And by times, I mean staffing picture of our department here at work. On Monday, two new members joined the LucasArts Audio Department. The first is our new Audio Lead, Tom Bible. Tom comes to us from the UK where he likes sandwiches with butter on them and has a very different set of cultural references than we do. He seems like a supremely nice guy and I'm really looking forward to working with him.
The second addition to the crew this week is our second intern, Jason Clark. Like our first intern, Jason also comes to us from Ex'pression Center for New Media. I'm hoping that he can help to explain what that apostrophe is doing in the middle of its name. So far he's been doing some really unglamorous cleaning detail, but he freakin' rocked it out with the reorganization (can it be a reorganization if it was never really all that organized in the first place?) of our Cable closet. Among the oddities that he unearthed was a very special XLR->MIDI cable. Audiophiles right now are saying "WHAT?!" Everyone else thinks that I'm speaking gibberish. Suffice it to say, it's like have a cable that connects your printer to your refrigerator. Not very useful (to which I'm sure Seth will tell me I'm wrong for the sake of telling me I'm wrong).
Anyway, I'm heading home at a normal hour tonight and I'm gonna' go enjoy hanging out with Amanda before 10 PM on a weekday for the first time in a long time.
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5 comments:
Well, as a matter of fact, there's quite a useful reason to hook your printer up to your refrigerator. Doing so opens up a channel of communication between you and your fridge. How else can the ice box express its grievances and concerns? And without that ability, it just keeps everything pent up inside. Which is less efficient for the fridge, as pent up grievances and concerns cause the temperature to rise, meaning the motor has to work harder. But more importantly, it's a recipe for your refrigerator to eventually take matters into its own "hands" and attack. Did you learn nothing from Attack of the Killer Refrigerator, good sir? Without a printer, you're one poorly-hidden-man-behind-your-fridge away from disaster. Disaster I say.
I feel I must represent the nerds here with the disclaimer:
MIDI cables use 5-pin DIN connectors which existed before the advent of MIDI. In fact, part of MIDI's adoption was based on its low cost of implementation for keyboard manufacturers by using already available components.
Both cables are just electrical conduits and while MIDI transmits data, the cable is capable of transmitting audio as well as the next thing out there.
5 pins would be exactly what you need if you had a stereo mic which needed to send balanced audio for left right (4 pins) and have a ground cable left over for... well ground.
In fact, going one step further, using a non-standard cable like a 5-pin din could be advantageous for something like a Ribbon microphone because phantom power could mean the death to a ribbon mic so avoiding a standard connection could allow you to avoid phantom power inadvertently being sent down the line to the mic.
So there's that... people who read this blog now know far more than they need to about audio cables they'll likely never encounter.
I can always count on you two to disagree with me.
I'm wasn't disagreeing.
How's that for disagreeing? ;)
I laughed out loud and scared my girlfriend upon reading the cable comparison for the common man. I've never seen one of those cables, or even heard of one before. But thanks to emoriot, I now know why they exist.
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