Andrew Sullivan grasping at straws

This is a response to an Andrew Sullivan blog post .

Quote :

"The choice was either civil marriage or civil unions with all the state-accorded rights and benefits of civil marriage. Now I have long argued that civil unions are no substitute for civil marriage – but am I prepared to say that everyone who disagrees with me is motivated by the kind of rank bigotry that Sterling represents? Of course not. That was the position of the Human Rights Campaign for many years, after all. They may be tools, opportunists, resource-hoggers and credit-grabbers, but they’re not bigots."

A few corrections are in order :

1. there have never been any civil unions in California. There are domestic partnerships. Please be historically accurate.
2. California registered domestic partnerships (RDP) didn't actually offer all the state-accorded rights and benefits of civil marriage. There are a few differences, most significantly, the requirement that both partners must reside together at the same address in order to enter into a domestic partnership.
   Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_California#Differences_from_marriage
   This caused some to be excluded from CA RDP, notably prisoners, which could still enter into a civil marriage.This may sound like a small difference, but it is actually significant in light of this case :
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_v._Safley
   This common residency requirement for RDPs existed back in 2008 at the time of the Proposition 8 campaign, but has apparently been lifted since
3. CA RDP did not enjoy much recognition outside of California, especially not in other countries, whereas CA same-sex marriages did. Most significantly, those who entered into a CA RDP never got any federal recognition. The 18,000 same-sex couples who married in California got federal recognition in retrospect in light of the Windsor case . While that may not be a state-accorded right, but it is definitely one very important benefit of marriage that CA RDPs lack.
4. Therefore, the actual choice that was on the ballot in CA's 2008 Proposition 8 was :
   
   Keep both the superior CA civil marriage and the inferior CA registered domestic partnerships
   for same-sex couples in California.
   or
   Eliminate the existing right to a CA civil marriage, and keep only the inferior CA RDP as an option for same-sex couples in California.
5. Whatever you may think of HRC, they never advocated voting for Prop 8 and eliminating the rights to a civil marriage from same-sex marriage in California.  HRC actually gave $2,057,981 to "No on 8". It is simply a lie to interpret HRC's past positions as supporting Proposition 8. In reality, HRC never advocated the elimination of rights to a same-sex civil marriage for anyone, in any state, at any time. 
6. In my opinion, anyone who donated to "Yes on 8" and thus contributed to successfully taking away civil rights was, indeed, an anti-gay bigot, unless proven otherwise.
   

About the Mozilla CEO resignation

There has been much news over the last week about Mozilla .
See http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2014/04/03/3422750/mozilla-ceo-steps-down-after-backlash/  .
Here is my take.

Prop 8. was passed after an extremely deceitful campaign. The "Yes on 8" TV ads were blatant lies, and just horrible. Even some of my low-information, non-voting, gay friends who say them thought they should vote for prop 8 after seeing them.
Prop 8 was unlike all other state constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage, because it revoked rights that were already legally recognized.

I was deprived of the rights to marry my partner in California for many years, as many other LGBT couples were. Brendan Eich contributed $1000 towards that campaign. Unlike the 52% of the California electorate who voted for Prop 8 in 2008, this contribution was not the mere expression of an opinion, but something he actively did to influence the result of the referendum that stripped me and others of rights. While the Supreme Court declared in "Citizens United" that money is speech, I don't accept that.
I cannot simply ignore that he made that this contribution. Neither do I think the rest of the world can. I think some backlash against Brendan Eich is entirely warranted.

Whether backlash against him should translate to a Firefox boycott is much more debatable. For better or worse, a CEO represents the corporation, and his political opinions cannot be merely considered private matters. I believe CEOs should be held to a higher standard than lower-level, non-management positions. In this particular case, Brendan Eich was already in a high-level position, as a co-founder of Mozilla, and previously CTO. He was not recently hired, but merely internally promoted to CEO. His "Yes on prop 8 "donation was uncovered years ago, and did not make headlines as big then as now. The Mozilla board probably underestimated how big of an issue this would become after his promotion.

There is no evidence that he has taken discriminatory actions against Mozilla LGBT employees in the past. He has promised that he would not do so either as CEO in the future.
However, he has never publicly discussed his reasons for funding Prop 8 in the past, and there is no evidence that he has changed his mind on the subject. If he did, I believe he would have told the world already, and ended the controversy already.
In my mind, it is difficult to reconcile having funded Prop 8 and not being an anti-gay bigot. While many were deceived by their churches and very strongly encouraged to fund Prop 8, we don't know if that was the case here. I believe he would have said so as well if this was the case. That leaves with him having been and still being an anti-gay bigot as the sole explanation for the funding Prop 8. He is certainly entitled to his bigoted beliefs. But free speech under the First amendment only means it is free of repercussions from the government, not from individual citizens. A boycott certainly falls under free speech as well. Several Mozilla employees have called for him to step down from his CEO role last week.

I'm a long-time contributor to the Mozilla project, including 9 years working on the NSS security library - but never as a Mozilla employee. I certainly don't want to see the Mozilla project disappear into oblivion. I am glad the controversy ended, before the damage to Mozilla and Firefox became irreparable. Having Brendan step down from the CEO role was the best outcome.

Of course, Brendan's $1000 contribution towards Prop 8 was relatively small, considering the $40 million+ spent on each side. I incidentally also donated $1000 to "No on Prop 8" - the same amount he gave to "Yes on 8". But I'm proud of having done so.
Other CEOs have contributed to anti-gay causes, even in tech . When AOL acquired Netscape, Steve Case donated millions to anti-gay organizations, all the while paying Netscape/AOL employees to contribute to the Mozilla project .
And obviously, companies like Chik-Fil-A, Barilla, Wal-Mart, Exxon, and their CEOs have done much worse.
In that light, the recent reaction to the new Mozilla CEO may be overblown.
Ultimately, it comes down to how much intolerance we can tolerate. I think it's a good thing that the bigots are being pushed into the closet, for a change. I worry that many will still continue to promote their bigotry anonymously, however.

As someone who is in an interracial, same-sex marriage, I would certainly be just as upset if he had donated to a group that opposed interracial marriage. I suspect the rest of the world would be more upset about it than about his donation to "Yes on prop 8".

There is a line between political opinions and human rights. Most people nowadays recognize that racism affects human rights and is not just a mere political opinion.
Many people, but not as many, also recognize that LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage, are human rights as well.
Hopefully In 50 years, there will be as few homophobes as there are racists today, but that will still be too many.

Goldberg Variation N°19

I just made this new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variation N°19 on my grand piano.

M-Audio Profire 2626 vs Yamaha RX-V2500 SPDIF and M-Audio Pulsar II microphones

I recently had several bad experiences trying to update my home recording studio, first with a MOTU 828mk3 interface, then with a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 interface . Not deterred by the previous incompatibilities I encountered, I decided to try another model.

On monday may 13, I picked up a used M-Audio Profire 2626 interface . It was in like-new condition, still in box, with some cables still unopened.

After I hooked it up, I immediately noticed that there was no sound playing through the SPDIF digital output of the M-Audio through my Yamaha RX-V2500 receiver .This was the exact same incompatibility I had encountered with the MOTU 828mk3 . I did some google searches and found that I was not alone with this problem. Other M-Audio customers had already reported the problem as early as 2008 . There was a suspicion that this was related to the SPDIF copy protection flag, but a separate unit would be required to strip this flag. The issue was never resolved by M-Audio.
I contacted M-Audio support about the issue on may 14 and may 15 and was told to expect a callback within a week about a possible fix.

One of the nice features of the 2626 is that it can operate in standalone mode, without being hooked up to a computer at all. I figured I could use it as an 8-channel analog preamp, in combination with another interface, as I needed more channels than the 2626 could provide on its own at 24 bits / 96 kHz.

I tested all the microphone inputs on my 2626 unit to make sure they worked. And I also tested all my microphones with them. Much to my surprise, I got a very a nasty high-pitched hiss in my recordings when I used a pair of M-Audio Pulsar II microphones in combination with the 2626 . None of my 7 other microphones had any hiss issue with the 2626 and sounded clean.

I double-checked the Pulsar II microphones by recording them using the preamps in my old Roland VS-2400 CD all-in-one digital audio workstation, and my ART DPS II digital preamp . They sounded clean with either one. So, the microphones were not at fault.

After I posted about the issue on gearslutz, a kind forum member pointed to me that I was not alone with this hiss problem either . Others had seen the same problem using some MXL 990 and 991 microphones on the M-Audio 2626 .The M-audio forum members suspected that it had to do with phantom power on the M-audio 2626. But one of them said their other phantom-powered mikes, AKG C3000B, did not show the hiss. I own these mikes as well, and they did not show the hiss on my 2626 either. My conclusion was that this is an issue with the preamps built-in to the 2626 that only shows with certain microphones, for some reason. This is an issue that many others have seen with multiple microphones, but not at all. It is once again, an issue for which M-Audio does not have a fix. What makes it really unforgivable is the fact this this issue exists between M-Audio's own Pulsar II microphones and Profire 2626 preamp . I contacted M-Audio support about this second issue on May 16. I asked them to test their microphones with their interface. They told me that both their interface and microphones were discontinued, and they did not have them in house to test with since the recent acquisition of M-Audio. Basically, I was shit out of luck on this one.

This second issue made the 2626 unsuitable for me even as a standalone preamp.

I contacted the craigslist seller who very kindly took the Profire 2626 back today, on friday may 17. He was actually glad to have it back, as he had just upgraded his new Apollo unit's firmware which caused some trouble for him. He was lucky enough not to run into either of the incompatibilities I found with the 2626.

Edit : I received the following message from Adam Gay at M-Audio on May 23 :

You had asked me last week to reach out on the status of the driver updates for the Profire 2626. They haved received your feedback request, but unfortunately, due to new products coming out and a lot of older drivers needing to be updated for Windows 8 and mac 10.8.3 compatibility, it may be some time before an update for the Profire 2626 control panel is released. My developers did not give me an estimated time.

Any updates to the drivers will be posted to our website when they become available.
 

Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 vs ART DPS II SPDIF digital preamp

After my recent bad experience with a MOTU 828mk3 interface, I bought a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 interface .

The first thing I tested when I got it was its SPDIF digital output against my Yamaha RX-V2500 receiver's digital input . Fortunately, that worked just fine, all the way to 192 kHz using an optical cable.

I then hooked up my ART DPS II digital preamp to the Saffire's digital input via SPDIF .
Everything worked beautifully at 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz . But when I tried at 88.2 and 96 kHz, the audio transferred from the ART to the Focusrite was garbage. I tried both optical and coax SPDIF cables. I tried different clocking configurations - making either the Focusrite a clock slave to the ART via SPDIF, or making the ART a clock slave to the Focusrite via a BNC word clock cable. Neither helped with the transfer of audio at 96 kHz.

I knew the ART unit was not at fault, because I can transfer data from it to my Roland VS-2400CD DAW over SPDIF at 96 kHz just fine.

I contacted Focusrite about this issue. They got back to me promptly, but were not an aware of existing problem. They suggested I exchange my Saffire 56 unit for another one to rule out a defective one. I did not get a chance to do that as my local Guitar Center did not have another one in stock for me to try.

Because of this issue, I ended up returning my Focusrite Saffire Liquid 56 to Guitar Center for a refund.

Even after this return, I have remained in touch with Focusrite . Their UK team said they are in the process of obtaining an ART unit to reproduce the problem. If they are able to do so and fix it, I will purchase it again, provided I haven't found something else that works in the meantime.

Somehow, everything else I have tried has had problems so far, unfortunately.

MOTU 828mk3 hybrid audio interface SPDIF vs Yamaha RX-V2500 receiver and Roland VS-2400CD DAW

Last friday, I purchased a new MOTU 828mk3 hybrid interface at Guitar center. The intent was to move from my venerable self-contained Roland VS-2400CD recorder to a computer-based setup.

Unfortunately, I ran into a very strange problem : the digital output of the 828mk3 did not work at all with my Yamaha RX-V2500 receiver. There was no sound whatsoever !

I confirmed in the MOTU audio console software that the interface was sending data. MOTU tech support had me hookup its own digital output to the digital input, and I could see a waveform.

The problem happened with the receiver regardless of the sampling rate.

I also tried hooking up the digital output of the 828mk3 to the VS-2400CD digital input. I had a little more luck this way. The Roland was able to lock in to the signal when the interface was at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz. But no such luck at 96 kHz. The Roland can do this successfully against my ART DPS II digital preamp at all sampling rates including 96 kHz..

I contacted MOTU support. They said they had were not aware of this or any other current issue with the 828mk3. They suggested I swap my unit for a different one to rule out a manufacturing defect. My local Guitar Center did not have another one in stock, however.

While I really liked the MOTU 828mk3, I could not get past the incompatibility of its digital output with the rest of my equipment. I ended up returning it to the store for another interface, a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56, which does not have this problem. More on this.

Goldberg Variation N°18

I just re-recorded this piece on my K280.

Invention N°1 in C major by J.S. Bach

I just re-recorded this piece again on my new piano. Hopefully the interpretation is better than my previous recording also.

Goldberg Variation N°9 recording

Here is a clip of Goldberg Variation N°9 by J.S. Bach , which I just played and recorded today, on my Schimmel K280 .

Prelude in C major recording

Here is a recording of the Prelude #1 in C major, BWV 846 from Well Tempered Clavier, book 1. Recorded on February 13, 2013 on my new concert grand.

My new Schimmel K280T full size concert grand piano

I just bought a new full concert-size grand piano. It is a Schimmel K280T. This is the first recording I made with it, on the first day of getting the piano. Not my best performance, but not the worst either, and I was happy to get the piano.

Test recording

A recording I made about 6 weeks ago. Mainly intended as a test for my Canon T3i video DSLR.

Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UDH3 built-in ATI HD4290 video vs Asus nVidia GTX 560 Ti

About a year ago, I acquired a Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard. It has a built-in video card with one DVI-D digital port, and one VGA analog port. I never used the video card and always had it disabled. I was using a separate discrete video card from nVidia, previously a 9800 GT, and now an nVidia GTX 60 Ti from Asus .

I am now running a triple-monitor setup, with a pair of HP LP3065 30" 2560x1600, and a Gateway FHD2401 24" 1920x1200, fitted with a custom mount to run in pivot (vertical) mode. Since the GTX 560 only has 2 DVI-D ports, I decided to enable the internal ATI motherboard video card to get a 3rd port. Unfortunately, I ran into several issues.

1. I connected both the large HP LP3065 monitors to the much faster nVidia GTX 560 Ti video card. These monitors are setup horizontally on my left. I wanted the boot display to be the leftmost HP monitor. In the Gigabyte BIOS, under "Advanced BIOS features" / "Init display first", I selected "PEG" in order to select the nVidia card as my boot video card. It booted fine to the correct display, but unfortunately, when the OS loaded, it turned out that the internal ATI video card had been disabled !
   
   This happened despite the fact that I had "Advanced BIOS features"/ "IGX Configuration" / "Internal Graphics Mode" set to "UMA" . I tried the other values, "SidePort" and "UMA + SidePort". No go. The only way to have the internal video card enabled was to select that card as the boot display. This didn't sit well with me, since I had a pivot monitor attached to it, and thus all the BIOS bootup messages would appear vertically ! This is clearly a Gigabyte BIOS bug. The only way I was able to solve it was to physically switch the monitor connections between the two video cards. I connected the leftmost HP LP3065 to the internal ATI card on the motherboard, and then the second HP LP3065 and Gateway FHD2401 to the nVidia GTX 560 . Then I was able to have the boot display on the leftmost HP LP3065, and run all 3 monitors with both GPUs.
   
2. After solving the first problem, when Windows 7 loaded, it recognized both GPUs and 3 monitors perfectly. But I started getting strange messages that "Windows has detected your computer's performance is slow". This was not actually the case. But the messages were incessant, every 30 seconds or so. Windows was inviting me to disable Aero and switch to Basic. Even when I switched the Windows setting to "optimize for quality", the messages continued. I did about an hour's worth of google searches, and nothing I found helped. I concluded that this was a software conflict between Windows 7 x64, the nVidia 296.10 drivers, and the ATI Catalyst 12.3 drivers.
   
   The only way I was able to solve this was to disable the motherboard's ATI GPU. I had an old 8600GT video card lying around, and put in the second PCI-E x16 slot . I used it only to drive the smaller Gateway FHD2401 display. Now that both video cards are nVidia, everything works fine, without any pesky bogus performance messages.

USB composite device vs Gigabyte motherboards keyboard power-up

The two desktop in my home office feature recent Gigabyte motherboards, specifically models GA-990FXA-UD3 rev 1.1 and GA-890GPA-UD3H rev 2.1 .


One notable "feature" of these boards is that they only have a single PS/2 port for keyboard or mouse, but not both. This is a stupid design. If you use PS/2, you normally want to use it for both keyboard and mouse.

The omission of the second PS/2 port has forced me to purchase adapters to convert the PS/2 mouse signal to USB, more specifically the PS/2 mouse signal from my Iogear GCS84B KVM switch.

Simple passive adapters did not work. There was no mouse signal on the computer. I had to purchase smart active adapters. I literally tried 10 different models at Fry's Electronics and Micro Center before I found that was compatible with the mouse signal from the KVM switch, a noname one when I got the GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard a year ago, and a Belkin model when I got the GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard more recently.

These smart adapters actually take a pair of PS/2 signals for both keyboard and mouse, and turn it into a single USB signal. The computer sees it as a USB composite device.

I figured I would try to use it as designed, and connect both the keyboard and mouse to the adapter.

I immediately noticed a problem : I could no longer power the machine through the keyboard.

The BIOS on the motherboard normally allows you to power the system through the keyboard or mouse. You can select any key, or a password, or mouse motion or click. I choose a simple 1-character password option.

The feature just does not work when using the PS/2 to USB adapter . I tried all the possible options with mouse and keyboard. I set all the wake-up options to "Enabled" in the power management menu. But nothing worked, except pressing the power button on the front. This is OK for one of my systems that is close to my chair, but not OK for the other one.

This is a bit puzzling, because the BIOS otherwise supports the keyboard on this adapter just fine for purposes of entering into the BIOS setup menu.

I switched the keyboard connections back to the PS/2 port on both motherboards, leaving only the PS/2 mouse on the adapter, and powering up the machine through the keyboard worked fine again.

The lesson here is that 15-year old USB technology still has not caught up to good old PS/2. It could be argued that this is a problem with the motherboard implementation of USB power-on. But there are likely many other motherboards with the same problem.

Yamaha KX61 MIDI keyboard vs Windows 7 sleep mode

The Yamaha KX61 is a very nice USB-powered MIDI controller. I have owned a pair of them for about 3 years.

While trying to reorganize the dozens of USB cables in my home office, I found out the following problem : if the KX61 is hooked up directly to my PC's GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard via USB, the PC is unable to stay asleep. More precisely, the PC will go to sleep, then wake right back up 2 seconds later. I found out that the KX61 was the problem through trial and errors by unplugging USB cables one at a time.

The Windows powercfg -lastwake did not show any reason for waking up.

The fix was to connect KX61 through a USB hub instead of directly to the motherboard. In this case, the computer was able to remain asleep. I'm not sure if this is a software or hardware problem. Probably a combination of both.

Roland VS-2400CD vs Lantronix Spider Duo IP KVM

The Roland VS-2400CD has been in this blog a lot.

While it is an excellent digital audio recorder, its keyboard, mouse and video interfaces are only PS/2 and VGA . Those interfaces are now considered "legacy". Most current computers use USB interfaces for keyboard and mouse, and some sort of digital interface for video, either DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort. This makes it a lot harder for the VS-2400CD to coexist with other equipment, especially on a KVM switch, if one wants to share the keyboard, mouse and monitor.

For many years, I have been using the following combination of devices to solve this problem :

1. To switch the keyboard and mouse between my various computers and the VS-2400CD, I use an Iogear GCS84B KVM switch. This is a PS/2 and VGA KVM switch. I don't use the VGA connection on the switch. I change device through hotkeys or the pushbuttons.
2. To convert the VGA video output from the VS-2400CD to DVI, a  video signal converter
3. To switch the video between my various computers and the VS-2400CD, a Gefen EXT-DVI-441N DVI switch

There are several problems with the above solution :

1. It requires two different operations to switch the keyboard/mouse and the display. One hotkey on the keyboard, plus one press on the DVI switch. The ergonomics are lacking. A proper KVM switch should switch them all at the same time.
2. The 3 computers I connected to the Iogear KVM switch no longer feature dual PS/2 connectors for mouse and keyboard. 2 of them only have one PS/2 connector. The third is a laptop and has no PS/2 connector. This means I had to buy 3 PS/2 to USB converters. I tried 10 different models before I found some that worked for all cases ! 2 of them are noname, one of them is Belkin. This gets pricey and was very time consuming.
3. The Iogear KVM emulates a regular mouse. This means I cannot access all the features of my Kensington Expert Mouse trackball on my computers, in particular all 4 buttons.
   Edit : I found this very nice free software, called X-Mouse Button control which does the job nicely, much better than the original Kensington software.
4. The signal converter only converts the VGA analog signal to 640x480 DVI single-link. Two of my monitors, a pair of 30" HP LP3065, do not accept this resolution. This model will only work at 1280x800 over single-link DVI, or 2560x1600 dual-link DVI. It also has no VGA analog input . This means I cannot display the signal from the VS-2400CD on these 2 monitors at all.
5. My third monitor, a Gateway FHD2401 does accept 640x480 over DVI single-link. However, due to space issues on my desk, I am now running it in portrait mode, vertically. The VS-2400CD firmware does not have a portrait mode of operation. And the Gateway monitor does not have a way of displaying the video signal at a 90 degrees angle. Thus, when I use my VS-2400CD, I now have to pivot the monitor back to landscape mode. However, there is not enough space, and if I do this, it protrudes in front of one of the other monitors

The first 3 problems are inconveniences that I have been willing to live with, but with the addition of a second HP LP3065 monitor recently, the last 2 are now a major issue.

The 4th problem might be solved with a video scaling device. I don't know if one exists that outputs at 1280x800 or 2560x1600 . If it does, it's probably very expensive.
Edit: I found an inexpensive scaler that worked, the AT-HDView from Atlona. It was only $99 at Fry's.

The 5th problem is much more difficult to solve. I don't know of any device that will turn the video around at a 90 degrees angle. I am not sure if any monitor exists that has this function built-in.

Because of all the problems, I attempted a different approach. I purchased a Lantronix Spider Duo KVM switch. This is a KVM that has 2 PS/2 ports for keyboards and mouse, and one VGA port for video. It connects to the local network via Ethernet. The device connected to the Spider Duo can be accessed via a Java application over the network from any computer.

This was a very appealing solution to me, because I would no longer have to try to convert these legacy PS/2 and VGA ports on the VS-2400CD to modern 21st century technology.

After speaking to Lantronix support and being told there was a 95% chance that it would be compatible, I ordered the $200 Spider Duo from Provantage. I received it on April 25. I hooked it up. The keyboard worked fine. The video worked. Unfortunately, the mouse signal did not work at all, either remotely or with the included local KVM cable. I spoke at length with Lantronix support and, it was determined that the Spider Duo is incompatible with the Roland VS-2400CD. My Spider Duo is now on its way back to Provantage for a refund.

At this point, I am really wondering if there is any device on the planet that can solve my problem. I may try other IP KVMs, but the prices can get very high as these are typically enterprise devices. The Spider Duo was the least expensive IP KVM I could find.

I welcome any ideas on how to solve the issues and simplify my switching situation. Please feel free to comment on the blog. Suggestions from KVM manufacturers are welcome, too !

Using the modified Roland VS-2400CD recorder : part 2

Last year, I wrote a blog post detailing how to do a hardware modification to the Roland VS-2400CD to add an eSATA port and and breathe new life into it.

I promised a follow-up post about how to take advantage of the modification to transfer projects to your PC. This post is long overdue.

Background information

The VS-2400CD uses a FAT32 file system on the hard disk. There are several major limitations to keep in mind :

1. The VS-2400CD maximum hard drive size is 120GB . Larger drives can be used, but the VS-2400CD cannot see anything above 120GB.
2. The VS-2400CD maximum partition size is 10GB. On the standard 40GB hard drive, this means there will be 4 partitions. On a drive of 120GB or more, there will be 12 partitions
3. The original PC had a limit of a 4 primary partitions per hard disk. This still persists today. For this reason, only the first 4 partitions on your VS-2400CD can be directly seen by your operating system when you attach the VS-2400CD hard drive to the PC.

Since you have taken advantage of the eSATA hardware modification, you likely now have a larger drive than the original 40GB that came with your VS-2400CD, and thus you will have to use special software see the partitions beyond the 4th on your computer.


The only program I know that does this is called VS Wave Export, and runs on Windows.

Initial computer setup under Windows 7

1. download VS Wave Export
2. since there is no installer, you will need to unzip it to a folder of your choice
3. create a shortcut on your desktop to the executable 
4. edit the shortcut properties, and enable the option to "Run this program as an administrator" . If you forget this step, VS Wave export will not see your VS-2400CD hard drive 
5. in the Control panel, search for "partition" and click "create and format hard disk partitions"
6. make sure your VS-2400CD and the disk enclosures are both turned off.
7. connect the disk enclosure that contains your VS-2400CD hard drive to the PC via USB .
8. turn on the disk enclosure
9. you may get prompted 4 times to "autoplay" the content of VS partitions . Don't do it - just stop the autoplay.
10. the disk will show up in the "Disk Management" screen . It will look something like this :
    
11. Click button 2 (Right-click) on the first VS-2400CD partition, and select "Change drive letter and paths"
12. Click "Remove" and confirm
13. Repeat steps 10 and 11 for the other three VS-2400CD partitions. This ensures that the operating system is not accessing the drive, and thus will make it available to VS Wave Export.
14. You can now close the disk manager

Using VS Wave Export to export your projects to WAV files

1. If your VS-2400CD is on, turn it off
2. connect the disk enclosure that contains your VS-2400CD hard drive to the PC via USB .
3. turn on the disk enclosure.
4. Run VS Wave Export from your desktop shortcut. You should get prompted to run it as administrator. You must accept.
5. You will now see something like this :
   
6. The above shows all 11 partitions on my VS-2400CD hard drive
7. Click the + on one or more partitions. It will show the projects on those partitions :
   
8.  click the project to export
9. select the tracks you want to export in the matrix on the right. There are up to 384 V-tracks. In most cases, just select "All". The selected tracks will be highlighted in red
10. if you want only part of the timeline, select specific start/end times.
11. click the folder to select the destination for your WAV files
12. click "export" and wait
13. That's it ! You should now have a bunch of WAV files for all your tracks.
    
14. Each of the WAV file is mono and uncompressed. The files are named
    $project name" "$sampling_rate"_"$track"-"$vtrack"_"$trackname
    In my case, the track names are each of the 9 microphones I use.

The above method is what I use primarily now as I just use the VS-2400CD to record. I do all my mixing and editing on the PC, which is much faster with Reaper. I never feed any data back from the PC to the VS-2400CD. If your workflow is like mine, you may never need to do anything else.

However, there may be some times during which you will want to backup the actual VS-2400CD projects to your computer, and later restore them. One such occasion would be for example if you want to change change your VS-2400CD hard drive. I did this today - I upgraded from a loud WD 160GB hard drive to a whisper quiet 64GB Patriot SSD.

Backing up all the projects on a VS-2400CD partition to your PC

1. in the Control panel, search for "partition" and click "create and format hard disk partitions"
2. make sure your VS-2400CD and the disk enclosures are both turned off.
3. connect the disk enclosure that contains your VS-2400CD hard drive to the PC via USB .
4. turn on the disk enclosure
5. the disk will show up in the "Disk Management" screen. You will see the first four VS-2400CD partitions
6. select the partition you want to backup, click button 2 (Right-click) , and select "Change drive letter and paths"
7. select "Add"
8. select "Assign the following drive letter"
9. choose a drive letter
10. click OK
11. Autoplay might come up. Select "Open folder to view files". If it doesn't come up, go to "Computer" and just double-click the drive letter you assigned
12. Backup all the files on this drive letter using a method of your choice, for example, to another hard drive, online storage area, DVD, tape, etc.
13. in the Control panel, search for "partition" and click "create and format hard disk partitions"
14. select the partition you want to backup, click button 2 (Right-click) , and select "Change drive letter and paths".
15. click "Remove" and confirm

This method only works for backing up the first 4 partitions of the VS-2400CD . Unfortunately, you cannot mount partitions 5 to 11 on the PC this way. If you need to backup the projects on these partitions, you may have to move projects to partitions 1-4 using the VS-2400CD first . It will be slow, but not nearly as painful as using CD-R/CD-RW to backup the data.

Restoring all the projects from your PC to a VS-2400CD partition

1. using the VS-2400CD, empty one of the first four partitions on the disk. You must delete all the projects on a selected partition to make space for the restore.
2. when this is done, shut down your VS-2400CD and disk enclosure.
3. in the Control panel, search for "partition" and click "create and format hard disk partitions"
4. connect the disk enclosure that contains your VS-2400CD hard drive to the PC via USB .
5. turn on the disk enclosure
6. the disk will show up in the "Disk Management" screen. You will see the first four VS-2400CD partitions
7. select the VS-2400CD partition you want to restore to, click button 2 (Right-click) , and select "Change drive letter and paths"
8. select "Add"
9. select "Assign the following drive letter"
10. choose a drive letter
11. click OK
12. Autoplay might come up. Select "Open folder to view files". If it doesn't come up, go to "Computer" and just double-click the drive letter you assigned
13. Examine the files on the VS-2400CD partition. Make sure sure this is really the freshly emptied VS partition you want to restore to There will typically be one project directory only, with very few files inside.
14. When you are sure, delete all the files and directories on that partition. This is required to clean up the project index.
15. Restore all the files from your previous backp
16. in the Control panel, search for "partition" and click "create and format hard disk partitions"
17. select the partition you want to backup, click button 2 (Right-click) , and select "Change drive letter and paths".
18. click "Remove" and confirm

Again, this method only works for restoring to one of the first 4 partitions of the VS-2400CD .
If you have more partitions to restore, you can use the VS-2400CD first to move projects between partitions 1-4 and 5-11 . It will be slow, but not nearly as painful as using CD-R/CD-RW to backup the data.



Backing up and restoring individual projects

This procedure is more complex and I'm not going to attempt to write it down in details as I don't use it. Basically, you will need to copy/restore the content of individual song directories.

The complexity comes from the index file in the root directory of each VS-2400CD partition. You would need to manually update that index file to keep things in sync. This poses a problem if you want to restore a project to an empty parttion. You would have to first create an empty project on the VS-2400CD partition, then swap the files on the PC.

I hope this will be helpful to all those who have modified their VS-2400CD.