u/general_musician

Thanks for reading!

I haven't posted about this topic before, and I'm not the developer or anyone working directly on the project, but I've seen a few posts in the past and have been following along since the Lines forum days. I didn't see a post added to the TE subreddit and I thought it was relevant to share. Mods: I checked the subreddit rules and didn't see any rules being broken, so I thought it'd be okay.

As many know, this unreleased device was previously limited to playback of a single album. There is now an option to upload your own stems to the device (which has ~3.3GB memory with the previous album removed, or about an hour of stemmed audio)! I have tested and confirmed it's working! Best of all, it's using the original firmware and the stem transfer utility is totally free and open source! So all of the original functionality works!

I know there are probably questions that are going to come up - I'd encourage you to check out the help page and check the Lines forum (although the topic is closed, it still has all the initial details). All the instructions on the Help page were great too.

https://solderless.engineering/stemloader/help/

The two pieces of worthwhile feedback that could be relevant for folks:

• Device upload speeds are slow due to the memory chosen for the device. A 5-minute multitrack WAV takes about an hour to upload to the device. Get your songs sounding good beforehand and they'll sound great once they're on the device!
• I'm not sure how scarce the devices are going to become - it's been noted that they're not as easy to come by outside of the US and the prototype/unreleased status means we're on our own if something goes awry. Build quality is, in my opinion, pretty superb for the current price of the device on the site I purchased from ($45 USD + shipping).

Anyway, here's my device! I uploaded a few of my songs on it and it sounds awesome! Have a great day!

I've been getting more into rackmount gear for several months, with a stellar deal last fall from a college radio station replacing their "old" studio equipment with new gear (including a Yamaha SPX-900 effects rack and a Marantz dual cassette deck). It currently suits my more "experimental" approach to music making a lot better than previous workflows, endlessly toiling over a DAW trying to perfect a sound.

The Hughes unit I picked up today (won at an auction for ~$110USD) intrigued me-not just because I needed a way to add dimensionality to mono tape experiments, but because it works with both mono and stereo sources with what seems to be the most basic of filtering options. I'm old enough to remember playing back my earliest songs on Windows XP and emulating the SRS experience through Media Player. On a pair of headphones, I knew a fully mixed song is not going to sound drastically different. But I knew singling out layers or instruments could potentially change the soundstage. Plus, a mono source can now be pre EQ-ed then post-EQed in stereo if I wanted!

Anyway, coupled with the scarcity, I figured it was worth some experimenting and the nostalgia dive! Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Thanks for reading! I have sadly been idle with expanding my collection of reel-to-reel tapes since getting my Teac last spring and winning a lot of ~30 home recorded reels from the early 80's. It included college radio excerpts from a college on the Minnesota/North Dakota border. Yesterday I bid on a series of four lots from a music store that closed a couple of decades ago in rural South Dakota, and I made the 4-hour round trip to pick it up. There's a huge amount of smaller 5-inch tapes and I haven't seen any tapes susceptible to sticky shed, but there are some gems that I can't wait to dive into. I spent ~$140USD in total and I don't have a final count of reels or a sense of timeframe or programming.

Thanks for reading! After my post a couple of weeks ago, I went to a few more local stores to scout out the one missing US release I had wanted: All In The Mind by The Bucketheads. I was able to find a copy at the Electric Fetus, a well-known shop here in Minneapolis.

But I knew the local shops wouldn't be getting these UK titles in, so I stayed up until Sunday morning and placed an order on iMusic for them! They finally arrived today (no tariffs, $18 international shipping).

The Orb album is a quirky one, but bridges the gap between their spacey 90's output with a more direct, percussion-driven approach starting with their Kompakt releases. The Olive record is a good example of the early electronica genre while searching for a commercial pop sound. I prefer Trickle, but I'm going to enjoy them both!