has to be done underneath the console. She plugged the cable in and went back to her computer.

The Apollo Silver unit and the Satellite refused to pop up on the list of devices.

Ok, there is no reason this shouldn't be working, unless Julie has somehow plugged the cable in incorrectly. This means that I will need to inspect the cable install.

Trips to the floor: three. Once more with feeling.

Thunderbolt cables are finicky beasts and it turns out that Julie had twisted the Thunderbolt cable so that the lighting bolt was face up on the Apollo 8 and face down on the Apollo Silver. In her defense, I hadn't removed the cable wrap from the new cable and that was the way that it *wanted* to be plugged in. It was just wrong.

I unwrapped the cable, plugged it in correctly, and stuck my head out from under the console. Three devices were now present in the display. Yay!

I crawled back up into my chair, fiddled with things a bit more, discovered that all of my plugins were now recognized, and declared victory. I fired up Cubase, pulled up a recent project, and hit the playback button.

Everything sounded good. Very good. Probably better than before, which is what one should expect from the newer unit with the better converters.

So this project was a success.

I am going to go take some Aleve now.

Things I learned today, some of which I should have already known.

1) Before buying a new power strip, check to see if the GFCI that it is plugged into needs to be reset. If you bought the new power strip anyway, do this before unboxing and unwrapping it. (I will find a use for the new power strip some time.)

2) It appears that a Universal Audio Apollo unit with a Thunderbolt 2 interface card in it will not work on a Windows 11 system equipped with Thunderbolt 4, no matter what the very nice Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter thinks. This can be fixed by buying and installing a Thunderbolt 3 interface card in the Apollo system.

3) If you move the Monitor plugs back from the new Apollo unit to the old one, but don't move the ones that are attached to Line 1 and Line 2 *and* you have managed to set up your old Apollo system so that you are actually monitoring through Line 1 and Line 2 no matter what Cubase thinks is happening, you will not get any sound out through the speakers. This is fixed by getting back down underneath the console and moving the other pair of wires.

Things that I already knew:

1) I hate getting up off the ground after rewiring underneath the console.

Ah, well. Another learning experience. I'll be back on the ground installing the new interface card when it arrives. And then we'll see how everything works. :)

I'm now in the process of trying to upgrade my old office desktop computer to Windows 11. This is slightly dicey, because -- although I installed the correct TPM module -- the CPU is one generation too old to be on Microsoft's "approved" list. It does, however, have all of the currently required instruction set. And since there's no way to upgrade the CPU without upgrading the motherboard, this is where the system is pretty much stuck.

So we'll see how it goes. Making this more fun is that I'm connecting to the old machine via Remote Desktop from the new machine. We'll see what happens when the reboots start...

Gretchen has wanted a new puppy to be a companion for Ruby for a while. We went to a foster and looked at puppies and today we have an additional dog in the family.

He is an 11 week old hound mix who came to us with the name Calvin, which he will be keeping. He is very, very cute. And very, very hungry. He has also figured out that I am the feeder of dogs. :)

In other news, I have the two new monitors in the basement studio configured using a DisplayPort MST hub, but they periodically blink off. I am trying to figure out how to discourage this behavior, as it's simply annoying. So far, no luck.

On the other hand, when they aren't blinking, the extra screen is nice...