Sadly, the white ipod earbuds are the primary cause of hearing loss/damage.
The earbuds aren't designed to seal the ear canal so people have to run the volume so high on them to get above the noise level.
Apple's only concern is to include the cheapest headphones possible. Unfortunately, the white earbuds are a (pathetic) fashion statement, and they sound good enough that most people keep them.
It has been a good 8-10 years since Creative Labs crushed, and then bought up the technology from Aureal.
Half-Life Counterstrike supported A3D2, which included wave-tracing. This did a fairly simple modelling of early
reflections, which allows your ears/brain to figure out the approximate size and shape of the space you are in.
In simple terms, this meant you could fire a pistol and the wave-tracing added reflected sounds that made it apparent
that you were standing in a courtyard, or a hallway, etc. If you walked into an arched doorway and fired, you could
actually hear the reflections change as you moved in and out of the doorway. It gave context to the sound and made
everything sound more realistic instead of just as dry sound samples.
Creative on the other hand, didn't support A3D2 and only had it's canned EAX reverb presets. All this did was apply a
type of reverb as decided by the map info. You would cross a magic line and suddenly it would play "chasm preset". As
you walked over this line the reverb simply turned off or changed to whatever the adjacent space was "set" to.
Surprise, surprise, it sounded fake and really added nothing to the sound.
So when Aureal finally went under, CL bought up all of Aureal's technology.
Fast-forward to today. We have quad core cpus instead of P2 300's and we still have no real audio features like
wave-tracing/early reflections.
Creative Labs bought Aureal's technology and then proceeded to never use it or do anything similar.
The last survey by Steam showed that something like 75% of gamers use the free onboard Soundmax/Realtek chipsets
instead of a separate PCI card. The average gamer, who is the captive audience for such addon cards, sees no value
in what CL offers. CL doesn't put any features in it's card that actually make gamers want to buy them.
Creative made it's bed, now it gets to sleep in it.
We can have Internet access that isn't filtered by Bell
Bell is throttling bit torrent traffic now and some encrypted traffic is getting
caught in the same "web" as well. Us Bell users have to switch to 3rd-party DSL
to avoid this throttling.
I wish I had mod points right now to mod down a bunch of these totally
ignorant descriptions of how bit-depth/sampling rate affect sound quality
Anyone that says "we don't need the dynamic range of 24 bits" has no fking clue
how digital audio works. 24 bits is better because it allows for a smoother waveform,
such that it more closely resembles the infinite voltage range of analog. 16 bits is
is a relatively "jaggy" waveform. Most people perceive it as "harsh" even if they don't understand why.
I think I'll go tell some doctors how to use a scalpel since I sorta know what the word
scalpel means.
I was the head reviewer for AGN3D (allgames.com). I gave Turok 2 a fairly scathing
review and Acclaim contacted my boss (Jeremy Alford) and tried to have him pull it
or give it a higher rating.
Thankfully, Jeremy had high integrity and he stood behind my review.
We didn't say anything about the matter on the site, but now I'm starting to think
that all sites should expose publishers/developers who try to coerce review sites.
BT trackers have any *files* on them other than a.torrent? A BT "hub"? Note how they make it sound like the tracker itself has all of the infringing files, rather than the peers. This is just pure lying/bullying.
Stop buying all CDs/DVDs until copyright laws are reduced to 10 years. Sonny Bono was a prick.
If another company wanted to use "apple" or "mac" in their product names you would say Apple was justified. But when it's your beloved Apple using "tiger" the rules change. Typical mac hypocrisy on Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
The earbuds aren't designed to seal the ear canal so people have to run the volume so high on them to get above the noise level.
Apple's only concern is to include the cheapest headphones possible. Unfortunately, the white earbuds are a (pathetic) fashion statement, and they sound good enough that most people keep them.
Michael Bay needs to be stopped much more so than Uwe Boll.
Half-Life Counterstrike supported A3D2, which included wave-tracing. This did a fairly simple modelling of early
reflections, which allows your ears/brain to figure out the approximate size and shape of the space you are in.
In simple terms, this meant you could fire a pistol and the wave-tracing added reflected sounds that made it apparent
that you were standing in a courtyard, or a hallway, etc. If you walked into an arched doorway and fired, you could
actually hear the reflections change as you moved in and out of the doorway. It gave context to the sound and made
everything sound more realistic instead of just as dry sound samples.
Creative on the other hand, didn't support A3D2 and only had it's canned EAX reverb presets. All this did was apply a
type of reverb as decided by the map info. You would cross a magic line and suddenly it would play "chasm preset". As
you walked over this line the reverb simply turned off or changed to whatever the adjacent space was "set" to.
Surprise, surprise, it sounded fake and really added nothing to the sound.
So when Aureal finally went under, CL bought up all of Aureal's technology.
Fast-forward to today. We have quad core cpus instead of P2 300's and we still have no real audio features like
wave-tracing/early reflections.
Creative Labs bought Aureal's technology and then proceeded to never use it or do anything similar.
The last survey by Steam showed that something like 75% of gamers use the free onboard Soundmax/Realtek chipsets
instead of a separate PCI card. The average gamer, who is the captive audience for such addon cards, sees no value
in what CL offers. CL doesn't put any features in it's card that actually make gamers want to buy them.
Creative made it's bed, now it gets to sleep in it.
We can have Internet access that isn't filtered by Bell
Bell is throttling bit torrent traffic now and some encrypted traffic is getting
caught in the same "web" as well. Us Bell users have to switch to 3rd-party DSL
to avoid this throttling.
Fool me 630 times......won't get, won't get fooled again.
I wish I had mod points right now to mod down a bunch of these totally
ignorant descriptions of how bit-depth/sampling rate affect sound quality
Anyone that says "we don't need the dynamic range of 24 bits" has no fking clue
how digital audio works. 24 bits is better because it allows for a smoother waveform,
such that it more closely resembles the infinite voltage range of analog. 16 bits is
is a relatively "jaggy" waveform. Most people perceive it as "harsh" even if they don't
understand why.
I think I'll go tell some doctors how to use a scalpel since I sorta know what the word
scalpel means.
I was the head reviewer for AGN3D (allgames.com). I gave Turok 2 a fairly scathing
review and Acclaim contacted my boss (Jeremy Alford) and tried to have him pull it
or give it a higher rating.
Thankfully, Jeremy had high integrity and he stood behind my review.
We didn't say anything about the matter on the site, but now I'm starting to think
that all sites should expose publishers/developers who try to coerce review sites.
No more late fees.
So I have 6 Seagate drives, paid about $120 each = $720
I get a 5% refund, or about $36 (assuming I can find 6 receipts).
BFD.
The last time I visited HMV (or any such store) was about 5 years ago. I was looking for the New Radicals CD, "So Maybe You've been brainwashed too".
It was $24.
$24 for a CD that was released in 1998, the group disbanded, sales probably close to nil.
So I went home and downloaded it in MonkeyAudio (big at the time).
Go fuck yourself music industry.
Good 'ol "high def DVD". Fishier than 1000 year old anchovies.
Soon to be followed by the no button mouse.
We (Canada), aren't part of the new 12-point-axis-of-copyright-evil.
George Bush has had a desk lamp with this sort of bulb for about 6 years.
The d'oh heard 'round the world.
Hurray! No more need for sunblock.
Sweatshops came back to bite Nike after its customers rose up in arms;
Ya I can't remember the last time I saw someone wearing Nike's.
This is like the Playstation 2 box, manual, dualshock that was selling on ebay for $300 when the PS2 first came out.
Nobody was clever enough to receieve a 5 in this thread. Now I have nothing to read since I only browse at >4
codename - MPAA's Bitch
It's ok when the perceived good-guys do it.
Stop buying all CDs/DVDs until copyright laws are reduced to 10 years. Sonny Bono was a prick.
1) handed over to them
2) shutdown completely
3) taxed at 95% for any useage (no matter how irrelevant to music/movies)
Think different?
I'm proud to be a Canadian