...interestingly, now that I think of it, ALL Vermont voters take an _oath_ to vote their honest beliefs and not jerk the system around playing games with it. I'm not making this up- an actual oath is administered. What other states do something like this? In which states are you breaking your word and ignoring the oath you swore if you go off voting in some misbegotten game-theory attempt to game the system? I concede that some people have no concept of honor and don't give a damn anyhow...
I'm voting Nader, don't give a rat's ass what state I'm in (actually I think Vermont isn't likely to go Bush, but I don't care if it does) because voting is NOT A GAME. It is the expression of my opinion, and an attempt to get representation of my concerns.
Leaving aside the fact that attempts to convince me that Gore is some kind of acceptable choice are insulting, I figure that if this is supposed to be a GAME, why don't we just sit them in front of PCs and have them Quake it out? Better yet, they can wrestle for it and WWF can broadcast it on pay-per-view. This is not a game people! Talking about game theory and win strategies completely betrays your obligation to represent YOUR VIEWS honestly and directly! That means if you really _back_ either of the two main clowns, you should vote for them- but if you back Nader, or Browne, or McReynolds etc etc, you are _obligated_ to vote for them and give the country GOOD DATA. Garbage in garbage out- who knew that computer geeks would have to have this explained to them? But the game concept is so established that it's not suprising...
GIGO, people. Your vote is not a game! It is DATA. Give the country ACCURATE DATA and we'll go from there and see what else needs to happen. I know that, voting as a Progressive, I seriously doubt I'll be able to roll over and go back to sleep for four years- in particular, corporate abuses have become so outlandish that I don't think there's time for apathy. I think the Libertarians should take a look at the amount of spending BOTH parties are delighted to allow (Libertarians should appreciate this one Nader story- there are government researchers trying to find cures for malaria and other diseases. They're way underfunded which would not impress a libertarian- but Nader asked these guys how they felt about the continued contracts for obsolete B1 bombers, which is spending on an unimaginably greater scale, all from taxes. He asked how much of a B1 would it take to double the researchers' budget. One of them came right back with, "A wheel.")
This 'votepact' idea seems like just an informal admission of something people are already doing without the securityblanket- it's an excuse to abandon the parties and put in accurate data for a change. Many people are doing this and to hell with the resulting balance of the major parties- this seems to be just a way for people who are more frightened, to do this and feel that they aren't risking anything. But the end result is the same- more accurate DATA being put into the system. Hooray for them:)
Sorry, there are no pics:) it doesn't look like much really. Sort of curved rounded beige case with darker beige fakefur inside covering the top and back. It would be equally interesting to use spray adhesive to stick fakefur to the inside of a PC case.
Just went and did some of what I was talking about- diodes on the powersupply and PCI card fans, and also took the Seagate screamer HD and sat it on two rolls of soft felt instead of bolting it to a slide-in plastic clip. It does seem to be quieter- more unexpectedly, the fan noise is now almost louder than the drive whine- seems a _lot_ of that drive whine was being conveyed through mechanical vibration, and is now no longer being transmitted through the case. Anybody who was familiar with this drive would faint to hear how much the noise is suppressed- it really illustrates how well the case mods are containing the deafening noise. Gotta keep the powermac upright now and not kick it about:)
The striking thing about a difference in levels of very familiar noises like that is that my brain insists the computer's the same as it was- but my _typing_ is unaccountably twice as loud as before;) interesting trick of perspective, that.
Support pirate radio and television! I have just donated a spare rackmount reverb unit to our local free radio station, and helped adjust their compressor to better suit its purpose ('soft knee' compression is _not_ what you want feeding a transmitter- ideally you'd want a limiter but... $$$...)
Go find local free radio stations and contribute tech expertise to them! There are always plenty of people willing to play CDs, DJ them with lots of pauses and dead ear, and play songs with Carlin's dreaded Words You Can't Play. But whether these places have decent technical backing is very much another story. If you can, help this sort of activity!
I like it. Because this same behavior very nearly killed Apple:)
Apple fell back to a very simple lineup and now it's Microsoft that has five different various options for everything. I hope they choke on it:)
Think about it- logically for every user there are four sorts of Windows that are _wrong_, correct? How much of a jump would it be to decide that all six are wrong and go with Linux, or Macintoshes?:)
Cut off Xbox (because it's not real and we'll never see it) and 98 (obsolete) and we still have four sorts of Windowses, of which three are wrong;)
Who cares? Prove it isn't a simple tax writeoff. I don't buy that the guy is Mother Teresa, or even has the interests of others at heart. Even in this he's out for himself- if nothing else, the amount of goodwill he got from _you_ was worth every penny- and in relation to his total wealth it _was_ the equivalent of a penny to most people.
Sorry- having an open mind is great so long as your brain doesn't fall out. I think you've been spun. The guy's still the primary personality behind the totally unacceptable behavior of Microsoft, which has been _convicted_ of monopolistic crimes, the list of which is so long it'll make your head spin. Did they just do this at random? No, there was a pattern of 'search and destroy' and open attack of the capitalistic process coming right from the top there.
If tossing a few nickels at charity can really make you forget that, you have a _short_ memory.
All my own mods are essentially performance mods having to do with NOISE. (What do you expect from a recording studio geek?)
I'm running MIDI sequencing off a Performa 575 which was basically my first computer- for starters, I removed the vent louvers on the rear fan area and lined the inside/top of the case (this is an all-in-one Mac) with fake-fur to try and mute noise. I sold it to a local computer shop for use as their house Mac, and there it stayed for a couple years- then I got it back because it had always been so great for MIDI sequencing, 33mhz 68040 and all (you can do MIDI on a 8mhz 68000 mac but the screen updates are really slow!) at which point I got serious...
Apple drive replaced with a smaller IBM drive that was significantly less whiny (remember these are all SCSI drives, some are kind of noisy). Also, a layer of thick, loose feltlike stuff (sound absorption from old speakers!) was added over the drive in the cramped little compartment the drive goes in.
first fan attempt- adding smaller fan in series. Cut airflow dreadfully- computer was running hotter, though the just-ticking-over fans were indeed quiet.
Final attempt- 5W 92 ohm resistor in series with fan. This mellowed it out just enough...
Planned- sculpted duct lined with fakefur or felt absorption material to block a direct path for sound from inside the computer. This would be the final touch...
That's the little computer- only for MIDI and playing networked Marathon Infinity:) the powermac was and is quite another story, and currently looks unusual as well- largely because of the hard drive. I'd been running some problematic IBM fast/wide drives that I had to kluge to get to work, and the main partition ate itself one day and I was looking for a 50-pin SCSI-2 drive of 4G or more... and found one... only thing is, it was a Seagate Cheetah. ST15150N. We are talking _shriek_ here. The drive was given to me because nobody else could tolerate it at all! I'd been using it as a spare external drive for intermittent use. Here's what I did to get this drive into my 9500 as the main HD and not go (more) totally insane.
First, the case already had some sound damping materials in it, from earlier tweaks. Didn't help. The Seagate is just _scary_ in its noise pollution, like an open-header dragster engine spitting flames and noise. The whine is savagely loud and abrasive. I have reason to believe it goes over 20K and gives headaches from ultrasonic noise pollution at very high sound pressure levels. The start was keeping the sound damping stuff in the case, but how to block this penetrating noise?
The sides of the case are heavy material compared to a lot of PCs, but they're pretty 'live'- resonant. I layered two 50 yard rolls of aluminum tape over the metal parts of the case, inside and out- maybe eight layers deep. This has two effects- the weight helps to block sound, but more significantly, aluminum can soak up a lot of vibration and resonance when used in this way- forcing it to distort rather than using it for rigidity.
The front of the case was only plastic so even more ruthless procedures were in order: concrete:) actually I didn't do this right- I didn't leave enough space to seamlessly put the case back together, stripped a screw (actually, broke a plastic bit) and kluged it with strapping tape. However, the concrete does suppress the noise of the Seagate- this combined with the aluminum-clad panels cut the noise by two-thirds.
Next, I'm going to try some fan mods from another 'silent PC' site- putting diodes in series with the fans (apparently startup current is greater this way than if you just used resistors). There are two large fans in the Power Mac 9500: a PCI slot fan that also cools the CPU daughtercard, and an internal power supply fan. Both will get slowed down a bit by series diodes (the air the power supply output blows is always _cold_... 300Mhz G3s don't make much heat, nor does the ATI Nexus).
Finally- gotta get rid of that horrible Seagate:) if the system is rendered relatively quiet even with a ST15150N in it, imagine how nice it's going to be with a Fujitsu or IBM Ultrastar instead- I might even be able to record with it.
Even stranger mods might be possible- I'm picturing layering concrete on the _outside_ of a case. No sound's going to get through that. The only problem would be keeping it on there- riveting steel mesh to the sides of the case might do the job, or possibly some sort of big casting job might work. Alternatively, a _wood_ case would probably do a good job- speakers are made out of MDF for a reason, it seals in sound better than stamped wobbly steel boxes:)
Another very significant concern given this attention to sound absorption is airflow. However, this is somewhat easily solved- make the airflow go through a Bose-like labyrinth, only one that's lined with sound absorption. It won't take much to impede sound at the frequencies we're talking about (HD whine etc) while still allowing substantial airflow.
I love seeing weird cosmetic mods and general weirdness modes like the Turbine Case- I'd also like to see more ergonomics mods like I've been talking about. It wouldn't be very difficult to build PC parts into a slightly large wooden box- perhaps a box within a box, with an internal suspension system to suppress residual vibration noise. Ideally you could do things like run a RAID array of dirt cheap Seagate ST15150Ns (cheap because they are so ^$%#&^* noisy!) and suppress the noise so ruthlessly that you could record music in the same room with the things! All it would need is really soundproof cases _and_ an exhaust system that allows serious airflow while blocking any and all sound. This would not be easy, and you couldn't do it with existing PC cases- but you could do it. You could probably do it with a couple 4x8s of plywood and a bunch of heavy felt...
I think Bush AND GORE would have happily signed it off. Ironically, it seems obvious that either Nader or Browne would have completely repudiated the very idea- for sharply varying reasons that amount in the end to the same thing.
If this was meant to be a 'oooo, Bush, scarey' remark in favor of Gore, I would ask, why this faith that the guy would _not_ blithely go along with this sort of thing? I think that faith is misplaced, completely misplaced. But then I _would_ think that as I'm voting for Nader and to hell with vote trading or whatever- the Democratic Party is a corpse, and maybe some of us will have to just keep being politically active _after_ a very possibly Bush-won election.
I hope the libertarians and socialists etc etc keep being politically active too:) but I can only say that even if they don't, I will. I hope the Dems or Reps win this election and GO TO SLEEP. To wake up again four years hence to a vastly more hostile public climate...
That would only happen if Microsoft actually intends to _ship_ any X-Box. If they are simply using it as the code name for buying up any company that might support Playstation 2, taking them out of the market, and confusing people with demos rendered on SGI workstations, then the last thing they're going to want to do is buy a hardware maker- particularly one competing with Sony.
I think there's no way they're going to want to buy Sega. We'll see.
Hey, you have to understand what the job actually is. For both Bush and Gore, corporate control is the water in which they swim- they can't imagine anything else, as they don't deal with individuals but with pressure groups, and these days that's the corporations (wielding impressive carrots _and_ sticks).
Therefore, for each, the job of the President is to cause people to be more in favor of, less resistant to, the wishes of those _really_ running the country. It's a tacit admission that for either, the President is a figurehead in charge of controlling and synthesising public opinion.
If the Firestone deaths by corporate negligence had happened a few years later we'd be seeing the President interceding for Firestone in a PR initiative designed to put across the idea that highway deaths are exciting and add life and thrills to driving:P that would be a good domestic consensus too!
yeesh, can you tell I'm one of the nader guys?
;P:)
None of these guys have a clue about that. That's why I'm voting for Nader- of all of them, he is the one _most_ likely to give a rat's @ss about the notion of a 'public domain'. That happens to be one of his big issues and have you heard any of his speeches? Nader is _seriously_ outspoken about what you could call 'public domain' and _seriously_ against the notion of corporations locking stuff up in pay-per-use. I mean, his voice raises and he starts to boom and fulminate about the way shiny skyscrapers go up while public works, facilities fall into disrepair.
Anyone who feels really strongly about public domain has their candidate right there- it's really obvious how central the underlying concepts are to Nader, and how meaningless they are to every other candidate except probably the Socialist (and Nader's getting a hugely stronger turnout than him)
If you've ever heard Bowie's "Young Americans" you've heard exactly this. It wasn't meant as feedback control- it was meant as a sound effect. At any rate, this is something that people can do.
Um- the article is fake, the guy made it all up. I think it's rather unlikely that that claim was accurate.
I think it would be _terrific_ if there were that many geeky, intellectually curious people in the world actually trying Linux- I do run into them here and there, but as for market share, even counting people who are just experimenting, I think the numbers are neither higher than MacOS or much lower than MacOS.
Want to impress somebody? Let's see some numbers on marketshare of people who are NOT dualbooting Windows. No Macs dualboot Windows (though some dualboot Linux). I have a hard time believing the numbers when an awful lot of people go use Windows anyhow and just try to seem l33t by dualbooting to Linux. I don't see a lot of Mac users dualbooting to Windows- they have to get all the software they need on their native platform or do without. Let's see more Linux people do that. Then if the marketshare gets to exceed MacOS it'll really mean something...
It's weird how nobody seems to think there's any other sort of espionage than industrial espionage these days. How about entertaining the possibility of:
Guess 1.5: Some MSFT employees are intentionally working on relaying MSFT source code to give their government employers better ability to commit IT sabotage at time of war. They ain't working for the US government.
Honestly, the world does not begin and end with e-commerce. Warfare still happens, and IT is militarily sensitive- it can be an absolute jugular vein if mishandled.
MS Windows massively monopolizes not only the consumer sector, but huge chunks of the military as well. Hell, _ships_ run off Windows, the Air Force is totally full of Windows, and who knows how many other countries in the world are totally standardised on Windows.
If Russian military intelligence got to go over Microsoft's source code with a fine-tooth comb (or anybody- I only say Russian because apparently that IS precisely who's going over the code now), they would be able to conduct information warfare much more effectively, whether or not there are intentional backdoors- if there aren't, all the military spooks would have to do is dig up overflow exploits and the like. They have the code, and lots of people find ways to do this even _without_ the code.
They're not interested in fixing it, selling it, posting it on the net or anything of the sort. Their only concern is being prepared to take all of American military IT _down_ before the missiles are launched. (And again, America doesn't have to be the target- any country with a modern computerised military could be the target.)
The problem with lazy-ass monopolised security through obscurity is just this: now there's no security at all- odds are, some country (possibly not even Russia?) now has what they need to be able to take out any and all Windows-based IT at will. They're not going to be filing bug reports, or _using_ their techniques, unless they are seriously taking action. The only defense against this is to persuade Microsoft to either open their process to outside auditing (for instance, the NSA or the military), or to ask Microsoft to please fix any bugs that might be a weak point in this sort of attack.
*bitter laugh* riiiight.
I want my country's military off Windows, dammit. Now. All that is _compromised_. It's one big trojan horse because of Microsoft's arrogance and belief that they are SO SMART that they don't need to let anyone else into their process.
The reason I'm interesting in seeing what the no-psychoacoustics version would do is that, apparently, the psychoacoustic transform is a dynamic but extremely elaborate equalisation curve. There are definite consequences to doing such an elaborate correction- and I think Fraunhofer has illustrated some of them, in particular by pushing for an _extremely_ sharp cutoff at the top end of the frequency range- which results in ringing.
A lot of the pre-echo that's showing up as resonant peaks could be attributed to this type of equalisation. If that is the case, applying the fractal transform alone would result in noticably coarser frequency information but, at the same time, a much cleaner time domain with pre-echo and over-ring much more diffuse and unhearable. It might be percieved as extremely dynamic but somewhat colored sound with a great deal of openness and energy but compromised tonality. It might be terrific for certain types of electronic music, drum machines and such things.
I'm working on being able to try this experiment. If I can do this, I can also experiment with different types of filtering (realistically, I'd be working with a programmer who would know how to do this but might not have thought to try some of the things I'll suggest).
If anybody tries this sort of thing, don't test it on stuff that would obviously suck! It would be pointless trying it on classical, or easy listening. On the other hand, gabba house music and really harsh techno, or brutally distorted heavy metal... I know I've got stuff that I'd like to have encoded in a way that pushes impact at all costs and brings out the rawness of the sound at the expense of the detail and clarity. That should be possible, don't know if axing the psychoacoustic model would do it- depends on how much it compromises the original sound. Not all filters produce such obvious artifacts- just the ones with really sharp slopes such as the top lowpass filter in Fraunhofer.
I didn't notice at first but you're proposing a mirror image of an exercise I'd dearly like to try, an idea that emerged from yet another slashdot audio argument:)
You are talking about applying only the psychoacoustic model of the mp3 encoding, and producing a comparison of that with the original signal. I would indeed be really interested in seeing that- I'd like to know which of the various distortions, over-rings etc. arise from the psych model and which arise from the fractal part.
In the argument (lower in the thread) I was questioning whether you could skip the psych model entirely (pretend people can hear the difference between 128K mp3 and real life;P ) and see just what you'd get if you went purely with the fractal encoding- trying to diffuse any and all error in the process as evenly as possible over frequency and time.
People will swear up and down that this will be drastically worse. I'd like to measure it in comparison with normal mp3 encoders and see exactly what it is, not just run around making theories that it's going to be awful. The one thing I'm willing to guess about it is that the sound will be the opposite of BladeEnc's sound. For some people that'll be bad- but the idea of an 'anti-Blade' might really interest others.
I don't know if anybody's comfortable enough with hacking on a version of LAME or whatever that they'd be willing to try it- I am going to bounce the idea off Martin Hairer, with whom I worked to perfect the sonogram-plotting program (I needed to request better picture export capacities- he came through like a trouper and fixed everything). I think he is the one who ported LAME to his program, and he might be both able to try such experiments, and interested in seeing what they do.
At any rate I wanted to say that your idea of isolating the transformations and considering them independently _is_ truly an interesting exercise- and I hope to be able to do such experiments, and learn from them, with a bit of work and patience:)
I'd be very curious to know if this can be done- and I seriously question if the resulting encoder would perform 'very well'. If you think this would cause the resulting wave to score perfectly you're... not correct: it's not possible for that to happen with such lossy compression, perceptual model or no.
Actually, I think this would be a _very_ good experiment. I'm aware that my questioning some of these concepts is seen as prima facie evidence of being a tottering loony *g* but the whole concept of the psycho-acoustic model is so central to current audio theory... and this theory basically says, 'mp3s can be made to sound indistinguishable from CDs' and they cannot- the same theory on a broader level says 'CD itself is theoretically perfect sound', and it is not- mastering engineers, for instance, have learned that to do their work they need something better than CD audio.
I'm not certain that the psychoacoustic model must necessarily be that much better than, for instance, trying to diffuse unavoidable error as evenly as possible over the frequency and time domains. You are essentially insisting that concentrating the error in particular areas that are said to be 'masked' is far superior. This assumes the masking is effective, and that there are no side effects- neither assumption is wholly true, as large numbers of people are able to find fault with (say) 128K mp3s, and any filtering is going to impose extraneous characteristics. Finally, you're assuming that given an encoder that does not have a psychoacoustic model (I assume this would mean one that diffuses error pretty uniformly) is going to perform 'very well' in the procedure I devised. I'm not sure of that- I'd like to try it experimentally before jumping to that conclusion.
Finally, I have to admit- I haven't got the faintest idea what the resulting sonogram, and frequency/overring characteristics, would look like. I can say some things about it- with regard to the over-ring, diffusing it over a wider frequency range is not only desirable but markedly preferable. Fraunhofer loses badly to LAME, sonically, over just this issue- and Blade gets away with its severe over-ring by diffusing it over a wider frequency range. If the experimental psychoacoustic-model-less encoder showed significant improvements in diffusing out this over-ring and reducing its duration- there would be legitimate applications for its tonal characteristics, even if the raw frequency response was noticably compromised. It would be sort of like the 'anti-Blade'.
I don't suppose anyone will actually _try_ it, much less help me out with measuring it:P but if anyone is genuinely interested in investigating this, drop me a line? It sounds like something that could be attempted. Seriously- the whole point of such a model is 'masked stuff can't be heard'. If people can hear the masked error anyhow, what is the point? And if you assume people who can't hear anyhow and won't notice, what's the difference? Is it so axiomatic that you have to shun diffusing error evenly, and instead concentrate it in areas you think won't be heard?
Um- the 'sonogram' we're talking about here is the difference between a source and result sonogram (which is a pretty simple plot of frequency data over time). As such, one that was uniformly grey would represent a wave in which the distortion from the original is totally uniform over the complete frequency range _and_ time range. If I'm not mistaken, this would be essentially the same as taking the exact original wave, unaltered in any way, and perfectly blending pink noise with it. I don't see any other way you'd get a 'sonogram' result like you describe. Keep in mind that even if you took raw pink noise and called that your 'result' you wouldn't have a featureless 'sonogram', because it is relative to the original source- a 'sonogram' of full-spectrum full volume noise is uniform WHITE, and this differenced with the original source's sonogram will just invert it.
For this reason, writing an encoder for which everything is grey (given the techniques I've been using) is far from very easy to do- and the sound of the file that would produce this result would have to be 50% perfect uncolored reproduction of the wave, and 50% pink noise. That's basically as tough to do as 100% perfect uncolored reproduction of the wave, and it'll sound bad because of the loud pink noise, but I don't think it would sound like you are imagining it to sound.
The point about noise and psychoacoustic model is well taken- I'm not claiming that my testing is illustrating psychoacoustic model suitability. If you think about it you can see that's not testable- it's going to be different for every song, and every listener. Some people can't hear over 12K- nuke it! Some people are acutely sensitive to peaks at around 3K- for instance, someone with tinnitus who's subject to the phenomenon of _recruitment_ will find a resonance there to be painfully unpleasant.
I can't possibly test for that and am not trying. I can, however, work out where the errors are, where artifacts are being produced in the frequency band, and what types of resonance are present, and that information can be used by any person who knows what their psychoacoustic model will accept. For instance: if you like Xing, you'll probably like Fraunhofer at high bit rate still better. If you run screaming from Xing and hate all mp3 encoders, you might need to go with Blade assuming you listen to smooth music like classical. If you can't stand Blade at all, Fraunhofer might be right up your alley. These are quantifiable observations based on driving all these encoders completely beyond their ability to cope, and watching where they break down.
I would hope that anybody reading either what I wrote, or what you've just written, would avoid accepting unsupported claims, consider the facts of the situation, and make up their own minds...
Yeah- this is interesting stuff:) the fact that it's often measuring 128K tends to hurt LAME and Blade. I'd direct your attention particularly to page three, "Testing With Real Music: 'Dirty Blue'": Ars actually learned more than they realise with this test. I quote: "The FhG encoder strives mightily all the way out to 20 kHz, but this results in obvious errors in the power spectra." Absolutely- these are the artifacts I was able to illustrate in sonograms, and the artifacts are in part produced by high frequency ringing of Frau's overly sharp cutoff.
_Definitely_ an interesting site. Also, referring to the listening tests: "The Fraunhofer encoder produced a surprisingly harsh sounding attack on the guitar; it remained quick and sharp, but was artificially crisp and accentuated." That's precisely what I was trying to say, couldn't have put it better myself. It turns out Ars _likes_ that. I do not. But if you do- clearly, you're going to like Fraunhofer. It's not about picking a winner, it's like picking a musical instrument...
Very cool! Quite a lot of people have been saying (in inimitable slashdot fashion;) ) "j00 sux0rs! r3mix did this before you and is better!" *g*
In fact I think I have seen this before and r3mix actually affected my approach to my encoder analysis. Definite kudos to r3mix, and I entirely agree with many of this site's decisions and approaches- interestingly they reach precisely the same conclusion as I did, that LAME 256 was the ideal archival encoder and LAME VBR was the best one for smaller file sizes- except that r3mix has added the recommendation that joint stereo be used in the latter case! (this would really hurt the relative comparison with higher bit rate stereo encoders with my mono test signal, but I think I will take the advice and try that for my own mp3s...)
r3mix also chooses to use _relative_ graphs rather than attempting to give absolute measurements, something I heartily approve of.
Now, here's the thing- r3mix's results are sometimes a subset and sometimes comparable to mine, just depicted in a different way. The primary measurement of a frequency sweep produces different-colored graphs- if you take the horizontal axis and express the vertical deviation of each graph, from an ideal line of flat reproduction at the top, as a brightness value of a single pixel, you'd get something akin to a single line on one of my 'sonograms'. The test with the 'applaud' signal is an example too- if you subtracted the source from the results you'd end up with distortion levels very similar to my differenced sonograms.
More interesting to me is the fact that my sonograms show an _intermediate_ step- several r3mix tests are the averaged responses of an encoder over time. That is exactly what my 'charts' are- they are sums of all the deviation and distortion over the entire length of a sonogram, over a range of frequencies.
I'm almost certain I'd seen r3mix before doing my own analyses- I think it's very likely that this site significantly helped me define the processes I used for my own stuff. I heartily recommend checking it out- this is good work, I totally endorse it, in fact I'm going to put a link to it on my own encoder page right now:) *put* there!
Not so much 'better'. DIFFERENT. I think it's plain that Blade makes very different choices from Frau or LAME in discarding information. The results I got would suggest that Blade is only good for classical music but excels at that, that Frau is 'mid fi' sonic spectacular, that LAME strikes a balance between sonic spectacular and being driven into artifacts and coloration. Sure enough, I'm seeing people citing orchestra conductors who would only accept Blade, people getting Really Agitated (Fraunhofer fans?) and people saying 'yeah, I already knew LAME was best so your page has no point';)
Personally, I'm with LAME for my sonic requirements, although the only mp3s of my music out there (so far) are Blade, done many months ago before I did this research. But the point is not that there is a 'winner'- the point is that the differing sonic characteristics of these encoders CAN BE QUANTIFIED. Perhaps not measured outright (my charts etc. are _relative_ to each other), but these encoders take significantly different approaches to discarding information, and that applies directly to your choice of encoder for recording music, and translates to a completely predictable sonic characteristic of the encoder on ANY music, no matter what.
I put all sorts of music through Blade when I was on mp3.com with only Blade for a free encoder- no matter what I did, the result was always identifiably BladeEnc, with the smooth extended frequency response and absolutely terrible transient impact. For some pieces, this was suitable- for some it was grossly unsuitable. But the sonic characteristics were consistent- and correlate with what I learned about the encoder in this 'torture test'.
If you would like to write an encoder that actually encodes audio, and specifically trades everything off to perform terrific on 'EncoderHell' (the test tone noise), please do so! It might have interesting results when used with regular music. You cannot make it perfectly reproduce the sound without effectively hardcoding the exact waveforms for that sound into the encoder, because of the elements that use random bandlimited noise at up to 22K- there aren't enough bits to literally store that information in an mp3.
The ideal result from the process (totally unaltered waveform information) would be an entirely _black_ 'sonogram' at the end of the process. That's not going to happen. Since there are going to be deviations, it's down to the psychoacoustic model- and the pictures and charts are going to show what the encoder chose to throw away, on a larger scale.
You can argue that the encoder throws away stuff that can't be heard, therefore measuring _that_ is meaningless. This equates to arguing that the result is indistinguishable from the source audio. I disagree, and feel that all mp3s are audibly degraded from the source audio- which is itself degraded, being typically 16 bit 44.1K digital audio:)
I'm trying to measure what the encoder's failing to do. The project was meant to answer my own questions, and has done so.
Slashdot Mirror
...interestingly, now that I think of it, ALL Vermont voters take an _oath_ to vote their honest beliefs and not jerk the system around playing games with it. I'm not making this up- an actual oath is administered. What other states do something like this? In which states are you breaking your word and ignoring the oath you swore if you go off voting in some misbegotten game-theory attempt to game the system? I concede that some people have no concept of honor and don't give a damn anyhow...
I'm voting Nader, don't give a rat's ass what state I'm in (actually I think Vermont isn't likely to go Bush, but I don't care if it does) because voting is NOT A GAME. It is the expression of my opinion, and an attempt to get representation of my concerns.
Leaving aside the fact that attempts to convince me that Gore is some kind of acceptable choice are insulting, I figure that if this is supposed to be a GAME, why don't we just sit them in front of PCs and have them Quake it out? Better yet, they can wrestle for it and WWF can broadcast it on pay-per-view. This is not a game people! Talking about game theory and win strategies completely betrays your obligation to represent YOUR VIEWS honestly and directly! That means if you really _back_ either of the two main clowns, you should vote for them- but if you back Nader, or Browne, or McReynolds etc etc, you are _obligated_ to vote for them and give the country GOOD DATA. Garbage in garbage out- who knew that computer geeks would have to have this explained to them? But the game concept is so established that it's not suprising...
GIGO, people. Your vote is not a game! It is DATA. Give the country ACCURATE DATA and we'll go from there and see what else needs to happen. I know that, voting as a Progressive, I seriously doubt I'll be able to roll over and go back to sleep for four years- in particular, corporate abuses have become so outlandish that I don't think there's time for apathy. I think the Libertarians should take a look at the amount of spending BOTH parties are delighted to allow (Libertarians should appreciate this one Nader story- there are government researchers trying to find cures for malaria and other diseases. They're way underfunded which would not impress a libertarian- but Nader asked these guys how they felt about the continued contracts for obsolete B1 bombers, which is spending on an unimaginably greater scale, all from taxes. He asked how much of a B1 would it take to double the researchers' budget. One of them came right back with, "A wheel.")
This 'votepact' idea seems like just an informal admission of something people are already doing without the securityblanket- it's an excuse to abandon the parties and put in accurate data for a change. Many people are doing this and to hell with the resulting balance of the major parties- this seems to be just a way for people who are more frightened, to do this and feel that they aren't risking anything. But the end result is the same- more accurate DATA being put into the system. Hooray for them :)
Just went and did some of what I was talking about- diodes on the powersupply and PCI card fans, and also took the Seagate screamer HD and sat it on two rolls of soft felt instead of bolting it to a slide-in plastic clip. It does seem to be quieter- more unexpectedly, the fan noise is now almost louder than the drive whine- seems a _lot_ of that drive whine was being conveyed through mechanical vibration, and is now no longer being transmitted through the case. Anybody who was familiar with this drive would faint to hear how much the noise is suppressed- it really illustrates how well the case mods are containing the deafening noise. Gotta keep the powermac upright now and not kick it about :)
The striking thing about a difference in levels of very familiar noises like that is that my brain insists the computer's the same as it was- but my _typing_ is unaccountably twice as loud as before ;) interesting trick of perspective, that.
Um, 'air'. Dead _air_. Not dead ear. That would be quite a disability for a DJ :)
Go find local free radio stations and contribute tech expertise to them! There are always plenty of people willing to play CDs, DJ them with lots of pauses and dead ear, and play songs with Carlin's dreaded Words You Can't Play. But whether these places have decent technical backing is very much another story. If you can, help this sort of activity!
Apple fell back to a very simple lineup and now it's Microsoft that has five different various options for everything. I hope they choke on it :)
Think about it- logically for every user there are four sorts of Windows that are _wrong_, correct? How much of a jump would it be to decide that all six are wrong and go with Linux, or Macintoshes? :)
Cut off Xbox (because it's not real and we'll never see it) and 98 (obsolete) and we still have four sorts of Windowses, of which three are wrong ;)
Sorry- having an open mind is great so long as your brain doesn't fall out. I think you've been spun. The guy's still the primary personality behind the totally unacceptable behavior of Microsoft, which has been _convicted_ of monopolistic crimes, the list of which is so long it'll make your head spin. Did they just do this at random? No, there was a pattern of 'search and destroy' and open attack of the capitalistic process coming right from the top there.
If tossing a few nickels at charity can really make you forget that, you have a _short_ memory.
I'm running MIDI sequencing off a Performa 575 which was basically my first computer- for starters, I removed the vent louvers on the rear fan area and lined the inside/top of the case (this is an all-in-one Mac) with fake-fur to try and mute noise. I sold it to a local computer shop for use as their house Mac, and there it stayed for a couple years- then I got it back because it had always been so great for MIDI sequencing, 33mhz 68040 and all (you can do MIDI on a 8mhz 68000 mac but the screen updates are really slow!) at which point I got serious...
- Apple drive replaced with a smaller IBM drive that was significantly less whiny (remember these are all SCSI drives, some are kind of noisy). Also, a layer of thick, loose feltlike stuff (sound absorption from old speakers!) was added over the drive in the cramped little compartment the drive goes in.
- first fan attempt- adding smaller fan in series. Cut airflow dreadfully- computer was running hotter, though the just-ticking-over fans were indeed quiet.
- Final attempt- 5W 92 ohm resistor in series with fan. This mellowed it out just enough...
- Planned- sculpted duct lined with fakefur or felt absorption material to block a direct path for sound from inside the computer. This would be the final touch...
That's the little computer- only for MIDI and playing networked Marathon Infinity- First, the case already had some sound damping materials in it, from earlier tweaks. Didn't help. The Seagate is just _scary_ in its noise pollution, like an open-header dragster engine spitting flames and noise. The whine is savagely loud and abrasive. I have reason to believe it goes over 20K and gives headaches from ultrasonic noise pollution at very high sound pressure levels. The start was keeping the sound damping stuff in the case, but how to block this penetrating noise?
- The sides of the case are heavy material compared to a lot of PCs, but they're pretty 'live'- resonant. I layered two 50 yard rolls of aluminum tape over the metal parts of the case, inside and out- maybe eight layers deep. This has two effects- the weight helps to block sound, but more significantly, aluminum can soak up a lot of vibration and resonance when used in this way- forcing it to distort rather than using it for rigidity.
- The front of the case was only plastic so even more ruthless procedures were in order: concrete
:) actually I didn't do this right- I didn't leave enough space to seamlessly put the case back together, stripped a screw (actually, broke a plastic bit) and kluged it with strapping tape. However, the concrete does suppress the noise of the Seagate- this combined with the aluminum-clad panels cut the noise by two-thirds.
- Next, I'm going to try some fan mods from another 'silent PC' site- putting diodes in series with the fans (apparently startup current is greater this way than if you just used resistors). There are two large fans in the Power Mac 9500: a PCI slot fan that also cools the CPU daughtercard, and an internal power supply fan. Both will get slowed down a bit by series diodes (the air the power supply output blows is always _cold_... 300Mhz G3s don't make much heat, nor does the ATI Nexus).
- Finally- gotta get rid of that horrible Seagate
:) if the system is rendered relatively quiet even with a ST15150N in it, imagine how nice it's going to be with a Fujitsu or IBM Ultrastar instead- I might even be able to record with it.
Even stranger mods might be possible- I'm picturing layering concrete on the _outside_ of a case. No sound's going to get through that. The only problem would be keeping it on there- riveting steel mesh to the sides of the case might do the job, or possibly some sort of big casting job might work. Alternatively, a _wood_ case would probably do a good job- speakers are made out of MDF for a reason, it seals in sound better than stamped wobbly steel boxesAnother very significant concern given this attention to sound absorption is airflow. However, this is somewhat easily solved- make the airflow go through a Bose-like labyrinth, only one that's lined with sound absorption. It won't take much to impede sound at the frequencies we're talking about (HD whine etc) while still allowing substantial airflow.
I love seeing weird cosmetic mods and general weirdness modes like the Turbine Case- I'd also like to see more ergonomics mods like I've been talking about. It wouldn't be very difficult to build PC parts into a slightly large wooden box- perhaps a box within a box, with an internal suspension system to suppress residual vibration noise. Ideally you could do things like run a RAID array of dirt cheap Seagate ST15150Ns (cheap because they are so ^$%#&^* noisy!) and suppress the noise so ruthlessly that you could record music in the same room with the things! All it would need is really soundproof cases _and_ an exhaust system that allows serious airflow while blocking any and all sound. This would not be easy, and you couldn't do it with existing PC cases- but you could do it. You could probably do it with a couple 4x8s of plywood and a bunch of heavy felt...
(geez Chris, rant often? *g*)
If this was meant to be a 'oooo, Bush, scarey' remark in favor of Gore, I would ask, why this faith that the guy would _not_ blithely go along with this sort of thing? I think that faith is misplaced, completely misplaced. But then I _would_ think that as I'm voting for Nader and to hell with vote trading or whatever- the Democratic Party is a corpse, and maybe some of us will have to just keep being politically active _after_ a very possibly Bush-won election.
I hope the libertarians and socialists etc etc keep being politically active too :) but I can only say that even if they don't, I will. I hope the Dems or Reps win this election and GO TO SLEEP. To wake up again four years hence to a vastly more hostile public climate...
I think there's no way they're going to want to buy Sega. We'll see.
Therefore, for each, the job of the President is to cause people to be more in favor of, less resistant to, the wishes of those _really_ running the country. It's a tacit admission that for either, the President is a figurehead in charge of controlling and synthesising public opinion.
If the Firestone deaths by corporate negligence had happened a few years later we'd be seeing the President interceding for Firestone in a PR initiative designed to put across the idea that highway deaths are exciting and add life and thrills to driving :P that would be a good domestic consensus too!
yeesh, can you tell I'm one of the nader guys? ;P :)
Anyone who feels really strongly about public domain has their candidate right there- it's really obvious how central the underlying concepts are to Nader, and how meaningless they are to every other candidate except probably the Socialist (and Nader's getting a hugely stronger turnout than him)
If you've ever heard Bowie's "Young Americans" you've heard exactly this. It wasn't meant as feedback control- it was meant as a sound effect. At any rate, this is something that people can do.
I think it would be _terrific_ if there were that many geeky, intellectually curious people in the world actually trying Linux- I do run into them here and there, but as for market share, even counting people who are just experimenting, I think the numbers are neither higher than MacOS or much lower than MacOS.
Want to impress somebody? Let's see some numbers on marketshare of people who are NOT dualbooting Windows. No Macs dualboot Windows (though some dualboot Linux). I have a hard time believing the numbers when an awful lot of people go use Windows anyhow and just try to seem l33t by dualbooting to Linux. I don't see a lot of Mac users dualbooting to Windows- they have to get all the software they need on their native platform or do without. Let's see more Linux people do that. Then if the marketshare gets to exceed MacOS it'll really mean something...
Guess 1.5: Some MSFT employees are intentionally working on relaying MSFT source code to give their government employers better ability to commit IT sabotage at time of war. They ain't working for the US government.
Honestly, the world does not begin and end with e-commerce. Warfare still happens, and IT is militarily sensitive- it can be an absolute jugular vein if mishandled.
If Russian military intelligence got to go over Microsoft's source code with a fine-tooth comb (or anybody- I only say Russian because apparently that IS precisely who's going over the code now), they would be able to conduct information warfare much more effectively, whether or not there are intentional backdoors- if there aren't, all the military spooks would have to do is dig up overflow exploits and the like. They have the code, and lots of people find ways to do this even _without_ the code.
They're not interested in fixing it, selling it, posting it on the net or anything of the sort. Their only concern is being prepared to take all of American military IT _down_ before the missiles are launched. (And again, America doesn't have to be the target- any country with a modern computerised military could be the target.)
The problem with lazy-ass monopolised security through obscurity is just this: now there's no security at all- odds are, some country (possibly not even Russia?) now has what they need to be able to take out any and all Windows-based IT at will. They're not going to be filing bug reports, or _using_ their techniques, unless they are seriously taking action. The only defense against this is to persuade Microsoft to either open their process to outside auditing (for instance, the NSA or the military), or to ask Microsoft to please fix any bugs that might be a weak point in this sort of attack.
*bitter laugh* riiiight.
I want my country's military off Windows, dammit. Now. All that is _compromised_. It's one big trojan horse because of Microsoft's arrogance and belief that they are SO SMART that they don't need to let anyone else into their process.
A lot of the pre-echo that's showing up as resonant peaks could be attributed to this type of equalisation. If that is the case, applying the fractal transform alone would result in noticably coarser frequency information but, at the same time, a much cleaner time domain with pre-echo and over-ring much more diffuse and unhearable. It might be percieved as extremely dynamic but somewhat colored sound with a great deal of openness and energy but compromised tonality. It might be terrific for certain types of electronic music, drum machines and such things.
I'm working on being able to try this experiment. If I can do this, I can also experiment with different types of filtering (realistically, I'd be working with a programmer who would know how to do this but might not have thought to try some of the things I'll suggest).
If anybody tries this sort of thing, don't test it on stuff that would obviously suck! It would be pointless trying it on classical, or easy listening. On the other hand, gabba house music and really harsh techno, or brutally distorted heavy metal... I know I've got stuff that I'd like to have encoded in a way that pushes impact at all costs and brings out the rawness of the sound at the expense of the detail and clarity. That should be possible, don't know if axing the psychoacoustic model would do it- depends on how much it compromises the original sound. Not all filters produce such obvious artifacts- just the ones with really sharp slopes such as the top lowpass filter in Fraunhofer.
You are talking about applying only the psychoacoustic model of the mp3 encoding, and producing a comparison of that with the original signal. I would indeed be really interested in seeing that- I'd like to know which of the various distortions, over-rings etc. arise from the psych model and which arise from the fractal part.
In the argument (lower in the thread) I was questioning whether you could skip the psych model entirely (pretend people can hear the difference between 128K mp3 and real life ;P ) and see just what you'd get if you went purely with the fractal encoding- trying to diffuse any and all error in the process as evenly as possible over frequency and time.
People will swear up and down that this will be drastically worse. I'd like to measure it in comparison with normal mp3 encoders and see exactly what it is, not just run around making theories that it's going to be awful. The one thing I'm willing to guess about it is that the sound will be the opposite of BladeEnc's sound. For some people that'll be bad- but the idea of an 'anti-Blade' might really interest others.
I don't know if anybody's comfortable enough with hacking on a version of LAME or whatever that they'd be willing to try it- I am going to bounce the idea off Martin Hairer, with whom I worked to perfect the sonogram-plotting program (I needed to request better picture export capacities- he came through like a trouper and fixed everything). I think he is the one who ported LAME to his program, and he might be both able to try such experiments, and interested in seeing what they do.
At any rate I wanted to say that your idea of isolating the transformations and considering them independently _is_ truly an interesting exercise- and I hope to be able to do such experiments, and learn from them, with a bit of work and patience :)
Actually, I think this would be a _very_ good experiment. I'm aware that my questioning some of these concepts is seen as prima facie evidence of being a tottering loony *g* but the whole concept of the psycho-acoustic model is so central to current audio theory... and this theory basically says, 'mp3s can be made to sound indistinguishable from CDs' and they cannot- the same theory on a broader level says 'CD itself is theoretically perfect sound', and it is not- mastering engineers, for instance, have learned that to do their work they need something better than CD audio.
I'm not certain that the psychoacoustic model must necessarily be that much better than, for instance, trying to diffuse unavoidable error as evenly as possible over the frequency and time domains. You are essentially insisting that concentrating the error in particular areas that are said to be 'masked' is far superior. This assumes the masking is effective, and that there are no side effects- neither assumption is wholly true, as large numbers of people are able to find fault with (say) 128K mp3s, and any filtering is going to impose extraneous characteristics. Finally, you're assuming that given an encoder that does not have a psychoacoustic model (I assume this would mean one that diffuses error pretty uniformly) is going to perform 'very well' in the procedure I devised. I'm not sure of that- I'd like to try it experimentally before jumping to that conclusion.
Finally, I have to admit- I haven't got the faintest idea what the resulting sonogram, and frequency/overring characteristics, would look like. I can say some things about it- with regard to the over-ring, diffusing it over a wider frequency range is not only desirable but markedly preferable. Fraunhofer loses badly to LAME, sonically, over just this issue- and Blade gets away with its severe over-ring by diffusing it over a wider frequency range. If the experimental psychoacoustic-model-less encoder showed significant improvements in diffusing out this over-ring and reducing its duration- there would be legitimate applications for its tonal characteristics, even if the raw frequency response was noticably compromised. It would be sort of like the 'anti-Blade'.
I don't suppose anyone will actually _try_ it, much less help me out with measuring it :P but if anyone is genuinely interested in investigating this, drop me a line? It sounds like something that could be attempted. Seriously- the whole point of such a model is 'masked stuff can't be heard'. If people can hear the masked error anyhow, what is the point? And if you assume people who can't hear anyhow and won't notice, what's the difference? Is it so axiomatic that you have to shun diffusing error evenly, and instead concentrate it in areas you think won't be heard?
For this reason, writing an encoder for which everything is grey (given the techniques I've been using) is far from very easy to do- and the sound of the file that would produce this result would have to be 50% perfect uncolored reproduction of the wave, and 50% pink noise. That's basically as tough to do as 100% perfect uncolored reproduction of the wave, and it'll sound bad because of the loud pink noise, but I don't think it would sound like you are imagining it to sound.
The point about noise and psychoacoustic model is well taken- I'm not claiming that my testing is illustrating psychoacoustic model suitability. If you think about it you can see that's not testable- it's going to be different for every song, and every listener. Some people can't hear over 12K- nuke it! Some people are acutely sensitive to peaks at around 3K- for instance, someone with tinnitus who's subject to the phenomenon of _recruitment_ will find a resonance there to be painfully unpleasant.
I can't possibly test for that and am not trying. I can, however, work out where the errors are, where artifacts are being produced in the frequency band, and what types of resonance are present, and that information can be used by any person who knows what their psychoacoustic model will accept. For instance: if you like Xing, you'll probably like Fraunhofer at high bit rate still better. If you run screaming from Xing and hate all mp3 encoders, you might need to go with Blade assuming you listen to smooth music like classical. If you can't stand Blade at all, Fraunhofer might be right up your alley. These are quantifiable observations based on driving all these encoders completely beyond their ability to cope, and watching where they break down.
I would hope that anybody reading either what I wrote, or what you've just written, would avoid accepting unsupported claims, consider the facts of the situation, and make up their own minds...
_Definitely_ an interesting site. Also, referring to the listening tests: "The Fraunhofer encoder produced a surprisingly harsh sounding attack on the guitar; it remained quick and sharp, but was artificially crisp and accentuated." That's precisely what I was trying to say, couldn't have put it better myself. It turns out Ars _likes_ that. I do not. But if you do- clearly, you're going to like Fraunhofer. It's not about picking a winner, it's like picking a musical instrument...
In fact I think I have seen this before and r3mix actually affected my approach to my encoder analysis. Definite kudos to r3mix, and I entirely agree with many of this site's decisions and approaches- interestingly they reach precisely the same conclusion as I did, that LAME 256 was the ideal archival encoder and LAME VBR was the best one for smaller file sizes- except that r3mix has added the recommendation that joint stereo be used in the latter case! (this would really hurt the relative comparison with higher bit rate stereo encoders with my mono test signal, but I think I will take the advice and try that for my own mp3s...)
r3mix also chooses to use _relative_ graphs rather than attempting to give absolute measurements, something I heartily approve of.
Now, here's the thing- r3mix's results are sometimes a subset and sometimes comparable to mine, just depicted in a different way. The primary measurement of a frequency sweep produces different-colored graphs- if you take the horizontal axis and express the vertical deviation of each graph, from an ideal line of flat reproduction at the top, as a brightness value of a single pixel, you'd get something akin to a single line on one of my 'sonograms'. The test with the 'applaud' signal is an example too- if you subtracted the source from the results you'd end up with distortion levels very similar to my differenced sonograms.
More interesting to me is the fact that my sonograms show an _intermediate_ step- several r3mix tests are the averaged responses of an encoder over time. That is exactly what my 'charts' are- they are sums of all the deviation and distortion over the entire length of a sonogram, over a range of frequencies.
I'm almost certain I'd seen r3mix before doing my own analyses- I think it's very likely that this site significantly helped me define the processes I used for my own stuff. I heartily recommend checking it out- this is good work, I totally endorse it, in fact I'm going to put a link to it on my own encoder page right now :) *put* there!
Personally, I'm with LAME for my sonic requirements, although the only mp3s of my music out there (so far) are Blade, done many months ago before I did this research. But the point is not that there is a 'winner'- the point is that the differing sonic characteristics of these encoders CAN BE QUANTIFIED. Perhaps not measured outright (my charts etc. are _relative_ to each other), but these encoders take significantly different approaches to discarding information, and that applies directly to your choice of encoder for recording music, and translates to a completely predictable sonic characteristic of the encoder on ANY music, no matter what.
I put all sorts of music through Blade when I was on mp3.com with only Blade for a free encoder- no matter what I did, the result was always identifiably BladeEnc, with the smooth extended frequency response and absolutely terrible transient impact. For some pieces, this was suitable- for some it was grossly unsuitable. But the sonic characteristics were consistent- and correlate with what I learned about the encoder in this 'torture test'.
The ideal result from the process (totally unaltered waveform information) would be an entirely _black_ 'sonogram' at the end of the process. That's not going to happen. Since there are going to be deviations, it's down to the psychoacoustic model- and the pictures and charts are going to show what the encoder chose to throw away, on a larger scale.
You can argue that the encoder throws away stuff that can't be heard, therefore measuring _that_ is meaningless. This equates to arguing that the result is indistinguishable from the source audio. I disagree, and feel that all mp3s are audibly degraded from the source audio- which is itself degraded, being typically 16 bit 44.1K digital audio :)
I'm trying to measure what the encoder's failing to do. The project was meant to answer my own questions, and has done so.