ScottDanesi.com | Technology!

“Shit Breakcore”, New Album and The Story Behind it

Posted by Scott on March 31, 2024

Posted in: Events, Music. 3 comments

Hi Everyone! I am proud to share that I have released a new album on cassette called “Shit Breakcore”. This one is a bit special as it is not a traditional album, but a shit recording of a live performance I did back in 2005 alongside some of my closest friends and awesome headliners. Here is story on why it is special to me. Sit back, relax, and drink a coffee, this may be a long one… 🙂

The Venue

This performance took place on June 18th, 2005 in the Shawnee Cave Amphitheatre in Murphysboro, IL. The Event was called “Underground Sound – Midwest Freakfest” which was a weekend long camping event featuring more performers that I can recall. I was lucky enough to be put on the main stage of this event which was actually located inside the cave facing outward toward the dancefloor area. This place was huge, it even had a little lake and small river going through it. I put up a Google Earth satellite picture from 2005 with a few sections I wanted to highlight above. Civilian satellite imagery was not that great back then.

Here is the color legend for the picture above:
Yellow: Main entrance (only entrance into the venue, so it was guarded pretty well).
Blue: Main parking area.
Orange: Just some of the many camping site areas.
Red: The main stage inside of the cave.
Purple: Additional stages for more performers. There were a total of 9 different stages at this event. I believe the rest were scattered around in the forest around the property, but I do not remember the exact locations of all of these.

Above is a picture of the main stage of the Shawnee Cave Amphitheater. This particular picture was taken at a prior, and much smaller, event from 2003. For some reason, I do not have any pictures of this event. If you were there, please shoot me over some pictures and I will update this story. 🙂 I was lucky enough to have been on the staff and performance crew for 3 events at this location. It is absolutely a beautiful and special place.

Event Performers / Event Info

This event was put on by a really good friend of mine, who I unfortunately have lost contact with, Tom Foolery. Tom, if you are reading this, hit me up! This guy was one of the best party throwers of the time in my opinion. He brought in all the right people, secured the best spots, and made the party goers feel safe. Above is a copy of the actual 4-page party flyer that we were passing around all over the midwest. This is such an awesome time capsule. Tom was able to get some really huge performers that are still active today. Sorry for repeating this many times, but I am so grateful to have been asked to perform at this huge and iconic event. I am on the 3rd page in the top left quadrant as “DJ Scoto as Dr. Destructo”. I think I was toying with the idea of using the alias “Dr. Destructo” for my breakcore sets.

The Main Stage and Sound System

The main stage was set up with a massive sound system. I mean massive. It was a large semi truck long trailer full of subwoofers, uppers, and amps. The system was brought in from a really well known promoter from Minneapolis, MN. This sound system was larger than any concert I have ever been to at this point in my life. It does makes sense though, when you are outside, not near any residential areas, you want as much power as you can get.

As part of the staff/performance crew, we were able to get in early on Friday to set up camp and get ready to help get the show all ready to go. Our crew, which consisted of a bunch of my buddies and my brother, Kevin, set up camp in our favorite spot. This spot was stage right (or to the left of the main stage) up on a hill. It was such a good spot as you could see over the whole lower venue and had a great view of the main stage.

Since the headliners were not playing on the main stage until Saturday, the main sound system was not used on Friday night. My memory is fading a bit on this one, but I think it was a much smaller system used on the main stage Friday night and some of the DJs did perform on this system. It still sounded great. I was actually able to go to bed on Friday night at a decent time and slept right through the early morning sets.

The sound crew did not completely set up the main sound stage until Saturday morning. I was still sleeping at the time they finished setting this up. I was woken up by what I thought was an earthquake. The ground was shaking in a pretty violent way. This was the team doing a sound check on the main system. I am not sure what they were using to test, but I am pretty sure it was only the subwoofer banks being tested first. Once I realized what it was, I became so excited. This was going to be an awesome Saturday!

The Live Setup / Hardware

My hardware setup for this show included many hand built or modified synthesizers, mixers, effects processors, and circuit bent toys, many of which I still have in my possession today. The heart of the system was my shitty laptop handling a bunch of mission critical sequencing.

Synthesizers

The most prized of these “synthesizers” is my MIDI controlled Nintendo Entertainment System. I have had this NES for many many years and I used to play it a bunch as an NES, but after modifying it with a 1/4 inch output port and permanently installing a MIDINES cartridge into it, it is now a full time synthesizer. Don’t get the wrong idea here though, most of this hardware was shitty, noisy and unpredictable. I also had my custom circuit bent Speak and Read, which is still one of my most prized circuit bent toys. In fact, in 2023 I sent this toy off to one of the best circuit benders to get restored back to the way I had it. There were other small bent toys and a bent electronic piano synth that I sequenced as well. I was mostly using it to fill in some glitch sounds throughout the set. I had my Space Bass 303 (not circuit bent) hooked in as well to really add a bunch of low end to the set.

Laptop

The main control unit of this setup was my old shitty laptop running Ableton Live. I had a pretty junky audio and MIDI interface for it too. It worked, but the computer and interface had a bad ground loop and since the power there was noisy, it made it even worse, but in in a good way as you will see in the recording. This computer was barely powerful enough to do what I was asking it to do as well, I was right on the edge… The main issue with the computer setup was the MIDI lag that I had to make up for when live triggering. I will get into more details about that when I talk about the actual performance. In Ableton, I created a bunch of midi loops and some pre-recorded audio loops, so I was able to sample vocals and loops from some artists I liked to do some live remixing. These artists included Fear Factory, The Chemical Brothers, Eminem, Rush, and a few others. I was triggering these loops with my mouse, which was a horrible idea, which will make more sense later. I had grouped these loops in scenes that made sense, with duplicated loops so I could make somewhat transitions between segments. The data out to the midi gear was something I had to watch closely as I almost always had every instrument getting sent data all the time and used my main mixer to bring in and out these different parts. Most of the drum parts were being handled by loops that i created and rendered ahead of time as the computer did not have enough power to run a VST (virtual) drum machine. I did however use the 8-bit drum samples from the NES extensively all through this set and was even triggering them live with a MIDI intercept device that sat between the PC and the NES. I could intercept and modify incoming MIDI data from the computer before it hit the NES, it was really cool, and yes, janky and unpredictable as it would sometimes corrupt the data (which it did… a few times…). The coolest thing I could do with it was change the waveforms and offset the data in real time as the NES was running.

Mixer and Main Out Chain

For my main mixer, I used my pretty shitty Behringer 16 channel mixer. This thing was a clone of a mackie mixer, except made cheaper with cheaper parts and worse sound quality. I did not care though, this is breakcore. The master out chain had a Boss Heavy Metal guitar pedal on it that I was using as a compressor and safety limiter for the outgoing signal. It added to the overall distortion of the set as well, which sounded really cool.

The Performance

My 45 minute set was scheduled for 12:00pm Saturday on the main stage. This was the opening slot so it was going to attract a good amount of people as it would be loud and the first set of the day on the main stage, which would be running all day and into the night with awesome artists. After I got everything set up, we did a quick low volume sound check to make sure the sound guys were getting my signals. This worked perfectly, but the sound guy did tell me to back it down a bit as my signal from the Metal Zone pedal was pretty hot. This set was breakcore, so I am not sure he expected the signal to be so compressed and destroyed by the time it got to him.

The Start

I started the set out at a low intensity, you can hear the distortion, ground loops, and other interference noise coming from all the shit equipment I made. This quickly escalated into some pretty insane breakcore with screaming synths and distorted basslines and drums.

The Bass and Laptop

The set went pretty well, but I had one big problem. I could barely hear my headphones on my head as the sound system was so loud. This was amazing! The bass resonance was even distorting my vision, which lead to another awesome problem. I was having a tough time reading the screen of my laptop. Now, I do think there is a time and place for laptops to be on stage, but I have learned that a mouse is never a good way for me to interface with it. All it takes is one wrong click and you could launch a scene that makes no sense or worse, stop your MIDI clock. Luckily, none of this happened and I was able to get pretty good at dealing with it.

The Hardware Failures

During the set I had a few hardware failures that a normal person would probably never notice, but I am going to call them out so you can listen for them. One of the major failures is when the MIDI controlled NES locked on. This can happen when the MIDI data gets corrupted due to signal noise or the NES just giving up because I sent it something that it did not like. Either way, it was pretty funny as I had to hit the reset button on the NES just like you would have playing a game that you wanted to restart. The next failure was from the circuit bent Speak and Read. I figured this would happen as circuit bent toys really have a mind of their own. You will hear a few times where the toy locked on during a glitch sequence when I did not expect it to. It actually turned out pretty neat. The next hardware failure again was the NES. I was triggering some distorted kicks drum samples from the NES and the MIDI trigger got delayed by almost a half second, it was odd and I never really figured out why this happened. It could have been a conflict on the MIDI intercept device I was using, but no big deal there, still sounded good.

Reaction from the Crowd / End of the Set

At the beginning of my set, I looked up and noticed that people started gathering in front of the main stage to see what the hell I was even doing. Not much dancing was happening at this point as I am sure some of these people have never heard breakcore before, which was expected. It was nice to see my friends all there having a great time right off that bat though. It was not until about 10 minutes in when more and more people started gathering around and started dancing and having a good time. Let me remind you that this was 12:10pm in the afternoon, which was basically morning for everyone who stayed up late the night before partying. I was actually surprised to see a pretty large crowd assemble and seem to be enjoying it.

The End

I kept looking at my clock to make sure I was on track timewise during the set. I am really careful not to go over as it is pretty disrespectful in the party scene to do that. I wanted to also make sure the sound guys had enough time to get the next person ready in between artists. The last time I looked at the clock, I had about 5 minutes remaining before I had to stop. This was when I realized I had so much more content I wanted to share. So I did what any breakcore artist would do in this situation and just started layering all sorts of things on top of themselves and made a ton of noise! You will notice at the end of the set where it just starts to sound chaotic as I fly through a bunch of stuff. When I eventually got to the end of my time, I just left everything running I turned off all the MIDI hardware and used a bitcrusher on the master channel of the PC to smash the remaining pre-rendered audio loop down to 0 bits. For those that do not know what that means, it means nothing, I smashed it so much that the sound turned to nothing. The set when silent except for all the signal noise and dirty ground loop noise. This was also being amplified by the main compressor so it was worse than it was.

Final Reaction

Once the sound crushed to 0 bits, the venue went silent. I looked up, everyone was standing there waiting to see the next move, but nothing. They quickly realized the set was done and started clapping and yelling. It was the most amazing feeling and I had the biggest smile on my face. This feeling is something I cannot describe, and luckily nobody saw the tears in my eyes. It was very validating.

The Recording and Cassette Release

I wanted to make sure to record this performance, but I did not have a good way of capturing the master channel output with the computer, since I was not feeding the master out back into it. Also, the shitty laptop would struggle when recording and trying to sequence everything in time. This also massively added to the MIDI lag that I had already in the setup. So, the laptop was out. The only other option I could think of quickly was borrowing my friend DJ Kiddo’s mini disk player and recording on that with a 1/4 inch to headphone jack converter cable. This actually worked as the mixer I was using had 2 main outs. The only issue with that setup is that I had no way of knowing if the signal was too hot for the mini disk player, which it was. This resulted in a perfectly shitty, clipping, and generally noisy recording of the show.

Mastering the Recording

It was not until recently (2024) that I got the idea to take this shit recording and send it off to get mastered by a professional to remove the noise and do some general equalizing and fixing. This inspiration was driven from the overwhelmingly positive and surprising feedback I got from the people that bought my vinyl which was released the same year (2005). This limited edition vinyl had one of my original breakcore tracks on the second side.

I sent the recording to my mastering engineer to take a listen to see what needed to be done. I explained this whole story that you have just read to him before I sent it over. It was a few days later I get back a message from him saying that he was not going to master it. At first I thought it was just because it was too far gone, but I kept reading his response and long story short, he thought it was the perfect time capsule. He said it totally captures the moment as is and recommended I just send it to cassette manufacturing as is with a little bit of gain reduction, but that was it. I am so glad he recommended this.

Cassette Release

I made the decision to only release this live recording on cassette. This will not exist digitally, at least not from me in its digital form. I know this may sound strange, but I like the idea of people who have the cassette enjoying this recording on purpose. When you listen to a cassette, it is a conscious choice to do so. Also, another huge factor is that there are a ton of uncleared samples that will get me flagged, so there is that too….

Another cool thing is that Matt Andrews (mandraws.com) did the artwork for this release as well. If you are not familiar with Matt’s work, he did the art for the Total Nuclear Annihilation pinball machine along with many other new games now. He has also done a bunch of my album art over the years. Thank you Matt!

Conclusion

So I know I have been talking a bunch of shit about my shitty hardware and shitty recording, but this show was perfect. It was at the perfect time, it was at the perfect location and it was with the perfect people. If I could go back in time and do it again knowing what I know now, I would not change a thing. This set captured a moment in time perfectly and I hope you love it as much as I loved performing it.

If you happen to have some pictures from this show I would be grateful if you could send them to me. I cannot believe I did not take any with my personal camera. I can post them up on my website.

Also, I will leave commenting on below, if you were there and have stories or just want to share some feedback about the recording, please do so below. I would love to hear from you.

If you made it this far thank you and if you want to get one of these cassettes, thank you again. If I end up making any profit on selling these, I will absolutely dump it back into releasing a breakcore album. I might even use the alias Dr. Destructo finally. The cassettes of this recording are available at Pinball Life at the link below. Thank you all so much for reading my story and, as always, thank you for your support. <3 –Scott

Purchase the Cassette Here

If you are into this shit, the Cassette can be found at Pinball Life at the URL below!

https://www.pinballlife.com/scott-danesi-shit-breakcore-cassette-tape.html

EasyCap / Easier Cap (usbtv007) Drivers and Installation

Posted by Scott on January 27, 2024

Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

Hi Everyone,
This is going to be a short and sweet post here. I have a video capture device that is pretty old now, it is an EasyCAP S Video/Component video capture device. It looks like the picture below:

I recently tried to install it on my Windows 11 Studio PC to capture some old video equipment. However, to cut a long story short, I couldn’t find the driver for it. So, I embarked on a quest to find the right driver while avoiding viruses and malware. After an extensive search, I finally located the exact driver I needed. To benefit the community, I’ve decided to upload and host it here for future reference.

Installation instructions:

Download and extract the drivers from here. UTV007_Drivers.zip
Plug in the device and open Device Manager.
Locate “usbtv007” in the Device Manager.
Right-click on “usbtv007” and select “Update driver.”
Choose “Browse my computer for drivers” and navigate to the extracted files. Most likely, you will want to install the Windows 7 Drivers for 64-bit operating systems.
You’re done! Enjoy using your capture device, now recognized as “OEM Device.”

Total Nuclear Annihilation Virtual Pinball

Posted by Scott on May 13, 2023

Posted in: Arcade Posts, News, Total Nuclear Annihilation.

Congratulations to VPinWorkshop on the release of the virtual Total Nuclear Annihilation pinball machine! This game is a complete reproduction of TNA that can be played in VR, desktop, and virtual pinball machines. I provided VPinWorkshop the assets and they recreated authentic gameplay. Head over to link below to download. They put so much work into this game and I am excited for everyone to experience it!

https://vpuniverse.com/files/file/14359-total-nuclear-annihilation-spooky-2017-vpw/

Arcade Legend Official Soundtrack Now Available for Download

Posted by Scott on April 5, 2023

Posted in: Music, News.

Hi Everyone!

I am very excited to announce that I just posted up the Arcade Legend OST in my Discography. This was an awesome project, with an awesome team. If you have a VR headset and have not checked this game out yet, it is highly recommended.

More info about the album and game below:

The Arcade Legend Official Soundtrack was created for the amazing new VR game, “Arcade Legend”, available now on Meta Quest, coming in 2023 to Steam. This soundtrack features 6 all new songs and 6 remasters of previously released songs. For more information visit Arcade Legend’s official website or check out the game on the platforms below.

Arcade Legend on Meta Quest: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/4290234067753903/

Arcade Legend on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1490600/Arcade_Legend/

This album download contain both Lossless (FLAC) and MP3 versions of each track.

Tracklist:

Discovery (5:13)
Outrunner (5:29)
Arcade Legend (5:10)
Sentient Beings (4.36)
Silver Falls (4:29)
Steam Generator (4:23)
Bleeding Neon (5:10)
Dead Can Still Dance (6:22)
Total Nuclear Annihilation (4:33)
Turning Point (5:31)
Venerable (8:08)
Phosphor Trails (8:16)

Scott Danesi – Arcade Legend OST

The Arcade Legend Official Soundtrack was created for the amazing new VR game, “Arcade Legend”, available now on Meta Quest, coming in 2023 to Steam. This soundtrack features 6 all […]

NetSuite Costed BOM Revision Query for Average Costing Assemblies (SuiteQL)

Posted by Scott on March 22, 2023

Posted in: How To, NetSuite, Software. Leave a Comment

Hey Everyone,

I know this is not the most exciting post about new pinball stuff, but I just wanted to share this code with the world that I created to get around a huge limitation in Oracle NetSuite.

We recently upgraded our backend system to NetSuite Manufacturing and it has been really great so far. I am a huge data nerd as many of you know. The one major issue we have been having is trying to get a nice report of the Bill of Material (BOM) components within our Assemblies with the current and average costs. We use these reports to make sure that we are not under or overcharging for parts that we assemble in house. After looking around online and talking to support, it was clear there was no solution to show this properly. You can see what the last build price is, but that is not what we need. So I took it upon myself to write a direct SQL query into the database to show what we need. I feel that this is so valuable for the community that I wanted to post it up here as a starting point for others.

In order to run direct SQL in NetSuite, you will need to first install the free SuiteQL Query Tool from Tim Dietrich from the link below:

https://timdietrich.me/netsuite-suitescripts/suiteql-query-tool/

Once you install and configure this script within your NetSuite environment, you will need to copy the code below into the query window. Once you have that code ready to go, you will need to update 2 places in the code that reference the BOM Revision name. You must copy the BOM Revision name from your system exactly for this to work. Once the 2 spots are updated, you can hit run and enjoy the BOM analysis!

/********************************************************************************
Title:			Pinball Life NetSuite Assembly Cost Analysis SuiteQL Query

Created: 		2023-03-22 (Scott Danesi)

Description: 	Basic BOM Revision costing report used to show average cost 
				analysis on specific BOM Revisions in NetSuite.

Instructions:	Replace the 2 revision names in the code below to the
				exact revision name that you would like to run the report for.
				These revision names must be the full revision name.  If both
				revision locations are not replaced, the report will give
				incorrect results.
********************************************************************************/

SELECT
	t2.fullname as "assembly name",
	t2.displayName as "assembly description",
	bomRevision.name as "bom revision",
	item.itemId as "component Name",
	BomRevisionComponent.description as "description",
	BomRevisionComponent.bomQuantity as "quantity",
	to_char( item.cost, '$9,999.9999' ) as "cost",
	to_char( CASE WHEN item.averageCost = 0 THEN item.cost ELSE item.averageCost END, '$9,999.9999' ) as "average cost",
	to_char( BomRevisionComponent.bomQuantity * CASE WHEN item.averageCost = 0 THEN item.cost ELSE item.averageCost END, '$9,999.9999' ) as "avg cost total",
	to_char( CASE WHEN item.lastPurchasePrice = 0 THEN item.cost ELSE item.averageCost END, '$9,999.9999' ) as "last purchase price",
	to_char( BomRevisionComponent.bomQuantity * CASE WHEN item.lastPurchasePrice = 0 THEN item.cost ELSE item.averageCost END, '$9,999.9999' ) as "last purchase total",
	t1.altName  as "preferred vendor" 
FROM
	BomRevisionComponent
	LEFT JOIN item ON BomRevisionComponent.item = item.id
	LEFT JOIN bomRevision ON BomRevisionComponent.bomrevision = bomRevision.id
	LEFT JOIN
		(
			SELECT
				itemVendor.item,
				itemVendor.preferredVendor,
				itemVendor.vendor,
				Vendor.altname
			FROM
				itemVendor
				LEFT JOIN Vendor ON itemVendor.vendor = Vendor.id
			WHERE
				itemVendor.preferredVendor = 'T'
		) as t1
		ON t1.item = item.id
	LEFT JOIN 
		(
			SELECT
				item.fullName,
				item.displayName,
				item.id,
				bomRevision.name
			FROM
				item
				JOIN bomAssembly ON item.id = bomAssembly.assembly
				JOIN bom ON bomAssembly.billofmaterials = bom.id
				JOIN bomRevision ON bomRevision.billofmaterials = bom.id
		) as t2
		ON t2.name = bomRevision.name
WHERE bomRevision .name = '0199-0699_LEFT-BOM-REV-' 			/************ <--- Change this to the exact BOM Revision that you want to see. ******************/

UNION

SELECT
	NULL as "assembly name",
	NULL as "assembly description",
	NULL as "bom revision",
	NULL as "component name",
	'TOTAL COST' as "description",
	NULL  as "quantity",
	NULL  as "cost",
	NULL  as "average cost",
	to_char( SUM(BomRevisionComponent.bomQuantity * CASE WHEN item.averageCost = 0 THEN item.cost ELSE item.averageCost END), '$9,999.99' ) as "avg cost total",
	NULL as "last Purchase Price",
	to_char( SUM(BomRevisionComponent.bomQuantity * CASE WHEN item.lastPurchasePrice = 0 THEN item.cost ELSE item.averageCost END), '$9,999.99' ) as "last purchase total",
	NULL as "preferred vendor" 
FROM
	BomRevisionComponent
LEFT JOIN item ON BomRevisionComponent.item = item.id
LEFT JOIN bomRevision ON BomRevisionComponent.bomrevision = bomRevision.id
WHERE bomRevision .name = '0199-0699_LEFT-BOM-REV-'			/************ <--- Change this to the exact BOM Revision that you want to see. ******************/

Please keep in mind, this is the first revision of this code that I made, it is not the most efficient or the cleanest, but it is a good starting point if you need to see this data. I really hope this helps someone out there as much as it did for me. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any suggestions, or see any errors in my code. Enjoy!

Why Do Pinball/Game Companies Keep Their Licenses Secret During Development?

Posted by Scott on February 5, 2023

Posted in: Arcade Posts, Informative. Leave a Comment

This is an interesting question that I get asked from time to time and I realized I have a much longer answer than just “for FOMO”. So here is a nice blog entry about it. 🙂

If you are unaware, many different types of companies that develop products with officially licensed themes keep said licenses a secret during the development cycle for a number of reasons. This is obviously not limited to Pinball and Video Game companies. I am going to list the main reasons that I know about and have been exposed to below, but there are probably many others as well.

Theme, Licensor, and Competitive Edge

The licensee and licensor usually want to keep product development under wraps to get ahead of competing licenses. This also keeps any ideas/designs secret from other companies until the full reveal. Also, there are unfortunate things that could happen behind the scenes if a competing company found out about a theme. Sabotage can happen and licenses can be swept out from under you if you are not careful. For unlicensed themes, this can hurt the company because others could potentially replicate the theme or design elements.

FOMO / Hype and Stagnation

Yes, it is true, a company will want to manage hype around a product, and this is actually important to help drive sales and keep a professional appearance. If a company announced a theme that excites the community at the beginning of the development cycle of said game, this will generate a bunch of hype only have it die down and people lose interest and move on to something else. Development cycles can be pretty long for Pinball Machines and Video Games. It is way more advantageous to keep this under wraps until the product is just about to be released or fully revealed to the world. This also could expose the company to criticism from the outside due to the long time from announcement to product release. This could, and most likely will, hurt the companies reputation.

Avoiding Leaks

Leaks can be damaging to these companies. If a license is revealed too early, it can result in spoilers, reduced sales, and a loss of excitement for the game. Keeping licenses secret helps to prevent these types of leaks, but it is not fool proof as we all know. These leaks could also hurt the original IP as well as it could be for something like an unreleased movie or any other unreleased content. This could really get a company in hot water and could potentially get the license pulled.

The Community “What-Ifs”

This is an interesting one… If a company announced a theme early before or during development, the game community could start throwing ideas out left and right. These ideas cannot all make it into a machine otherwise it will look like a Homer Simpson car and loose all connection to the designer’s vision of what it should be. This complicates things in other ways too. “Hey, I came up with that mech! Where are my royalties, my feelings are hurt, fuck you X company”

Again, there are probably more reasons that I did not cover here, but these are just the ones that pop out to me as the most important. But as you can see, there is more to keeping these themes secret than just trying to control FOMO and hype. Have a great day everyone!

Properly Adjusting Your Amp Settings on TNA

Posted by Scott on January 22, 2023

Posted in: Arcade Posts, How To, Total Nuclear Annihilation.

I get this question pretty frequently, so I figured I would post a how to guide on getting the most out of the audio system on your Total Nuclear Annihilation pinball machine.

Do this at your own risk as this has the potential to damage your amp and/or speakers if set too high. But please do not do this unless your amp settings get totally out of whack.

Warning, this setup procedure is going to be loud, so warn the people around you.

Subwoofer Physical Adjustment (do this first):

You may notice some strange distortion coming from the subwoofer… These subwoofers are interference type speakers which means that upon loud use, the speaker cone extends beyond the mounting bracket plane. This will cause the cone to come in contact with the speaker grill and potentially the edge of the bottom of the cabinet. You can get a 10 inch speaker spacer online from various places that will make sure the speaker has enough space to move freely.

Sub Chamber Sealing:

A pinball machine makes a TERRIBLE subwoofer cabinet for a number of reasons, but here are a few. The main reason being that every subwoofer has a recommended cabinet volume specification. These pinball cabinets are MUCH MUCH larger than what the subwoofers call for. The next reason is that pinball cabinets are full of crap that can rattle around upon vibration from the subwoofer making terrible sounds. Another big reason is that pinball cabinets are basically the most leaky thing ever. Porting subwoofer cabinets is important, but having the sound leak out from ever little hole and crack is awful.

OK, so what do we do about this…. In TNA I created a Sub Chamber in the cabinet. This is basically a box that goes around the subwoofer that is pretty close to what the subwoofer wants for volume. This box idealistically will push all of the bass out the bottom of the cabinet. This is great, but unfortunately, it is not perfect in production. The production sub chambers leak a bit as they were not sealed with silicone sealant.

Easy fix though. While you are in there putting a spacer under your subwoofer, it is a great time to pick up some silicone sealant and seal up the inside of the box. I recommend pulling all the screws out from the bottom of the cabinet and removing the Sub Chamber completely. You can then squish this silicone sealant into every join on the inside of the chamber. Once you go to reassemble it, put a bead of silicone on the bottom side where the chamber attaches to the bottom of the cabinet. This will ensure a great seal and improve the sound of the subwoofer.

Adjusting the Amplifier:

Step 1: With the game on, take the backglass out and press the volume up or down button on the back of the LCD and bring the pre-amp volume down to 11. It will show on the screen. This is probably set high from the factory, but I found reducing this made the audio quality slightly better.
Step 2: Put the backglass back in.
Step 3: Turn every knob on your amp all the way down until it stops.
Step 4: Go to Music Test in the service menu and select reactor 3 by pressing the start button a few times.
Step 5: On the coin door, press the volume up button until it reaches 11.
Step 6: On the amp, turn the second knob from the left (sub crossover) up about 1/8 turn.
Step 7: On the amp, turn the treble just past half way up.
Step 8: On the amp turn the Bass knob up about 1/8 turn. Keep this low as this is controlling the bass output to the upper speakers and could damage them or the amp if set too high.

Here is where it is going to get loud…

Step 9: On the amp, turn up the sub volume very slowly until just before you hear a bit of distortion. This will be pretty loud.
Step 10: On the amp, turn up the Volume knob slowly until before you hear distortion or you feel that is the loudest you would ever have the machine. This is also the time where adjusting the treble up or down should be done.

Important note! If the amp cuts out during any of these last 2 steps, you went too high with the volume and/or Bass knob. Bring these back down so the amp does not cut out as this could damage it.

Step 11: On the coin door, turn down the volume back to a reasonable level and enjoy.

Again, please do this at your own risk. You can damage your amp and/or speakers messing with this stuff. I am not an expert audiophile or whatever it is called, I am just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous here. Don’t blame me or Spooky if you break something.

Using an external subwoofer:

If you just cannot get your subwoofer sounding awesome, the easiest thing to do is install an external sub. These are pretty affordable and I recommend using the Polk Audio PSW10. All you do is disconnect the amp output wires on the internal subwoofer and run a new set of wires down to the PSW10s Speaker Level Inputs. You can then do that amp adjustment procedure again without the internal sub hooked up.

Conclusion:

I hope this helps you getting your TNA to sound awesome. If you have any questions or find any errors or better ways of doing this, please contact me and let me know. Enjoy!

Final note: I put a few Amazon links in this blog post that are linked to the Danesi Designs Affiliate Program. I did this to hopefully help generate a little bit of passive income. Thank you everyone very much!

Total Nuclear Annihilation v1.5.0

Posted by Scott on October 5, 2022

Posted in: Arcade Posts, News, Software, Total Nuclear Annihilation.

It is here! v1.5.0 has finally arrived. This new version contains some exciting new stuff including a brand new Jukebox Mode, even more Scorbit integrations, and a Spinner Rip counter with dedicated high score table. This version and all future versions are fully compatible with all versions of the Total Nuclear Annihilation pinball machine.

Below is the full changlog for this release.

####################################################################################
v1.5.0 - 10/05/2022 - Scott Danesi

## Bugs Fixed ##
- Fixed issue with music resetting at the end of multiball when it was not necessary to restart the song
- Slight sound effect mix balancing
- Scorbit misc bug fixes
- Fixed bug where the game would not allow you to completely erase your name on the high score name entry screen

## Features Added / Modifications ##
- Added support for the upgraded core numeric display
- Lightshows updated to include new RGB LEDs in upgraded core display
- Jukebox mode added (hold both flippers for 5s in attract mode)
- Jukebox mode settings to enable/disable the mode (for operators, on by default)
- Jukebox mode settings to enable/disable beacon (off by default)
- Added new song for when reactor is started AND value is maxed out
- Spinner Rip Count added to LCD
- Spinner Rip Count high score category added with default of 30 (so please lube your spinners!!!)
- Scorbit handling completely restructured and now will attempt reconnects when the connection is lost
- Scorbit now reports bonus x and reactor temperature
####################################################################################

Click here to get the latest code!

And as always, please contact me if you find any issues with this release and I will address it as soon as I can. Thank you!

New Album, “A System of Parts” Now Available!

Posted by Scott on July 10, 2021

Posted in: Music, News. Leave a Comment

Hi Everyone! I know if has been a while, but I have finally polished and packed up my newest album! This album has been in the works for over 2 years now and is finally available right here and on Bandcamp.

I will be releasing this to all the streaming services in about a month and it will also be released as a limited edition cassette later this year. I am still trying to see if it is feasible to so a double vinyl release of this as well, but will keep you posted on that.

Special thanks goes out to Dan Kushner on this album for the use of his Vocals and Samples of his song “Bento Box” and also Matt Andrews for his amazing art package for this release.

Click here to check out the release!

As always, thank you so much,
Scott