Happy Thanksgiving and my new/updated website

Hi all - and Happy Thanksgiving! I couldn't really think of a better place to put this, since I use Sonar X1 and most everything I post about typically pertains to it... I've been around these boards for what seems like forever, but I've been away lately because my business has been doing really well, and keeping me extremely busy. One of the side-effects of this is that I've increased my abilities in website design, specifically with a content management system called Joomla! (the exclamation is part of the name ) So, in order to make it a lot easier for me to update my site, which didn't seem to happen much before, I've redone the site in Joomla!. Now I can update the site at will, much like Wordpress allows if you are familiar. I've also added topics on Joomla!, the T3 framework that I use to make custom website templates, and Xara, the software I use to create all my graphics. I've not yet added any content in those areas, but will as time goes by. I'd love for you to stop by the site and let me know what you think. It is a work in progress for sure - and some of it is out of date but I think most of it still applies. I hope to be able to keep up with it better in the future and to add to this community like I have in the past. You can check out the site here: http://www.blades85.com Thanks for your time!

Hi again Blades.
 
WB.

Nope - never left Sonar.  I just haven't had any time on here as mentioned above.  I honestly haven't touched my Sonar setup in at least months - maybe as long as a year!

I'd really love to get Sonar X2 going, as it seems to add a lot of things that X1 seems like it should have had, but I can't justify the upgrade expense for as little as I've been using it. If I could get enough donations or ad revenue from my site to upgrade, that's the first place it would go! I've been fortunate enough to get a few donations (2 at $5) but my ad revenue in 3 years hasn't even been enough to get a check from Google.  Same goes for my affiliate account from zzounds.  I need about $100 before I'll have enough to do the upgrade.

I am trying to get back into it - making time for it.

Hey Kev.  Opinion accepted.

I AM a "pro", however.  It may be "boring", but it's to the point and the conversion has made me more able to update.  This site is more about content than artistic design or whatever.  I've actually purposefully taken a step back on the design from the previous version, which was a bit more graphical but a total PITA to update.

As mentioned above, this is a work in progress, so it will undoubtedly change, but I had to get off the old format, off the old hosting, and on to something usable.

Thanks Marcus.  I also have a Variax 500, which I REALLY like.  It's been a great guitar that I got cheap when they were discontinuing the 500 model.  I really like the sounds I get out of the 500 with the Lester model that emulates the Les Paul Jr.  It just sounds really smooth to me, especially with a decent distortion.  I have a real Tele, which barely gets played because of some not-so-great frets and  I also have the 5-string Variax Bass, which I also like for all the tone options it provides. 

The USB 1.x interface on the UX2 has never been an issue with me for a number of reasons.

1.  I really only use it for monitoring effects.  My real audio recording goes through my Layla 3G.  This allows me to crank the latency in Sonar and still get really fast feedback on the effects/models.  This is less important now than when I got the UX a few years ago, but still pertains when I'm woking on something that doesn't fare well at low latency.

2.  It's just a single/stero device anyway and the bandwidth of USB 1.x is plenty for this.  In this case, it wouldn't really matter if it was USB2.0, as that extra bandwidth would never get used.  If it were an 8 channel device or something (which it couldn't be anyway), then it would obviously be a problem.  But not here.

3.  I use the PODFarm plugin now, which allows me to get at all of the models from inside of Sonar - still have the latency to deal with, but as I said this is less of an issue now - I still reserve this as mostly a mix-down thing anyway.  I don't have the newest version of this plug, which would allow me to split out the individual effects of the PODFarm, so I could access the delays and such without having to load up a whole preset.  This would help a lot, but I'm holding out on this to see what the new guitar fx models in Sonar X2 are like.  I may not need the PODFarm at all, or at least not the upgrade, which is something like $100- as much as the upgrade to X2 would be for me!  But I really do like the delay modules that are in the PODFarm better than anything else I've used (that came with Sonar).

Thanks again for the feedback.

Markus - I got a ridiculous deal on the 705 when I got it and I think it was one of the last ones anywhere.  I think I ended up paying $300 for it!  I'm planning on holding onto it, but you never know when the itch for something may arise that I can't justify any other way than to sell it

Blades
Hello again everyone.  Very excited about the pending release of X3.  I REALLY thought it was going to be $149 for Producer upgrades (from X1), but now I see that it's going to be $199 from X1 and $149 from X2.  I have been collecting donations at my website for the past 2 years to be able to get enough to purchase an upgrade to "whatever" next version there would be - to justify the cost of keeping the website there and for spending the time for creating the videos.  And I'm almost there!  In fact, I was ready to plunk down the $149 this morning as soon as it posted. 
 
But now I'm $12 short of the $199 I need.  Is there anyone out there who appreciates or appreciated the videos I've created about drum maps or the Behringer BCF2000 or any of the others to pop me over a $12 Paypal donation?  Sure would be appreciated if so.  I don't want to seem like a beggar!  But it's been REALLY hard to get any donations.  In truth, most of the $188 I've gotten through the site has been from affiliate income that I got from the burstnet hosting company for VPS website hosting that I "sold" in the real world and not really even directly through the site.
 
Any assistance anyone was gracious enough to send my way would be quite excellent.  In fact - as soon as I hit the number, I'll post it so that I don't just get a bunch of money that wouldn't be put towards the new Sonar.
 
Thanks for listening!  Now go at least watch a video :)

Yeah sure, would you like me to buy you a new car while I'm at it ?

Hey Chuckebaby: Most everything that's there is (at its source), FLV video.  The player I'm using on the site is JWPlayer, which should fall back gracefully to HTML5 video if the original were in MP4 format, but in the case of the FLV files, it requires Flash.
 
I just tested in IE11 (don't have 10 on this laptop) and it works fine there as Flash, but actually downloaded the FLV file in Chrome rather then playing it when I disabled the Flash plugin.
 
Does that help at all?