TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Production Studio
-- How often do you perform routine maintenance of your gear?

How often do you perform routine maintenance of your gear?

I'm wondering how often do you guys find yourself doing the little activities that keep your gear/software running smoothly - installing updates/upgrades, updating drivers, troubleshooting gear/software, backing up files, looking for workarounds for bugs, etc. BTW, you can choose more than one option for the poll.

I find myself doing some of these things so regularly (daily) that it's almost become part of my workflow.

About 0.1%!

I have a funny brain that has this automatic code that results in everything in life being discounted unless it's of very high importance to the end game.

Now one could argue that maintenance and updates are vital to the end game, but in terms of music I'd still stick with my approach.

I've read a number of producers such as Tocadisco say this (and someone big in FM recently - ?). Thier and my rationale is that I want to focus on value added outcome changing activity.

That's an interesting and certainly valid point! I guess I just prefer to live by the "ounce of prevention > pound of cure" ideology.

I only update to enable a new feature that I actually need or to attempt to fix a bug that's preventing me from accomplishing some task. Otherwise, I'm a big proponent of the "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" philosophy. Once I have a stable system, I leave it alone. I think that if you are serious about getting any actual work done, then your studio rig is not the place to be installing the latest, cutting edge software. Find what works and leave it alone, and never upgrade anything if you have deliverables due.

I haven't updated my system in months nor any of the plugins installed. I will run a Software Update to get any Max OS X security fixes or Pro Applications updates, but that's only 5 or 6 times a year, tops.

I am planning on going to Logic Pro 9 after I finish these last couple of tracks, but, again, only because I want to use the new FlexTime features. If it weren't for that I'd probably not bother. I'm hoping that it will lessen my dependence on Ableton Live for advanced audio editing.

Tocadisco and the producer owner of sample magic use a 9 year old version of logic and cubase sx3 respectively. I'm quite often surprised how many pros use old DAW's, but if it ain't broken.....

I was influencd by the NASA approach I once read about where they claimed to use ancient but uber reliable software (msdot I think) and would never use windows until it had gone through years of bug fixing.

Often I've updated only to find the effort made zero difference to my music making outcomes.
I upgraded everything 1 year ago and went for good ole windows (the one prior to vista) as it just works with everything. Never ever update the PC software.

I've discovered in life that you cant do everything - I spend a good 2 hours per night with the kids, excercise everyday, am very house tidy and forever doing jobs, plus run a business and fit in 2 hours music per night (more at wend), so something somewhere has to give and for me its thing like updating software.

My dad always updates everything and cleans his car for hours, but his health is bad - his compromise was on his own body mechanics!

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Butler I was influencd by the NASA approach I once read about where they claimed to use ancient but uber reliable software (msdot I think) and would never use windows until it had gone through years of bug fixing.

NASA and other scientific organizations tend to gravitate toward reliability rather than new and improved. This is one of the reasons why programming languages like FORTRAN are so pervasive in the science community, because they are stable and reliable. Is FORTRAN inferior compared to more modern, OO languages? Absolutely. However, its stable, reliable and predictable. Thats the most important thing for anything you depend on.

Yes i dont like updating thigs as you always tend to get problems. as Eric says if it ain't broke don't fix it.

hardly ever really - if everythings fine i just leave it be (although i did fuck up with the Battery 3 update )

IME, a lot of the updates that I install are typically fixing problems and improving stability. Believe me, there's nothing unstable about my system, even with all the hardware, software, dongles, etc. that I run (and have previously run). But, it comes at a cost of about 10-20 minutes a day on average.

Now again, remember that I'm asking about routine maintenance here - not major upgrades. I don't typically install major upgrades when I'm in the middle of a big project.

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik IME, a lot of the updates that I install are typically fixing problems and improving stability. Believe me, there's nothing unstable about my system, even with all the hardware, software, dongles, etc. that I run (and have previously run). But, it comes at a cost of about 10-20 minutes a day on average. Now again, remember that I'm asking about routine maintenance here - not major upgrades. I don't typically install major upgrades when I'm in the middle of a big project.

I dont know about anyone else but 20 mins a day just updating stuff/maintenance seems a tad excessive

quote:

Originally posted by evo8 I dont know about anyone else but 20 mins a day just updating stuff/maintenance seems a tad excessive

Well, that's not exactly what I wrote. 20 minutes is the upper end of my ballpark guesstimation for the average time I spend keeping my computer running smooth. Most days it's less than 10 minutes (some days not at all, of course), but every once in a while you have an issue that takes a while to figure out. Again, just a guesstimation.

About once every two months.

We get this really weird dust, here, that gets into everything, I haven't done so, on my new computer, yet, but on my old one, it had to have a good, inside and out dusting, every two months. As a regular practice, however, the outsides of anything electronic gets dusted once every week to every other week.

EDIT: Software maintenance, like cleaning up bad registry entries, defragging, disk clean-up is task dependent. I'm probably due for a defrag, shortly, as it has yet to be performed on this computer, but registry cleaning is done about once every other week.

Yeah, Eddie, that's exactly the sort of routine things I'm talking about. We get a lot of dust here as well, which requires me to change our house's filters on a regular basis, but also means that every week or so I've got to dust off gear, get out the canned air, etc. No, I obviously don't have to do that every day, but it's another activity that routinely takes up some of my time, and cuts into my music-making time, family time, etc. But, as I said, all these little things have become so ingrained in my workflow, that it's not like I'm spending discrete 10-20 minute blocks on them every day. My point here was simply to see if people actually paid attention to, or even thought about, how much time they actually spend doing all these little things. But, I think that either my point wasn't very clear, or maybe I'm just anal about my gear. Oh well.

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Yeah, Eddie, that's exactly the sort of routine things I'm talking about. We get a lot of dust here as well, which requires me to change our house's filters on a regular basis, but also means that every week or so I've got to dust off gear, get out the canned air, etc. No, I obviously don't have to do that every day, but it's another activity that routinely takes up some of my time, and cuts into my music-making time, family time, etc. But, as I said, all these little things have become so ingrained in my workflow, that it's not like I'm spending discrete 10-20 minute blocks on them every day. My point here was simply to see if people actually paid attention to, or even thought about, how much time they actually spend doing all these little things. But, I think that either my point wasn't very clear, or maybe I'm just anal about my gear. Oh well.

Join the club. Taking apart my computer can be a one to six hour ordeal. I'm much more experienced with it now, so I'm kind of down to one hour - although with a new computer case, I'm planning an abundance of caution, before cracking it open, pall-mall. When I first moved in, the dust in my girl-friend's computer was so bad, the video card was over-heating and causing the screen to cast a purplish tint.

I have the same filter problems, with dust here, too. I have filled two 35 pound buckets that formerly held kitty litter with the dust I've vacuumed from our apartment (including but not limited to filter screens and the computer) with it. It's kind of making me wonder what my lungs look like between that and my half-pack a day cigarette habit.

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Yeah, Eddie, that's exactly the sort of routine things I'm talking about. We get a lot of dust here as well, which requires me to change our house's filters on a regular basis, but also means that every week or so I've got to dust off gear, get out the canned air, etc. No, I obviously don't have to do that every day, but it's another activity that routinely takes up some of my time, and cuts into my music-making time, family time, etc. But, as I said, all these little things have become so ingrained in my workflow, that it's not like I'm spending discrete 10-20 minute blocks on them every day. My point here was simply to see if people actually paid attention to, or even thought about, how much time they actually spend doing all these little things. But, I think that either my point wasn't very clear, or maybe I'm just anal about my gear. Oh well.

I mean, I'll dust off my gear maybe once a month, but it's pretty much a futile effort in my house. Two people and 4 animals means that I can dust it off one day and by the next its just as dusty. I'll find cat hair, dog hair, people hair, and unidentified particles all over my equipment on a regular basis.

Now, I only use dry cloths and feather dusters when cleaning music equipment. Compressed air has some type of liquid that shoots out if you hold it at the wrong angle, so i don't use that stuff on equipment.

I wipe down the vsts every other day; LOL

well im using 13" macbook pro, with Reason, Logic and Ableton. No VSTs, no external hardware-synths, and only included samples. This makes it all very easy to maintain, actually its not needed at all. I think i reformated once or twice a year before maybe, but not yet donne it since getting mac, because everything has gonne smooth since i bought it, i only did the tiger snow update without even deleting anything and it works without a problem.

Also ive burned out all my old projects and samples to a DVD so if this computer crash it doesnt matter anyway, theres nothing important here other than iTunes folder. i back up my iTunes folder quit often to an external disk, caus theres more action there than in my Logic, Reason and Ableton folder all together, while those folders might get an DVD backup every now and then if i actually make something good.

Recently ive also deleted everything non-edm mp3 from iTunes caus thats all avaliable on Spotify anyway, so now theres only two folders to backup in my iTunes folder: "singles", "mixes", where the last one is livesets, podcasts, mix-albums etc.

And thats really that, i dont have anything more on my computer. Damn simple setup and i love it, caus theres nothing important there other than that it works, if it crash, i only need to reinstall the OS and those three softwares.

Everything you described are issues that plague mostly software. There hasn't been an OS update to any of my instruments for at least four years.

The only thing I'm constantly updating is my UAD software. They're always coming out with new goodies.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.