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Aural Heaven -- iPod And Analog
Ant writes This Wired News article says there is aural magic in the combination of the very old with the very new: iPod through an old radio or tube-driven amplifier gives it a special warmth and atmosphere. '50-year-old Takeyuki Ishii insists the antique equipment creates an atmosphere that has been forgotten. The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed.'"
"The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed."
Considering the heat put out. That's not an unexpected result. Throw in a big meal.
... I just finished watching a _movie_ entitled Aural Heaven.
Movie's tagline: If you're bored with the rear, try it in the ear.
I thought that was my Powerbook? :-)
Click HERE
iTubes?
I dream in binary.
"The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed."
So, one can safely assume Mr. Ishii is not a fan of like say Slipknot?
- Victorian telephone (wireless version)
- Mac G5 embedded in an IBM S/36 case (to give that authentic Computer feel)
- email, delivered by the postman
- the LowCost cruise liner ($25 across the Atlantic)
- not rose-coloured glasses, but B&W glasses... gives you that good ol' monochrome feeling
- the e-Quill, looks like a quill, writes like a quill, drops ink like a quill, but runs Windows XP for Quills
- the iQuill (similar, but stores 150 hours of music)
- ye old Coffee Shoppe: double espresso machiatto served in antique copper cups, by surly wenches
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
So you are saying that an mp3 on an ipod played via FM out of my old dad's radio sounds better than the ipod on it's own. Or maybe you are just trying to sell old radios?
At the rate IBM is currently (not) making PowerPC 970 processors, Apple may just have to switch to tubes to power their machines.
(Don't think it'll be a good quarter for us shareholders, though the sharemarket yet doesn't seem to have noticed Apple can't supply a G5 Dual 2.5 / iMac / XServe for love or money.)
in oral heaven. It's called....
:)
oh, _aural_ heaven. Nope, don't know anything about that.
Except that CDs sound better when coated with a green highlighter.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
So hook up was to DAT -> pre-amp -> giant head-enclosing headphones. The DAT player was about the size of a harddrive and had to be kept in their backpack. The pre-amp was size of a thick, hardcover book and had to be held since the volume control was there. And these guys walked all over campus with this setup.
I always tried to avoid them whenever they were listening to music. Which wasn't hard since I only had to stay out of visual range.
I hope none of your sales/marketing people overheard this conversation, otherwise you'd be fired in no time...
Vacuum tubes do give a warmer sound. As, to a lesser extent, do the pink and gold mini-iPods.
You can do the same change to the sound if you feed it through an old shoebox that has "Vacuum Tubes" written on it with a Sharpie marker. Just don't tell the listener that there is nothing in the box :-)
I think James Randi http://www.randi.org/ is also skeptical of 'golden-eared' audio nuts. In fact, he has a million dollar prize for anyone who can tell the difference in sound quality between super expensive speaker wires and cheap crap from the hardware store.
And BTW, did you know that you can improve the sound of your mp3s by running the files through gzip/gunzip? However bzip2 seems to make the sound worse, probably because it compresses more.
And always keep your files on prime number tracks of your hard disk (i.e. track 2, track 3, track 5, track 7 etc.) to get the best sound!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Seriously. Listen to some Myles Davis or Gatemouth Brown through an old RCA tabletop being fed a signal from an old single ended AM modulator/exciter stage (ie "three tube transmitter"). It's been so long that AM has been out of favor very few realize nowdays how very good it can sound with "honest" frequency response up into the top octave... if you have a decent AM radio.
both can be subjective.
....translating....
:-)
special warmth and atmosphere
fuzzy noise, crackles and scratchings
I just had an image of an ipod with built in turntable and mini 3" high resolution records
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Cue the audiophile wars.
/. editors.
The only thing worse than an Apple/Linux vs. MS zealot discussion (a good thing IMHO) is an audiophile thread. They make beligerent Microsoft hating uber-geeks look like mongoloids when they start going at it. I swear, if audiophiles were allowed to talk in person, someone would lose an arm over whether ultra high sample rate digital is better than analog, or whether vacuum tubes should be used in amplifiers or whatever...damn, I have already read too much.
Please...Spare me oh great
Sometimes I think that they throw certain stories up on the site on purpose, just to get a rise out of some people and and to get everyone else to come and watch the train wreck.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
If someone could play some tunes through their Ipod on an old radio, record it for me, and send over the MP3's, that would be awesome!
Thanks in advance!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Yea...that doesn't even make sense. They ought to be doing earplug tests.
Eh? Eh? Am I right or what people?
Eh?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
analog baby.
Yeah... like my tube preamp really appeals to my soft, fluffy, feminine side and empathised with me when my dog got run over by my ex-girlfriend... my solid state amp merely told me to get on with life or hang myself. There's no "emotion" in either of these things just different filtering characteristics... SSSHHHEEESSSHH!!!
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Have a group of 100 people listen to something played on tubes then on modern equipment.
It's been done before. All 100 of them agreed that Britney Spears can't sing.
one might come close to nirvana by howing to ones self or banging on a hollow log with a stick.
Personally, I find the sounds which emanate from a well and truly squeezed cat to be the most refreshing.
Thank you, God, for giving me ears of clay :)
There's a whole world of "swapping fidelity for secondary emotional enhancement" we could go for.
I just bundle my iPod in a little cozy for warmth! Take a look here at 3 seconds of fame for my iPod!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Man, that's an awful lot of trouble to go though just to play "Crazy Train".
He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. -- The Sphinx, Mystery Men
Something old (tubes), something new (iPod), something "borrowed" (music) ... now we just need something blue.
It's even better if you draw a line around your iPod with a green marker pen.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
This new-fangled vinyl will never catch on. Wax cylinders are where it's at! They sound so much better... mind you, the original scratch on tinfoil wrapped around a bar was better than anything, but the limited choice of recordings (just "Mary had a little lamb", which gets kinda old after the 200th play) mean that wax is still the way to go for variety AND quality.