Musical Mystery Solved!

A while back I blogged about breaking into the world of synth hardware, with an Alesis Micron Firebox audio interface, which came with a stripped down version of . Since then, I've been slowly trying to get it to interface effectively with my PC. I got a Presonus Firebox, which comes with stripped down version of Cubase, to be the middle man, but couldn't quite get it to work. I could occasionally get something from one to the other, but mostly ugly noise (not the kind of noise I was aiming for!).

But I had a theory. The Firebox has inputs on the front and back, the front ones being designed to take advantage of the box's built-in preamp. They're designed for input from guitars or microphones. Theoretically, the direct audio inputs on the back would be the place for the Micron to plug in. Since that wasn't working, I wanted to try another input device.

I borrowed one of my brother's guitars, hooked it up, and - VOILA! - it worked. I could get straight guitar sound into Cubase and back out in a format I could import to ACID. But, I'm not a guitar player, so that won't do me much good. The swap of a few chords and I had the Micron hooked up (using the headphone out) to the front input. Well, I'll be damned - that works, too! So, I can finally start utilizing the Micron's features in my ACID recordings. Woot!

In honor of this breakthrough, I thought I'd throw up some new pics of the studio:


The yellow beast there is my brother's guitar (as is the tiny Marshall stack on the desk). I owe you a string, bro'!

The heart of the operation - the E-Mu Xboard MIDI controller (top), Micron & Firebox (bottom):


A closer up shot of the instrument/PC interface:


I'm ready to rock! Or something somewhat similar. ;)