One foot cable!!!

I used to know a man who owned a Pools Company. Every weekend millions of people predicted the winners of the football matches and could themselves win millions if they got the right answers. The lottery killed the business. One weekend his computers weren't working. It was a nightmare; results are shown on television and broadcast on radio - to not be able to announce the winner was terrible - customers might not trust you again...

Experts were brought in to see the state of the art computers and fix them. All to nought. A helicopter brought in a super specialist. Still no joy. Then, one of the employees asked what he thought might be a silly question. "Is that the plug for the computer? The one that's not quite in it's socket?" Of course it was and no one had remembered to check it! Everything else worked but the power was intermittent and was 'upsetting' the computer results - as you might imagine.

In my studio, after much deliberation, I had choosen a certain type of USB mixing desk. This links directly to the software in the computer. It should be brilliant. It wasn't. Time and again one part of the system worked and another didn't - always a different part. I thought it was me.

Over weeks that became months I worked away to fix it. I know I am configuring it correctly, I know it should be seeing it work, I am getting in to midi controller programming- Ahhh... not somewhere I want to be!

Anyway - long story short - one midi cable 12 inches long was a dud. I finally saw that it worked sending but not receiving and started to spot quirks and isolated it to that problem, more by luck than judgement. So, £4.99 has delivered me a beautiful mixing desk that works like a dream. I showed Christiane and she was delighted too. So, in a happy mood I went for lunch. Came back after lunch and... it didn't work again!!!!!! Calm down check the wires. The new one was not pushed in far enough... and it all worked again - pretty lights, faders et al. Thank goodness. I can track across 72 tracks with two key pushes... joy...

Step by step I'm getting there with my studio set up. Just hope I can get there before I'm 96!

Love N