I have pressed CDs from bands my high school friends were in, while they were in high school. It's not an expensive process... and doesn't at all require a strong deal with distributors...
As to what I would do with a CD once I rip it... rip it again, should my online backup of my music hard drive fail when my music hard drive invariably does. My once-ripped CD will still be in perfect condition.
My pressed CDs absolutely outlast my hard drives. I have CDs that still play bit-perfectly from the 1980s without a single scratch on them - CDs that I got when I was 3 and my family first got a CD player. I don't have many hard drives that have lasted 25 years.
And yes I can find my CDs. They're on a shelf in my music room (well, several shelves), organized by artist alphabetically, and then by order of release...
I can also find all of the FLAC files I generated from those CDs on my hard disk, well organized, etc.
It might be tedious to rip an entire colelction, but how often do you buy music? It's hardly tedious to rip a single album... you stick in the CD, and on most computers you launch your audio program and press "rip" or "import" - it grabs all of the necessary metadata from the net, and if you've chosen your software well, it'll even either automatically grab your album art for you, or be just one more click to grab the art for the full album.
What CD gets scratched if you're ripping it once to FLAC? It stays in a case...
CDs give you the possibility to convert to ANY format without quality loss, and ripping a CD to FLAC doesn't impede you at all in terms of further conversions.
Not if it was well mastered you can't. You definitely don't want to RECORD to 44,100/16-bit. But there's not much of a reason to move to something higher for finished mixes. In my experience as both a recording engineer and a lover and collector of music, higher quality audio formats (DVD-Audio, etc.) tend to be mixed with less overall dynamic range compression - but nothing that's stretching more than 100dB of dynamic range across the recording. Honestly, there's no reason you couldn't get just as good a sound out of 16-bit/44.1KHz CDs. And if you took the same recording project, never downsampled it, and mastered it using exactly the same settings... you would still be getting a product that has no dynamic range whatsoever from most mastering houses these days.
In the unlikelyhood that you really want only one song on a CD that isn't offered as a CD single at some point over the active promotion life of that CD, because that one track is really that good, and your musical tastes never change, and you'll never appreciate the fact that you have all those other tracks... then I guess you're screwed. Darn. Yes, I know that in North America, the CD single doesn't seem to have been a hugely popular concept. I have several CD singles from artists I like that originate in Europe however, and as a bonus, you get all that B-side material that comes with the CD single whether that be remixes, or even tracks that will never be on an album. Or you could just I dunno, skip the starbucks for a couple of days and buy the full album anyway.
Seriously, I'm not sure what's so complicated about this. It's not like CDs are that much more expensive than buying stuff electronically. Plus, you have a backup copy that's going to outlast whatever media you rip it onto anyway as long as you keep it physically safe. Plus you have the booklet that goes with it.
What are these better ways? Really. At 50GB per disc, my bluray collection is already larger than all of my local computer storage combined. A single season of television is larger than most bandwidth caps. There's not an ISP in my country that can offer a connection speed that could handle a continuous stream of BluRay qualtiy, and even if there was, this wouldn't help much when I'm on the move. As a pressed optical medium, if handled properly, it is likely that the media will last most of my lifetime.
So... what's this better way of moving it around?
Bandwidth capacity isn't free, but bandwidth usage nominally is. The problem with ISPs is that they are trying to solve the problem that they created by overselling capacity by putting arbitrary restrictions on usage. If they didn't oversell capacity, they wouldn't have this problem.
(Yes, I know people charge for bandwidth usage all over the place. The fact remains, it costs you the same amount of money to provide the gigabit link between your two computers no-matter what you do with that link. If you don't use it, it costs the same as if you saturate it 24/7... with the exception that yes, you MIGHT potentially wear out your equipment SLIGHTLY faster if you use it 24/7 - and you MIGHT be drawing a bit more power from a used router as compared to an unused router... but again - nominal costs for usage compared to capacity.)
How can you hold it like a book? It doesn't fold in the middle like a book... or maybe I just hold books weird... cos whenever I pick up a book, I hold it in the middle - thumb on the fold, with the book balancing and resting on the other fingers...the fact that it isn't flat gives me a good grip, while my second hand is completely free... I feel like any tablet, regardless of size, couldn't be held that way unless it was dual screen with a fold in the middle....
(Plus I'm not building a new computer, I'm doing a CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade. Everything else is fine at the moment - just because I'm upgrading doesn't mean buying new software... besides I'd have the software regardless...)
Not to mention that the AxeFX costs MORE than a computer upgrade... and I have my eye on a few microphones first... (and I'm not a guitar player, so for the most part the AxeFX wouldn't be a day-to-day item for me anyway)
AxeFX is great... for guitar...
As I don't exclusively deal with rock music, and even when I do, I tend to just use analog gear, it actually wouldn't help much.
It's certainly not going to help me record more tracks at a lower latency, or run bus reverbs more efficiently, or manage my vocal processing (I'm talking multi-stage compression and EQ, not tuning) faster, or help with the sample libraries that are more CPU intensive than disk intesnsive (ie, using convolution reverb to provide more control over 'mic distance' rather than actual reverb)
The AxeFX pro is definitely on my list of things to acquire eventually... but it's not even close to the top of the list, and my studio computer as is, is still a Pentium 4. It's an 840EE and it can still hold it's own pretty well, but it needs an upgrade, and given my upgrade cycle, it makes sense to go for the top of the line in terms of pro-audio processing ability every 5 years or so, because a) I can affoard to, and b) about halfway through the cycle, I'll be pretty close to pushing it to the max, but I'll have a stable system that I know works, which is more important than constantly upgrading at a cheaper price point.
Texting creates a message that can be read at any time, with your phone at a distance, without interrupting your ability to listen to what is going on, with a length limit that forces people (generally speaking) to be rather quick in their communication. Therefore it has a distinct benefit over say, someone leaving you a voice message. It is also, for some things, more precise than a voice message - for instance "Call me at my office, 555-7983" - is quick to read, understand, and the important information (the actual phone number) is clear and precisely communicated - no worry about having to say it three times to make sure that they get the number.
So to compare SMS to voice communication is not necessarily 1:1, or even A>B. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
I have limited data, but unlimited texts... so if anything, a large amount of SMS data would cost me near nothing...
Is there any highish-latency browser that can use a stream of SMS texts for data? Cos that would be awesome...
1) Download OS upgrade for device from any carrier.
2) Install the downloaded package.
3) Delete Vendor.xml from the directory it was installed to.
4) Install upgrade.
As long as ANY vendor has released an upgrade, or an upgrade has leaked, it is that simple to install on any Blackberry. You do NOT have to wait for YOUR carrier. I was running OS5 on my 9000 a year and a half before my Carrier offered an upgrade, and my carrier still doesn't offer OS6 for my 9700 that I've been running since the fall. Upgrading was still free, and involved doing nothing special on my device whatsover. Deleting a single XML file may be unsupported, but it's not even jailbreaking.
I do audio recording. This processor, especially in a heavily threaded operation like running multiple plugins on multiple tracks of audio is absolutely aamzing. I'm already looking into upgrading my stuidio computer to use one of these.
It was a pretty ridiculous mess for a while - for instance, I had the Complete U2 pack - and even though for the LONGEST time, all of the components of that pack were avaliable for upgrade, the U2 pack as is was not... which was a gigantic portion of my audio library. Of course by then, I had stripped the DRM off of most of my files... so for me the upgrades were much more about the increase in audio quality than stripping DRM.
Every Blackberry I've ever owned has been able to upgrade to at least one full version above what it was shipped with... and all of the upgrades are free...
You had to pay an upgrade fee, yes, but every track sold NOW has no DRM. And there are plenty of tools which will remove that legacy DRM for you on your old files, if you so desire. Those files were also 128kpbs AAC, now all files are 256kpbs AAC... so they sound better too. So the upgrade fee isn't really just for removing DRM, you're also getting a better quality file with that no DRM. Still, early adopters got bit, and people who bought CDs didn't, and are still better off.
And Apple, not paying dividends, has a stock value based purely on market speculation. Therefore it's pretty much BS. I'm not sure if Microsoft pays dividends or not, but if they don't at all, then again, pretty much BS. Then again, in general, the stock market is pretty much all BS these days. In no way does the market cap of a company reflect how well they do UI research, or development, or anything really besides how well they "market themselves" to traders, investment bankers, and to an extent, sheeple.
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In my country, iTunes Plus is still "the new standard on iTunes" and refers to 256kbps AAC, not ALAC audio files - has this changed in the States?
I have pressed CDs from bands my high school friends were in, while they were in high school. It's not an expensive process... and doesn't at all require a strong deal with distributors...
As to what I would do with a CD once I rip it... rip it again, should my online backup of my music hard drive fail when my music hard drive invariably does. My once-ripped CD will still be in perfect condition.
Bahahahaha... Now I kind of wish I hadn't posted just so I could mod this funny :) You made my day good sir.
My pressed CDs absolutely outlast my hard drives. I have CDs that still play bit-perfectly from the 1980s without a single scratch on them - CDs that I got when I was 3 and my family first got a CD player. I don't have many hard drives that have lasted 25 years. And yes I can find my CDs. They're on a shelf in my music room (well, several shelves), organized by artist alphabetically, and then by order of release... I can also find all of the FLAC files I generated from those CDs on my hard disk, well organized, etc.
It might be tedious to rip an entire colelction, but how often do you buy music? It's hardly tedious to rip a single album... you stick in the CD, and on most computers you launch your audio program and press "rip" or "import" - it grabs all of the necessary metadata from the net, and if you've chosen your software well, it'll even either automatically grab your album art for you, or be just one more click to grab the art for the full album.
What CD gets scratched if you're ripping it once to FLAC? It stays in a case...
CDs give you the possibility to convert to ANY format without quality loss, and ripping a CD to FLAC doesn't impede you at all in terms of further conversions.
Not if it was well mastered you can't. You definitely don't want to RECORD to 44,100/16-bit. But there's not much of a reason to move to something higher for finished mixes. In my experience as both a recording engineer and a lover and collector of music, higher quality audio formats (DVD-Audio, etc.) tend to be mixed with less overall dynamic range compression - but nothing that's stretching more than 100dB of dynamic range across the recording. Honestly, there's no reason you couldn't get just as good a sound out of 16-bit/44.1KHz CDs. And if you took the same recording project, never downsampled it, and mastered it using exactly the same settings... you would still be getting a product that has no dynamic range whatsoever from most mastering houses these days.
In the unlikelyhood that you really want only one song on a CD that isn't offered as a CD single at some point over the active promotion life of that CD, because that one track is really that good, and your musical tastes never change, and you'll never appreciate the fact that you have all those other tracks... then I guess you're screwed. Darn. Yes, I know that in North America, the CD single doesn't seem to have been a hugely popular concept. I have several CD singles from artists I like that originate in Europe however, and as a bonus, you get all that B-side material that comes with the CD single whether that be remixes, or even tracks that will never be on an album. Or you could just I dunno, skip the starbucks for a couple of days and buy the full album anyway.
Seriously, I'm not sure what's so complicated about this. It's not like CDs are that much more expensive than buying stuff electronically. Plus, you have a backup copy that's going to outlast whatever media you rip it onto anyway as long as you keep it physically safe. Plus you have the booklet that goes with it.
What are these better ways? Really. At 50GB per disc, my bluray collection is already larger than all of my local computer storage combined. A single season of television is larger than most bandwidth caps. There's not an ISP in my country that can offer a connection speed that could handle a continuous stream of BluRay qualtiy, and even if there was, this wouldn't help much when I'm on the move. As a pressed optical medium, if handled properly, it is likely that the media will last most of my lifetime. So... what's this better way of moving it around?
Except that you don't get a macbook pro, you get a macbook air...
I'm actually curious as to what you mean by the fonts looking blurry? They look the same to me as in any other application...
Bandwidth capacity isn't free, but bandwidth usage nominally is. The problem with ISPs is that they are trying to solve the problem that they created by overselling capacity by putting arbitrary restrictions on usage. If they didn't oversell capacity, they wouldn't have this problem. (Yes, I know people charge for bandwidth usage all over the place. The fact remains, it costs you the same amount of money to provide the gigabit link between your two computers no-matter what you do with that link. If you don't use it, it costs the same as if you saturate it 24/7... with the exception that yes, you MIGHT potentially wear out your equipment SLIGHTLY faster if you use it 24/7 - and you MIGHT be drawing a bit more power from a used router as compared to an unused router... but again - nominal costs for usage compared to capacity.)
How can you hold it like a book? It doesn't fold in the middle like a book... or maybe I just hold books weird... cos whenever I pick up a book, I hold it in the middle - thumb on the fold, with the book balancing and resting on the other fingers...the fact that it isn't flat gives me a good grip, while my second hand is completely free... I feel like any tablet, regardless of size, couldn't be held that way unless it was dual screen with a fold in the middle....
(Plus I'm not building a new computer, I'm doing a CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade. Everything else is fine at the moment - just because I'm upgrading doesn't mean buying new software... besides I'd have the software regardless...) Not to mention that the AxeFX costs MORE than a computer upgrade... and I have my eye on a few microphones first... (and I'm not a guitar player, so for the most part the AxeFX wouldn't be a day-to-day item for me anyway)
AxeFX is great... for guitar... As I don't exclusively deal with rock music, and even when I do, I tend to just use analog gear, it actually wouldn't help much. It's certainly not going to help me record more tracks at a lower latency, or run bus reverbs more efficiently, or manage my vocal processing (I'm talking multi-stage compression and EQ, not tuning) faster, or help with the sample libraries that are more CPU intensive than disk intesnsive (ie, using convolution reverb to provide more control over 'mic distance' rather than actual reverb) The AxeFX pro is definitely on my list of things to acquire eventually... but it's not even close to the top of the list, and my studio computer as is, is still a Pentium 4. It's an 840EE and it can still hold it's own pretty well, but it needs an upgrade, and given my upgrade cycle, it makes sense to go for the top of the line in terms of pro-audio processing ability every 5 years or so, because a) I can affoard to, and b) about halfway through the cycle, I'll be pretty close to pushing it to the max, but I'll have a stable system that I know works, which is more important than constantly upgrading at a cheaper price point.
Texting creates a message that can be read at any time, with your phone at a distance, without interrupting your ability to listen to what is going on, with a length limit that forces people (generally speaking) to be rather quick in their communication. Therefore it has a distinct benefit over say, someone leaving you a voice message. It is also, for some things, more precise than a voice message - for instance "Call me at my office, 555-7983" - is quick to read, understand, and the important information (the actual phone number) is clear and precisely communicated - no worry about having to say it three times to make sure that they get the number.
So to compare SMS to voice communication is not necessarily 1:1, or even A>B. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
I have limited data, but unlimited texts... so if anything, a large amount of SMS data would cost me near nothing... Is there any highish-latency browser that can use a stream of SMS texts for data? Cos that would be awesome...
iOS 4 was the first free upgrade. You had to pay for previous upgrades.
RIM also has a slower release cycle so your device doesn't become obsolete nearly as quickly... but whatever.
1) Download OS upgrade for device from any carrier.
2) Install the downloaded package.
3) Delete Vendor.xml from the directory it was installed to.
4) Install upgrade.
As long as ANY vendor has released an upgrade, or an upgrade has leaked, it is that simple to install on any Blackberry. You do NOT have to wait for YOUR carrier. I was running OS5 on my 9000 a year and a half before my Carrier offered an upgrade, and my carrier still doesn't offer OS6 for my 9700 that I've been running since the fall. Upgrading was still free, and involved doing nothing special on my device whatsover. Deleting a single XML file may be unsupported, but it's not even jailbreaking.
And not everybody is so selfish as to assume that low to no taxation is the best direction to be heading towards.
I do audio recording. This processor, especially in a heavily threaded operation like running multiple plugins on multiple tracks of audio is absolutely aamzing. I'm already looking into upgrading my stuidio computer to use one of these.
It was a pretty ridiculous mess for a while - for instance, I had the Complete U2 pack - and even though for the LONGEST time, all of the components of that pack were avaliable for upgrade, the U2 pack as is was not... which was a gigantic portion of my audio library. Of course by then, I had stripped the DRM off of most of my files... so for me the upgrades were much more about the increase in audio quality than stripping DRM.
Every Blackberry I've ever owned has been able to upgrade to at least one full version above what it was shipped with... and all of the upgrades are free...
You had to pay an upgrade fee, yes, but every track sold NOW has no DRM. And there are plenty of tools which will remove that legacy DRM for you on your old files, if you so desire. Those files were also 128kpbs AAC, now all files are 256kpbs AAC... so they sound better too. So the upgrade fee isn't really just for removing DRM, you're also getting a better quality file with that no DRM. Still, early adopters got bit, and people who bought CDs didn't, and are still better off.
And Apple, not paying dividends, has a stock value based purely on market speculation. Therefore it's pretty much BS. I'm not sure if Microsoft pays dividends or not, but if they don't at all, then again, pretty much BS. Then again, in general, the stock market is pretty much all BS these days. In no way does the market cap of a company reflect how well they do UI research, or development, or anything really besides how well they "market themselves" to traders, investment bankers, and to an extent, sheeple.