Moto Lust

I've been infected with a bad case of moto lust again.  I've had my Ducati Monster S4RS Tricolore for about a year now, and I still really like it, but I have to confess that I miss owning a hard-core, full-on sport bike.  They are still my first and greatest love, but I haven't owned a Ducati Superbike since selling my 1098S last year.  The thing is, I don't want another liter+ sized bike for the road.  As I've said before, the 1098 was, in my opinion, way too much motorcycle for street use and I've long been partial to the smaller Ducati Superbikes like the 748, 749, and now the 848.  It's been said before, and I agree, that the 848 is probably a better choice for a streetbike than the 1098.  Now that Ducati has gone up another 100cc for for model year 2009 I can only assume that's even more the case now than it was in 2007 and 2008.

My problem is that Ducati did a couple of things with the 848 that have always been questionable in my mind and one of them has so far been an outright deal-breaker for me.  The first questionable thing is that thus far they have not offered a 848S.  For whatever reason, I'd prefer to have a slightly upgraded model with better brakes, lighter wheels, Ohlins suspension, and some factory carbon fiber.  The problem from Ducati's standpoint is that the 2009 848 is only selling for $2500 less than a 1198 so a 848S would likely be the same price as, and probably even a little more than, its base model big brother and I've been told by people that would know that Ducati doesn't want to hurt 1198 sales.  I don't know the economics of it all.  What I do know is that personally, I'd rather have a trick 848 than base 1198, even if it cost a little more, and I doubt seriously that I'm alone.

The second questionable thing, and the deal-breaker in my mind, is that Ducati fitted the 848 with a wet clutch.  I've said time and time again that I don't care about having dry clutches on Monsters (well... some Monsters anyway), Multistradas, Hypermotards, etc. but I'm old-fashioned with regard to Ducati Superbikes: they should have dry clutches, never wet.  I can even understand the reasoning behind putting a wet clutch on the 848.  They were intended to compete head-to-head with the Japanese 600cc sport bikes and one of the things neophytes often don't like about Ducatis is the sound of the dry clutch.  My experience is that most people who are Ducati faithful prefer the dry clutch however.  This seems to me to be another reason to produce an 848S: the same people that would want the upgrades would likely want dry clutches as well, so produce an 848S with the previously mentioned upgrades, and add a dry, and preferably slipper, clutch to it as well.

The 848S question aside, the lack of a dry clutch is probably the reason I don't own a 848 right now. I suspect that had the 848 been available with the dry clutch I would have purchased one of those instead of my Monster when I went bike shopping last summer.  The good news, or possibly the bad news, is that Ducati has now made a factory dry slipper clutch kit available for the 848.  It's a little pricey but it's probably a decent deal considering all it comes with.  The really good news is that since it's a Ducati Performance kit it can be installed on a brand-new bike and not void the warranty, provided it's installed by a official Ducati Service Center.

So now I'm thinking about the 848 again.  I'm frankly not in a position to purchase another motorcycle right now, nor will I be for a while I don't think, but it's still got me thinking, wishing, and lusting.  Wouldn't it be fun to build my own 848S? Put the slipper clutch kit in along with a Termignoni full exhaust system. Next, install Ohlins suspension front and rear, then acquire a set of 1098S/1198S forged wheels, or possibly some Carbon Fiber or Magnesium wheels.  Slap on a Ohlins steering damper and you have a serious hotrod on your hands.  There's definitely some money involved in all these upgrades, but ain't it nice to dream? Who knows, maybe some of my long-shot stocks will hit it big...

Thoughts on Riding

After quite a while where either the presence or threat of rain has kept me cage-bound I finally got a chance to ride my motorcycle to work today. It was a beautiful, relatively cool, clear, and not-too-humid morning and as always, my ride to work left me walking into the office in a great mood. I had a decent day at work and on the way home I was again enjoying a comparatively nice afternoon for Eastern North Carolina in the latter stages of June. By that I mean it wasn't raining, it wasn't brutally hot, and it wasn't so humid you feel like you need gills to breathe. All in all, it was a fantastic afternoon for a ride.

While enjoying my ride home I started pondering the mystery of this whole motorcycle "thing." I came to the conclusion that it actually seems pretty strange. Why does it have the effect it does on so many of us? On the surface it doesn't really seem like it should. After all, it's just a means of transportation, right? Why do we get more excited about riding motorcycles than we do about driving a car, riding on a bus, or taking a taxi? If anything it seems as though any of the more "normal" options would actually leave us in better spirits than a motorcycle ride if for no other reason that it's safer and, one would think, less stressful.

Anyone who has caught the motorcycle fever knows that this isn't the case. There are some motorcyclists that are car nuts as well but most of the ones I know aren't. Motorcycles are a passion, cars are something to drive when you have to take the kids somewhere or go to the airport. Strictly a means to an end.

There aren't many motorcyclists that work at the same company I do. There are seven motorcycle owners that I can think of among my coworkers and three of those rarely ride to work. Even in that small sample of riders I've noticed a clear pattern: driving to work has either no effect on their mood or actively degrades it due to frustration with traffic, etc. Riding a bike to work almost invariably exposes a grin when the helmet comes off and they talk about how great the ride in was. Even when some idiot in a cage cuts them off or crowds them out of their lane it doesn't have much effect on the mood. You generally hear something like "some jerk on a cell phone changed lanes right in front of me and caused me to take evasive action. Other than that it was a nice ride."

So what's the story there? It seems like anybody riding a motorcycle, especially anyone riding a motorcycle to work through typical urban congestion, would arrive stressed out, frazzled, and shaky, not grinning, relaxed, and ready for a day of work. My experience has been that that's exactly the case though. What's the cause? Does it hearken back to man's age-old desire to fly? Is it a reaction to successfully cheating death? Is it simply a side effect of surrendering to the fates, taking your chances based on your own skill and luck, and just rolling the dice? The only answer I can give is that I have no idea.

Whatever the reason, I've been enjoying the effect for quite a few years now and I sincerely hope it doesn't fade anytime soon. Riding definitely has a strange effect on me, relaxing me and energizing me simultaneously. I can't really think of anything else that has the same sort of effect on me, with the possible exception of surfing. Even that I don't think is quite the same but it's probably the single thing in my life that comes closest.

It's a strange and addictive phenomenon and it has me fully in it's grip. I'm already looking forward to riding in tomorrow as well and hoping the weather holds out the rest of the week. If I could leave the truck parked in the driveway the rest of the summer it wouldn't hurt my feelings at all.

AMA Superbike, 2009 Style

I'm saddened by the state of the AMA Superbike Championship, circa 2009.  I don't know where it's going from here, but I really don't have any confidence it'll be anywhere I want to follow.  I've discussed the takeover of the series by the Daytona Motorsports Group in exhaustive detail in previous posts so I'm not going to go into much into detail talking about it more here. What I will say is that after the disaster was complete I decided that I was going to vote with my dollars and not attend any of the races in 2009.  I violated that personal edict pretty early since I ended up going to Daytona in March and seeing both the Superbike race and the Daytona 200.  In my own defense I will say that the only reason I went was that I was already down in Florida for business, and in fact had spent the previous several weeks living out of hotel only about 30 minutes from Daytona International Speedway.

Since Daytona I have been almost completely divorced from this year's series. I haven't watched a single race on television, have only been following results in the news in the most casual of ways, and haven't attended any more races. As I mentioned, I'm saddened by this state of affairs. I've been a dedicated follower of the series and I've really enjoyed it, even when the racing at the front was at it's most predictable. The race at Virginia International Raceway has been one of the high points of my year for several years now and this year I wasn't even planning on going. This affected my immediate family as much as it did me as it has become a family camping trip over the last few years, even to the point of us buying a 26' Toy Hauler almost solely for the purpose of our annual pilgrimage to VIR. Not this year though. The camper was sold a few weeks ago, my family made their peace with not going this year, and we've all moved on.

Then along came a couple of friends with an offer I couldn't refuse. Now the plan is to attend the race at VIR even though I won't be camping. We're hoping to have some really good access and a package that will be hard to beat, although I don't think it'll be as good as having my camper there, my own bed, A/C, beer, food, and a garage for my motorcycle. Still, it should be a lot of fun and I'm honestly looking forward to it.

I'm really curious now about how it will contrast to the previous years I've been to the event.  I haven't missed a race at VIR since I attended my first one in 2004 but last year seemed very different from previous years. The deal with the DMG had already been done by that point in the season and there just didn't seem to me to be as much energy in the paddock. There were far fewer vendors than in previous years, the manufacturers weren't doing as much for their owners' clubs, etc. It just seemed much more downbeat than previous years. Combined with the fact that I keep hearing how attendance numbers have been drastically down at every round so far this year (although it didn't look that way to me at Daytona) I'm wondering what the vibe at the track will be this year.

I'd really love for the series to get back on track and become great again. I don't think it'll happen anytime soon though as I'm hearing rumors ever more frequently that all of the manufacturers will be abandoning the series starting in 2010. I hope that's not the case but I'd be surprised if it wasn't, given some of the things that have happened this year thus far. I guess we'll have to wait and see. For now, I'm going to look forward to attending the Big Kahuna Nationals at VIR on the weekend of August 14-16 and I'm going to do my best to have a good time while I'm there. Even if I can't help thinking that the whole thing feels kind of like a swan song.

Stay Tuned

After some time away I have started feeling the urge to write again. Better late than never, I suppose, and very late I am. I've got a few things going on these days that I want to write about so expect some posts to start showing up again. Stay tuned to this station.

AMA 2009: The Weirdness Continues

After being prompted to do so by a couple of other things I read on the net I went and looked at the 2009 AMA Pro Racing Official Rule Book and discovered something strange. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, given that the DMG has been proposing this all along, but the homologated motorcycles for the new Daytona Sportbike class is strange to say the very least. I guess I kind of thought this would change and it didn't. So next year we're going to have a class where the allowed motorcycles are mixed up to say the very least. That was always a bit of the case with the old AMA Formula Extreme class but at least there it was broken up in such a way that it made sense. Basically, Formuala Extreme allowed the following:

• Liquid-cooled four-cylinders up to 600cc
• Liquid-cooled three-cylinders up to 675cc
• Liquid-cooled two-cylinders up to 850cc
• Air-cooled Desmo-valved, two-valve, two-cylinders up to 1100cc
• Air-cooled four-valve, two-cylinders up to 1200cc
• Air-cooled two-valve, two-cylinders up to 1350cc.

That's a pretty big spread of bikes but it keeps the horsepower ratings in the same general area, probably in the 115bhp range. Some bikes would have made more, some less, but it was generally fairly sane. Very broadly, liquid cooled bikes make more power per cc than
air-cooled, more cylinders generally equals more horsepower (albeit usually less torque) per cc, and more valves per cylinder equals more power per cc. With those very broad rules in mind the logic behing the 2008 rules is pretty clear: different but roughly equitable engine
configurations competing against each other.

The 2009 rules for Daytona Sportbike, on the other hand, and much weirder. The following bikes are homologated right now to run in that class:

• Aprilia RSV, a 1000cc liquid-cooled four-valve V-twin
• BMW HP2 Sport, a 1170cc air-cooled four-valve boxer twin
  
• Buell 1125R, a 1125cc liquid-cooled four-valve V-twin
  
• Ducati 848, a 849cc liquid-cooled four-valve V-twin
• Honda CBR600RR, a 600cc liquid-cooled four-valve inline four cylinder
• Kawasaki ZX-6R, a 600cc liquid-cooled four-valve inline four cylinder
• KTM Super Duke, a 999cc liquid-cooled four-valve V-twin
  
• Suzuki GSX-R600, a 600cc liquid-cooled four-valve inline four cylinder
• Triumph Daytona 675, a 675cc liquid-cooled four-valve three-cylinder
• Yamaha YZF-R6, a 600cc liquid-cooled four-valve inline four cylinder

Should be a strange class to say the very least...

AMA/DMG Official Rules Released. Finally.

The Daytona Motorsports Group, operating as AMA Pro Racing, finally released an official rule book today.  It's taken nine months of arguing, negotiating, threats, personal attacks in the media, and who knows what else to get here, but they finally made it.  I haven't perused the 115-page document yet so I really don't know much about the details.  I do know that there are three primary classes:

• American Superbike - This will be the premier class (after DMG finally dumped the idiotic idea of making a weight- and horsepower-limited 600cc-based class the premier class) and the last I heard will be based mostly around the 2009 rule book that was agreed upon by the manufacturers in 2007.  Also, I keep hearing that this class is ultimately going to shift to using the same rule book as World Superbike, which I applaud heartily and have been advocating for some time.
• Daytona Sportbike - This class is the originally-proposed, aforementioned weight- and horsepower-limited, 600cc-based class that finally ended up.  My understanding is it's kind of a cross between 2008 Formula Xtreme and 2008 Supersport.  Kind of like Formula Xtreme in that there are a variety of different bikes ranging from 600cc inline fours to 1000+ cc twins, but similar to Supersport in that the bikes aren't allowed a very high level of tune.  I'm not sure if the originally proposed weight and horsepower restrictions stood.
• SuperSport - I don't know much about this one yet, but I gather it's similar to SuperSport from previous years.  The big changes are that factory involvement will be severely curtailed or completely disallowed and there will be an age limit for the riders.  This class is intended to be a entry-level class for young riders to use as a springboard into the bigger class.

There haven't been many announcements from the various factories and teams so far.  The only people who've done anything official with regard to their factory team is Yamaha.  The held a media day last week and announced their 2009 racing plans as well as unveiled their 2009 rider lineup, which consists of Ben Bostrom and Josh Hayes on Superbikes and Josh Herrin and Tommy Aquino on Daytona Sportbikes.  Hopefully the announcement of the final rules hasn't come too late for everyone else to get onboard.  I can only assume we'll have a better idea in a couple of weeks when the traditional December tire tests occur at Daytona Internation Speedway.

For anyone who's interested, the official rule book can be found here: http://www.amaproracing.com/prorace/pdf/2009%20AMA%20Pro%20Road%20Race%20Regulations.pdf and an articles about Yamaha's Media Day can be found here and here.

The Open Source Musician, Part Two

In this installment of my "The Open Source Musician" series I'll talk about the trails and tribulations of getting my Linux-based home studio computer up and running and starting my first recording projects.  Look here for the first part of the series.

The Software
As mentioned in the previous article, home recording in the UNIX/Linux world is a bit different than doing the same thing in the Windows or Mac world, at least in my (admittedly fairly limited) experience.  Using Cakewalk or similar under Windows one tends to perform most tasks inside Cakewalk itself.  Or at least I always did.  Linux, on the other hand, follows more in the UNIX tradition of having tools that perform a single task very well and is intended to be linked with other tools to get a bigger task completed. As a refresher, the tools I'm using with Linux are as follows:

• JACK, for tying it all together.
• Hydrogen, for creating drum and percussion tracks
• Ardour, as my primary Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software
• Rosegarden, for non-percussion sequencing
• JAMin, for mastering

It's a bit difficult to decide where to begin because of the amount of interconnectivity of all these bits and pieces so I'll just take the novel approach of beginning at the beginning.  By that I mean I start discussing the software in the same order I would use it if I were starting a new recording project.

JACK
The place I always start is with JACK.  JACK, which is another of those ubiquitous recursive acronyms so popular with Open Source developers, stands for JACK Audio Connection Kit.  The name may not be much of a clue to the neophyte but JACK is in many ways the hub of the Open Source studio.  JACK is very literally the glue that ties all the disparate parts together.  JACK is, very basically, a sound server that sits between the sound card driver (like ALSA) and the software that comprises the studio.  That sounds simple enough that one might wonder why it's needed.  After all, does it have an equivalent on Windows or Mac?  I don't think so (I could easily be wrong) but then again it's not really needed if you're using one software package to record, sequence, mix, master, etc.  Since all these sub-tasks are performed by separate pieces of software in an Open Source studio they all have to have some way to communicate with each other.  That is the function that JACK performs.  All of the software packages listed above (and many more besides) are JACK clients.  That means they all use (or can use) JACK as a transport mechanism for routing audio or MIDI from one software package to another, all internally to the computer.  What's more, JACK doesn't know or care where the audio or MIDI data it's routing comes from.  It treats a guitar plugged into your sound card's recording interface or MIDI coming from your keyboard or electronic drum kit via a USB or serial interface exactly the same as it treats data coming from another source internal to the computer.  If all of this leaves you scratching your head then don't worry too much, it's one of those things that becomes clear when a concrete example is given.

JACK is also the primary place where one concerns oneself with system latency.  JACK is intended to be a very low-latency sound server but making it work as such means getting it configured right and, in some cases, having the right hardware.  As is usually the case in situations like these, having the wrong hardware can make this task nigh upon impossible.  The bad news here is that as far as I'm able to discern setting up JACK is mostly an exercise in trial-and-error.  It definitely was for me and all the guides I've read about setting it up end up suggesting the very same thing.  Once the operating system is configured with a low-latency kernel (this was handled by installing Ubuntu Studio in my case) one simply fires up a command prompt or a program like QJackCtl, plugs in some reasonable defaults, and tries to start it up.  If the server starts successfully you can either move on to the next stage if JACK's latency and performance are adequate with the settings used or, more likely the case, stop the server again, tweak some settings in a quest for lower latency, restart the server, observe, and repeat until satisfied.  Or perhaps I should say "repeat until it's as good as it'll get with your hardware" rather than "repeat until satisfied."

I suppose this is the place that I should note the fact that almost every setback, problem, headache, and complication I've encountered in my quest for an Open Source home studio to date have been related, in one way or another, to JACK.  In fact, I believe I've only had two that were completely unrelated to JACK and I'll talk about those later.  For now I need to qualify that statement because it sounds like JACK is a problematic piece of software, and it emphatically is not.  Or at least it hasn't been for me.  The problems, setbacks, headaches, and complications that have been JACK-related have been either the nature of the beast, misconceptions on my part, things I didn't know or understand, and configuration modifications that were simple once I understood I had to do them.

The first problem I encountered with JACK was just configuration.  As mentioned previously it's a mostly trial-and-error affair.  That seems kind of archaic and crappy but I honestly don't think it can be helped.  After all, the latency that can be achieved by a given system is entirely dependent UPON that system.  How are the JACK developers supposed to know the capabilities or eccentricities of your sound card?  Or worse, upon your sound card when it's combined with your driver version, motherboard, kernel revision, etc.  I suppose they could compile databases of cards and their performance metrics or write code that performs various and sundry tests trying to discover a good base setting but honestly I'd rather see them keep writing great code and let me worry about making it work on my system.

The second problem, or perhaps misconception, involved multiple sound cards.  My system has a AC97-based sound card on the mother board and as I mentioned in the last article I installed a old Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum when I set the machine up.  I originally had both cards enabled and Ubuntu Studio had no problem with that at all, in and of itself.  To make things even more complicated, I sometimes had a third sound card (at least as far as Ubuntu Studio and ALSA were concerned) because I was using my Digitech GNX4 as an audio interface via it's built-in USB connectivity.  When the GNX4 is connected to the computer Ubuntu treats it just like another sound card.  JACK really didn't have a problem with the multiple sound cards, it just didn't like being told to use an interface on one card for recording and an interface on another for playback.  What I was trying to do originally was to use my GNX4 as a recording interface but use the Audigy as the playback interface so I could monitor what I was playing or listening back to through my speakers (the GNX4 is a floor-unit guitar effects processor, among other things, and needs to be plugged into a power amp or used with headphones to be heard).  JACK didn't care for that configuration at all.  Some reading lead me to the information that JACK can only be used with one audio interface at a time due to issues with synchronizing the master clocks (and therefore the audio) on multiple sound cards.  That kind of made sense once it was pointed out to me, but it was still a bummer given my available configuration options, and even moreso because at the time I'd been unable to get the external breakout box for the Audigy to work (a problem I later solved, thereby greatly simplifying my setup.  The problem with the Audigy ended up being a power connection I missed during install.).  Since I had to use the same hardware interface for both recording and playback at any given time I was relegated to using my GNX4 and a set of headphones anytime I was recording tracks.  Thankfully Ubuntu Studio's handling of the GNX4's USB interface was seamless enough that I was able to do so.  JACK's performance did suffer in this configuration though, resulting in some Xruns from time to time.  Xruns are JACK's way of telling you it's having trouble keeping up and is loosing pieces of data.  They are A Bad Thing, and something that's to be avoided whenever possible.  I'm quite certain the Xruns were being caused by the system trying to pass audio data from the GNX4 to the computer (recording) and from the computer to the GNX4(playback), all through a USB 1.1 connection (because that's all the GNX4 supports).  Anyway, this configuration worked ok for a while, until it led me directly to problem number three.

Problem number three had to do with sample rates.  During all of my previous work I was switching more-or-less randomly between 44.1K and 48K sampling rates in an effort to optimize my JACK performance.  When I started recording with the GNX4 as the interface I happened to have the system set to 44.1.  Since it worked I didn't bother to check the 48k setting.  I got the first-run drum track, a guitar track, and a bass track all laid down for the original song I was trying to record while setting up and testing my new studio workstation.  Once I got the rhythm tracks recorded I wanted to switch back to just listening through my speakers (verses the headphones which were the only way I had to monitor sound through the GNX4) so I could experiment with some effects as well as routing, mixing, and mastering.  When I reconfigured JACK to use my sound card as the interface the problem showed itself.  JACK wouldn't operate with my sound card at 44.1K and wouldn't operate with the GNX4 at 48K.  The GNX4 only supports 44.1K sample rates so I thought I was dead in the water.  After some more reading about the emu10k1 chipset that is at the heart of the Audigy I discovered that there were two different ways it can be used to record.  One way is with what I guess would be best termed the "primary" or "consumer" recording interface and one way that is directly through the chip's onboard 16-channel mixer.  The emu10k1 chipset operates natively at 48K and if recording is being done directly through the mixer that's the only rate it will operate at.  If, however, one uses the "primary" recording interface the card will do hardware-based on-the-fly resampling to 44.1k.  I had JACK set up to record directly from onboard mixer so it would fail if I tried to operate at 44.1k.  Reconfiguring JACK to use the other interface allowed me to switch to a 44.1k rate and continue without Ardour complaining about different sample rates and, if those complaints were ignored, playing the song back too fast and slightly pitch-shifted.  This might seem as though the problem were solved, and it was to a point, but I noticed after working this way for a little while that JACK's performance was definitely degraded by having the card operating at a non-native sample rate.  This performance degradation surfaced in the form of a markedly increased number of Xruns while working with the audio in Ardour.  I ultimately ended up solving this problem by finding the missing power connection and getting the breakout box for the Audigy working.  Once I had that fixed I decided to not waste any more time with it and simply re-recorded my drum, guitar, and bass tracks through the Audigy at it's native 48k sample rate.

In the next installment of series I'll talk more about Ardour, Rosegarden, and JAMin, with maybe a bit about Hydrogen thrown in as well.  Stay tuned.