Cutting threaded rod can be a pain. I've seen all sorts of ways to hold it, cut it, prepared it etc... There's one way though that's very simple, quick and reusable. Just make a split-nut.

Here's how to do it...

A couple months ago, I made a hand-carved meat tenderizing mallet. Click-through for some stages of the process.

Sadly, there are some things about Ardour that make it not possible for me to continue the whole month with it. In fact, I've been cheating and using DP mostly lately. I just haven't had time to write about it.

So let's go through some dealbreakers for me with Ardour currently. Be sure to read the conclusion at the end however!

So let's quickly cover some relatively unique and cool features in Ardour 5.

Just opening up Ardour and starting a basic session, I've noticed quite a few things. So here's my first impressions, both positive and negative.

Note that I am using the nightly OS X version, built locally.

UPDATE: Please see the new DAW Feature Chart for more up-to-date information and a way cooler chart.

So I've been schooled in some Cubase things. Thusly I've updated my DAW Comparison chart rating, and what follows is some reasoning behind the changes.

What does this new scoring mean? Well... I don't know. DP is pretty cool, yo.

UPDATE: Please see the new DAW Feature Chart for more up-to-date information and a way cooler chart.

If you've been following this blog then you'd know that I recently tried 2 DAWS as my 1-month thing. Trying Cubase has been a harrowing experience that has made me rethink using Digital Performer.

Since it was very difficult for me to decide, given how great of a product Cubase is, I went ahead and did a methodical test and rating of both DAWs. I analyzed my projects to figure out what features I used most frequently, mildly and rarely. I looked at features of various DAWs that I thought were nice and considered those as well.

I then created a number of tests and attempted them multiple times with varying circumstances in each DAW. I wrote down a rating, relative to each DAW's capability. Results were weighted and tallied.

Click through to read more about the tests, ratings and other commentary.

Using a product like Cubase has really had my mind turning. The idea of having to deeply learn a new program as well as I know DP (or PT or SAW) is painful. There is also the fact that Cubase has its own weaknesses in areas that interest me.

So to help gather my thoughts, I thought that I should make a list of some nice things that would make the ideal DAW for me. It only makes sense to list the 'dealbreakers' as well.

So here we go!

Recently MOTU released Digital Performer 9.1 and one of the major enhances was advertised to be reduced latency in OS X with "industry-leading overall latency performance."

I was very skeptical of this. There's certain physical realities that can't be overcome without some sort of misadvertising. So what do we do? We test it!