All this talk of buying the odd song off an album is ok, but I'm not into current pop. I want whole albums. And I'm a completist. And I'm an audiophile (for want of a better word) and I don't want compressed crap.
The fact is that they are over priced. Music has been heavily devalued by radio and second hand stores (a second hand CD is practically as good as a new one, unlike vinyl records). The fact that the current price of CDs is held up by price fixing.
Bose sucks. Fact. 85db sensitivity? Now that really sucks. You're probably turning less than 1% of your amplifier power into sound. 103db and you're getting somewhere! (My speakers will go as loud on 1 watt as yours do on 100, with less distortion. Fact)
Now why does bose suck? Because they use massive resonance to make bass (which is the cheap and crap way of doing it) instead of more accurate methods (like real engineering - large speakers, large real magnets etc.)
Bose engineer in boom and ting. Not fun to listen too.
Heard any Quad electrostatics recently? Now there's some tonal accuracy for you. They don't go loud, but they do do quality. Or can I ask you what speakers are used to monitor classical recordings (or now soundtracks at Lucasfilm) - B&W - that's real engineering and innovation for you. Can you tell my why my 1960s loudspeakers sound better than any modern Bose rubbish?
Bose PA speakers are about getting the loudest bassiest sound in the smallest package. They don't manufacture for quality of reproduction.
Queen - none Sisters of Mercy - One partial album Tangerine Dream - one and a half albums (out of how many?) Fields of the Nephilim - none The Beatles - none Jean Michel Jarre - none Tori Amos - less than half of her songs orbital - one partial album Future Sound of London - none KLF - none Pet Shop Boys - 5 or 6 partial albums Joni Mitchel - 3 songs..... Alan Parsons - 3 albums + a few partials Pink Floyd - a few albums
The real price is about 10 US cents per song. At a dollar US a song, it's probably cheaper (and certainly better value) to buy a CD at the store.
Apple's really dropped the ball with this one. Why just deal with the majors in the RIAA? Why not use the same system to allow anyone - independants, individual musicians to set up their own store with the system, and charge whatever they feel the music is worth??? (and hopefully a more realistic number than 99cents!)
I buy an album, but both myself and my wife get to listen to it. 2 people - a million people - what's the difference? If 2 people is moral, why not 4 (my parents listen too) or 7 (my wife's parents join in) or my brother and his family (10). Where and why does it stop being moral??
Or are you saying that my wife should by her own copy?
People create a society that allows artists to produce non productive work because they enjoy doing so.
In ancient times everyone had to work - productive food gathering work, or they died.
Music is a nice luxury, but if it wasn't for the hard working members of society making food and houses, there would be no room for the luxury of a musical career.
I go around internet forums helping people with coding, video editing etc. I do this because I enjoy it, not for any payment. I have a job that pays me well - I don't need more money. I reckon musicians and artists are the same - they do it primarily becuase they enjoy it.
And sharing music detracts nothing from a musician. You're logical analogies are false. Sharing music is not comunism. The musicians themselves attach either a zero or fractional value to their music. They do it. Not me - not you. Record companies attach a very high value to music. Why the difference??
Artists are hurting themselves by signing to the RIAA record companies.
What is being said to musicians is "adapt or die"
What is being said is that you're giving away your music for free on the radio - what's the difference when someone shares it for free? None at all. If they don't want publicity then they can stop giving away their music.
Copying IP isn't theft. Sharing IP is just that - sharing. Just like modern musicians learn from the greats, like Bach and the Beatles.
Musicians are part of society and they use society for inspiration, themes, sounds etc. Nobody is suggesting that someone should be allowed to sell their music and take money for it - not giving it back to the artist ( the RIAA already have the monopoly on that).
Artists freely give away their music anyway. They give it away on the radio, on TV adverts etc. Why shouldn't people who've bought their music share it with anyone they so choose? They can't have it both ways - either music isn't free and every piece of music heard should be payed for, and when I buy a new album I should be getting the 4 ears licence so that my wife can listen too - or music is free because they give it away free on the radio and when I buy a CD I can listen to it as often I want, with whoever I want to share it with, and copy it for personal non money making uses etc. And even lending it to friends, or selling it or buying a second hand CD etc. Mr Music - which way do you want it.
I suggest you choose the second option, because if you choose option 1 - there will be no more music. Who'd want to even think of listening to music under those conditions?
And while you're on - what about Canada, where you have the right to borrow a CD and copy it.
What you end up doing is the object oriented structure and GUI in Cocoa, and any number crunching in plain old boring C. You get speed, ease of coding and reliability this way - it's great.
It seems that artists should be resigned to the fact that they're already giving away music for free.
Free as in the only way to advertise music is to allow people to hear it, and traditionally radio has been the free to listen media of choice. Top of the Pops and MTV work too, but to the end listener it's all just free to listen music.
I'm sure that they way it all works is that effectively the artist pays to have their music played on the radio. I'd serverely doubt that the music industry would advertise music and not charge it back to the artist.
If they're resigned to giving away their music for free to advertise it - why not just give it away free by seeding a P2P network?? If the musician had to put up their own server for listeners to download music then that could be quite expensive. Then all they need is a simple e-commerce site for their fans to buy the CD. When they buy the CD they're not really paying for the music (which is free) and only a small part of the money goes to pay the hard costs - the rest is basically a bargain with the musician - If I pay for your CD then you'll make more great music, and if I like that then I'll buy it too and continue the cycle.
So NTSC DVD's are at a 720 * 480 resolution. Full HD is 1920 * 1080 - that's a 6 times greater number of pixels.
To encode a decent movie at really good quality takes more than one layer of a DVD, so that's greater than 4.7GB of data.
The Terminator Windows file is said to be 3GB in size.
For it to be the same quality as the movie, which is going to be at least 6GB on the DVD, the new codec has to give 12 times the efficiency of the existing MPEG 2 codec.
The current US "anti-terrorism" stance is an excuse for sneaky trade embargos. It's got very little to do with oil or Saddam or anything other than balance of trade.
As part of the whole post 911 thing, the US now wants 24 hours notice of the contents of all shipments destined for the US, before they're even loaded onto the ship in the foreign port - so that they, if they decide to, can send a US customs inspector to check on the goods.
This is ofcourse, restraint of trade, but under the guise of anti-terrorism. It's designed to ruin anyone doing "just in time" manufacturing and frustrate people in general importing into the US. This is to encourage foreign companies to move their entire manufacturing (not just final assembly) to the US, and to make sure that the money generated stays in the US.
What I want to know is how the hell do you force change on the patent system? We know what needs to be done to make it better, but how do we go about it??
Patents are no longer written in english it would seem, so it's pretty hard to contest something you don't understand.
Software is protected by copyright - it doesn't need patent protection.
If I see a new steam engine, I can deduce how it works by it's shape and structure. If I see a new computer program running (not it's source, obviously) I have very little idea of how it works. Patents should be for things, not abstractions!
The patent system is increasingly under abuse, and the US Patent office will allow anything through. It's past time for a revamp of the whole system, the removal of a lot of patents and make some areas un-patentable again.
Re:What about Terrasoft? Can't their machines run
on
Beige Box Apple Clone?
·
· Score: 1
The briq is actually from www.totalimpact.com
I use 60 or so of them as a renderfarm for 3d graphics and they're great.
70's transistor amps were awful. Sure they measured well in terms of THD, but had really bad crossover distortion through running in mostly class B, where as valve amps are usually class A or AB (heavily biassed into A).
Modern transistor amps don't have crossover distortion, but also generally use less feedback, and sound a lot better because of it.
Valve amps don't give out mostly 2nd harmonic. Most valve amps are Push/Pull, which eliminates the 2nd harmonic, leaving your hearing mostly odd harmonics. Pentodes give more 3rd than 2nd, triodes give out more 2nd than 3rd, but they're much less common.
Any warmth or mellowness in a valve amp is a problem of frequency response, not distortion characteristics, and probably because of a mis-matched loudspeaker with nasty impedance characteristics. Valves don't have to sound warm, it's a stereotype that they do - not a fact that they have to.
And if the original recording was made in the 60s, with valve equipment and engineered to be heard on a pair of Quad ESL53 electrostatics driven by Quad II, Quad 22 valve amps, they are therefore going to give the most accurate rendition of the recording.
Finally, if you do prefer your music warmer, and that allows you to listen to recordings that would normally give you a headache if played on modern transistorised equipment, you're not just expressing a preference, but you're enjoying the music - which is the whole goal of hi-fi reproduction!!
Slashdot Mirror
Funny isn't it?
People who use horns are used to getting 108db from a couple of watts, not 2500!
And yes, unless you can reach 120db with a handful of watts, your speaker is going to be distorting like hell at lower, more listenable volumes.
I'd term it more an acoustic mirror, and acoustice mirrors are notorious for colouring the sound. Anyway - who wants wide dispersion?
I use OS X jaguar on a lowly 500mhz black G3 powerbook, and I don't get any of those kinds of problems.
Now my 17" iMac is snappier, but both are equally usable.
The only problems with OS X seem to ocur with less than 512MB ram.
Bollocks. Tube measure worse and sound better.
But this isn't cheaper - is it??
All this talk of buying the odd song off an album is ok, but I'm not into current pop. I want whole albums. And I'm a completist. And I'm an audiophile (for want of a better word) and I don't want compressed crap.
The fact is that they are over priced. Music has been heavily devalued by radio and second hand stores (a second hand CD is practically as good as a new one, unlike vinyl records). The fact that the current price of CDs is held up by price fixing.
Bose sucks. Fact. 85db sensitivity? Now that really sucks. You're probably turning less than 1% of your amplifier power into sound. 103db and you're getting somewhere! (My speakers will go as loud on 1 watt as yours do on 100, with less distortion. Fact)
Now why does bose suck? Because they use massive resonance to make bass (which is the cheap and crap way of doing it) instead of more accurate methods (like real engineering - large speakers, large real magnets etc.)
Bose engineer in boom and ting. Not fun to listen too.
Heard any Quad electrostatics recently? Now there's some tonal accuracy for you. They don't go loud, but they do do quality. Or can I ask you what speakers are used to monitor classical recordings (or now soundtracks at Lucasfilm) - B&W - that's real engineering and innovation for you. Can you tell my why my 1960s loudspeakers sound better than any modern Bose rubbish?
Bose PA speakers are about getting the loudest bassiest sound in the smallest package. They don't manufacture for quality of reproduction.
Sure - they're selling some albums for $10.00
That's still too much and doesn't recognise the true market value for music, which is significantly lower.
Queen - none
Sisters of Mercy - One partial album
Tangerine Dream - one and a half albums (out of how many?)
Fields of the Nephilim - none
The Beatles - none
Jean Michel Jarre - none
Tori Amos - less than half of her songs
orbital - one partial album
Future Sound of London - none
KLF - none
Pet Shop Boys - 5 or 6 partial albums
Joni Mitchel - 3 songs.....
Alan Parsons - 3 albums + a few partials
Pink Floyd - a few albums
Not really a good enough selection eh?
Absoultely correct.
The real price is about 10 US cents per song. At a dollar US a song, it's probably cheaper (and certainly better value) to buy a CD at the store.
Apple's really dropped the ball with this one. Why just deal with the majors in the RIAA? Why not use the same system to allow anyone - independants, individual musicians to set up their own store with the system, and charge whatever they feel the music is worth??? (and hopefully a more realistic number than 99cents!)
I buy an album, but both myself and my wife get to listen to it. 2 people - a million people - what's the difference? If 2 people is moral, why not 4 (my parents listen too) or 7 (my wife's parents join in) or my brother and his family (10). Where and why does it stop being moral??
Or are you saying that my wife should by her own copy?
People create a society that allows artists to produce non productive work because they enjoy doing so.
In ancient times everyone had to work - productive food gathering work, or they died.
Music is a nice luxury, but if it wasn't for the hard working members of society making food and houses, there would be no room for the luxury of a musical career.
I go around internet forums helping people with coding, video editing etc. I do this because I enjoy it, not for any payment. I have a job that pays me well - I don't need more money. I reckon musicians and artists are the same - they do it primarily becuase they enjoy it.
And sharing music detracts nothing from a musician. You're logical analogies are false. Sharing music is not comunism. The musicians themselves attach either a zero or fractional value to their music. They do it. Not me - not you. Record companies attach a very high value to music. Why the difference??
Artists are hurting themselves by signing to the RIAA record companies.
What is being said to musicians is "adapt or die"
What is being said is that you're giving away your music for free on the radio - what's the difference when someone shares it for free? None at all. If they don't want publicity then they can stop giving away their music.
Copying IP isn't theft. Sharing IP is just that - sharing. Just like modern musicians learn from the greats, like Bach and the Beatles.
Musicians are part of society and they use society for inspiration, themes, sounds etc. Nobody is suggesting that someone should be allowed to sell their music and take money for it - not giving it back to the artist ( the RIAA already have the monopoly on that).
Artists freely give away their music anyway. They give it away on the radio, on TV adverts etc. Why shouldn't people who've bought their music share it with anyone they so choose? They can't have it both ways - either music isn't free and every piece of music heard should be payed for, and when I buy a new album I should be getting the 4 ears licence so that my wife can listen too - or music is free because they give it away free on the radio and when I buy a CD I can listen to it as often I want, with whoever I want to share it with, and copy it for personal non money making uses etc. And even lending it to friends, or selling it or buying a second hand CD etc. Mr Music - which way do you want it.
I suggest you choose the second option, because if you choose option 1 - there will be no more music. Who'd want to even think of listening to music under those conditions?
And while you're on - what about Canada, where you have the right to borrow a CD and copy it.
What you end up doing is the object oriented structure and GUI in Cocoa, and any number crunching in plain old boring C. You get speed, ease of coding and reliability this way - it's great.
It seems that artists should be resigned to the fact that they're already giving away music for free.
Free as in the only way to advertise music is to allow people to hear it, and traditionally radio has been the free to listen media of choice. Top of the Pops and MTV work too, but to the end listener it's all just free to listen music.
I'm sure that they way it all works is that effectively the artist pays to have their music played on the radio. I'd serverely doubt that the music industry would advertise music and not charge it back to the artist.
If they're resigned to giving away their music for free to advertise it - why not just give it away free by seeding a P2P network?? If the musician had to put up their own server for listeners to download music then that could be quite expensive. Then all they need is a simple e-commerce site for their fans to buy the CD. When they buy the CD they're not really paying for the music (which is free) and only a small part of the money goes to pay the hard costs - the rest is basically a bargain with the musician - If I pay for your CD then you'll make more great music, and if I like that then I'll buy it too and continue the cycle.
So NTSC DVD's are at a 720 * 480 resolution. Full HD is 1920 * 1080 - that's a 6 times greater number of pixels.
To encode a decent movie at really good quality takes more than one layer of a DVD, so that's greater than 4.7GB of data.
The Terminator Windows file is said to be 3GB in size.
For it to be the same quality as the movie, which is going to be at least 6GB on the DVD, the new codec has to give 12 times the efficiency of the existing MPEG 2 codec.
I reckon it's going to look like shite.
Apex players aren't exactly built to the DVD standards are they - they cheat a little bit in the same way that Sony's etc don't.
Most players observe the "don't skip" and it's a pain in the arse. One of the benefits of chipping players is that these rules sometimes get broken.
What about not being able to fast forward through the silly FBI warning, or the trailers or the Disney adverts....
The current US "anti-terrorism" stance is an excuse for sneaky trade embargos. It's got very little to do with oil or Saddam or anything other than balance of trade.
As part of the whole post 911 thing, the US now wants 24 hours notice of the contents of all shipments destined for the US, before they're even loaded onto the ship in the foreign port - so that they, if they decide to, can send a US customs inspector to check on the goods.
This is ofcourse, restraint of trade, but under the guise of anti-terrorism. It's designed to ruin anyone doing "just in time" manufacturing and frustrate people in general importing into the US. This is to encourage foreign companies to move their entire manufacturing (not just final assembly) to the US, and to make sure that the money generated stays in the US.
Ok, so it's redundant.
What I want to know is how the hell do you force change on the patent system? We know what needs to be done to make it better, but how do we go about it??
And you sir are an abusive twat!
Patents are no longer written in english it would seem, so it's pretty hard to contest something you don't understand.
Software is protected by copyright - it doesn't need patent protection.
If I see a new steam engine, I can deduce how it works by it's shape and structure. If I see a new computer program running (not it's source, obviously) I have very little idea of how it works. Patents should be for things, not abstractions!
The patent system is increasingly under abuse, and the US Patent office will allow anything through. It's past time for a revamp of the whole system, the removal of a lot of patents and make some areas un-patentable again.
The briq is actually from www.totalimpact.com
I use 60 or so of them as a renderfarm for 3d graphics and they're great.
70's transistor amps were awful. Sure they measured well in terms of THD, but had really bad crossover distortion through running in mostly class B, where as valve amps are usually class A or AB (heavily biassed into A).
Modern transistor amps don't have crossover distortion, but also generally use less feedback, and sound a lot better because of it.
Valve amps don't give out mostly 2nd harmonic. Most valve amps are Push/Pull, which eliminates the 2nd harmonic, leaving your hearing mostly odd harmonics. Pentodes give more 3rd than 2nd, triodes give out more 2nd than 3rd, but they're much less common.
Any warmth or mellowness in a valve amp is a problem of frequency response, not distortion characteristics, and probably because of a mis-matched loudspeaker with nasty impedance characteristics. Valves don't have to sound warm, it's a stereotype that they do - not a fact that they have to.
And if the original recording was made in the 60s, with valve equipment and engineered to be heard on a pair of Quad ESL53 electrostatics driven by Quad II, Quad 22 valve amps, they are therefore going to give the most accurate rendition of the recording.
Finally, if you do prefer your music warmer, and that allows you to listen to recordings that would normally give you a headache if played on modern transistorised equipment, you're not just expressing a preference, but you're enjoying the music - which is the whole goal of hi-fi reproduction!!