Lunar Shards

So you might have noticed the blog being a little faster (on some days 200% faster). The reason behind this is that I’ve finally left Fatcow as terms of web hosting and have rented space from the fine folks who run Zantetsuken.net! I greatly appreciate the space/hosting environment, it’s light years better then where I was!

So what’s changed? Well nothing that you can see aside from overall speed. I’ll probably look into updating the layout just a little bit more. Maybe a little less blue? Dunno just yet. Need to work on my design chops a bit more.

Persona 3 Portable
Platform: Playstation Vita (Playstation Portable Emulation)
New Game + Started: 3/27/2012
New Game + Status: Ongoing

Just more Persona… I’m a little pissed because it turns out I’m not on anyone’s romance route anymore. Was originally going to attempt Akihiko but it has some really stupid requirements like say very specific things. Hell I was practically on Shinjiro’s and *shivers* Ken’s route without trying but declined them. Oh well. I’ll just finish the game and be done with it. Going to see if I can get all my S.Links up but I may have messed that up too. Should have worked on Yukari’s and Junpei’s first before everyone else since they get less and less active.

Skyrim
Platform: PC
Started: 5/14/2012
Status: Ongoing

What a wonderful day to pick this up :O The day before the next game on the list ^^; Well enough time has passed on the PC version that modes are around and enough mods to make it playable for me. Things I can’t deal with are now replaced with things that I can look at and such and I made damn sure my character doesn’t look tha ugly… seriously… they need to hire some staff from say the Aion character creator or something because damn it, they still look ugly. Using a custom race and face mesh/texture to compensate for the issue. Still prefer playing in 3rd person but I need to probably go back to Whiterun and work there for a while. Went to Solitude and the stuff around there is kicking my ass badly…

Diablo 3
Platform: PC
Started: 5/15/2012
Status: Ongoing

Well… it’s Diablo… a VERY PRETTY Diablo! I haven’t touched Diablo 2 since oh… college so this has been a bit of a treat. I did try the first few quest during the stress test but by not touching till now it was an experience to see. The game is fun to play and it’s drop in co-op is very nice. They simplified much of the game mechanics so there isn’t crazy combinations you had to cast to get certain effects. You have a left and right click attack and 1-4 for special abilities like tracks or dodges (well for a Demon Hunter anyway). We were able to clear the first major boss in the first Act before the Login servers melted down… Only draw back about requiring you to login to play every time

Yup, at this point I think I have most of everything I need now. So nearly a month ago I got a hold of a Zoom R24 with the help of my friend. The Zoom R24 has been a challenge to get use to since it’s a very different device. In it’s current setup it acts as an audio interface when doing podcasting recording for Sequence Break XIV. I’m hoping to use it for a lot more though.

So a week or two after getting the Zoom R24 I went ahead and got the microphone I wanted. After checking out quite a lot of sources I settled on the MXL 990. It’s a condenser microphone which should help a lot in terms of quality upgrade in the recording. I’m still trying to master the techniques to using it properly since it will pick up breathing quite a lot if your not careful. The particular MXL 990 kit came with the MXL 991 which is designed for instrument recording however it can double as a spare condenser mic as well in the proper configuration.

Now one of the challenges I ran into when I first got the Zoom R24 was the issue of Skype using only channel 1 of my audio interface and couldn’t select other channels. To compensate for this, I ended up picking up an Art MP Tube Pre-Amplifier. This is a relatively inexpensive pre-amp however it does provide both phantom power to line 1 as well as give the MXL 990 a warmer tone.

So in it’s current configuration the MXL 990 is passed through the Art MP Tube Pre-Amp into channel 1 of the Zoom R24. This allows me to use it as the primary microphone in recording on Skype. To allow me to hear the other hosts I have a stereo split going out of the computer into channels 3 and 4. A few weeks ago the Zoom R24 had this sudden weird issue where it wasn’t down-mixing the audio if I plugged a single cable from the computer to the unit. I’m still not sure what I changed on the unit to cause this but the work around is a stereo splitter and the left and right assigned to their own channels.

Now I’m still using Callgraph to recording the audio as the most recent podcast was a bit of a rush setup since my equipment was taken a part earlier in case I needed it for an event at work. I did test on a previous podcast of recording the audio into Cubase which came with the Zoom R24. In this case the audio channels 1, 3, and 4 were recorded with 1 being a solo mono track and 3 and 4 recorded as a single stereo track. This worked fine and I could even control it using the faders and dials on the Zoom R24 since in Cubase, it can double as a control surface. My audio in that particular podcast (Episode 20 for those wondering) is a little quite because I was using the MXL 991 to record and forgot I had to be close to the mic for it to pick up well.

Now as cool as this is, Cubase is still a bit unwieldy for me to use in terms of editing the podcast. I’m lucky as it does record all the tracks as an independent wave file which I can then open up in Sony Acid Music Studio which for me is a lot easier to work in. I’ve heard a lot of stories that Sony Vegas actually provide a much richer working environment but until I can get a hold of a copy I think Sony Acid will work well for me. I have still yet to master EQ settings but I’m getting around to it. This is no magic formula setting and it’s all by ear which at times drives me nuts sometimes. Skype does introduce some unforeseen problems and since we’re not in studio environment there’s also something I can’t remove.

Well i guess that’s all for now. There’s always more I could do like oh I dunno, rig some type of hanging system to drape a heavy comforter behind me while i’m recording to act as a sound absorbing wall, lol… hmm…

Final Fantasy XIII-2
Platform: Playstation 3
Started: Jan 31st, 2012
Status: Completed

Not just completed, 100% completed! I actually got my first Platinum trophy! The story… my god… that was a gut punch when you realize what happens and I found myself face-palming. I’m not revealing any more than that since it’ll spoil the fun. The adventure to get the secret ending proved to be a bit of a challenge. Beating the extra bosses wasn’t the most time consuming part, it was getting the two items I needed to make Noel’s ultimate weapon. The battle against this special boss requires you to poison it to death all the while trying not to die. It took me several days to do so but I eventually got my two items and steam rolled the rest of the game! All that’s left is DLC content coming out eventually.

Persona 3 Portable
Platform: Playstation Vita (Playstation Portable Emulation)
New Game + Started: 3/27/2012
New Game + Status: Ongoing

These social links are getting more difficult to complete as the game begins to close in on the ending. I may have to adjust the way I do things or I might have to redo it once again Things are getting to a point where the battles are getting a little bit difficult. I’m hoping to get a 100% complete on this run but at the rate things are going that may not happen. I’ll have to keep pushing forward and see.

Alien Syndrome
Platform: Playstation Vita (Playstation Portable Emulation)
New Game + Started: 4/28/2012
New Game + Status: Ongoing

I got this on a sale and I’m not 100% sure why I did. I remember playing this a long time ago and not finishing it and I think I played the Wii version too. The game play is meh and not that exciting compared to other games. I remember a lot of hype around it since it was a classic game from the 16bit era days. I went through the first level or so and then called it quits. I might go back to it, not sure yet.

That title should confuse a lot of people, lol. So yes this is technically the second version of this post and for good reason. I originally wrote this post based around gain access to the Zoom R16 however due to someone stealing the AC adapter out of the packaging and/or returning it without it I ended up taking the unit back. Since my friend was helping me out and checking to see what kind of employee discount he had we went ahead and price checked the R24. The store we got it at had priced the R24 for about 599 which is INSANE but when we pulled up the employee price tag it was actually only 50 dollars more than the R16. Hell I had $50 dollars in cash, the difference was worth it considering it adds an additional 4 additional phantom powered inputs for a total of 6 powered inputs.

Anyway the reason I went ahead with this plunge off the deep end is mostly due to A. my friend’s discount is ending soon at the store and B. the original intent with mixers wasn’t panning out. Over the past weekend I had hit up a Guitar Center while I was out of town to ask about equipment like this. My original intention was to get a mixer with a USB output to record the mics for a local podcast and to double as an audio interface for the Sequence Break XIV recordings. This would break me free of the tinny sounding Samson GoMic which I have been using since the start. Much to my dismay I found out that the output for the mixers I was considering only did stereo over USB and not multitrack. So the Behringer mixer went out the door like that. The nearest mixer that gave me an Alesis Multimix 8 which the newer version runs about $299.

The staff member suggested I consider the audio interface route and just skip the mixer entirely and suggested the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra which gave me the 4 powered inputs which I may need. The price however was a lot more at around $399. There was a cheaper alternative but he warned me that it didn’t play well with Windows which is my editing environment and could have gone with the Alesis iO4 which ran about $149. He mentioned that it worked much better under Mac which I’m not surprised about based on the name of the device.

Taking this into account this gave me not that great of a picture to deal with. I actually had the money to actually get the gear thanks to a side job I recently did. I was beginning to spec out equipment for real. Then out of the blue last Tuesday I passed by Best Buy to look at Mass Effect 3 which was on sale. I hadn’t picked it up yet mostly because I had other games in the way to finish like Final Fantasy XIII-2 among other things and happened to run into my friend who worked there. Both of us were considering doing a podcast together for fun. We checked out the gear that the store had and turns out he could get a relatively good deal on the Zoom R16. It was the cheaper model then the Zoom R24 and well since his discount was going to go away soon and the price dropped to close to the mixer and audio interface range I decided why the hell not.

The Zoom R series recorders are unique beasts in themselves. The Zoom R16 which was the first unit I had has 8 inputs on the device allowing you record 8 different device simultaneously and then if you really need to mix them with an additional 8 tracks on the recorder itself free of a computer. That alone is really cool and something to consider as noted in my previous post about the equipment. Well the R16 I had when I got home and pulled it out was missing its damn AC adapter! Part of me was about to say fuck it and just keep going but at the same time I paid this much I might as well have all the parts so my friend and I went back to the store the next day to exchange it. In my absent-mindedness I forgot to price check the Zoom R24 something I asked my friend to do for shits and giggles to see just how much we could get off the unit. Much to our surprise quite a lot actually. Only an additional 50 dollars or so more than the R16 which when we looked at the store price tag was a bit insane. The markups for this gear is extraordinary!

So I now have the Zoom R24, the very unit I was considering to begin with at a lot less than I had anticipated spending for it should I have gotten it by other means. Will I use it soon? I’ll try my damnedest to get it working before the next Sequence Break XIV recording! (which at the time of this writing is about 23 hours from now!) I’ll go over it more in a separate post.

That and microphones because that just needs a post by itself.

Final Fantasy XIII-2
Platform: Playstation 3
Started: Jan 31st, 2012
Status: Ongoing

I’ve cleared more side areas and collected more fragments. I’m sitting right in front of the ending doing clean up work before I end the game and send it into post. I’m hoping to clear most of the content before I end the story so that the post game doesn’t take so long. I still need to beat the bosses in the steppes and complete the maps all of which can be done before the end. There is also the damn casino to deal with. I may just earn enough cash then set my controller to auto-play (i.e. stick something in the L1 trigger to hold it down) while I sleep.

sonic CD
Platform: Playstation 3
Started: ???
Status: ???

Why “???” ? Well because this wasn’t on my system and not my save file ^^; I ended up booting up the game over at my cousin’s place to check where we left off in her game. I ended up beating the boss she as stuck in before we booted out of it. Not really to keen on playing this again just yet. The game is a bit rough with the special stages :/

Plants vs Zombies
Platform: Playstation 3
Started: ???
Status: ???

I wasn’t expecting this game to have co-op but it’s actually a lot of fun to play with a friend. My cousin and I went through the first several missions playing together and squealing when shit nearly hit the fan. One of the neat features of the co-op mode is that you can have one player hold a troublesome zombie in place while you setup something to take it out. A few times I had to have her hold something while I dropped a piranha plant or cherry bomb in front of it.

Persona 3 Portable
Platform: Playstation Vita (Playstation Portable Emulation)
New Game + Started: 3/27/2012
New Game + Status: Ongoing

I’ve gotten several more Social Links complete and already halfway through the main story. I’m hoping to maintain the pace a bit more and hopefully get all the Social Links ready to go. I may play the male side just to see the romance options for him but I like playing as the female protagonist because it’s a different story. (Especially after I’ve beaten this multiple times now)

So part way through last week I was frustrated trying to find a way to get a cleaner copy of the audio recording from Skype. It always sounded weird that I always sounded ultra clear and everyone sounded kinda odd due to the way sky is recorded. We use a program called Callgraph to take care of the recording. It records my voice which is local to the left audio channel and everyone else to the right audio channel. I end up splitting these into mono channels so its easier to listen to.

One of the problems that exists is audio noise reduction and equalization is a bit messy from the Skype recording. I usually end up running the file through Levelator and and run noise reduction through Audacity. The end result isn’t the greatest but it is usable. Sometimes you get some very robotic sounds due to the process though.

So this past recording (Episode 17), I asked the team to try something out for me. Since Callgraph records the local channel to the left audio, wouldn’t it be easier to just grab everyone’s left channel and build the audio file with that? In theory it would work just like doing it live assigning each mic to their own audio track in the program. In practice though I learned (or in some cases relearned) the problems with recording audio (or even video) on a PC.

So once we finished the podcast I started getting the files from our hosts through Dropbox. All looked good until I dropped the audio files into Sony Acid Music Studio. I immediately noticed a problem once I synced up My audio track with Calaera’s audio track. Although the first 20 seconds were synced things started to go just a slight bit out of phase until you jump a good half our into the audio where it was off by almost a full second or two! I was about ready to curse when I saw this. Was it the compression she used? No it couldn’t be that. I loaded up Orophen’s audio file and the same problem. It only dawned on me the next day what had happened.

With recording audio (and video) on a PC, the way the audio gets recorded is dictated by a few factors. Audio latency of the hardware, CPU, and HDD read/write speeds. Any background programs such as web browsers and such can effect the recording by a millisecond or two since it draws resources. In most cases it’s unnoticeable however in the way we were attempting this recording, it slowly became very apparent. The same issue comes from video as well as I remember when I tried to record gameplay footage from my console for youtube videos.

I’m a bit stubborn and didn’t just fall back to the old method and instead focused on how to make this work. I started with my recording as a baseline importing my split audio track as well as the original channel with both left and right channels not separated. Since my voice would be synced with the unsplit track I was able to make the cuts for beginning and end relatively easily. I then loaded each host one by one and synced up the start of the podcast. I would then advance through the podcast slowly trying to find a point where our host Calaera’s voice would go out of phase beyond a half a second. I would make the cut and move both the person’s voice and the full Skype recording and sync it back up by moving it either forward to catch up or back to pull it back. Yeah the audio would speed up or slow down depending on how the thing was recording :O

This took a good 3 hours but in the end I had a very clear sounding podcast compared to previous attempts. I was able to apply more directed noise reduction a specific host rather then the whole podcast which some hosts didn’t need. I didn’t mess with a lot of EQ as at this point I was tired of it all and wanted to go to sleep.

In the end after all the work produced one of the most clearest sounding podcasts we have to date. Will I do this again? I dunno, I’m not sure the headaches of editing this is worth it. There is also the time needed to upload the files to Dropbox and then get the link. I’m lucky the new program I had gotten works well this with kind of editing but man, i can’t imagine what would happen if the audio had slowed down significantly on someone’s recording or if someone’s recording fails. Too many points of failure for my taste.

It does give me a chance to play with localized tracks for each host which is something I’ll be facing in a future podcast should my friend ever get it up and running.

Final Fantasy XIII-2
Platform: Playstation 3
Started: Jan 31st, 2012
Status: Ongoing

Continuing to play the game and earning as many casino coins as I can. The Chocobo raising is mind numbing and a little frustrating when you you’re faced against a starred chocobo which means they will most likely win. I can win most races but it requires my chocobo to actually run the last leg to get close enough to boost and sometimes the boost drains way too fast for something that should last a bit because of the blue streak ability. I’m still moving about trying to collect as many artifacts before continuing the story. I’m aiming for a full complete this time around.

Persona 3 Portable
Platform: Playstation Vita (Playstation Portable Emulation)
New Game + Started: 3/27/2012
New Game + Status: Ongoing

So, more Persona 3! Trying to maintain a schedule to actively raise all the social links is a bit hard. Sometimes a social link just want raise and requires me to keep adjusting or sometimes story events interrupt my search to get this done. So far I’m close to maxing out some of them so just a bit more. The tower itself isn’t much of a problem yet. Stuff still dies in one shot unless I miss or hit them with a spell that they are strong against. It should ramp up in another level or two.

Ghost Recon Online
Platform: PC (Beta)
Started: 4/7/2012
Status: Testing

What’s this??? A beta??? Actually yes, I did list a beta here! It’s a closed beta too! Unlike others though there isn’t an NDA present in this closed beta and we’re actually allowed to talk about it. Personally…. I SUCK at this game. I was testing the game on my laptop and it was rather unstable but eventually got to play it on my desktop. The game plays okay but there’s a major balancing issue that I’m sure they’ll address. I just suck at a mouse-based shooter. The last time I used a mouse to play a shooter was…. Half Life 2 Episode 2 ^^; I like where things are going though and we’ll just have to see where Ubisoft takes this.

Armored Core V
Platform: Xbox 360
Started: March 20, 2012
Status: Completed

Played a bit more with a friend trying to put together a better build. My friend’s build is a bit nuts as it is all about the speed. Sure there’s a bit of firepower but she essentially recreated a fast moving AC from the previous games in here! I’ve since modified it a bit for heavy armor as that build was entirely light armored based packing more firepower

Final Fantasy XIII-2
Platform: Playstation 3
Started: Jan 31st, 2012
Status: Ongoing

I played a lot more of the game unlocking the the next chapter and the Silver Chocobo. In the process of raising it but I’m not sure if I have it done right. I still need some more things to level creatures to up this bird’s ability to race though.

Persona 3 Portable
Platform: Playstation Vita (Playstation Portable Emulation)
New Game + Started: 3/27/2012
New Game + Status: Ongoing

I pulled this one out after they went on sale on PSN. Persona 3 Portable adds a female protagonist and since I had my save file from the previous release of the game on UMD, I went ahead and started New Game+ which lets me concentrate on the leveling and social links and not worry about upping stats. You can do it in one play through but it’s rough :O

Wipeout 2048
Platform: Playstation Vita
Started: February 21, 2012
Status: Ongoing

This game is all about the speed. I’m mean LOTS OF IT! The first round which is set in 2048 is relatively easy but once you get deeper into the 2049 race year, it gets harder and harder. Some races I can win but some I just can’t beat without unlocking faster ships. My favorite mode is the combat mode where it’s all about the points. The hidden races are excessively hard as it’s about maintaining boost while running clean lines through the course. I’ll probably get it but I need to get use to that track.

Super Stardust Delta
Platform: Playstation Vita
Started: March 25, 2012
Status: Ongoing

I like this game! I ended up playing the arcade mode and was able to beat it but damn is it addictive. I think I played it before I went to bed and ended up playing well into the night. Not a good thing considering I was about to see a movie early in the morning ^^; The game reduces the weapon modes but this is good since it forces you to focus on the two weapons. It really does feel like you have to switch at the proper time. I could just go with the fire whip in the PS3 version since the damage it did was a lot but now it really requires you to use the right tools for the job.

Hot Shots Golf World Invitational
Platform: Playstation Vita
Started: February 15, 2012
Status: Ongoing

I’m beginning to burn out on golf and I’m probably going to end the daily tournament in the 700s. Not bad considering I held a near top 6% for almost a month now. The more I play the worse I get. I should really focus on another game for a while. Maybe in a few months, I’ll pick this game back up and play more of it.

Armored Core V
Platform: Xbox 360
Started: March 20, 2012
Status: Completed

It finally came out! Armored Core V is the newest in the series and probably the most different. The gameplay now focuses on team tactics then run and gun mecha though a good deal of that still happens. Everything can be played co-op with another player which is useful as some missions get really messy by yourself. Me and my friends blitzed through the story missions Saturday night which was fun but man did it throw me for a loop. I ended up playing mostly as a heavy sniper. When you snipe with a howitzer-like cannon, there is something rather wrong ^^; I may be slow but I’m heavily armored and packing enough punch that if I hit, it’ll surely put a major dent.