daveydave

Snappy title, eh? I have one of these snazzy bits of kit plugged in to my PC for recording stuff in Presonus Studio One. It started to misbehave when I upgraded to Windows 10. There seems to be quite a few people around having some issues with the FireWire cards or the Saffire Mix Control software so when my setup started to act up, I hit the forums. The issue I was seeing was that Saffire Mix Control wouldn't open. The first thing I did was replace my FireWire card for one with a Texas Instruments chipset (TI TSB43AB22A) which seemed to fix things initially. But didn't. So it is possible that the original FireWire card (with VIA Fire VT6315 chipset) would be fine. I just can't be bothered to swap it back into the computer. The solution for me was to get Saffire Mix Control running in compatibility mode. I used the compatibility troubleshooter and the Windows 7 setting seems to work fine, Another issue that has shown itself is that I stopped getting sound out of the...

Newcastle Arena. Friday, 24th October 2014. Ah yes, the Arena - the place where good music goes to die (it probably doesn't make much difference with bad music). Imagine if you will the crack of a snare drum. Drummer hits drum skin and from the PA comes the sound of, well... a snare drum. All good so far. However, half a second later the same sound hits your ears again, only this time reflected off and mangled by the hard surfaces inside this glorified cow shed. Lovely clear crack of the snare now sounds more like a dog farting in a wheelie bin. Now add in to the mix a selection of guitars, synths, brass and vocals. Mess. No professional musician should be forced to play in such a place. But I digress. He played a selection of tunes from his latest album, Caustic Love , which I really like. Obviously, he played songs from his earlier albums too, which I'm not so familiar with but there wasn't a duffer amongst them. We were even treated to a couple of strripped-down ac...

Continuing with my "not writing proper reviews" thing, here is a list of gigs we've been to since the last round-up in April. So, where was I... Woody Pines at the Cluny 2 in April. Right, here we go. We went to see Crowded House at Newcastle City Hall in May, they were really excellent, and the lovely Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis was at The Sage (Hall 2) in June. In July there were back-to-back gigs as part of the Mouth of the Tyne Festival by Seth Lakeman (at the newly refurbished Whitley Bay Playhouse ) and James Morrison ( Tynemouth Castle - fine backdrop for a concert). No gigs in August, which just feels wrong to be honest, but The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain were splendidly bonkers entertainment at The Sage in September. A folky night at The Sage (again) highlighting the songs of local songwriter Ed Pickford was great fun and the truly fabulous Spiers & Boden at The Cumberland Arms the following night rounded off October. Final push, honest. Salsa ...

It's been a pretty busy 12 months or so for live music and although I have pushed out a few Tweets , I thought I'd do a proper round up on here. However, I've left it so long that I really can't do proper write ups of all the acts, so I'm just listing who I've seen since the start of 2009. Dull, I know. Maybe I'll get some proper reviews done in future.... So, I saw an Abba tribute in March '09 who were pretty good, April was an Indian Classical music double bill and Rumours of Fleetwood Mac tribute band. 10cc in May, Naturally 7 in June, James Morrison at Durham CCC 's Riverside Ground in July along with incredible guitarist Preston Reed and a latin double bill including pianist Roberto Fonseca and brilliant Columbian Salsa band La-33 . September saw some Taiko Drummers at The Sage , and October was a busy month with the other incredible guitarist Newton Faulkner , the real Fleetwood Mac at Manchester Arena and the awesome Buena Vista Social...

This is exactly how legal downloads should work. I was looking around to see if Yasmin Levy had a new album out and Amazon, as it does, suggested a few alternatives it thought I may like. I previewed The Beauty and the Sea by Mor Karbasi and liked the sound of it, so I coughed up my seven quid and downloaded it using the little Amazon download gadget. Now for the best bit. Having bought and downloaded the album at work, I copied the MP3s on to my USB key and transferred them over to my system at home. Within a few minutes I was listening to the album on the telly (via the wireless media streamer) - no hassle, no error messages telling me I wasn't allowed even though I'd paid good money for it or any of that caper. Absolutely spot on and exactly the sort of thing I couldn't do, thanks to the damn DRM infection, the first (and last) time I downloaded music. Music and video producers/sellers take note: make legal downloading as nice and easy as this and people will buy. Conti...