Amp Modelers Are Dead, Long Live Amp Modelers
Framework's refreshed Laptop 12 hits $699 with Intel Core Series 3, we get real about the WFH mental health grind, and how free amp modelers are making expensive hardware modelers obsolete.
What we cover
- Framework’s refreshed 12-inch laptop, its aggressive $699 entry price, the RAM/storage tradeoffs, and Framework’s surprisingly transparent Linux compatibility push.
- How to stay sane while working from home, including balancing the day job with passion projects when your office is also your house.
- Free and open-source guitar amp modeling software (Neural Amp Modeler) killing off expensive hardware modelers, plus a shoutout to the open-source Pi Pedal project.
First up, Adam walks us through Framework’s refreshed Laptop 12, which swaps the old 13th-gen Raptor Lake chips for Intel’s efficiency-focused Core Series 3 Wildcat Lake processors. The entry-level prebuilt lands at an aggressive $699 with a Core 3, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB NVMe. The bigger story might be the connectivity upgrade, with two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back and two USB 3.2 on the front and the fact that 80% of first-gen Framework 12 buyers surveyed are running Linux. Stephen also talks about his experiences with the new Intel chips in a ThinkPad X1 Gen 14.
Next, prompted by a question on our Discord, the trio gets into the real talk about work-from-home life and how to keep passion projects alive when your day job already lives in your spare room. Alex traces his own journey from a corner-of-the-bonus-room setup to a full attic studio, Stephen talks through sharing his garage office with his wife’s embroidery business, and the group riffs on Adam’s theory about the “death of the third space” and how COVID reshaped where and how we socialize.
Finally, Alex and Stephen nerd out on guitar gear, specifically how free software like Neural Amp Modeler has effectively killed the need for thousand-dollar amp modeling hardware. We talk through impulse responses, why nobody can tell a modeled amp from the real thing in blind tests anymore, and Alex flags an open-source Raspberry Pi guitar pedal project called Pi Pedal for anyone wanting to build their own modeler rig without vendor lock-in.
Tags: framework, framework-12, intel-core-series-3, wildcat-lake, linux-laptop, work-from-home, remote-work, third-spaces, neural-amp-modeler, nam, amp-modeling, guitar, pipedal, open-source-hardware, thinkpad, lenovo
Links
- Framework Laptop 12:
- Neural Amp Modeler & Guitar:
Transcript
Alex: Episode 13 is lucky for some. We’re back with another episode of the BitFlip show. I’m joined this evening by Adam and Stephen. Good evening, gents. 00:00
Adam: Hello. 00:07
Stephen: Hello. 00:07
Alex: First topic in the dock tonight, Framework have refreshed their 12-inch laptops. Adam, I think this one’s yours. 00:09
Adam: Yes, I’m kind of drooling every time Framework comes out with a new thing these days. And whilst they’re not changing their chassis on this one, it’s a pretty significant upgrade from everything that I’ve read here. I’m kind of, I mean, I think it’s a reaction to other market factors and the fact that you now have the Mac Neo in place. You now have these lower cost Dell options that seem to be decently high quality as well. And the reason I say that is that the first thing that I noticed is that if you look at their pre-built, the entry level pre-built comes in at $699, which I’m like, hmm. that’s pretty interesting that the price is so price competitive and suddenly it’s got a new core 3 uh cpu in there which is way more appropriate for this this box um and uh it’s also got eight gigabytes ram 512 gig nvme ssd in this thing and they’ve they’ve upped their game on some of the additional like uh niceties so it now has a backlit keyboard it has the fingerprint reader And again, like I said, those more powerful CPUs that are also significantly more more friendly on the battery life for this specific unit. So what do you guys 00:15
Alex: I just went to look on Amazon for a 512 gig NVMe SSD. First of all, there isn’t any stock of anything you’d recognize. The top result is, okay, it’s Patriot. And then there’s a Fan Zhang something, an Acclimator 512. They’re all $100, like between $80 and $100 for 512 gigs of NVMe. It looks like all the brand name stuff like Samsung and all that stuff is all gone, to be honest. So this framework at, was it $699? 01:41
Adam: Yes. 02:12
Alex: You take a hundred bucks off for the storage, 02:13
Adam: Mm-hmm. 02:15
Alex: $599. And then how much was the RAM? 16 gig? 02:16
Adam: Eight. 02:19
Alex: Ah, okay. There’s the catch then. 02:21
Adam: Yes. 02:23
Alex: Is eight enough? 02:23
Adam: If you’re running Linux, so here’s another really fun little factoid about this. Thank you for that. They are publishing some of their survey results and 80% of the people who were surveyed and responded were running Linux on their framework 12s, which is pretty frigging fantastic. So therefore I think that you will have a much higher probability of having a good experience with eight gigabytes of Ram versus running windows on a box like that. Um, there’s 02:25
Alex: It’s the year of the Linux desktop. 02:57
Adam: man, I’ll tell 02:59
Alex: It 02:59
Adam: you what, 02:59
Alex: actually is, though. Isn’t it? 03:00
Adam: it, it seems to be 03:03
Stephen: For me, it is. 03:04
Alex: Market share crossed 10% recently. Steam, I think, is responsible for a good chunk of it with the Steam Deck 03:06
Adam: mm-hmm 03:12
Alex: and getting people familiar with Bazzite and those kinds of distros for gaming and then… YouTubers in general, like the big guys, the ones that have been staunchly Windows forever, finally, are all like, hey, this Linux thing’s all right. Anyway, I want to come back to Stephen, because you were shaking your head when I asked if 8 gig of RAM was enough. 03:12
Stephen: Yeah. So as long as we’re in Linux world, I think you can get away with that pretty good. I think if you touch Windows, you’re going to have a bad time. I’ve seen a lot of my clients wanting to upgrade because, you know, a lot of them went from 10 to 11. 03:32
Stephen: A lot of the machines just had eight. And then I get a whole bunch of complaints that the machine just feels slow and laggy and whatnot. And then you look at task manager, I have an RMM that I can see all the history for their, their RAM usage and whatnot. And just shows like eight is just full all the time. So you throw 16 in there and it seems to be, I would honestly say the bare minimum of windows these days, but yeah, if you have eight on Linux, I think you’re probably fine at this point. If you’re not a tab monster in Chrome, I guess. 03:49
Alex: What’s that thing in your hand there, that big black rectangle? 04:20
Stephen: I like big black things that are rectangles. ThinkPad X1. So this is the Gen 14. And this is my… I’m not getting a Framework 13 Pro. I’m going to get this instead kind of maneuver. I suppose, full disclosure, I do sell Lenovo and I am a partner of Lenovo. So I sell a lot 04:24
Adam: Hmm. 04:48
Stephen: of their goods. But this 14th Gen… decided to become far more iFixit friendly I’ll say I’m sure I haven’t really actually looked at the iFixit ratings but the whole chassis and everything else is now quite a bit more user serviceable so it used to be you have to use to pick the keyboard off and it came off in a piece and then some of them you had to go through the whole bottom to take the keyboard off and everything else but in the gen 14 and if you’re used to seeing a framework 13 come apart it’s magnetic and so as soon as you release the screws on the bottom you can pop this off but where i’m 04:48
Adam: Thank 05:31
Stephen: you. 05:31
Alex: going 05:31
Stephen: with this is that for me this machine other than the ram because that’s soldered is just as serviceable as the framework 13 albeit i will never be able to upgrade the whole you know main board and everything else to go to whatever generation after this but 05:31
Alex: You can call someone to your house with a service contract to come and fix it next day, though. 05:49
Stephen: uh funny funny thing you mentioned that because i just purchased a well a couple weeks ago i guess um a T14 of i think intel’s 12th gen and it still had warranty and so the keyboard was acting up a bit and so i put in a request and a guy came to my house and replaced the keyboard and the trackpad for free off of a machine that i bought used That’s pretty cool. I don’t think Framework’s going to be doing anything like that anytime soon, but… 05:55
Alex: It’s funny, I saw a similar discussion this week about the new Pixels in a group chat that I’m in with a bunch of tech nerds. And everyone’s talking about, oh, you know, I want to get the new Pixel with the amazing new status LED. That must have taken some… He’s got one. Okay. But I just remember the last time I went to a Pixel and it broke, not being able to go to the Apple store and just shout at them and… get replacement or even just a loaner device for a little while i just i just i just want that level of service what lenovo do is amazing it’s actually amazing so going back to the framework though let’s talk a little bit more about the specs that it can get to so the the baseline is eight gigs of ram with a 512 is that 512 the baseline storage 06:28
Adam: For the pre-built, it is. 07:20
Alex: yeah not bad 07:22
Adam: Yeah. 07:23
Alex: what can it go up to though 07:23
Adam: Funny you should ask, actually. I was just looking at spec-ing it out to 48 gigabytes of RAM, which is the max that they offer in the system. Interestingly enough, if you look at the max spec, it has, they actually, it can go up to 6400 DDR5 and 64 gigabytes of that, but they don’t actually offer that in their store anyways, anywhere. So it seems like that’s, impossible to find at the moment so therefore in the actual offering that they’re selling it maxes out at 48 gigabytes of slightly slower 5600 ddr5 kind of interesting um 07:59
Alex: So you were going to buy one of the original 12s as like a couch laptop. 08:40
Adam: correct 08:44
Alex: Am I right? 08:44
Adam: and i am 08:45
Alex: Did 08:45
Adam: very 08:45
Alex: you buy one? 08:45
Adam: i’m very glad that i didn’t because it hasn’t 08:46
Alex: Okay. 08:49
Adam: been very long at this point i think 08:49
Alex: No. 08:51
Adam: it’s been less than a year and they’re already refreshing so um and 08:51
Alex: Yeah. 08:55
Adam: there’s some other significant aspects here so the original was kind of a meh from a connectivity perspective uh it had like one port that you could utilize for an external monitor now this guy has two thunderbolt 4 ports on the back port on the the the rear two and then two three 3.2 usb ports for the front so your ability to plug into additional docks monitors high speed uh external storage options etc are just going to be significantly better on this guy um so 08:56
Alex: I think 09:32
Adam: and 09:32
Alex: the main thing for me will be what the battery life turns out to be like. Because what’s always the Achilles heel, whenever I try anything that isn’t a MacBook, this has been the 09:32
Stephen: you 09:41
Alex: same for the last 15 years is battery life, reliability on wake from sleep and trackpad. Those three things, the MacBook has just gotten right for, well, I was going to say for a long time. There was a period during the sort of 2019, early 20, where they were putting the i9s in the MacBooks and they were toasty boys and they weren’t particularly good then. But then Apple Silicon came along and it was all fine again. So this for me will live or die based on trackpad and battery life. 09:41
Stephen: I can, I can comment on it 10:12
Alex: Let’s 10:15
Stephen: because 10:15
Alex: hear 10:15
Stephen: I’ve 10:15
Alex: it. 10:15
Stephen: been fighting 10:15
Alex: Yeah, let’s 10:15
Stephen: it 10:15
Alex: hear it. 10:16
Stephen: for like a week. Okay. So, so I’m running arch by the way. Um, It loads everything with the current kernel. I can run everything that’s in here. Now I’m holding this because, you know, fancy thing, but it’s the latest core three processor, right? So in theory, if you were to load whatever version of Linux that has the current kernel into the new framework that we’re talking about, or the new Pro, you’d get roughly the same sort of experience. Battery life, I will say, has been very, very good when using it. The thing I’m battling is being able to put the thing into like a long-term sleep. 10:16
Adam: Hmm. 11:03
Stephen: So I’m sure anyone that’s had a Mac in the past or currently has one, if that thing sits in your backpack for, call it like three days, you open it up, it has the Apple symbol and it loads, right? That’s coming out of like a deep, deep hibernation. So I can enable hibernation on this, but it does funny things. So when it came back, I couldn’t use my Thunderbolt dock for charging. I could get all the port population to come through. I would get connectivity, but it wouldn’t charge through it. And so I’ve been fiddling with weird things like that. Now, it’s possible that Framework has different BIOS and whatnot than Lenovo, right? So fair play. But that, to Alex’s comment, if they can nail that down and have it solid, I would have zero drawbacks using this compared to my MacBook. But currently, if I close MacBook, it’s very, very, very, very positive to hold battery very well. This thing, I even had it not sleep once. And then I pulled it out of the bag and it was a bit warm. Thankfully, it only sat in there for like 10 minutes. But yeah, so that part, not so much yet. But very early days of new Intel chips. 11:04
Adam: and that’s the the third gen that you have as well okay 12:27
Stephen: Mm-hmm. 12:33
Adam: so i i’m hopeful in this regard just because they are very transparent and communicative about the linux compatibility for this this new system to the extent that they’re talking 12:33
Stephen: Yeah. 12:43
Adam: about which kernel that they’re recommending for it uh they’re talking about the fact that it’s compatible the fingerprint reader on this guy they’re specifically talking about the library that it’s utilizing in linux for that fingerprint reader the keyboard on this guy the controller for the keyboard is now a programmable controller with an open source what does it call it 12:43
Stephen: like VIA or whatever yeah it’s like the same thing that you would 13:11
Adam: similar 13:14
Stephen: you would use for your you 13:14
Adam: similar to that yeah 13:15
Stephen: know something like that right you can you can mod it about 13:16
Adam: mm-hmm 13:18
Stephen: hey they have they have the pen on that on that laptop right like touch the screen use a pen 13:19
Adam: Yes, sir. 13:25
Stephen: that’s a whole drawing thing yeah i thought that was pretty neat for that size right like if you were i’m not an artsy person but i imagine if you were an art student and whatnot and you wanted to be able to sketch on something that’s kind of small right like that kind of lends itself to that 13:25
Adam: And it’s a convertible, too. So you could. 13:39
Stephen: Right. That’s what I mean. So you flip it around and then you could doodle on it. 13:42
Adam: Sign something. 13:46
Alex: What 13:47
Stephen: I 13:47
Alex: is 13:47
Stephen: would have stick 13:47
Alex: old 13:47
Stephen: figures, 13:48
Alex: is new 13:48
Stephen: but 13:48
Alex: again. Do you remember the Lenovo Yogas that they used to do that with? 13:48
Stephen: yeah. Yeah. That’s still a thing. It still exists for 13:51
Alex: Skinny 13:53
Stephen: sure. 13:53
Alex: jeans will be back before you know it. I won’t fit into them anymore, 13:54
Stephen: Yep. 13:56
Alex: but they’ll be back. 13:56
Stephen: I won’t have them, but that’s okay. 13:57
Adam: Some of those yogas were a little bit silly, don’t you think, though? Because they would put them in such huge laptops. Like, who’s actually using a 15-inch, 16-inch tablet, I guess, is the question. 13:59
Alex: Yep, 14:10
Adam: But, 14:10
Alex: yep. 14:11
Stephen: Yep. 14:11
Adam: yeah, it’s… Oh, that specific open-source firmware was called ZMK, which I’m not that familiar 14:11
Stephen: Yeah. 14:18
Adam: with, but kind of interesting. And they’re this Nordic’s latest… not even going to read that microcontroller is something that they’re going to push through the entire line eventually and can be utilized for additional purposes so they have a whole little subgroup where they’re trying to people get people into this new open standard and how they can use it for other options too so open open open is what it sounds like which i i love 14:18
Stephen: That’s great. I’m hopeful for the future because I really love what this company is doing. Honestly, I love that they’re pushing out all this open stuff, making your actual used parts helpful for other projects. They have that case for the older motherboards and whatnot. I think that’s all wonderful, and I think that pushing Linux stuff is definitely needed. I’d like to see it. 14:47
Adam: Hopefully it’s good. 15:12
Alex: Now, I want to give a great big shout out to our patrons. You can find out how to support the show at bitflip.show. Big thank you to our Terabyte supporters, Maurizio, or as you sometimes better know, Badnet Mask, and Alex Taylor. Big thank you to you both. We have a few different tiers available on our Patreon. Five bucks a month. We’re very grateful. We just support the show. $10 a month or more will get you access to a behind-the-scenes episode at least once a month. And last week, we talked about, I think it was video games for like half an hour, just shooting the breeze and talking about video games and stuff. It was actually, honestly, in some ways, a better episode than the actual episode. You can find out more at how to support the show, bitflip.show. Like I say, you can get in touch with us, contact at bitflip.show. 15:12
Adam: And we’d love to hear from you. So speaking of Mr. Maurizio Badnet Mask, he brought up an interesting topic. It was either today or yesterday in regards to how do those of us who are work from home employees, how do we balance that with our own personal passion projects and make that work? And I know, Alex, I’m going to hand this one over to you. 16:00
Alex: Do what you love and you never work another day in your life, right? That’s the saying. Or do what you love and never stop working, I think is actually a more accurate 16:28
Adam: More 16:37
Alex: statement. 16:37
Adam: accurate. 16:37
Alex: Yeah. Ah, dude. I did that with podcasting and educational videos and stuff like that. I made that my job for the last three years. And it’s been a real… At times it’s been, honestly, quite a struggle with various different aspects of the mental health part of it, you know. So when I started at Tailscale, I had just been… a desk jockey. I’d been fielding typical customer calls. I could put a set of headphones on, take a laptop with me, and that was my office. It didn’t matter really where I was. All I needed was that single screen and a pair of headphones and a microphone, and I was good to go. Soon as I started doing video, and I appreciate this is quite a unique set of circumstances, but I ended up needing a whole bunch of accoutrement to go with my job. I needed somewhere to put my camera and my lights and stuff that’s actually very visually intrusive in a normal home. So like in the corner of our bonus room for the first six months of Tailscale, in fact, you probably, if you go back and look at the old Tailscale and the old KTZ systems videos, it’s just the corner of my bonus room where my desk was. And I’d be sat there at the weekend looking at my office. because that’s the only space in the house that was big enough to film the video. It’s not my actual work desk that was already downstairs in a separate part of the house that I used to use when I was at Red Hat. I had to use the one in the bonus room because of audio reasons and how good it looked on camera and stuff like that. So then that led me to convert the back bedroom in my house instead so I could actually at least close the door on work at the end of the day or for a weekend. But then that came with unique challenges around asking the family to be silent whilst I was recording. And at that point my daughter was three and she was in and out of daycare and home half the day and stuff like that. There were vast swathes of time where my wife and my three-year-old just had to sit quietly in the house whilst I recorded, because I was very new at video back then, and it took me a lot of takes to get some of the stuff out that I wanted to get out. So then that led me to actually convert the attic that I’m sat in now in my house into a full-blown, separately, acoustically detached studio. It has a few benefits. I can close the door properly. on probably about a third of the square footage of my house, which in some ways is good because it’s a different floor of my house, so it’s out of sight, out of mind. But the downside is I’m paying to heat and cool this space. I’m paying to own this space. And there’s just this mental demon in there. I don’t want to go in there on a Saturday or Sunday. In fact, a couple of weekends ago, I kept you guys waiting for a file because it was on this laptop in this room and the editor needed a file. And I’m like, I really can’t face going up there at the weekend. It’s just a constant struggle. And I don’t really have a better, more honest answer than that. I’ve just… Find a way to try and separate that gray line. I mean, it’s already hard enough with having Slack on my phone and stuff like that, you know. 16:39
Adam: David Ensign, How about you, Stephen. 19:47
Alex: And I know you, Stephen, you’ve converted a good chunk of the square footage of your house to work from home as well. 19:48
Stephen: I don’t have the luxury of putting additional, I don’t know, rooms onto my home by using an attic. I really do like what you’ve done with all the wiring and everything else. Very clean. But I sit in a garage that honestly isn’t laid out like a garage anymore. Like we have nice floor. Everything’s insulated. It has AC and heating as you can see above my head with the pen here. And for all those people that were listening, it’s just a wall-mounted mini split. um but i’m i’m quickly running out of room and so my wife is taking over space with this uh this industrial size embroidery machine for example and um it’s it’s starting to wear on me a wee bit because well a i’m sharing the space but i also this is the only like guy space my space kind of thing and i lose that more and more every day with a second business running into it right um 19:57
Alex: You don’t want to go out there of a weekend because you’ve already spent 20:59
Stephen: I don’t. 21:01
Alex: 40, 50 hours out there 21:02
Stephen: Well, that’s the truth, right? 21:04
Alex: during the week. 21:05
Stephen: And I don’t, yeah. For me, because I run my own business, a lot of the time weekends aren’t weekends for me. I really do try to make like Sunday is just not working day, right? And then I very try my hardest to make Saturdays like the family thing and make sure I go with a little guy and we go do something so long as it’s not minus 50 outside, which is most of the year. But, um, but yeah, no, I don’t really want to be out here on the weekend because it just represents a whole workload of things that come Monday I’m going to have to deal with. And like, it’s healthy to get away from it and, and have it somewhere else. I think 21:05
Alex: Would you want 21:47
Stephen: that’s one of 21:47
Alex: an 21:48
Stephen: those 21:48
Alex: actual 21:48
Stephen: things. 21:48
Alex: office? Would you want a commute that goes with it and 21:48
Stephen: Well, 21:52
Alex: everything else? 21:52
Stephen: for me, because, and as you know, because you’ve been here, but my town’s not very big. And for me to have a commute would only ever be five, 10 minutes at max, right? So I would love to have like a commercial space, even for, you know, this, this podcast to have something set up all the time that I don’t have to fiddle with. And it’s all just, it’s just laid out nice. And like right now, if, if you were looking at video here of this recording, instead of just listening, there’s a whole bunch of boxes everywhere. And I just, I couldn’t clean this space because I got home like half an hour before recording from a really big install. And so, uh it’s it’s a mess now and it’s not really how i am normally but it just is as it is because it has to be and i would really like to have a space even for my office where you know my desk is nice and neat and whatnot and like there’s a production room and everything else so um it’s wearing on me a bit i don’t mind saying but overall the work from home thing i do prefer but for me work for home it might be a bit different because i own my own business and even if it were a commercial space i rented or i bought a building a commercial building and what have you it would still feel like my own thing so i think i’m in a bit of a slightly different situation 21:53
Alex: There’s a theory that there’s this phenomenon called the death of the third space. Are you familiar with this? Which 23:13
Stephen: i’m 23:20
Alex: is 23:20
Stephen: not 23:20
Alex: pubs, clubs, community centers, 23:21
Adam: Yes. 23:25Alex: that kind of thing, for a few reasons. One of which is it’s easier to just sit at home and watch a movie on Netflix or whatever you’re using to watch movies. um than it is to go out and meet people in real life number two is beer is really expensive these days like a pint of beer at my local bottle shops like six seven eight nine dollars depending on what you get uh and you know by the time you get to sort of our age like we’ve got kids and it’s just hard to find like child care like i’m not going to get a sitter to go to the pub that’s just ridiculous um It’s tough isn’t it? But I know Adam you also work from home as 23:25
Adam: I 24:04
Alex: well. 24:04
Adam: do. 24:04
Alex: How do you deal with that balance? 24:04
Adam: Before I get to that part, I want to speak to what you were just saying about the third space, because I actually put a whole lot of blame on covid for that, because I can I mean, I can speak for myself. I can speak for my friends and relationships that I’ve I have in life. And we learned a lot of not the best, healthiest i guess habits during that time from a social perspective and a lot of that is unfortunately stuck is what i would say so things like doordash guess what i never used doordash from my home prior to covid you know i would go down the street to the taqueria and pick up my burrito not a big deal and for work also that was really like the kickoff point of of the remote work the work from home explosion right that everybody started pushing through and it was also kind of a proving point of effectiveness for remote workers at that time so I blame a lot of it on that and that we and maybe that’ll improve over time hopefully I know that I have to be way more 24:06
Alex: I think it’s up to us to really as a collective generation and certainly the ones, the generations that come after us with all of the pressures that AI is bringing to the workforce and everything else too. Like we’re going to get to a point as a society where it just, it breaks down and it stops working. I don’t know what’s going to happen then, and it’ll probably be just a very slow incremental change over a period of five, ten years or whatever, about what becomes acceptable moving forward. But yeah, I’m fascinated. I think even as a kid, I used to go to all sorts of clubs, and some of it’s being a kid, isn’t it? But I don’t do any of that anymore. I just figured it’s because I’m getting old and grumpy, 25:17
Adam: Well, that’s true. 25:58
Alex: but maybe 25:58
Adam: You 25:59
Alex: not. 25:59
Adam: are. But 25:59
Alex: Well, yeah. 26:00
Adam: a part of that is true. Like as we get older, our social just in general, this is just a thing where social groups tend to shrink. Your family unit becomes more of what you’re investing the majority of your time in and such. But but I’m still hopeful because I think if people can be a little bit more mindful and maybe I. will actually possibly be a catalyst for more of that because people will get sick of the artificial non-human sort of media aspect. I’ve seen some pushback in that regard already from like craftsmen. I was watching an interesting video the other day where the sentiment was basically, you know, I used to try for perfection to the extent that you couldn’t tell that human hands touched this. And now that specific person was building some sort of metal art sort of pieces. And they’ve switched their approach to, oh, the human hand touched the physical… uh the obvious human interaction with the piece of art was the selling point going forward so maybe that’s a bright side of where we’re going you know i don’t want to think of the dystopian end just yet um so for me personally when it comes to this this was something that was super fascinating and very personal to me because i struggle with it I find that it’s very easy to feel passion about technology and such, especially with what we’re doing here and what we’ve kind of begun together. And I think that was I feel comfortable saying that that’s something that the three of us have in common is that you can struggle to to keep the passion and excitement about tech when it is your day job. And this was such a. i guess change of scenery from that perspective something new to focus on so i’d say if people are wondering how to keep some passion in it and how to get stuff done look at a different angle turn it this way instead of that right and look at a different angle of technology so that it’s not the same old same old and yeah get out of your office get a laptop go upstairs go outside um i used to really really value my co-working space that we have in knoxville and uh then my uh nick if you’re watching you abandoned me and i hate you uh because now i have much less less of an impetus to go to that co-working space i’ll effectively be working around other people but not with like that direct human interaction But yeah, just I would say look at different angles, maybe work on a project that’s so disparate from your day job, but can still be tech related, that it’s fun and exciting. And go upstairs, go somewhere else for that part of it, right? so for your work alex your example of like oh i had to close myself and the wife and child had to be quiet right well that was work but if we’re talking about this show and we’re talking like maybe post-production or another angle of something you’re you’re doing you could easily take a laptop and go downstairs and not be bothered by you know bluey being on the television right so 26:01
Stephen: Speak for yourself. 29:21
Alex: But then I’m editing video off the NAS, so I need my fiber connection. I get your point, though. But it’s an interesting thing. And I’d love to hear from some of the audience as well who have made the transition from maybe earlier in their careers to, as we are now, a bunch of middle-aged dudes who have to make that transition, figure out how to make it work for us. i’ve been giving a lot of thought to what would happen if we ever left this house i mean we’ve been trying to sell it for a long time you know that it hasn’t been going well um so for now this attic is my office right that’s that’s not going to change in the short term but like longer term if we ever did leave this place i think i’m with stephen i think i’d get some kind of a small commercial space that i could just call my own that would be in the middle of a small town i could walk everywhere go and get a couple of cups of coffee and just be outside and actually walk places. There’s no reason for me to leave the house. So most of the time I just don’t. And there can be stretches of time, sometimes two, three, four days, where the only time I’ve left the house is to drive kiddo to school. And now she’s started kindergarten, I don’t even have to get out of the car. So I literally drive around my neighborhood and then drive home. And I haven’t even taken a single footstep. It’s tragic some days, really. 29:23
Adam: I can relate to that. I can’t even tell you how much I relate to that, where sometimes I’ll be like, what day is it? Oh my God, I 30:50
Alex: Yeah. 30:58
Adam: went through almost a week without leaving the house. And so I would love to have a space where I could walk, like you said, grab a coffee. just be around other humans i was telling somebody the other day that i get an unreasonable amount of uh joy from going to get to my barber to get a haircut and a beard trim just because i’m going to get some like face-to-face interaction with somebody who i don’t see very often um and there’s there’s just a ton of value of touching grass they say touch grass, I wonder if if would have a similar effect if it was just like an ad or a separate building on the same property just to go from one space to another that might be like an in between. 30:59
Alex: Well, I’ve thought about this, too, because, I mean, my attic is kind of most of the way to being an ADU, although it’s not quite, but it mostly is. No, I don’t think it would. I mean, yeah, in some ways, you go out to work and you’ve got this kind of separation, but you’re still on the property. You’re still at home. And so you’ll be looking out of your lounge window at the weekend and looking at your work. And there it is staring at you going, you could be over here, you know, hustling on a KTZ systems video, not a Tailscale video or whatever it is. uh and it just never goes away whereas at least if it’s in town even if town is five minutes away it’s not looking me in the face the whole damn time 31:44
Stephen: know what it is for me is to actually see other people’s lives happening 32:33
Alex: people watching yeah i used to 32:37
Stephen: yeah 32:39
Alex: love that 32:39
Stephen: people 32:40
Alex: about 32:40
Stephen: watching 32:40
Alex: commuting actually 32:40
Stephen: I do 32:40
Alex: like 32:41
Stephen: it 32:41
Alex: riding 32:41
Stephen: right yeah 32:41
Alex: the train in england i really miss trains 32:41
Stephen: so every morning I force myself to get up not force I just do this but I just get up and I go get a coffee I don’t make it at home, so it’s a relatively expensive thing to do, but it makes me leave the house and I have to go and get the coffee. Funny enough, I have met a number of clients because of this coffee shop. So for me, it’s been a very good networking thing, but the reason I continue to do 32:44
Alex: That 33:10
Stephen: it 33:10
Alex: was a good pun. 33:10
Stephen: right indeed it was because i’m in networking um but the reason i do it uh is that it gets me out of the house in the same way that having to go to a job does what i didn’t want to do when working at home was just starting to let the starting time slip like i can do that if i don’t feel well whatever i’ll start at 8 30 instead of 7 but like getting up at a certain time and holding myself to do that has been helpful instead of just sauntering out to the garage whenever. 33:12
Alex: In the same way that making your bed isn’t really necessarily about making your bed. It’s about 33:44
Adam: The habit. 33:49
Alex: taking a choice that has a little bit of friction to it. So that then later on in the day, when you come to do something that’s actually hard, you’re like, well, I’ve done all the other hard stuff, which wasn’t even actually hard. Right? 33:50
Stephen: Yeah, for sure. And it is difficult in the winter, right? Because sometimes I wake up and I’m like, well, I must snowblow before I can go get the coffee. But I force myself to go do it. It’s just a thing. 34:01
Alex: You Canadians, man. 34:12
Adam: Is 34:13
Alex: Crazy. 34:13
Adam: this your coffee shop we all went to? 34:13
Stephen: Yeah. 34:17
Adam: Okay. Also 34:17
Stephen: Yeah. 34:18
Adam: it’s fricking excellent coffee. I don’t remember 34:18
Alex: It is 34:21
Adam: the 34:21
Alex: a good 34:21
Adam: name 34:21
Alex: coffee 34:21
Adam: of it, 34:21
Alex: shop. 34:21
Adam: but I would do free advertising for that place. Cause that was also like probably the biggest, you can’t see what I’m holding up, but like the, it’s as big as my face of a cup of coffee that I got from that place. 34:21
Alex: And they roast their own beans right there in the place. Yeah, it was excellent. Really excellent. 34:33
Stephen: There’ll be a link in the show notes if you’re ever up in the frozen north and you’d like to visit this place in Ontario. 34:38
Alex: Now, Stephen, you and I have some guitar talk to get into. Is that all right? 34:44
Stephen: We do. We do. And I find it kind of funny because of what Adam was just talking about with the human touch, but I think we’ll get into that. 34:48
Alex: Yeah, I’ve thought about trying to start like a dad rock band for a while. Maybe I should actually put some effort into doing that. That would be fun. 34:56
Stephen: Don’t ask me because I’m rusty as hell but I would endeavor to work with that. 35:05
Alex: Well, you just got a new guitar last week and it 35:10
Stephen: I did. 35:13
Alex: just so happened that the week before I discovered, I think, what is going to be the end of amp modelers. So for those of you that aren’t in the guitar space, you can plug your guitar into some kind of an interface, like I would plug my microphone into a computer to record it with. You just use a quarter inch cable and in it goes. And then you can record that into your laptop and you can use things called amp modelers that basically have… what are called impulse responses and a bunch of patches that emulate the sound of the circuitry of specific amplifiers we’re talking classics like JCM 800 marshall stacks turned all the way to 11 like and if you if you know anything about tube amps or valve amps as i would call them in my old life um they only sound good when they are cranked what’s the phrase dimed 35:13
Stephen: dimed as it 36:05
Alex: yeah 36:06
Stephen: were. 36:06
Alex: they only sound good when they’re actually making your ears bleed and We ain’t doing that in suburbia, right, unless we actually hate ourselves. So the thing about amp modelers is that you can actually recreate a lot of those sounds pretty faithfully. You know, there’s plenty of A-B tests on YouTube of people picking between the two and getting it wrong every time because, I mean, there is no way to tell the difference because human hearing is only so good. The trouble with amp modelers, though, was it was often locked 36:07
Adam: Hmm. 36:35
Alex: behind pieces of hardware that cost $1,000, $1,500, $2,000. There’s one called the Axe FX that I actually had until a couple of years ago that you could load different patches in and build signal chains. So you could have a chorus pedal, you could have a fuzz pedal, you could have a JCM-800, and you could have a specific impulse response to map the sound of a particular speaker inside a particular cabinet. And that was, you know, I think a $2,000, $3,000 device when it was new. Then Neural DSP came out with the Quad Cortex, which is like a stomp box you put on the floor and it’s got pedals and you can do basically the same thing. $1,800. So I was incredibly excited when I saw a YouTube video entitled, Amp Modelers Are Dead. And I’m like, sure, yeah, all right. You know, this changes everything type clickbait YouTube 36:35
Adam: Thank 37:25
Alex: title. 37:25
Adam: you. 37:25
Alex: But there’s this thing called Neural Amp Modeler. It’s completely free. And they just released version two about two or three weeks ago. And I’m telling you guys, amp modelers are dead. They actually are. 37:26
Stephen: So it’s a bit worse than you made it sound, actually, because you would buy that hardware, the very expensive thing, and you would get maybe a certain set of different models that sounded like certain amps. But then… like a John Mayer pack would release and you could buy that 37:40
Adam: Hmm. 37:59
Stephen: for 38:00
Alex: Yeah. 38:00
Stephen: many hundreds of dollars just to tweak settings and get things to sound John Mayer-ish right but for for people that don’t necessarily get into this or don’t really play guitar he mentioned like pedals and so pedals add effects to your to your sound of your guitar and distortions may be a bad example because you can get distortion when you turn an amp up way too loud but for all those people that don’t want to um bother their next door neighbor while trying to learn guitar but you still want some of that that distortion sound you could get a pedal and you could dial in a certain amount of this distortion and whatnot but all of this is now on software 38:00
Alex: which it has been for 38:45
Stephen: and 38:45
Alex: a while, but you had to pay 38:46
Stephen: yeah 38:47
Alex: for the software before. 38:47
Stephen: You did pay for it. Yes. But now you can, you just get an interface, which doesn’t have to be super expensive. Like I just picked one up for a couple hundred dollars, which arguably is a very nice piece of 38:48
Alex: It’s 39:00
Stephen: kit. 39:00
Alex: a very fancy one. Yeah, you can buy them for like 39:00
Stephen: Yeah. 39:02
Alex: 50 and they’ll 39:02
Stephen: Yeah, 39:03
Alex: do the job. 39:04
Stephen: you truly don’t have to spend a ton. Mine does other things. But you can then realistically get your Stevie Ray Vaughan sounds for your blues stuff and whatnot. There are actually people that are so into this like any hobby, that they’ll go out and they’ll buy multiple very, very expensive amplifiers, like a Marshall this, and then a Marshall that looks exactly the same, except for internally it’s slightly different because they’re really going after the sound of, I don’t know, Green Day Dookie, 39:04
Adam: Mm-hmm. 39:37
Stephen: right? Actually, I think they just 39:37
Alex: They 39:38
Stephen: released 39:38
Alex: just had a reissue 39:38
Stephen: a… 39:39
Alex: of that one, actually, 39:39
Stephen: They just 39:40
Alex: yeah. 39:40
Stephen: did a reissue of the amp that that fellow was playing on. So it goes the rabbit hole very, very deep, right? And so I’ve plugged my guitar into this, and I’ve fiddled with it a little bit. But the brilliant thing is now I can fairly quickly get to the tones and the sounds that I want. to practice whatever song I’m trying to learn without sitting there going, okay, well, I’ve started to learn the song. I think it sounds pretty good, but it just does not sound like what I’m listening to in the recording. I know what I’ll do. I’ll go on to Amazon and I’ll order 15 different pedals until I find the exact one that X amount of person 39:40
Alex: Mm-hmm. 40:22
Stephen: was using and with the exact same settings. Well, you don’t have to do this anymore, right? Like you can look up settings and whatnot that other people have used, import them, play with them very easily. And I’m not a professional musician. I can get close enough to the sound that I want. to make it sound right 40:22
Alex: The 40:40
Stephen: and 40:40
Alex: real 40:40
Stephen: it’s 40:40
Alex: magic, 40:40
Stephen: been pretty cool. 40:41
Alex: the real magic of NAM A2 is, Neural 40:41
Adam: Hmm. 40:44
Alex: Amp Modeler is called NAM for short, NAM A2, you weren’t there, man, is the website tone3000.com. And you can go there, it’s completely free. And there are, so this is the other side of the coin, right? There are now tens of thousands of free captures of all of your favorite amps And how on earth are you supposed to make sense of all this stuff? I mean, I know, for example, that 2002 Linkin Park used a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, right? I know that because I’m a nerd. I know that Billy Joe in 1994 used a specific JCM modded Marshall, right? I can go and search for those things. But what about like when I just want to jam out to some Rammstein or something? Like I don’t know what amp they’re using between different eras and stuff like that. These bands that have been running forever, And so what I want to do is find a way, and I haven’t found one yet, so I might just make one, but I want to find an app where I can literally basically use an LLM-style semantic text box and say, make me sound like Billy Joe on Dookie in 1994, give me a clean tone, give me a crunch tone, and then it just creates me a preset, and then… done that’s that’s what i want from this and that’s where i can see this going eventually it’s not there yet you do have stuff to go through and download the patches yourself manually and import them into your into your door and stuff like that but Man, this is exciting. And I’ve put a link to a project in the show notes called Pi Pedal. So this is somebody that’s building an open source version of a guitar pedal with a Raspberry Pi inside it, you’ll be surprised to know from the name, that runs Neural Amp Modeler. And so you can load these patches into this open source pedal box that you put on the floor that you can build for, you know, 100, 150 bucks or whatever. and you own it forever there’s no proprietary licenses there’s no drm rug pulls nothing like that’s ever going to happen you never have to use iLok ever again god i hate that piece of software so much uh it’s just really cool if you’re into guitars go check it out there’ll be links in the show notes down below 40:44
Adam: Can I ask, are you guys familiar with the fact that Linus is actually playing with not the squeaky Linus, the other Linus is playing with creation of some of the pedal or something along those lines or some sort of a There was a, I think he was creating his own pedal. I remember seeing in a YouTube video, I think he was talking to, it was Linus and Linus, actually. They were both in the Linus Tech Tips Canadian studio and they were talking about a machine they were building for Linus of the Linux ilk. And he was talking about something that was keep, like his new passion was, I believe it was a pedal or something to do with like a, some sort of a modeler or something along those lines is that related to this at all 42:44
Alex: I don’t remember that segment at all. 43:36
Adam: okay hmm interesting maybe something interesting to look at because i’m sure the 43:38
Alex: I 43:43
Adam: project’s 43:43
Alex: did watch 43:43
Adam: out there 43:44
Alex: it and I recall something about electronics in there, but I don’t remember anything to do with guitars specifically. 43:44
Stephen: So you know the big thing that this is changing for me? I used to play guitar far more than I do now. I’m trying to get back into it because I think it’s healthy to get away from using a keyboard 43:50
Alex: What 44:02
Stephen: constantly. 44:02
Alex: were we just saying? 44:02
Stephen: But 44:02
Alex: How do you separate 44:03
Stephen: we were 44:03
Alex: work 44:04
Stephen: just saying, 44:04
Alex: and play? You just go and do something 44:05
Stephen: do the 44:05
Alex: analog. 44:05
Stephen: other things. 44:05
Alex: Yeah. 44:06
Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. So, 44:07
Alex: And so now all of your pedals are in software and you need a computer 44:08
Stephen: except for 44:10
Alex: and 44:10
Stephen: they’re all in the software. Yeah, yeah, we’re really just going back. But I can use an iPad for that. Actually, you didn’t really mention that so much, 44:10
Alex: I 44:17
Stephen: is 44:17
Alex: didn’t 44:17
Stephen: that… 44:17
Alex: know. And the iPad app 44:17
Stephen: You can 44:18
Alex: is awesome. 44:18
Stephen: put this on an iPad and so I can leave this bloody garage and I can go somewhere else in my house, maybe because my child’s outside and he’s not going to try to play guitar with me. But I can use an iPad that I have clicked into this and whatnot, right? And so it becomes a very separate thing. I’m not using a computer. But where I was going with this is that before when I would play, I would try to learn a new song and I would start getting down that rabbit hole of, learning the actual song but i would never sound the same and so my interest in it would just waver completely um or if i had just you know a fender amp with some basic distortion and i would try to get it but i could never 44:19
Alex: Yeah, 44:59
Stephen: you 44:59
Alex: it’s 44:59
Stephen: can’t 44:59
Alex: good 44:59
Stephen: play 44:59
Alex: enough. 44:59
Stephen: rammstein 45:00
Alex: Yeah, 45:00
Stephen: with the 45:00
Alex: we’ve all been 45:00
Stephen: the built-in 45:01
Alex: there. 45:01
Stephen: you just can’t you will never sound right and so everything you do even though you’re playing 45:01
Adam: Hmm. 45:06
Stephen: it technically right never sounds right And my brain doesn’t like that. It just feels like failure to me. And so I would just stop. And so for me now, 45:06
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. 45:16Stephen: I will be able to get the tones, actually learn the thing, and I think be more engaged in it. That’s going to be a big thing for me. 45:17
Alex: I do think it’s hard to beat a genuine tube amp moving physical air and you feeling it in your chest versus a digital recreation. There’s just something intangible. And whether it’s just a placebo, whether it’s the fact that I just know that that’s the case or not, as we’ve said with the A-B testing earlier, maybe there isn’t any actual audible difference. There’s something warm and fuzzy about knowing that an actual vacuum tube is doing the thing that I want it to do, and it just sounds warm and creamy doing it, you know. 45:24
Stephen: What I want to 45:57
Alex: I 45:57
Stephen: do 45:57
Alex: don’t know. 45:57
Stephen: is they make what looks like a normal amplifier and it still technically is an amplifier, but it actually just takes the input from say like one of your little audio box that you have on your desk there, right? And so you’re gonna output the audio stream from your computer into an actual cabinet, like a guitar cab looking thing. And so you’re still going to have that kind of experience of some air moving. And 45:58
Alex: Hmm. 46:24
Stephen: I understand it’s not going to have the warm tones that you might get out of a valve amp, right? 46:24
Alex: Well, also, my hi-fi is voiced very differently from a Celestion V30 46:30
Stephen: It is. 46:33
Alex: or whatever 46:34
Stephen: Yeah, 46:35
Alex: I’m using. 46:35
Stephen: like I don’t really want to put my guitar through my nice Dynaudio tower speakers. It’s just not going to be the same. And it really doesn’t, it’s not the same in headphones. Like it just 46:35
Alex: Sure 46:45
Stephen: is not. 46:45
Alex: ain’t. It sure ain’t. No. 46:46
Stephen: My wife doesn’t have to put up with me playing the same little riff over and over and over again, messing it up until I get it. But 46:48
Alex: Mine 46:55
Stephen: anyway, 46:56
Alex: does. 46:56
Stephen: so I really… Yeah, here’s to us. But I really do want to maybe pick up one of these cabinets that you just output as a speaker. 46:56
Alex: Yeah. 47:04
Stephen: And so you still get the experience of a guitar with an amplifier. Yeah. 47:04
Alex: Adam, you found the Linus 47:08
Stephen: Do we… 47:09
Alex: Torvalds guitar pedal project. 47:09
Adam: I did. I put it in our chat here. 47:11
Alex: We’ll link that in the show notes. It’s real, it exists. Mr. Linux himself is learning analog circuit development. 47:13
Adam: The very on the nose 47:20
Stephen: Mm-hmm. 47:21
Adam: titled Torvalds forward slash guitar pedal for those who are interested. 47:21
Alex: But it’s on GitHub, so you won’t be able to see it. Good luck 47:27
Adam: David Price- 47:29
Alex: after their week of outages. 47:29
Adam: Correct. 47:30
Alex: My goodness. 47:31
Adam: Correct. Um, I love that what you got what you guys just said that like in between that to have something that is still giving you some of the the feel part with a cabinet like that. That sounds amazing to me that would I love finding kind of those overlap points. 47:31
Alex: Well, a big thank you to everybody that tuned in and listened to episode 13 of bitflip.show. I suppose I just said the website out loud, didn’t I? Bitflip.show. You can go there to find out more about the show. Get in touch with us. Contact at bitflip.show. Big thank you to our Patreons, as always, who support the show and make this show possible and help us pay our editor. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. I’ve been Alex. 47:49
Adam: I’ve been Adam. 48:10
Stephen: And I’ve been Steven. 48:12