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Dell Colludes With RIAA, Disables Stereo Mix
RCTrucker7 writes with a link to a Maximum PC story, which begins: "Details of Dell's surreptitious collusion with RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) have emerged. Apparently, the computer manufacturer disabled the Stereo Mix/Mono Mix/Wave Out sound recording function on certain notebooks to assuage RIAA. The hardware functionality is being disabled without any prior notice and one blogger has even alleged that he was asked by Dell's customer support staff to [shell] out $99 if he desired the stereo mix option. Gateway and Pac Bell are the other two manufacturers to have bowed to RIAA at the expense of their customers' satisfaction and disabled stereo mix without warning." (There are some workarounds posted in the comments of the linked article.)
I know it's fun to use hearsay and draw wild conclusions which make a boogeyman out of various unpopular (some rightly so) parties, but is there anything here besides a bunch of conjecture and reporting of anecdote as fact?
The MPAA has decided that asking large computer manufacturers to disable any Video Out options, so pirates are thwarted.
My UID is prime... is yours?
Is this to prevent home grown artists from recording their own high quality material?
Gateway and Pac Bell are the other two manufacturers to have bowed to RIAA at the expense of their customers' satisfaction and disabled stereo mix without warning."
Is that the Packard Bell that so many of us loved to hate? Really, did they even reach the technological prowess of having stereo recording in their systems?
I really thought their systems pretty well disappeared back in the mid to late 90s, and were buried in a junkyard with rusted-out Yugos somewhere.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If this is true, what does the RIAA intend to gain from this? It won't stop or even discourage piracy. People recording streams or radio broadcasts do have easy access to simple tape recorders, and mass distribution pirates will simply use a different machine. All this does is annoy people and put a dent in Dell's sales. What is the point???
If Dell advertises "ACME sound chipset ABC123" but doesn't deliver all the features of that chipset, are they guilty of false advertising?
Just asking.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I wish Slashdot had a mechanism to mod news stories into oblivion... Especially ones like this, with no real facts, and no basis in reality...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
As it turns out, the editors are basing this on complete hearsay. Nobody knows if the RIAA were even involved in this.
Sorry to reply to myself, but I forgot to add that Dell is not the only one that distributes drivers that disable stereo mix. Lenovo has these problems too:
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=Special_Interest_General&thread.id=316&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
It's quite a popular thread, and Lenovo reps have posted too.
Is this to prevent home grown artists from recording their own high quality material?
Basically we are talking about Dell screwing up one driver to which people are ascribing various conspiracy theories. If you are actually read any of the blogs they are all just speculating and pointing to each other. Some of the more serious blogs outright say it is just random speculation, but that does not stop them from spreading the FUD. Something tells me if Dell made some secret deal, this would affect ALL of their computers, not just ones based on specific chipset. They wouldn't be selling alternative audiocards, and they would not be posting workarounds all over the place.I think that old variation of Occam's razor applies - "don't attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity." Its not the first driver Dell screwed up - its not going to be the last. This one just happened to somewhat fit into a conspiracy theory.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Just use the non-Dell drivers. If it's a Sigmatel, download a Sigmatel driver from somewhere else for the same chipset. Use Everest or something to report what chipset it actually is, and just go get someone else's driver. I've dived through the .INF files for some of these, and this kind of thing is something you can enable/disable directly within there, if you were so inclined and knew where to look (and had the time and patience to change it in about six different places in the same file). It's actually pretty easy to figure out if you're used to looking at config files, even if it really is a different beast.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
The only use I see is for a program like FRAPS, which records your screen and sound.
Exactly, and I for one am a person that uses that functionality to record stuff legally (voiced go lessons on the Kiseido Go Server to be exact). Heck, it is impossible to do it illegally as it falls under the same category as recording videos. Why should I be restricted from using my own computer as I wish.
What I am really afraid of however is how these people are colluding by using a mix of cryptography and laws to prevent "unauthorized" equipment from being able to interface with the system. Right now I can always get another more free piece of equipment, but what about in 10-15 years when you can't run the software on anything but authorized hardware, and trying to bypass that is a federal offense.
The above may be a nightmare to me, but for some rich people it is an utopian vision. I mean it when I say that I am afraid. Afraid because people tolerate minor restrictions being added all the time with just minor protests. It will become worse much worse and by the time people wake up it will be too late...again. Have you heard some of the people behind this. They are not acting as individuals but instead as lunatic powerhungry agents for powerful immoral organisations.
And I used immoral instead of amoral deliberatly. Earning money is an amoral stance, but the idea of earning money above anything else is simply immoral.
What's also funny is that typically the Stereo Mix functionality is implemented post-DAC. So when you're recording from stereo mix, the signal goes:
Output->DAC->ADC->Stereo Mix
So modulo electrical noise on the microphone and headphone jack, you get essentially the same result you'd get as if you went:
Output->DAC->Headphone Jack-> $6.00 Cable->Line In Jack->ADC->Line In
... that I encountered this issue just yesterday for the first time on a new Dell laptop (with SigmaTel sound) when I needed to record from the stereo mix -- for lawful uses, mind you.
I did some googling of my own and found other users who located a Dell driver (R171789) for XP that can be installed in Vista using the XP-SP2 compatibility mode option. I found this driver, installed it as prescribed, went into Vista's Recording Devices, told it to show and enable all disabled devices, and boom, there was my stereo mix. So far I have been recording without any issues.
So yeah, without question it sucks that I even had to go through that, but it took me 10 minutes of research and even less than that to enable and configure.
I hope this helps somebody.
This looks like they are going after people like me. I don't like buying CDs because the markup is absurd and I don't feel like contributing to that industry. When I like an artist, I will typically checkout things like their MySpace( or PureVolume if that is still going ) and listen to their songs. If I wanted to load that on to my computer or portable player, I simply fired up Audacity, selected the Mix as a source and recorded it as it played. Yes, I know that this will produce the lowest fidelity recording short of recording over a phone line, but for most of these songs I simply don't care. It is clear enough for my casual listening enjoyment.
Here is the kicker though; if I couldn't do that, I still would not buy the CD. On the contrary, being able to sample music like this brings me closer to caving in and buying a CD( but I typically only buy used CDs because I am more willing to pay the discounted, still marked up price when I know the profit goes to the small business, so suck on that secondary market RIAA ).
Yep it's ridiculous but true. For all you disbelievers, try recording "silence" on your Stereo Mix. Not so silent now, is it ?
I actually hadn't used this feature in ages, but I did a few weeks ago to rip a friend's tune on some lame-ass artist site... the MP3 download was "disabled" and the guy wasn't answering his phone, so I just recorded the streamed output from my onboard sound. Hello noise! I was seeing -48db peaks, maybe -58db average; it's almost inaudible but still not what I expected.
So just to be sure it wasn't the actual source file that was noisy, I did the same thing via my old M-Audio Audiophile 2496, using its "Monitor Mixer", and that one was perfectly clean. I would expect any card with an Envy24 chip to perform the same, as it does this virtual mixing at the digital stage, right on the chip.
There used to be a nice "virtual audio cable" freeware, but Google only turns up some $30 whoreware offering that's clogging up the index.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I submitted a story that didn't make it beyond blue in the firehose, but which was selected for one of the subsections. I submitted another which made to red, and it wasn't selected.
Firehose popularity may be something editors consider, but it is by no means the deciding factor. This story is on the front page because an editor thought it ought to be there.
Loose lips lose spit.
I just got a new T61p through the upgrade program at work, and spent literally hours a few nights ago trying to figure out how to re-enable this function.
I use it for one reason only: I call into telecons from our VOIP client, and record them so I can post them online internally as MP3s (along with meeting minutes) for those that miss the discussion. I dial in from my phone, dial in again from the laptop, hit record in Audacity, and have the whole thing recorded and done.
I'm really quite annoyed because this simple function won't prevent pirates from pirating audio. Clever folks will always figure out a workaround.
And yep, I'm an IBMer. I work in Power Systems development (Power 575, 595, etc., NOT at Lenovo). There's even one or two random posts on our intranet message boards mentioning that folks couldn't get this to work on the latest systems, but no one's posted a solution.
This is a common problem on Analog Devices SoundMax Digital HD audio chips. I was able to modify the INF file for the SoundMax driver to give me the GUI option to record the audio, but when I select that device, it records nothing, so obviously something else isn't quite correct.
At least I'm not the only one with these problems. Hopefully if enough people make a fuss, AD will re-enable this function.
~ Mike
Michael C. Hollinger
this MAY be only for the 'junk' cards like creative.
yes, you heard me. creative resamples (!) to 48k. always. even if the input is ALREADY at 48k!
historically, they have been evil like this.
and so, its not surprising that you get resampled junk when you put silence on the input.
also, while I'm on the subject, 'dolby digital LIVE' is also junk. it tried to convert regular stereo to '5.1' but it does some analog conversions (I'm pretty sure) where you should have an all digital chain. the fidelity is NOT there, its NOT good and should be avoided. if you have 2 channel audio, just LEAVE it as 2 channel and don't get caught in this marketing LIE about upsampling to 5.1 channel mode. you gain nothing good from that and the DD live chipsets are junk.
good ones: cmedia (cmi) 8738 series. better one: envy24 chipset. those do NOT resample and are bit-perfect.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
This is the one I use:
http://www.fridgesoft.de/downloads.php
"UPDATE: HarddiskOgg is now Open Source, the source code is available on SourceForge."
It says it's not for streaming audio, but it worked on the radio interview I mentioned above.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Unbeliever here, so just tried it. Perfect digital silence. [Relatively] old dell laptop (D505) with SigmaTel C-Major low end sound card.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
I'm eight and have ADD, you insensitive.. LOOK! A BUNNY!
Nah, that would make Slashdot outright unusable. I mean, half the headlines would be identical then. Can you imagine trying to find anything? ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Dell Allegedly Colludes with RIAA, Stereo Mix Disabled without Forewarning
Slashdot:
Dell Colludes With RIAA, Disables Stereo Mix
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
n. A secret agreement between two or more parties for a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose.
That doesn't really sound like what's going on here. Maybe Dell relinquished a little more choice in the matter than they should have, but Michael Dell isn't sitting behind a curtain wringing his hands over this one. Try "cooperates", it's much less FUD-filled.
Said options were disabled on my computer too. When I finally required its use, I got around to fixing it by going to SigmaTel's web site and acquiring updated drivers. The 'Stereo Mix' option then appeared and worked without issues.
OK, here is ALL of the evidence that the RIAA has been strongarming Dell into this behaviour:
(from http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/32286847/vista-audio-solution--wh.aspx)
"Many of you may have been as frustrated as myself by Micrsoft bowing to the RIAA
and pressuring the soundcard manufacturers to remove the "What You Hear" feature
from their drivers."
Oh, yeah, and there's the other article which points to it, on http://www.ripten.com/2008/07/07/bend-over-dude-youre-getting-a-dell/:
"Some believe that Dell, and several other computer manufacturers such as Gateway and Pac Bell, were pressured by the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) into disabling the stereo mix functionality." ...
"So that we are all clear, the evidence points to Dell appeasing the RIAA by disabling hardware, only to have their customer service reps turn around and offer a solution to their consumers that reverses the alteration they made in the first place at a premium price."
Yep, that's it. One guy claimed it with absolutely no evidence, and so it's apparently true. Another guy wilfully misinterpreted some random tech support guy's suggestion, and now we have a collusion between Dell and the RIAA. Wow, this is investigative reporting at its finest!
My Dell laptop at work didn't have a way of turning off the damned 'tap to click' feature of the touchpad. I spent ages looking for a downloadable driver to make that feature work. Based on the rules of logic illustrated above, this is clearly a sign of collusion between Dell and Logitech.
Honestly, aren't there enough examples of corporate bullshit that we don't have to invent false ones?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
How many people even use stereo mix? You record what's playing through your speakers. Any decent sound editing program is going to have some kind of mixer that will combine your recording with whatever you were playing along with.
My friend has a Dell, and for some reason you can't burn CDs with EAC on it. What we wind up doing when we're putting our LPs on CD is burn the .wav to CD as a data CD, then I take it home and burn it as a music CD. Oddly, his Dell will let you copy music CDs with no problem. So ironically, "fair use" is disabled while copyright infringement is not.
And unless by "speakers" you mean your guitar amp, if you are recording your speakers with a microphone you're doing it wrong. See an article I posted on K5 a few years ago, How to rip from vinyl or tape.
Dell is not the only one that distributes drivers that disable stereo mix. Lenovo has these problems too
So if Ford Crown Victorias explode when hit in the rear, it's OK for Chevy to make exploding cars? Your logic is quite faulty there.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest