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2011

114 posts. All years

  1. Richard Lainhart, RIP...

    I'm very sad to end the year on a down note, but I have to report that Richard Lainhart, master of the Buchla / Haken, has passed away from an infection picked up during surgery. He was an inspiration, and a super nice…

  2. Year End Wrap Up...

    Since everyone else is doing it, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. I imagine I'll hear in short order if anyone actually gives a fuck about this information, but it's easy to get, so here you go. The Top Five Most…

  3. And The Hits Just Keep On Comin'...

    Just put away another 64-bit update, this time to Automaton. Every platform is now 32/64, and there are some minor bug fixes, stuff you probably wouldn't have noticed anyhow, but will definitely not notice now. Free…

  4. Happy Holidays!

    Normally, someone like me who is non-religious (I don't choose to use the term "atheist" because it implies actively disbelieving in something, which is in and of itself a belief) and who is decidedly left-of-center…

  5. Some Fun Shit...

    Sorry for the vertigo-inducing "camera" work, but I shot this with my iPhone in one hand, while I tried to drive the iPad with the other. Anyhow, what you're looking at is Phaedra sequencing a Korg Monotribe. I did the…

  6. A Little Improv...

    As much as I was tempted to bust out in to high-speed Tyner-esque runs (a fellow lefty, and that's how we do) I managed to hold myself back. Since there will be an inevitable question, I'll go ahead and say now that the…

  7. All Kinds Of Fun Stuff...

    First up, Ratshack Reverb 2 is back in the Audio Damage store. It has been revved to v2.1.0, and is now 32/64 across the board. It has some internal bug fixes and new Lion-friendly installers and the whole shebang. We…

  8. Phaedra Now Available...

    Phaedra, my "analog sequencer" app for iPad, is now available in the iTunes App Store. It is US$4.99 (otherwise known as "Tier 5" pricing, so whatever that equals in your currency) until 1/1/12, when it goes up to $9.99.

  9. Wanna See Some Bullshit?

    Exhibit A: The Akai Analog Custom Shop Analog Delay. Available here. $122. This is one of several pedals in the Akai Custom Shop line of analog effects, about which Akai says the following: "Building upon this history…

  10. Kombinat Dva Now Available...

    As the subject says, Kombinat Dva is done and in the store. It's $49.00 for the full version, and a $10 upgrade from the original Kombinat. Git some! Note: this will not affect any existing projects if you upgrade…

  11. The App So Nice I Made It Twice...

    So way back in April, TASCAM approached me with this idea of "re-skinning" the PortaStudio app I'd already made them to make it act like one of their handheld recorders. I said "hmmm..." because the cassette paradigm…

  12. The Difference Between Vintage And Old...

    Steinberg today announced that they updated their old Model E and VB-1 plug-ins from VST1 days to modern 32/64 VST2.4 standards, and made them free. They are available on Steinberg's site. Model E, along with Neon (also…

  13. Meet Phaedra...

    In my ludicrously ample free time, I've been working on this bad boy, Phaedra. It is an "analog" style four-channel MIDI sequencer for the iPad. Click the picture for the full-rez screenshot. In the interests of full…

  14. Kombinat Dva On The Ropes...

    Above is the more-or-less final UI of Kombinat Dva. Click to embiggen. All that remains to be done on the Windows side is presets, then some simple porting and we can roll this bitch out. Probably next week some time…

  15. Audio Damage Blue Monday Sale...

    As the image says, use the code HOWDOESITFEEL at checkout in the AD store until midnight Tuesday, and take 25% off your entire order, no matter what it is. Rock it. EDIT: Sale is over, sorry.

  16. A Note About How Copyright Doesn't Work...

    One question I get with fairly alarming regularity in the AD Info box goes something like this: "I bought $PLUG\ IN from you, and I'm going to use it to make samples to sell. Is there some sort of royalty I need to…

  17. A Couple Videos...

    This is a quick overview of the highlights of Filterstation. Pretty much what it says on the tin. Wubwubwubwub. This one is a little more involved. It is most of a complete track, done in the style of Autechre's "Corc"…

  18. Meet Kombinat Dva...

    Closing in on Kombinat Dva's imminent release. I'm still not settled on the final UI (I may replace the crossover with a graphic, for starters) and things need a lot of touching up, but that's the general idea. It will…

  19. Noink-O-Rama...

    One visit to my studio/office/Hellmouth, and you'll rapidly realize that my preferred form-factor for both effects and instruments is the desktop box. I couldn't justify this in any particular way except to say that I…

  20. ADverb Updated...

    Audio Damage ADverb, our "vintage digital" plate, has been updated to 1.1.0. This update includes 32/64-bit Windows VST and 32/64-bit OS X VST and AU. Any remaining vestiges of PPC support have been removed, so if you…

  21. The Current State Of Affairs...

    A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in this case I'm just gonna have to prattle on for a bit, because we're not ready to show off yet. However, I'm pleased to announce that Kombinat is getting a much-requested…

  22. Eventide Stompbox Modular Magic Trick...

    Now, I'm fairly well versed in many things, but when it comes to electronics, I'm strictly rule-of-thumb and follow-instructions. For some reason, as soon as you stick a soldering iron in my hand, my IQ drops like 50…

  23. Words Of Wisdom...

    In the early 60s, saxophonist Steve Lacey played with Monk briefly. This is kind of quasi-ironic, considering at the time he joined Monk's group, virtually all his recordings to that point had been of Monk tunes. Sort…

  25. More Disembodied Hands Doin' Stuff...

    I got an Eventide Space pedal yesterday, and only had a chance to fool with it for a few minutes. But today, I had a couple-hour window between when Adam decided he couldn't take AudioUnits any more and when the folks…

  26. Various Things...

    First up, you may or may not have heard but Beatserv is going out of business. Wade makes beds and background music for television as his main job, and his work has really taken off in the last few months. While this is…

  27. And Even More Tempest Stuff...

    I'm trying to get as much use out of this thing as I can before it has to go back to its rightful owners, hence overlapping videos and blog posts. Anyhow, in this one, you can see me utilizing the "16 Mutes" mode of…

  28. More Tempest Stuff...

    Richard Devine put up a video the other day that got me all bummed out because (through complete coincidence) I was working on one showing exactly the same thing, the fun to be had with the quantized pattern switching…

  29. Tempest First Impressions...

    DSI were kind enough to loan me one of the first production versions of the upcoming Tempest drum machine for beta testing and to write some presets. The word "loan" there is loaded, because they're gonna have to send…

  30. Beepcat: A Modest Proposal...

    I've spoken to some of you in person about this idea, and received generally good feedback, but we're getting to the point in this project where we need to start committing real resources, and I wanted to open it up to…

  31. Meet Filterstation...

    Here's a screenshot of our upcoming plug, Filterstation, running in Studio One on PC as a VST3. From the UI, you should be able to get a pretty good handle on what it's all about. As you can see, it is a pair of filters…

  32. Pics from LA T_A Meet...

    Here's a Flickr set with some pics from the LA T\ A meet on Saturday. It was necessarily Euro-Centric, so most of the pictures are the usual cast of characters. Of note, if that sort of thing interests you, were the new…

  33. Out Of The Orifice Open Thread...

    Heading to L.A. in the morning. I've got a gallery show to go to before it closes, and on Saturday, a meeting of Close Talkers And Other Social Misfits Anonymous... errrr... I mean Trash\ Audio Synth Meet 10. I will, of…

  34. micronaut - trapezoid (Fun With Synthi!)...

    I'm busy as fuck right now, as I've mentioned not upwards of half a dozen times. But I took a couple hours late last night to bust out this little improvisation with the Synthi. This is entirely computer-free, start to…

  35. Viva Italia...

    Yesterday, one of my many Craigslist search spiders turned up this little gem, a Melo-Sonic 350 combo organ (with drum machine, natch!) I'd never heard of this particular instrument, but that's never stopped me before…

  36. SQUIRREL!

    \[Embedded media, no longer available.\] Fs qd1 by Chris Randall \[Embedded media, no longer available.\] Fs qd2 by Chris Randall Here's a couple quick (well, "quick" as in I just banged 'em together, not "quick" as in…

  37. particulate...

    My latest micronaut EP, particular, is now available at Bandcamp for download, pay what you want at least a dollar. This EP was essentially an experiment at removing the DAW and its ludicrously powerful audio editing…

  38. Movin' Right Along...

    As you've probably guessed by the lack of pithy posting, I'm in one of those super-busy times that always seem to occur around August/September/October. Just trying to plow through this mountain of work, keeping my head…

  39. micronaut -oxide

    Something a little different this time. I've been trying to come up with a workflow to enable direct-to-tape "live PA" style performances for the next round of micronaut stuff, and this video is a proof-of-concept of…

  40. iGear...

    I thought, since I've had this combo for a bit now, and had a chance to work with it in a production environment, I would take this opportunity to provide some further thoughts about the Alesis iO Dock and the Korg…

  41. The Big Sale, Round 1...

    I'm clearing out stuff I don't need / use / appreciate in preparation for a new series of projects. Most of it isn't synth related, and thus won't get posted here. However, there are two items might be of interest to AI…

  42. Workin' For A Livin'...

    It's been an exciting (interesting?) couple of weeks here at Audio Damage Command And Control. Adam and I decided, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to either of us any more at this juncture, that we would finally…

  43. Monotribe Mini-Review...

    Last night my BFF The UPS Guy dropped off a shiny new Monotribe. I really haven't had time to put it through its paces, so I'll pre mea culpa this review in to submission by saying that once I've attempted to use it in…

  44. OS X Lion Bullshit Thread...

    I am in the process of installing Lion right now, and will update this post throughout the day with my findings. If you're in a mission-critical situation and you're updating your main working machine to Lion, and you…

  45. This Too Shall Suck...

    Matt Davidson (Stretta) put up an interesting comment on Google+ the other day that sparked a rather long and involved discussion. Since he put it on G+ instead of his blog, and limited it to his Circle Of Compadres or…

  46. Alesis iO Dock Mini Review...

    My Alesis iO Dock showed up in the mail today. One thing I should say right from the start is that it Just Works. There ain't nothing fancy about it, and this is roughly akin to reviewing a 2 in / 2 out audio interface…

  47. Audio Damage Update...

    Well, with a couple hiccups, our new framework for porting older products (e.g. those without the newer "flat" UIs, everything released after Tattoo) that we first tried with Dubstation seems to be standing the acid…

  48. Jaymar My First Piano...

    I'm working on the music for an iOS game, and in one of the level songs, I wanted a little lietmotif played on this 1950s toy piano I got. Unfortunately, the keys stick so bad as to make it nearly unplayable, so I…

  49. Terms of (Dis)Service...

    This is a subject which will no doubt be incredibly un-interesting to you, but which should be paid attention to. I'm not gonna do it in the neck-bearded "Information Wants To Be Free" bullshit arm-waving way, and…

  50. And Away We Go...

    We've just put Dubstation 1.5.2 in the AD store. With this update, Adam has theoretically mostly conquered the problem of porting our older stuff to 64-bit. On the Windows side, it should Just Work. On the OS X side…

  51. Shit Just Got Real...

    TNR-i, the Tenori-On clone for iOS created by Yamaha (so it would stand to reason it's pretty close) is now available in the US app store finally, a week after it appeared in Japan and the UK. You can grab it here. Note…

  52. The End Is Nigh...

    The recent hubbub over Final Cut X (which you're no doubt familiar with, but if you aren't, Tom Ellard's highlights here and a funny but informative bit from Conan O'Brian here) is kind of silly. It's like standing on…

  53. Calling All Southwest Nerdcore...

    I don't believe there are enough 'core types in the Pho-Sco / Tucson area to warrant a true AH-type meet-up, and also, I find that format to be somewhat stifling. "THOU SHALT HAVE PATCH CORDS!" But I thought it might be…

  54. More Update News...

    Okay, we've now put new installers for Replicant and Eos in the store, in addition to Panstation. If you were experiencing any problems whatsoever with getting 64-bit versions of our plugs to validate/instance/whatever…

  55. Panstation Updated, Others To Follow...

    If you follow me at all on Twitter (or even happen to occasionally glance at the sidebar of this site), you'll note that I occasionally mutter semi-disparaging comments about Logic. Turns out that at least some of the…

  56. AD Hardware...

    We made an update to the Audio Damage store today. This will be mostly transparent to you guys, as we added the ability for the store to query the USPS for true shipping prices and apply those to orders that contain…

  57. The Three Hour Challenge...

    My wife is a good sport about my noise-making habits, bless her heart, but she draws the line at cranked tube amps. For extra bonus points, we both work at home. This being the case, my guitar playing usually goes via…

  58. Audio Damage Panstation Now Available...

    Meet our newest bouncing baby plug, Panstation. As you can pretty much guess from the name, it is an autopanner, and as far as we're aware, the most sophisticated autopanner plug-in available. (If you feel like…

  59. New Toy, Oh Way Oh...

    \[insert usual apology for lack of posting here.\] I've been swamped the last two weeks. I took on an art project, of all things, that is sucking up my copious free time at an alarming pace, plus dealing with a t-shirt…

  60. The Perfect Monosynth...

    While it's generally accepted as a truism that either the Korg MS20 or the Moog MiniMoog is the perfect monosynth, in this modern world we live in, both are horribly behind the times. The reason I bring this up is that…

  61. Get Busy, Y'all...

    'Tis the season, apparently. While it may seem that little is emanating forth from the various Audio Damage facilities, that's about to change. We'll have at least two additions to the store in the near future, possibly…

  62. Out Of The Office Open Thread...

    After that last epic conversation, I'm busy congratulating myself for having created a blog that, after years of tuning, can have such a high level of completely bullshit-free discourse. The previous post didn't have a…

  63. Medium != Message...

    One thing I've often said, when confronted with the type of person that gets in to the minutia of the recording process, perhaps at the expense of the big picture, is that a good song will survive any production…

  64. Buy Shit Now!

    Yeah, you pretty much need this. While Dave is a good friend of mine, and I wouldn't talk some bullshit about a friend, this plug is honestly the bomb, plain and simple. It has an easy-to-use front end that hides a…

  65. Stand Up! Sit Down! Fight! Fight! Fight!

    I'd been thinking of going to a standing office solution for some time now. I kind of got half-way there when we moved to our new house in February. Most of my music gear was in a standing work configuration, but my…

  66. Poll Time...

    We're busy building our latest Roadmap To Success/Five Year Plan/Whatever, and while I have a fairly good idea of what the answers to this poll will be, I'd like a little less anecdotal evidence. While it's true that…

  67. 2io Progress...

    Making nice, albeit somewhat slow, progress on the 2io module, the first Audio Damage hardware release. I now have the prototype in my possession, and am busily trying to break it. It works entirely as expected once we…

  68. Purity Of Procedure...

    Ever since I switched from Pd to Max and didn't have to deal with incessant Problems, I've spent a lot more time working on my own music in this environment, rather than just using it for product development and such…

  69. Makin' Shit, Yo...

    Obviously, I bailed on NAB early, because I got both sick and tired. Working at home doesn't prepare you physically for the necessary miles and miles of walking that have to occur at a show of that size. I'm in good…

  70. NABster Pt. 2

    Day one of my trip to NAB is in the bag. Those of you that follow my Twitter stream saw the highlights. Pretty much the same shit as last year, for the most part, and the show is somewhat smaller, as well. Last year…

  71. NABster...

    I'm heading to the NAB convention in Vegas on Sunday. The best way I can describe it is that it's like NAMM if there were no drummers or guitar players, and a fuck of a lot of video post editors. It has a fairly…

  72. Messe Redux...

    It occurs to me that I could just re-post my MusicMesse comments from last year, and nobody would be the wiser. (Synopsis: cool little analog synth from Korg, and the rest of it is kinda whack.) But in the interests of…

  73. adm02 - 2io...

    Since the intrepid sleuths over at the Muff Wiggler forum essentially deduced what it is, and in order to at least have the facade of a certain amount of control over the information, we've gone ahead and released the…

  74. Happy Birthday Muddy Waters...

    My general theory is that if you have style in your delivery, everything else (production, lyrical content, the music itself) is fairly unimportant, and Muddy Waters went a long way towards supporting that theory. I…

  75. Well, Shit...

    I was going to, at this juncture, put up a lengthy rant about the Roland Jupiter 80. And the person that wrote this slavish bullshit. But then I thought what's the point? Why should Roland give a shit about 2,000…

  76. What The Hell Are They Building In There?

    Let me state for the record that this is not an April Fool's prank. Homie don't play dat. This industry's habit of putting out fake press releases on April 1st is right down there with genital warts and Logic on my list…

  77. Discord3 and Replicant 64-bit OSX AU and VST...

    I have, in my grimy little paws, 32/64-bit installers of Discord3 and Replicant. We'll push them out tomorrow, but if you'd like to test, and you already own either or both, hit me up and I'll sport 'em to you. EDIT…

  78. New (and older) Micronaut Stuff...

    This is definitely absolutely the final "experiment" video. I have decided how I'm going to do the next micronaut full-length, and am going to begin work on that in earnest now. In this one, everything is sequenced in…

  79. The End Of The Road, Vis-A-Vis Hipster Cool...

    My main purpose in putting this up, aside from strictly historical interest, is to make James from RetroThing wet his pants with jealousy. Jeff Laity from TASCAM (who posts as synthetic here) sent me this little gem…

  80. How To (Not) Make A YouTube Video...

    Okay, here's the deal. Either you're a media professional of some sort, or you want to be one. Concurrently, you got a new piece of kit and want to show it off on the 'Tubes, to amaze your friends and amuse your…

  81. iOS Apps: ur doin it rong...

    My goal today was going to be to put up a fairly thorough review of the Fairlight App for iOS devices. However, I'm a little pissed off now, and with the mood swing comes a goal change. I purchased the app essentially…

  82. The Sun Also Rises...

    As I remarked to someone on AIM last night, my e-mail inbox looks like Half Life 2. Shit is total destruction right now. So in lieu of pondering the complexities of life or ranting (or both) I'm gonna drop some tidbits…

  83. Happy Anniversary!!!!

    Seven years ago today, Adam and I released our first product under the name Audio Damage, the Mayhem FX suite. In seven years, we've never had a sale or discount of any sort. We've fiddled with prices here and there…

  84. Eos 1.4.0 for OS X Now Available...

    If you hit your account in the Audio Damage store, you can grab the Eos 1.4.0 installer for OS X. This installer throws what Apple terms "Standard (32/64-bit Intel)" builds of both the VST and AU. These work in every…

  85. On Location...

    I've been intrigued by the videos Diego Stocco puts up on der tüben for a while now, and I decided to give that sort of thing a whirl. So I soldered a couple piezo speakers to a hacked-up RCA cable, packed up my DR-2d…

  86. ZOMGWTFBBQ BUY NOW!!!

    SimpleMidiPad was approved, and is now available in the iTunes App Store for immediate purchase. It is what Apple calls "Tier 2 pricing," which means $1.99 in the US and Canada, and all kinds of arbitrary amounts in the…

  87. Whelp, Said The Mother Dog...

    I had hoped by this time I'd be putting up a "HEY ZOMG BUY NOW!!!!111!1" post about SimpleMidiPad, because in my experience (which, in this particular subject area, is not vast, but exists), when an app goes in review…

  88. Old And Busted < New Hotness...

    ![Old And Busted 4 transition. So, almost 8 years since the last time I opened this program. I imagine this will come as no surprise to the Max users among the readership, but come to find out there is a world of…

  89. Just To See If I Could, Really...

    This was interesting to make. Instead of sequencing the MIDI for this track, I made a Max patch that shits MIDI notes via an intricate system of nested metro and delay objects. Sort of a brute-force generative system. I…

  90. Well, That Was Easier Than I Thought It Would Be...

    I've now submitted SimpleMidiPad to the App Store for review. Normally this sort of thing isn't so quick, but for this particular app, which I dearly wanted anyhow, I had all the parts lying around from other projects…

  91. The Next Cycle...

    I'm currently in the planning stages for the next cycle of Micronaut EPs. If you don't know by now that I'm all about process, and the purity thereof, then you haven't been reading this blog very long. Setting up the…

  92. Defining Results...

    For some reason I can't quite explain (perhaps it was all the Fashion Week articles in my New York Times RSS feed) I was hit with an overwhelming urge to re-read Zero History last week. In the course of doing so, I came…

  93. The Results Of Saturday's Endeavor...

    EDIT : I took out the Bandcamp player because it is slowing down the site in a nasty sort of way. Hit the image to go to the Bandcamp site and listen there. I've just got done cleaning up the audio from the live PA I…

  94. Cluster-Grade Fuck...

    Heading to L.A. in the morning to play my Big Show at Bar Sinister. (I'm on at 11PM. Wear black.) I've managed to rehearse my set several times with only minimal mistakes, the kind an audience would never notice. So I…

  95. Eos 1.1.0 Now Available...

    Eos 1.1.0 is now available for download in the AD Store. New UI. We've updated the user interface a touch to match the other recent AD products. Operationally, no change whatsoever. Windows 64-bit. The Windows installer…

  96. Who Gives A Fuck About A God Damned Grammy?

    We're still working away at the Eos update, as those of you who follow me on Twitter no doubt know. We've got the Windows versions done and ready to go, but the OS X side of things is causing some troubles. The VST…

  97. The Experiment Station...

    Another Experiment, this time mostly digital. (Sorry, synth nrrrds.) I just scored all of Twisted Tools' stuff, and their newest, Scapes, really caught my ear. It's kind of hard to describe in detail, largely because…

  98. The New Eos UI...

    My original plan was to update the Eos UI to bring it in line with D3/Axon/Replicant 1.5/Phosphor. (Some of you may have seen my first attempt, as I posted a screenshot to Twitter.) However, after reading an article…

  99. Great Taste, Less Filling...

    I hesitate to use the term "rehearsal," because that implies a poorly-soundproofed room in a warehouse somewhere in a bad neighborhood that smells like rock (that is to say a combination of stale weed, cigarettes…

  100. What Are They Building In There?

    We've got Big Things brewing at both the Rocky Mountain R&D Facility and down here in Tempe at Human Resources And Marketing And Other Shit. The picture above is representative of one aspect of those Big Things. One of…

  101. Phosphor Video Overview...

    Here's a quick run-through of Phosphor's capabilities. Nothing fancy; the first half is a general collection of sounds, and the second half hits the highlights of the UI.

  102. Some CMU Samples...

    Since there was some interest in this, here is a Live project that contains the following: 1\. Drum Rack containing all the CMU-800R drum sounds. 2\. Sampler containing a multi-sampled version of the "Melody" voice of…

  103. And Another One...

    I used a lens with a bit wider angle and deeper DOF for this one, so you could kinda see what's going on. Less arty-farty, but a bit more informative, I suppose. Same general gear and workflow as the last one, except I…

  104. A Science Project...

    Once I got everything hooked up, I banged out a little track just to make sure it was all working. The usual suspects are used. The interesting bit is that this is live, sequenced from the CMU-800R.

  105. I Almost An Office...

    Getting very close to done with my new/improved workspace. The only thing I'm missing on the analog side is an 8-buss mixer, which I don't currently own, so it's not like I just haven't plugged it in or something. The…

  106. Der MeeBlippen...

    Those of you that have been following my snark on Twitter and here know that I've been less than kind to James and Peter about the whole MeeBlip Situation. For what it's worth, some early adopters like myself got left…

  107. The Unusual Wednesday Bullshit...

    On the bright side, we've got the vast majority of our shit in to the new house in Tempe, and are now living there. On the not-so-bright side, Cox fucked up the transfer order for the Intertubes rather massively, and we…

  109. NAMGLA, Day Two (Updated)...

    I just got back from the Trash\ Audio BBQ. You may or may not have heard a rumor that I tried to start a fight between Alessandro Cortini and BT, the two friendliest people in the music industry. This is patently…

  110. NAMGLA, Day One...

    I know, it's actually Day Two of the North American Man/Gear Love Association (NAMGLA, and unfortunately I didn't think of that; my friend Carl did. But I'm using it from now on, and it'll eventually get credited to me…

  111. Micronaut - Transformer

    The third and final installment in my 3-EP "Electronics" series is now available on Bandcamp. These last five tracks complete my exploration of this particular workflow, and round out the collection to 16 tracks in all…

  112. The Usual Monday Bullshit...

    For three years running, January has been as busy for me as all the other months put together. I think next January, I'm going to rent a cabin in Tahoe, take my special ladyfriend, and split my time equally between a…

  113. The Various Shits...

    I'm monumentally busy. I will attempt to enumerate the things that are causing this rather distressing turn of events, and you'll rapidly begin to understand why it has been four days since I posted. 1\. Moving …

  114. 2010 RIP. Long Live 2011...

    Another revolution around the sun, thus completing our somewhat arbitrary, albeit quite handy, unit of meta-time one more time. Overall, I feel I had a pretty productive year. Three AD products, or five if you count…