Jesus Christ, man. I never said I was an audiophile. I said I've been enjoying LPs lately. Sure, I could delve into the inner workings of CDs, and in fact I have a pretty good intellectual understanding of how PCM audio works (though the SACD tech still baffles me). But I have a fairly complete intuitive understanding of how a vibrating needle converts to voltage, is amplified, and becomes sound waves at my speakers. I don't have to read engineering dissertations to understand it.
And as for your assertion that before processors the sound should be "accurate," don't forget that any recording engineer is using preamps, compressors, and often even EQ just in tracking the original sound. What does "accurate" mean in that context? The engineer is trying to get the solo clarinet, for instance, to sound present, full, and warm. There's yards of processing equipment invoked to do that, and often this comes well before the signal ever gets to its recording medium. Any good engineer knows how to use this stuff beautifully and transparently, but it's definitely a couple of steps from "accurate."
By the way, I'm a musician & recording artist. Recently I was working in a really nice studio, which has a beautiful, fully analog setup (2" tape, 16 or 24 track, 30ips), as well as a very high-end ProTools setup (24bit/192kHz, 64 channels, nice A-D/D-A converters), plus really really nice preamps, compressors, everything. We were doing everything analog. We decided we wanted to loop a section, so we bounced the track from 2" tape to ProTools, did the loop, and synced it to tape. We then did a blind A-B comparison of the original analog & the version that had been through ProTools (of course with the levels matched etc.). Listening to the all-analog version, there was a spacious sound, as if the singer were outside singing to the hills. As soon as the engineer switched to the ProTools version, it sounded like the singer had been placed in a box. I never would have noticed it alone, but with the A-B comparison it was obvious that some of the beauty had, in fact, been lost in the digital conversion, even with some of the highest grade digital equipment available.
I recognize that this is only marginally relevant to the discussion of LP vs. CD/MP3, since the resolution of an LP is far less than 2" tape, and the resolution of CD (and moreso MP3) is less than a high-end digital studio rig. But I did find it fascinating. Enough to get me to start listening to LPs again;)
Also incidentally, my stereo's preamp/power amp (an old NAD 7020, fairly well regarded during the heyday of analog gear) has two phono preamp inputs, one "pure" ("LAB IN", intended for precision & measuring), and one with a little (very little, by looking at the schematics) sweetening circuitry. I'd always used the LAB input until recently, when I decided to try the other one. I found the modified sound to be pleasanter to listen to, and I appreciated the subtle tweak offered by the engineers who designed it. That's what I was referring to when I said that engineers used to focus on beauty slightly more that accuracy. It was a subtle adjustment, easily bypassed, and I thought they made a good choice. A far cry from adding mega-bass to mask crappy equipment.
It is simple, in the way washing the dishes is simple. Yes there's maintenance & care involved, but there's also a sense that music is valuable & worth taking care of. How many of us have 40 gigs of music, and don't even know half of what's in there? I do. Digital music has become almost valueless in a sense, with the ease of perfect duplication & lack of physical media.
As for your other points, no matter what format you use, you still have to select what you listen to. And come on, how hard is it to pick up an LP and put it on the turntable? Takes about 5 seconds longer than finding an album in itunes. Plus you get to see & hold the cover art, & you might actually get involved in reading something--liner notes!
In general I feel more involved in the music, rather than just having it be a background activity. Maybe I'm just retro-chic, but at least I'm chic somehow, for once...
You read my mind. I was honestly just thinking exactly that. I've lately been enjoying listening to LPs largely for the simplicity of it. Not only is it a simple process, but I also (mostly) understand what's going on with the whole set of devices I'm using.
Also, many audio equipment manufacturers used to consider their craft an art, in that their goal was to provide a beautiful sound, rather than a necessarily "perfectly accurate" sound. Using equipment designed with that intention adds to my enjoyment of listening as well.
FYI, Camino isn't written entirely in Cocoa. The Gecko implementation, and therefore the actual webpage rendering, are in Carbon. This means that things like integrated spellchecking and anything in the Services menu don't work in webpage forms.
Not to knock it, Camino's my favorite browser. But I do consider that a minor shortcoming.
Oh, and someone mentioned the inconvenient tab-changing keyboard shortcuts. There are corresponding menu items, so you can just remap those keys using the Keyboard preference pane in System Preferences.
Well the US prices of the MacBooks Pro are the same as the 15" PowerBook ($1999) and 17" PB ($2499), respectively. So perhaps you could expect a similar pricing strategy in Europe.
However, it's worth looking at why. Yes, music predates records or videos, and musicians used to make all their money off performance. That used to be the only way to hear music! But since the appearance of radio, records, etc., the amount people go out to hear music has steadily dropped in comparison to album sales. Nowadays all the money is in product, not performance.
Nobody said they HAD to tinker with it. It's not like they're gonna hand the kid the computer without an os on it, plus a compiler, bootstrap, & source cd, and tell them to have fun building a kernel. It'll all be preinstalled-- OS, word processor, firefox, email program, (drivers;)... whatever they decide to include. Using an open source means a) the developers can modify whatever they need to to suit the hardware & intended purpose, and b) the more ambitious & interested kids have the ability to dissect things if they're inspired. This way these computers can serve two educational purposes: to learn about the world & use the vast stores of information on the internet, and to learn about computers.
I love OSX & all, and I also think using linux actually makes a lot of sense in this case.
And if you've got any questions about iLife '05, let me know. GarageBand's vocal effects are pretty cool, though I don't sound all that hot as a woman...
Ctrl-d works in any cocoa app for forward-delete. Many other emacs/bash editing keystrokes also work: ctrl-a/e for home/end; ctrl-k to clear to end of line; ctrl-y to paste what you just cut (which is separate from the OSX clipboard, by the way); ctrl-b/f/p/n for left/right/up/down, etc.
jesus, why the hell write ANOTHER search engine? there are plenty already deployed, and even some open source ones. why not get out of the house instead?
know who has violated more UN resolutions than any other country? Israel. Know whose second in line? the USA. Time to get busy enforcing, I hear Bush has weapons of mass destruction...
And it's a wireless repeater, which means I can finally sit on the porch on nice evenings and surf the web. (That last might not work until I get an Apple branded basestation, but I won't know for sure till I get one of these things.)
I don't know why this is so hard for folks to understand: It's not just a wireless repeater, it is a basestation.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a nitpick: shorten is a lossless compression scheme. The tech behind it & FLAC are quite similar.
Thanks.
Jesus Christ, man. I never said I was an audiophile. I said I've been enjoying LPs lately. Sure, I could delve into the inner workings of CDs, and in fact I have a pretty good intellectual understanding of how PCM audio works (though the SACD tech still baffles me). But I have a fairly complete intuitive understanding of how a vibrating needle converts to voltage, is amplified, and becomes sound waves at my speakers. I don't have to read engineering dissertations to understand it.
And as for your assertion that before processors the sound should be "accurate," don't forget that any recording engineer is using preamps, compressors, and often even EQ just in tracking the original sound. What does "accurate" mean in that context? The engineer is trying to get the solo clarinet, for instance, to sound present, full, and warm. There's yards of processing equipment invoked to do that, and often this comes well before the signal ever gets to its recording medium. Any good engineer knows how to use this stuff beautifully and transparently, but it's definitely a couple of steps from "accurate."
By the way, I'm a musician & recording artist. Recently I was working in a really nice studio, which has a beautiful, fully analog setup (2" tape, 16 or 24 track, 30ips), as well as a very high-end ProTools setup (24bit/192kHz, 64 channels, nice A-D/D-A converters), plus really really nice preamps, compressors, everything. We were doing everything analog. We decided we wanted to loop a section, so we bounced the track from 2" tape to ProTools, did the loop, and synced it to tape. We then did a blind A-B comparison of the original analog & the version that had been through ProTools (of course with the levels matched etc.). Listening to the all-analog version, there was a spacious sound, as if the singer were outside singing to the hills. As soon as the engineer switched to the ProTools version, it sounded like the singer had been placed in a box. I never would have noticed it alone, but with the A-B comparison it was obvious that some of the beauty had, in fact, been lost in the digital conversion, even with some of the highest grade digital equipment available.
I recognize that this is only marginally relevant to the discussion of LP vs. CD/MP3, since the resolution of an LP is far less than 2" tape, and the resolution of CD (and moreso MP3) is less than a high-end digital studio rig. But I did find it fascinating. Enough to get me to start listening to LPs again;)
Also incidentally, my stereo's preamp/power amp (an old NAD 7020, fairly well regarded during the heyday of analog gear) has two phono preamp inputs, one "pure" ("LAB IN", intended for precision & measuring), and one with a little (very little, by looking at the schematics) sweetening circuitry. I'd always used the LAB input until recently, when I decided to try the other one. I found the modified sound to be pleasanter to listen to, and I appreciated the subtle tweak offered by the engineers who designed it. That's what I was referring to when I said that engineers used to focus on beauty slightly more that accuracy. It was a subtle adjustment, easily bypassed, and I thought they made a good choice. A far cry from adding mega-bass to mask crappy equipment.
It is simple, in the way washing the dishes is simple. Yes there's maintenance & care involved, but there's also a sense that music is valuable & worth taking care of. How many of us have 40 gigs of music, and don't even know half of what's in there? I do. Digital music has become almost valueless in a sense, with the ease of perfect duplication & lack of physical media.
As for your other points, no matter what format you use, you still have to select what you listen to. And come on, how hard is it to pick up an LP and put it on the turntable? Takes about 5 seconds longer than finding an album in itunes. Plus you get to see & hold the cover art, & you might actually get involved in reading something--liner notes!
In general I feel more involved in the music, rather than just having it be a background activity. Maybe I'm just retro-chic, but at least I'm chic somehow, for once...
You read my mind. I was honestly just thinking exactly that. I've lately been enjoying listening to LPs largely for the simplicity of it. Not only is it a simple process, but I also (mostly) understand what's going on with the whole set of devices I'm using.
Also, many audio equipment manufacturers used to consider their craft an art, in that their goal was to provide a beautiful sound, rather than a necessarily "perfectly accurate" sound. Using equipment designed with that intention adds to my enjoyment of listening as well.
FYI, Camino isn't written entirely in Cocoa. The Gecko implementation, and therefore the actual webpage rendering, are in Carbon. This means that things like integrated spellchecking and anything in the Services menu don't work in webpage forms.
Not to knock it, Camino's my favorite browser. But I do consider that a minor shortcoming.
Oh, and someone mentioned the inconvenient tab-changing keyboard shortcuts. There are corresponding menu items, so you can just remap those keys using the Keyboard preference pane in System Preferences.
Well the US prices of the MacBooks Pro are the same as the 15" PowerBook ($1999) and 17" PB ($2499), respectively. So perhaps you could expect a similar pricing strategy in Europe.
Another poster has on the main gripe I had--"Musicians obtain the vast majority of their income from live performances" is completely false.
However, it's worth looking at why. Yes, music predates records or videos, and musicians used to make all their money off performance. That used to be the only way to hear music! But since the appearance of radio, records, etc., the amount people go out to hear music has steadily dropped in comparison to album sales. Nowadays all the money is in product, not performance.
And the previous one was Polish. It was 1978 when the-pope-is-Italian jokes were funny. Oh wait, no, longer than that...
That's redikulus. Why would Apple switch processors NOW, when they're just about to go bankrupt?
Nobody said they HAD to tinker with it. It's not like they're gonna hand the kid the computer without an os on it, plus a compiler, bootstrap, & source cd, and tell them to have fun building a kernel. It'll all be preinstalled-- OS, word processor, firefox, email program, (drivers;) ... whatever they decide to include. Using an open source means a) the developers can modify whatever they need to to suit the hardware & intended purpose, and b) the more ambitious & interested kids have the ability to dissect things if they're inspired. This way these computers can serve two educational purposes: to learn about the world & use the vast stores of information on the internet, and to learn about computers.
I love OSX & all, and I also think using linux actually makes a lot of sense in this case.
after consumer protest, Sony's stopping producing this stuff.
It does the same thing in 10.4.1. Not sure why it suddenly interferes with your Quicksilver.
No fair, mine's only 17megs! I want my extra features! AND my two dollars!
Yeah, Apple should never do anything someone else did first. Just proves they're not innovative.
I'm not a big fan of breaking either, but braking is pretty important to me...
Did you sound better as a man?
Um, i'd venture that only about 10% of the planet has a computer. To say nothing of an internet connection.
Ctrl-d works in any cocoa app for forward-delete. Many other emacs/bash editing keystrokes also work: ctrl-a/e for home/end; ctrl-k to clear to end of line; ctrl-y to paste what you just cut (which is separate from the OSX clipboard, by the way); ctrl-b/f/p/n for left/right/up/down, etc.
I wish my ATM card would work in my powerbook. Just think of all the free money!
seems obvious: they'll add 802.11, and let you stream music to your stereo through an airport express.
jesus, why the hell write ANOTHER search engine? there are plenty already deployed, and even some open source ones. why not get out of the house instead?
-1 troll, huh? i'm not trolling, just telling the truth.
know who has violated more UN resolutions than any other country? Israel. Know whose second in line? the USA. Time to get busy enforcing, I hear Bush has weapons of mass destruction...
I don't know why this is so hard for folks to understand: It's not just a wireless repeater, it is a basestation.