Well, I’ve just finished putting my Zoom G9.2tt guitar effects processor back together after fixing it. That was kind of a long story, really. The Zoom G9.2tt appears to be built like a tank, but since nothing is perfect, it has some weaknesses. In this case it’s the small pushbuttons on the unit. They consist of three parts… There’s this translucent plastic thing that you push with your finger, which is clicked onto the PCB, over the actual microswitch and a led. This plastic thing ‘hinges’, so you can push it down onto the underlying microswitch. There aren’t any actual hinges, it’s just two thin parts of plastic so it can move around a bit. But after a while, fatigue sets in, and it breaks off. It doesn’t really help that the contact with the microswitch isn’t always perfect, and these microswitches are very vulnerable to dust and such, so you automatically push harder when the switch doesn’t respond, putting even more stress on the fragile hinge. So I broke one of them quite a while ago. I had to take the entire unit apart to see if I could fix it. This was a hellish task, because the unit is built up from various PCBs which are partly on top of eachother and/or connected via brackets or other things. There are also quite a few cables connecting the different PCBs. Because you can only access the electronics from the bottom, the PCBs with the buttons are actually the furthest away, so you have to take the ENTIRE unit apart. A very time-consuming and stressful task. There are so many parts to maneuver out of the way, and it’s all very delicate… Anyway, I just decided to go into it head-first, so I took it apart completely, and discovered how these plastic ‘hinge’ things worked. I switched the broken one with a button that wasn’t important, and I used some adhesive tape to put the broken part back together. Then I put the entire unit back together. Much to my surprise, it all worked again. Having found out the hard way how delicate these buttons are, I tried to be as gentle as I could from then on. This worked fine for a few years, until eventually the inevitable happened: Another button failed. The nightmare of the previous fixing operation flashed before my eyes… This time I wanted to do it differently. It was very hard to fix it with adhesive tape… so I wanted to get some proper replacement parts. My unit was JUST out of its 3-year warranty period (I have a very early model, serial number 749)… besides, I had ordered it from Germany at the time. So I figured I’d just contact the local distributor for spare parts. They responded that they could provide the spare parts, but they don’t deal directly with end-users. So I would have to place the order through one of their dealers. Well, since there is only one dealer in my city, according to the Zoom distributor (Rock Palace), I figured I’d go there. I explained my problem to one of the salesmen, and left my email address. He said he had to look into it, and get back to me. About a week later, I received an answer. He said it was very hard for them to get spare parts, and I’d have to try to contact the manufacturer myself. Well, that’s odd… That’s not at all what the distributor said… And basically that brings me back to the distributor then, as Zoom doesn’t have any direct contact info for service, they refer only to the local distributors on their site. Anyway, so I just tried to send a mail to the general info email address, and after a few days I got contacted by the distributor again. They were willing to make an exception, and shipped the spare parts, free of charge. And here we are today… I’ve just finished putting in a new microswitch and a new plastic thingie, and the unit works fine again. I hope it stays that way this time… Because it’s a LOT of work to fix these simple buttons… even if you know how to do it. I have to say though, kudos to Zoom

These are some direct quotes from Danny Danzi: "I've made a life of helping others the only way I know how and because I communicate in a language they can understand, they respect me for it and probably take my side. Not to mention I have went through the pains of hell for many years to help the fine people on this site and many others for the price of a thank you." "Lets look at the facts...I have accomplished quite a bit in my years on this earth. I share information and parts of myself with people that works. When they do what I tell them to do, they get results. It's not based on opinions, it's based on what works. This is why people like what I have to say and jump on my bandwagon. If they happen to like my songs, my playing and my tone, this works even better for them." "I on the other hand, have created special videos for site members showing them and answering their questions in full. I have helped them personally behind the scenes to achieve what they were after going above and beyond the call of duty for the price of a thank you." "don't mistake my personality for having an ego. Though you think it's me hiding behind something, I earned all that I have in both stature and credibility. Don't confuse ego with belief in myself, tried and tested success and the ability to communicate with others better than you." Wow, I almost confused 'belief in myself' with ego there :)

Some of you might be familiar with the Guitar Rig amp modeling software from Native Instruments. They've organized a contest where anyone can put a video on Youtube, using Guitar Rig. More info can be found here: http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=guitarrigcontest Here's my entry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erfR6Ij28nA Please rate the video if you like it.

I bought a guitar processor a while ago (a Zoom G9.2tt to be exact), which has a USB connection with ASIO support. Very convenient for recording. However, it only supports 16-bit 48 KHz. My own soundcard does 24-bit 96 KHz, and therefore whenever I wanted to add a guitar track, I either had to use an analog connection and record with my soundcard (which means plugging out other sources and plugging the guitar processor in), or convert my entire project down to 48 KHz or less, if I wanted to use the USB connection. Or if I *really* wanted to have my hands full, I could make a copy of my 24/96 project, downsample the copy to 48 KHz, then record the guitar track... then import that 48 KHz track into the original 24/96 project, while having Cubase convert it. So I thought it would be very convenient if the signal of the guitar processor could be upsampled to 96 KHz instead. This would allow me to preserve the quality of the other tracks, and as a bonus I could apply any effects in 24/96 on the guitar track aswell, which should improve the overall quality compared to doing everything in 48 KHz.. even if the source audio itself isn't of better quality. Anyway, I started creating a proof-of-concept ASIO driver which can be placed in between Cubase and an actual ASIO device, and perform upsampling on the incoming signals, and downsampling on the outgoing signals (it does some basic linear filtering aswell, so the resulting quality is actually quite nice on the ears). Currently I have a driver which can double the samplerate, and I have it working for my guitar processor, and I've also done some small tests with my 24/96 soundcard, and it seems to work okay aswell. The nicest part is that there is no additional latency when using this driver. It costs a bit of extra CPU power, but on a modern machine it's negligible. The cost of having all VSTis, effects, mixing etc at 96 KHz instead of 48 KHz is far larger than the extra overhead that the driver adds. If anyone is interested, I can clean the driver up a bit, shave off some of the rough edges, and release it to the public. I plan to release the sourcecode of this driver aswell, so other people can modify it to make it support other devices and perhaps other functionality. It isn't a whole lot of extra work to add in support for more generic upsampling/downsampling... Currently you're limited to only the double samplerates of your device, but with a bit of extra work you could also turn eg 44.1 KHz into 96 KHz, or even 192 KHz or whatever you want. Speaking of other functionality... Currently I can only use a single ASIO device for the multitracking. This means that I can use either my soundcard, or my guitar processor. I have this idea of adding multiplexing to the driver. With the resampling in place, I can basically make every ASIO device appear as having the same capabilities. Currently both my soundcard and guitar processor appear to Cubase as 96 KHz devices. The next step could be that I combine both to a single ASIO device with multiple inputs. This will allow me to record the guitar and other instruments at the same time, and multiple outputs could also come in handy, no doubt. The current concept I have in mind, would give you an input latency equal to the highest latency device that you're using, and an output latency of twice the highest latency. In that case I think I can make it work in a robust way. With modern hardware, latencies of below 1 ms are doable, so if by using this driver you'd go up to 2 ms, that would probably still be acceptable. With older/higher latency devices, it may become a bit of a problem... You might also get problems when the latency between different devices is too large. Anyway, currently I don't even know for sure if it will actually work properly in practice at all. But I am willing to give it a try.