I couldn't agree more, but then I'm biased coz I'm a sound-guy. One of the things about Return To Castle Wolfenstein (apart from the nice rocky rock-textures and great doomy Ramms+ein-like feel) was the great score and SFX. The downside of all this sonic realism is that when playing said game at 3AM on headphones in the dark, on the crypt level, surrounded by the undead, a bag of books falls off the bed behind me, causing me to nearly blast a hole clean through the seat of my chair.
In the classic Dungeon Master on the Atari ST the programmers used to make the Floppy drive whir occasionally to increase the tension in the player, the intention being that the player would imagine the game was loading up some monster for around the next corner. Being an utter saddo I used to put a bit of wire in the monitor port's mono sound out and one in the earth and connect these to the mixer in my studio, where, with a bit of stereo reverb from my Midiverb One (it was the 80's remember) I could get all those dungeon clanks to sound really, really clanky!
I've mentioned this before, but in case anyone still wants to play Dungeon Master, they can download Return to Chaos from
A lot of government and military projects have the sole purpose of attracting money to, or showing deference to whatever fashioanble political/buzzword compliant initiative that has sway that week. This isn't news to slashdotters, I know, but I wonder what real hopes the project had, or was it one of those "impress the boss and get a cheque to swell the department" projects. It seems that's the way things work in the government service and industry these days. Whatever happened to doing the bloody job?
It is said that in the days of yore, London thieves used rhymes to obscure their nefarious intentions from paid police informers. Apples="apples and pears"=stairs. Still in use amongst we denizens of the South of England and BBC soap-opera characters. Will employing a munged language such as this be illegal eventually? If not, then like Winston Smith, we will learn always to obfuscate our speech and facial expressions. Eventually not wearing a McSmiling Non-Terrorist face (tm) will be illegal.
I'm an audio techie, and have to make short runs (1000 or so) of some material for promotional purposes. You're looking at about £900 fpr 500 or $1,100 for 1,000, including jewel case and 4-colour 2-sheet insert. Prices, and therefore quality, may vary.You can get cheaper, but the results may shock.
These are short runs, and therefore VERY expensive. Most of this cost is in making the Glass Master, the "stamper", to make the CD's. After this is made, the costs per unit fall precipitously. On huge 100,000+ runs of Bleatles CD's, or AOL-branded coasters, the unit cost is negligible. The most expensive part is the jewel case, which is where Digipaks came in.
Please feel free to mod me down for 'BS', as usual:-)
Weird! I've just got back into the hack 'n' slash of DM again on my Losedows boxen (not my fault - I need them for work until the excellent Rosegarden is a drop-in replacement for VST)
The impetus - Return to Chaos, George Gilbert's much-appreciated rehack of DM. DM PC doesn't do much sound, so this is a godsend for all of us who missed the atmosphere of this game. I never forgot the chill generated by this classic.
http://www.ragingmole.com/RTC/
Props to Mr Gilbert for a top hack. Now back to getting my crew nearer Archmaster everything. Level 6 fireballs ahoy!
If I was one of these government officials, I'd be worried that MS - a US company so important to their economy that it gets let off after being found guilty of crimes, would be showing me a sanitised version of the code.
All MS need to do is take out the us govt. approved spy code for the examination. The Chinese won't be compiling and shipping their own versions of windows will they? Or is MS now employing Stallman/
Windows with improved support for USB (Ultra Straggly Beard)
In my day-job as a producer/mixer-wrestler musicians sometimes say "if we overdub XXX how can we reproduce it live?" to which I reply "If live performance sounded the same as the CD why do we buy 'XXX live albums?'". We know it's not going to sound the same, it's an interesting re-working of known material. In fact live material SHOULD offer a new take on the songs
Another sale is another sale. Bootlegging of live events otherwise unrecorded has not robbed artists, or even, (God forbid!) record companies. It can be argued that it serves to increase their profile. Now we can have bootlegs that might not sound like they've been mixed with a food-processor.
Persuant to the DMCA, PATRIOT act and Magna Cartman I hereby give notice of procedings for patent infringement for my 310 patents on inane sig files.
All Simpsons quotes are excepted, naturally (or else I'd have no conversation).
This could be quite a sideline for some of us. Maybe we should be grateful to these short-sighted companies giving us another cash-in-hand source of income. If thay make modding mobos illegal then EVERYONE will want me to mod their boxen. I can just see my new Lexus....
That is because they were mastered by pros, who have been working for decades and with pride in their work. I've had the privilege of working with George "Porky" Peckham on a mastering job. The guy knows more than I ever could, mind you he's at retiring age now, and he charges top-whack.
Nowadays stuff sent to some training-scheme monkey with a "Finaliser" box (there are many makes -tc Electronic made the first, now Drawmer, DBX etc make similar boxes) which add multiband compression and "brickwall" limiting to make up for what was often a bad master tape. With the proliferation of home studios, VST and "producers" who have never worked in proper studios and don't know what to listen for. The Finaliser box does keep all the frequencies in line, but of course at a price. The sound.
Nowadays I do all the mastering I can in the studio and present the plant with a press-ready CDR. If I play this CDR and then the pressed version, the pressed version sounds odd. Even the musicians can tell, and they have cloth ears.
As for ABBA, don't be embarassed. They were great songwriters, and their studio (Polar) was equipped with a Neve desk, I believe. Lovely EQ (tone controls). Now people use SSLs, compression on each channel, subgroup busses and output bus. They sound NASTY - too much compression. Horrible EQ too. They are ergonomic, though.
I'm amazed at how vitriolic people have been about this post. I may be a drunkard, but not a cokehead. My spleen was being vented at the record companies, who have no interest in the output.
My point WAS that it _shouldn't_ be true that pressed CDs sound different, but I was reporting that they _do_ and reporting an article that purported to explain this. Those comparing ripped discs with the originals are missing the F____NG point. The pressing plants Do vary from the standard inter-pit-train widths. They shouldn't but they do. I wish they didn't.
If anyone was any more questions, mail me at phasedistort(at)NOSPAMyahoo.co.uk
If anyone just wants to shout, then Happy New Year to you.
Studio Sound was the only pro-audio mag worth reading. So, naturally it's "suspended" I.E. gone. The website (www.prostudio.com) seems to be gone now as well, so there are no online reprints anymore.
I've got a pile of them in the cupboard (the shelf went, I got so many) so I'm not sure I can find the article.
I thought it was bullshit too. But when I heard things off album CDs that went onto long-play-time CDs they sounded "gritty" on the long-play pressings. I usually try to attend the cut, and it usually sounds fine at this time. It's only when the grim time of the boxes of pressed disks being delivered that you get a shock. When I read the SS article it seemed to provide an explanation.
By the way the end product is at 96KHz at 24 bit depth, dithered/shaped down to consumer quality with an Apogee UV22, and as it's sometimes on Exabyte cart, I can't guarrantee I have a reader at home:-)
Yes, I am in recording - since I was 16, a depressing 21 years in April. I was really venting my spleen at the parasites in the business (the RIAA).
My formatting was wonky coz I typed it up in KWrite and didn't check the formatting. D'oh.
Yes, audiophiles talk bollocks. All hifi is bollocks. When you've heard real analogue tape multitrack masters through real speakers in a room designed for neutral listening conditions, hifi is an abortion.
Having said that, capacitance problems in long cable runs have been known to cause problems. They make XLR balanced boosters for some apps. Also, bout the only digital standards we can count on are MIDI and SPDIF!
I particularly like the phrase-
"Idelfonso Soli's Heredia, brother of the rooted ones and empowered of Mekong, announced yesterday that the next week will interpose denunciations against PGR and the Secretariat of Property"
This sounds like something written by Edgar Rice Boroughs.
I hate to think what interrogation methods the police were using here...
"To them they gave a shelter them so that they loosen them, but the PGR rooted them to initiate their investigations"
Yuck! Maybe our local Plod aren't so bad!
I'm just a part time nerd. My line of work is making records. Most of the time my blood, sweat and tears (it comes to that much of the time) gets mangled by bad pressing. CDs are virually worthless. On a long pressing run (on E. John or yet another Bleatles greatest hits) the unit cost is negligible.
It has often been felt that long playing-time CDs (greatest-blah-album-ever type things) sound poor but the wisdom is that digits-is-digits. Until Studio Sound actually tested this assertion. Bugger me if it wasn't true. Something to do with narrow track widths, thin allyplate and jitter.
Time was that we, the producers, used to get a test pressing, to make sure that the inevitable transition to consumer formats hadn't sucked all the life from our babies. After all, as Producers it's our job to give the company a saleable product. Not anymore.They just press 'em, ship 'em and stack 'em.
I've heard such abortions (of recordings I bust my guts over) coming from pressing plants that any cack you hear is possibly just bad pressing.
Then again, The Enemy (the bastard cokehead record execs) may just be trying a technological stay of their inevitable execution.
Chop away. We who actually make the records can't wait for the day when all OUR profits aren't snorted.
Happy New Year to all fellow techs (and good luck getting that cabbie job to record company executives.)
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't agree more, but then I'm biased coz I'm a sound-guy. One of the things about Return To Castle Wolfenstein (apart from the nice rocky rock-textures and great doomy Ramms+ein-like feel) was the great score and SFX. The downside of all this sonic realism is that when playing said game at 3AM on headphones in the dark, on the crypt level, surrounded by the undead, a bag of books falls off the bed behind me, causing me to nearly blast a hole clean through the seat of my chair.
In the classic Dungeon Master on the Atari ST the programmers used to make the Floppy drive whir occasionally to increase the tension in the player, the intention being that the player would imagine the game was loading up some monster for around the next corner. Being an utter saddo I used to put a bit of wire in the monitor port's mono sound out and one in the earth and connect these to the mixer in my studio, where, with a bit of stereo reverb from my Midiverb One (it was the 80's remember) I could get all those dungeon clanks to sound really, really clanky!
I've mentioned this before, but in case anyone still wants to play Dungeon Master, they can download Return to Chaos from
http://www.ragingmole.com/RTC/
and let Mr Gilbert what a top chap he is!
A lot of government and military projects have the sole purpose of attracting money to, or showing deference to whatever fashioanble political/buzzword compliant initiative that has sway that week. This isn't news to slashdotters, I know, but I wonder what real hopes the project had, or was it one of those "impress the boss and get a cheque to swell the department" projects. It seems that's the way things work in the government service and industry these days. Whatever happened to doing the bloody job?
Ha Ha Only Serious.
These are short runs, and therefore VERY expensive. Most of this cost is in making the Glass Master, the "stamper", to make the CD's. After this is made, the costs per unit fall precipitously. On huge 100,000+ runs of Bleatles CD's, or AOL-branded coasters, the unit cost is negligible. The most expensive part is the jewel case, which is where Digipaks came in.
Please feel free to mod me down for 'BS', as usual :-)
Reigime change for Nashville! Bomb the Country Music Charts! Invade the Dixie Chicks! :-) H.H.O.S.
strawberry jam is on the OUTSIDE!
The impetus - Return to Chaos, George Gilbert's much-appreciated rehack of DM. DM PC doesn't do much sound, so this is a godsend for all of us who missed the atmosphere of this game. I never forgot the chill generated by this classic.
http://www.ragingmole.com/RTC/
Props to Mr Gilbert for a top hack. Now back to getting my crew nearer Archmaster everything. Level 6 fireballs ahoy!
All MS need to do is take out the us govt. approved spy code for the examination. The Chinese won't be compiling and shipping their own versions of windows will they? Or is MS now employing Stallman/
Windows with improved support for USB (Ultra Straggly Beard)
The following text is copyright of Perfect Indastriis Pty-
Another sale is another sale. Bootlegging of live events otherwise unrecorded has not robbed artists, or even, (God forbid!) record companies. It can be argued that it serves to increase their profile. Now we can have bootlegs that might not sound like they've been mixed with a food-processor.
Lucius "in the sky with" Sour
Persuant to the DMCA, PATRIOT act and Magna Cartman I hereby give notice of procedings for patent infringement for my 310 patents on inane sig files. All Simpsons quotes are excepted, naturally (or else I'd have no conversation).
This could be quite a sideline for some of us. Maybe we should be grateful to these short-sighted companies giving us another cash-in-hand source of income. If thay make modding mobos illegal then EVERYONE will want me to mod their boxen. I can just see my new Lexus....
Nowadays stuff sent to some training-scheme monkey with a "Finaliser" box (there are many makes -tc Electronic made the first, now Drawmer, DBX etc make similar boxes) which add multiband compression and "brickwall" limiting to make up for what was often a bad master tape. With the proliferation of home studios, VST and "producers" who have never worked in proper studios and don't know what to listen for. The Finaliser box does keep all the frequencies in line, but of course at a price. The sound.
Nowadays I do all the mastering I can in the studio and present the plant with a press-ready CDR. If I play this CDR and then the pressed version, the pressed version sounds odd. Even the musicians can tell, and they have cloth ears.
As for ABBA, don't be embarassed. They were great songwriters, and their studio (Polar) was equipped with a Neve desk, I believe. Lovely EQ (tone controls). Now people use SSLs, compression on each channel, subgroup busses and output bus. They sound NASTY - too much compression. Horrible EQ too. They are ergonomic, though.
I'm amazed at how vitriolic people have been about this post. I may be a drunkard, but not a cokehead. My spleen was being vented at the record companies, who have no interest in the output.
My point WAS that it _shouldn't_ be true that pressed CDs sound different, but I was reporting that they _do_ and reporting an article that purported to explain this. Those comparing ripped discs with the originals are missing the F____NG point. The pressing plants Do vary from the standard inter-pit-train widths. They shouldn't but they do. I wish they didn't.
If anyone was any more questions, mail me at phasedistort(at)NOSPAMyahoo.co.uk
If anyone just wants to shout, then Happy New Year to you.
I've got a pile of them in the cupboard (the shelf went, I got so many) so I'm not sure I can find the article.
I thought it was bullshit too. But when I heard things off album CDs that went onto long-play-time CDs they sounded "gritty" on the long-play pressings. I usually try to attend the cut, and it usually sounds fine at this time. It's only when the grim time of the boxes of pressed disks being delivered that you get a shock. When I read the SS article it seemed to provide an explanation.
By the way the end product is at 96KHz at 24 bit depth, dithered/shaped down to consumer quality with an Apogee UV22, and as it's sometimes on Exabyte cart, I can't guarrantee I have a reader at home :-)
Yes, I am in recording - since I was 16, a depressing 21 years in April. I was really venting my spleen at the parasites in the business (the RIAA).
My formatting was wonky coz I typed it up in KWrite and didn't check the formatting. D'oh.
Yes, audiophiles talk bollocks. All hifi is bollocks. When you've heard real analogue tape multitrack masters through real speakers in a room designed for neutral listening conditions, hifi is an abortion.
Having said that, capacitance problems in long cable runs have been known to cause problems. They make XLR balanced boosters for some apps. Also, bout the only digital standards we can count on are MIDI and SPDIF!
I particularly like the phrase-
"Idelfonso Soli's Heredia, brother of the rooted ones and empowered of Mekong, announced yesterday that the next week will interpose denunciations against PGR and the Secretariat of Property"
This sounds like something written by Edgar Rice Boroughs.
I hate to think what interrogation methods the police were using here...
"To them they gave a shelter them so that they loosen them, but the PGR rooted them to initiate their investigations"
Yuck! Maybe our local Plod aren't so bad!
I'm just a part time nerd. My line of work is making records. Most of the time my blood, sweat and tears (it comes to that much of the time) gets mangled by bad pressing. CDs are virually worthless. On a long pressing run (on E. John or yet another Bleatles greatest hits) the unit cost is negligible. It has often been felt that long playing-time CDs (greatest-blah-album-ever type things) sound poor but the wisdom is that digits-is-digits. Until Studio Sound actually tested this assertion. Bugger me if it wasn't true. Something to do with narrow track widths, thin allyplate and jitter. Time was that we, the producers, used to get a test pressing, to make sure that the inevitable transition to consumer formats hadn't sucked all the life from our babies. After all, as Producers it's our job to give the company a saleable product. Not anymore.They just press 'em, ship 'em and stack 'em. I've heard such abortions (of recordings I bust my guts over) coming from pressing plants that any cack you hear is possibly just bad pressing. Then again, The Enemy (the bastard cokehead record execs) may just be trying a technological stay of their inevitable execution. Chop away. We who actually make the records can't wait for the day when all OUR profits aren't snorted. Happy New Year to all fellow techs (and good luck getting that cabbie job to record company executives.)