Ups and downs

It's been quite the rollercoaster today. I've been having a tough time getting up early and by the time school pick up rolls around, I'm just so sleepy. I was coughing a little bit too yesterday but that seems a little better today. I decided to change my schedule a little bit because I thought the house seemed quieter earlier in the morning so instead of settling down to write, I tried to record. Well, the high of finally getting the computer upgraded to a larger internal drive and getting the Mbox to work... that's over. Now, the recordings are back to crackling and popping and I don't know why!

Monoprice XLR cable

I had a lengthy test of the SM58 the day before. It worked perfectly, connected to the Mbox2. I cranked up the gain and got it real hot. There was no clipping. It was clean. I know that the switch to the dynamic mic meant that I would need the boost to get the level where I needed it to be but the main reason for the switch was really so that the mic would hopefully not pick up the noise from the highway and I thought it worked out pretty well. The new XLR cable I got for it looks so heavy duty, I just loved it. I never thought I would ever geek out over a microphone cable and yet here we are. 

On the computer, the only thing different was the update/s that got installed overnight. Could that be what messed it all up? I don't know. It really comes to a point where I can't just do a reset every single time I encounter a problem. Do I cave and upgrade to Windows 11? Not that I think that will help with the Mbox as I believe the driver should have worked with both Windows 10 and 11. I reinstalled the driver but that didn't fix it. Is the problem with Waveform? I will consider reinstalling that too but it doesn't explain why it worked properly on previous occasions. I considered downloading Reaper but I am looking for an absolutely free version and not one that's free for 60 days only. I could also just buy another interface. This is driving me absolutely crazy. By buying the USB mic, I thought I could escape having to get a separate interface and now I'm just back to that. The AT2020 has a gain button, which is great but when I turn on the noise reduction feature, even if it's just on the lowest level, it sounds so processed that I can't use it. 

At this point, I think I'm going to record a bunch of things using the AT2020 (blower be d*mned) until I can find another fix for the problem or until I decide that I just want to buy another interface. I suspect I'm going to have to do that anyway. I just need to pick one. The good news is that today, I finally heard back from two teachers. I will have a trial guitar lesson with one next week so very eager to see if that will work out. The other teacher called back but does not have the time for regular lessons. Good to know that I could reach out to her in the future though. I might hit her up for a consult in the summer. 

Playlist Recommendation: Life is a Rollercoaster, Ronan Keating