RPM Update or Screw You Steinberg

I have officially begun working on the 2009 RPM Challenge.

Let the failure commence!

As noted last night, I reinstalled the USB interface drivers and the Steinberg Cubase software. I plugged a mic into the interface and recorded two tracks of me mumbling. It worked fine.

Today I got my fat ass out of bed at a little bit past 5:00am and went into the cellar. My first task was to get a load of laundry going. After that I grabbed my Les Paul, a tuner (terribly important), my Line 6 Pod, my Alesis drum machine, my hand held tape recorder, and a few cables.

I went up to the kitchen table where my laptop awaited, pulled out the guitar (and the tuner) and started noodling. The plan is to take the first two or three ideas that pop out of my pea-brain and work them into something. I plugged the guitar into the interface and recorded the first idea. I then stayed on the same track and tacked the second idea onto the end of the first.

That's as far as I got kids.

Cubase informed me that it had suffered a "serious error" and requested I save my project as a new name, close the program, and reopen. Fat chance. I closed the error message and it immediately came back up. I closed it again and Cubase crashed. Nice!

I then went into Audacity to see if I could record my noodles there and it did not recognize the interface as an input device. Odd, thinks I.

The last time I installed this crap I tried reinstalling the drivers at this point and that was when whatever corruption happened happened. So I uninstalled everything I had installed Monday night, and then reinstalled it all. While that was going on I programmed the lamest drum machine patterns ever.

Once the reinstallation was done I opened up Cubase for the first time and wouldn't ya know it, it hung. I went into Audacity and it was seeing the audio interface as an input device. I quickly recorded my crappy drum machine program and a bad scratch guitar... which were out of time because Audacity has serious latency issues... which is why I wanted to use the piece of crap Cubase shit in the first place.

So... it's back to my ancient, completely obsolete ADAT 8-track. I uninstalled Cubase and all of the Steinberg crap but left the Lexicon interface drivers installed. Hopefully I will be able to use that for mastering purposes. It would be much much more convenient than using my CD burner rack. Cheaper too as I can't get the Music CDr's it writes to anymore.

What did we learn by this morning's events? A few things.

First, I can actually get my fat ass out of bed at 5:00am to try and write music.
Second, My adventures in RPM/FAWM have officially commenced.
Third, Steinberg doesn't just make ugly, shitty sounding guitars and basses. They make shitty, useless, crap-o-la recording software too.

Thanks for nothing Steinberg, you suck.

Good day!