Saturday, August 2, 2025

Starting The Move To Windows11 & Pain.

 


After putting off researching building/ buying/ rebuilding my studio computer for much of the last year, I finally decided that getting one of the locally assembled brands was the most straight forward.  Unlike Sydney, there aren't build PC stores run by Chinese guys with all the parts you might need, local. 

There are stores that build customizable desktop PCs, like APPLIED and DOSPARA, but they aren't at my local MALL, and from my visit to downtown Kyoto DOSPARA, it isn't like they carry all the Gigabyte and other such motherboard brands.   

Most in Japan just use a Smart Phone or a small laptop. 

So I customized a MOUSE PC GAMER PC option. I have bought just an i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, DVD R/W and fancy graphics card in a box. Lots of DisplayPorts and an HDMI.   No Display, keyboard, mouse or HDDs, as I have these in my existing system.

It will arrive next week, giving me 2 months to install, move things to it and be able to switch over before the October Windows 10 end of support.  Moving stuff over, installing, registering, deregistering the old machine, etc, etc takes many weeks. Mostly just waiting for things to copy and install.

My existing machine has 16GB ram and the new will have 32GB, but that is about the only real difference.  My existing machine is completely fine, as it was running XP, before I move it to Win10.

The only thing I have that pushed the memory of my existing system  is the GRITONE DRUM vst, and don't use that very often.  

Everything I have read just shows Windows 11 to be a step backwards, allowing advertising in the system widgets.  The requirement that Windows11 needs TMP2.0 is just an excuse for an Intel cash grab.  I was at a LAB in the 1990s when Intel released some special version of the 386 and then they came looking for any software that "required those new features".  

Same old strategy.

And keeping with this blogs theme of  PAIN, today is the 10th anniversary of my kidney stone trip to the ER

Kidney Stones hurt like hell, but with drugs for the pain and flushing out the trouble makers, that will be all fine again in a few hours. 

What is REALLY painful is an extensive hemorrhoidectomy that means you have the same or worse pain for 8 hours after pooping each day for 2 to 4 weeks, and no painkillers available to you help at all.  Recovering from that took me over 12 months.  For most of the last 10 months of that time, I wasn't in pain, but the intense extended pain seems to have caused a "depression". I wasn't sad or have the blues,  but everything that I had done for fun, wasn't interesting to me at all for 10 months.  Was like being a different person.    

But I was looking at interesting 1967 manga speech balloons this morning...


And today 2025/8/8 we are up and running on the New Win11 Machine.  Found a few things not installable, but have work arounds: 


It has a SSD drive so it boots fast, but other than that, is the same speed as my win10 i7 PC for rendering Reaper audio projects or MOHO animations.  Of course there were faster CPU options, like i9 and upward, but they add significantly to the price.  It has cost ~¥270,000.  It is a very nicely built machine though, and dead quiet the way I use it most of the time. That is a lot to be in pretty much the same place I was before getting it, but that is current American Capitalism for you.   

So Win11 doesn't support my old audio interface so going back to ASIO4ALL and the motherboard audio. That is what I did for years when I first started using Reaper. I had a MIC100 preamp plugged straight into the motherboard line in for guitar, bass and microphone. The noise performance of the motherboard was better than the preamp. I also only record one instrument at a time, so things like crosstalk between channels is not relevant. I have used a Mackie 4 channel mixer for the last 5 years doing the same. The knobs and multi segment VU meter is way better than a single clip led on most audio interfaces.

Motherboard line out now goes to an Audio Technica Headphone Amplifier, then to my JBL-104 monitors. I mostly use headphones, and don't like just plugging them into to the JBLs when needed. I keep everything plugged in as needed, and turn on the headphone amp or speakers at the power point as needed.  Hardly a Pro Studio monitoring environment, but the room is too small and I use a slow spectrum analyzer in mixing as much as anything else. The quality of my mixing and mastering isn't why no one listens to my music. 



Not sure what to do with the old Win10 16GB machine. I originally bought it in February 2016 as a Win7 machine in a Corsair Case/PSU, with 1TB HDD, 8GB, DVD R/W and a GeForce graphics card for $1,489.58.   9 years is a good run for a PC!   

At the moment it is the /Netflix/Prime/mediaPlayer connected via HDMI to a small 24" TV I have in the studio. Has Kodi on it.  

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