scharkalvin - I'll address this reply directly to you, since you posted an intelligent, good-faith reply. Also, since you're posting in this thread, I assume you aren't one of the clowns who modded me troll and flamebait, respectively. (note to mods: just because somone who you don't agree with is slightly outspoken, doesn't merit troll or FB status)
First point - the 'warm' sound of tubes. What is meant by this, is a type of sonic coloration. You are entirely correct in that tubes and FETs have a much more pleasing overload characteristic, but older tube designs tended to have a lot of coloration in general. For that matter, many conventional tube designs rely on classic circuit and transformer designs, and thus express the same colorations. Take a listen to Marantz, Harmon Kardon and McIntosh gear of the classic era - each has its own sound, each is individually pleasing, but none of them are particularly correct. That said, if I had to live with a Marantz solid-state unit vs. a Marantz tube unit, I'd take the tubes.. they are just easier to listen to (irrespective of accuracy).
Your comment about digital being able to make a PERFECT copy of an analog source is still subject to some debate - and I say this, having a reasonable understanding of the Nyquist math. However, you are dead-on with the statement about the sampling rate of CDs being too close to the frequency limit of the source material. I'm also slightly sad about the failure of the DVD-A format, which held great promise as a truly solid digital representation of an analog source. For now, we are still stuck with the legacy of computer hardware and storage density from 1982 - 44.1Khz sampling, with a 16bit wordsize. Frankly, I'm amazed that it works as well as it does.. at least digital recording and mastering techniques (and hardware) have improved a lot in 25 years, and these days it's possible to make a CD sound pretty darn good.
If only they'd had just a little more CPU power and storage density in those days, they would have been able to implement a 'true' digital audio format - when I say true, I mean one that has robust error checking and correction. Redbook audio CDs have no true form of error correction at the bit level, and this is one of their great downfalls. IIRC, the blocksize on a CDrom is 2352 bytes long - but for a computer CD, only 2048 bytes. That remaining space is used for error correction data on a computer CD, but on an audio CD it's used for music. The engineers of the 80's needed every byte on board, so they could get their 74 minutes of music on a CD. Thus, it's never guaranteed that the data on the disc is precisely what the CD player sees at the input of its DAC. It's OK for audio (I guess..) but for actual data storage and transfer, it's a joke.
Lastly, the bit about us humans losing our high-frequency hearing with age is quite true, but therein lies a huge red herring. Whether or not one can hear a 20Khz tone (which might be part of some audio program) is not as absolute as you might first think. Despite the fact that you might lack the ability to hear such a tone, does not imply that this has no effect on your perception of the rest of the program. Those high-frequency components still impact your eardrum, and affect the way in which you perceive other sounds in the program. Think about this: when you are ascending in an airplane, and your ears begin to load up from the change in barometer, everything starts to sound different (at least prior to the "pop"). That's a (essentailly) 0Hz signal being applied to your ears - and while absolutely nobody can 'hear' 0Hz, it's certainly affecting your perception of other sounds, isn't it? Point is, any frequency components - whether directly heard or not, have an impact on one's overall perception of the material.
Anyway, I've done enough trolling and flamebaiting for one day;-) Thanks for your time
Let me get this out of the way first - my original post was questionably topical, so I'll accept the off-topic modding. But a troll it was not; that's just piffle, and mod should have thought it over a little more.
As was pointed out, I'm not the typical music consumer - my music consumption habits are the product of having the wool lifted from my eyes, and the tunes being put back into my ears. Also, music is extremely important to me, and I am willing to go to some rather great lengths to enjoy it. I'll avoid that discussion, lest you all think I'm really nuts.
Your challenge re: vinyl transcription to CD is one I would readily take up. At least with my equipment, I'd be able to tell the vinyl from the copy in about five seconds. That's about how long it takes me to tell the difference between a first and second press of Peter Gabriel's first solo record (the Atco, car in the rain) - differentation between digital and analog source is a trivial matter compared to the latter. This is not a jest, and it's not bragging - it's part of what I do for a living, and I'm good at my job.
Anyway, short answer: you are all correct. Long answer, you're all semi-correct but your equipment is extremely mundane and you've likely never heard a really decent phonograph or set of electronics in your lives. Until about ten years ago, I hadn't either.
And if dispelling the analog myth is so trivial, why hasn't analog been six feet under since 1982?
When I was a kid, growing up in the 1970's, I bought and listened to records. My friends and I would sometimes loan our records to each other so that we could 'share the love' - records weren't cheap, and sometimes it just didn't make sense for several of us to own the same title. Sometimes we took it a step further, and made a cassette tape of a record.. and shared it around that way. But in the end, the 'real music' was the record itself, not the copy on the cassette.
Sometime in the early 1980's, I (well, may of us) got duped into buying CDs. Perfect sound, now and forever we were told. I sold my records and my collection of CDs grew, but for some reason, by the mid 90's I'd stopped buying and listening to my CDs. I was doing a lot less music listening in general, but when I was listening, it was to tapes of my old records and mix tapes / tapes of CDs that were floating around. At the time, I just assumed it was the natural progression and change of interests in my life, and life went on.
Then something amazing happened. I struck up a friendship with a guy ten years my senior, who was a big vinyl junkie and in possession of some very trick analog gear - turntable, tube amps, etc. I was frigging blown away! From the first time the needle hit 'Zombie' by the Cranberries, I was sold. The reason I wasn't listening to my CDs, is that they sounded like shit, and I'd been duped by the Digital hype. The folly of my ways was apparent, and I immediately went out and sold all my CDs, and bought a turntable - as well as a simple little tube amp - and I was in heaven. Today, my LP collection is over a thousand titles and growing, and the music just keeps on playing.
So what's the point of this boring backstory? It's this: Digital media, at least music, is a joke. It's not real, and it doesn't even sound like it. CD playback has gotten a lot better, and I don't begrudge someone for buying a new CD - especially if there is no vinyl release. But the idea of paying actual money for a crappy sounding compressed version (MP3) of an already crappy sounding CD is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard of. These $0.99 music downloads are completely worthless, and the record companies / RIAA know that. Not only are you getting a poor replica of a music track, but it's totally without any tangible value. You're just one hard disk crash away from losing every song you ever bought - but never really received.
Sorry for the chiche, but the emperor really has no clothes - the entire business model of selling songs for download is nothing more than that - a model of business; a marketing breakthrough. And when you are selling worthless products on a large scale, you'd better be carrying a damn big stick. Or carrying a bunch of lawyers, who themselves have big sticks.. possibly with nails through them.
Thanks for your time, and my regrets if this wandered off-topic. I think you get my point.
Who modded the parent informative? That's simply pure nonsense.
The Dvorak layout was patented in 1932, and thus the patent is expired. It was designated an alternate standard keyboard layout by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1982. The reasons it never 'took off' are twofold - First and foremost, 99.9% of anyone who learns to type, learns on a QWERTY keyboard. Secondly, and more to the point, it's been shown over and over that there is no inherent speed advantage to the Dvorak layout. Yes, some people prefer the Dvorak layout, but if you put two groups of fast typists head-to-head, QWERTY vs. Dvorak, the results will tend to be a toss-up.
Actually, it was *over* 1,000 Trust and Safety employees.
See, 1,000 is a lot.. that's a lot of Safety and Trust employees, and they've got even more than that! How many Safety and Trust employees do you think they actually have? 2,000? 5,000? Whatever it is, it's over 1,000 - and that's a lot of Safety and Trust employees.
If it's eBay's goal to 'wipe out wrongdoing', then why don't they even enforce their own policies? Title spamming on eBay runs contrary to policy, yet is so rampant as to make many searches useless.
Of all the simple things eBay could do to clean up the end-user experience, building a crawling engine to sniff out and flag this kind of nonsense might be among the most trivial. But yet, nothing is done about it.
But of course.. it's a simple fact that eBay benefits any time a sale occurs. If title spamming increases the rate of sales, and possibly the final bid price, it's actually in eBay's financial interest to turn a blind eye. In the end, eBay is a for-profit corporation, with a primary duty to line the pockets of the execs and shareholders.
Just something to consider, next time you ask yoursef "Why the hell don't they *do something* about this?".
Wait a second.. two 800 pound gorilla companies, who might ostensibly be considered competitiors (The RIAA and Comcast are both involved in distributing media content) are working together to gain additional control over a marketplace.. I know there's a name for this.. what is it again.. oh yeah, it's:
Collusion: In the study of economics, collusion takes place within an industry when rival companies cooperate for their mutual benefit. Collusion most often takes place within the market form of oligopoly, where the decision of a few firms to collude can significantly impact the market as a whole.
Collusion is largely illegal in the United States due to antitrust law, but implicit collusion in the form of price leadership and tacit understandings still takes place.
(The above is courtesy Wikipedia.org, reprinted here under fair-use terms)
This may be OT, and mod it so (...) if you wish, but: Why is it that we cannot have a prime-time TV Sci-Fi series that does not contain one or more pointless romantic subplots? This is one of the things that really irked me about Enterprise, and kept me from giving a rat's ass about the show. It's as bad as that whole pathetic Riker/Troi thing in TNG.. the whiny dating the pompous.
Does any real Sci-Fi fan care who is banging whom? Let's just all assume they are banging each other, and get on with the relevant content please.
If I hadn't read this/. article, I'd never even have noticed it was gone.
...Touchstone is owned by the Walt Disney Company...the creative decisions that Disney makes have no bearing on the creative decisions that Touchstone makes.
Right. The century-old Disney empire has absolutely no sway when it comes to deciding what kind of content they, or their sub-group will release.
If I buy a car and don't like the rims, I don't ask the manufacturer or dealer for a refund. Don't buy from that vendor. No one put a gun to your head. This is stupid.
This is a really weak analogy.. despite the fact that you don't like those rims, they are still certified by a non-corporate entity (the DOT in the USA) to not fail under normal use and render your ass to grass. In addition, if the car manufacturer were to ship a model with rims/tires that were not roadworthy, they would be in quite a fix. Contrast this with the "safety" of the popular OS - your physical life my not be on the line in this instance - but in our modern technocracy, your personal information, credit, banking data etc, are pretty much "your life".
Anyway, I see you've become quite accustomed to corporate bullying strategies.
As someone who builds hand-wired analog electronics, I can understand fully the lack of competition. Not only are electronics of this ilk difficult to build from the start, but finding people with the required skills to execute a given design is becoming more difficult by the day. And even when properly built, these units require maintenence and repair - when's the last time you met anyone who fixes pinball machines for a living? An even better question: When's the last time you met anyone who is training to do any of the jobs mentioned?
And of course, no two designs are the same.. not only do they have different logic (for scoring, etc) but this logic has to translate into solenoids, bumpers, magnets, springs, switches, etc etc. The complexity is astonishing, especially for something that is a (relatively) low-production item.
My hat is off to the folks who can design, build and then keep these machines running - sometimes for 20+ years.
Of course I haven't read TFA, but the concept of "Information" is pretty nebulous, as there is no absolute measure of being informed - it's purely subjective. However, "Data" does exist, and knowledge is power.. so there.
Robert DeNiro will rappel into your living room and install a Linux machine, then set up your internet connection, while discussing the problems with Microsoft. That would so rock.
we have trouble coughing up $4 mill a year when it comes to funding a scientific expedition which has the potential for giving us greater insight into our place in the universe
That's only par for the course, when the top officials in the US Government live in a "universe" that was made 6000 years ago, fossils and all, by an invisible superhero in outer space. They already know where we came from, and what our place is - that is, top dog - in all of creation.
Scientific exploration is ultimately pointless, when we already have all the answers we need in our little black book. Why would we waste millions of dollars trying to answer questions that were answered in Sunday School?
Hey, it's one of several/. running jokes, and we all have a right to use each one, once. I've already used Soviet Russia and Let Me Be The First One, so you really haven't much to worry about at this point... except for Old Koreans - up next.
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scharkalvin - I'll address this reply directly to you, since you posted an intelligent, good-faith reply. Also, since you're posting in this thread, I assume you aren't one of the clowns who modded me troll and flamebait, respectively. (note to mods: just because somone who you don't agree with is slightly outspoken, doesn't merit troll or FB status)
First point - the 'warm' sound of tubes. What is meant by this, is a type of sonic coloration. You are entirely correct in that tubes and FETs have a much more pleasing overload characteristic, but older tube designs tended to have a lot of coloration in general. For that matter, many conventional tube designs rely on classic circuit and transformer designs, and thus express the same colorations. Take a listen to Marantz, Harmon Kardon and McIntosh gear of the classic era - each has its own sound, each is individually pleasing, but none of them are particularly correct. That said, if I had to live with a Marantz solid-state unit vs. a Marantz tube unit, I'd take the tubes.. they are just easier to listen to (irrespective of accuracy).
Your comment about digital being able to make a PERFECT copy of an analog source is still subject to some debate - and I say this, having a reasonable understanding of the Nyquist math. However, you are dead-on with the statement about the sampling rate of CDs being too close to the frequency limit of the source material. I'm also slightly sad about the failure of the DVD-A format, which held great promise as a truly solid digital representation of an analog source. For now, we are still stuck with the legacy of computer hardware and storage density from 1982 - 44.1Khz sampling, with a 16bit wordsize. Frankly, I'm amazed that it works as well as it does.. at least digital recording and mastering techniques (and hardware) have improved a lot in 25 years, and these days it's possible to make a CD sound pretty darn good.
If only they'd had just a little more CPU power and storage density in those days, they would have been able to implement a 'true' digital audio format - when I say true, I mean one that has robust error checking and correction. Redbook audio CDs have no true form of error correction at the bit level, and this is one of their great downfalls. IIRC, the blocksize on a CDrom is 2352 bytes long - but for a computer CD, only 2048 bytes. That remaining space is used for error correction data on a computer CD, but on an audio CD it's used for music. The engineers of the 80's needed every byte on board, so they could get their 74 minutes of music on a CD. Thus, it's never guaranteed that the data on the disc is precisely what the CD player sees at the input of its DAC. It's OK for audio (I guess..) but for actual data storage and transfer, it's a joke.
Lastly, the bit about us humans losing our high-frequency hearing with age is quite true, but therein lies a huge red herring. Whether or not one can hear a 20Khz tone (which might be part of some audio program) is not as absolute as you might first think. Despite the fact that you might lack the ability to hear such a tone, does not imply that this has no effect on your perception of the rest of the program. Those high-frequency components still impact your eardrum, and affect the way in which you perceive other sounds in the program. Think about this: when you are ascending in an airplane, and your ears begin to load up from the change in barometer, everything starts to sound different (at least prior to the "pop"). That's a (essentailly) 0Hz signal being applied to your ears - and while absolutely nobody can 'hear' 0Hz, it's certainly affecting your perception of other sounds, isn't it? Point is, any frequency components - whether directly heard or not, have an impact on one's overall perception of the material.
Anyway, I've done enough trolling and flamebaiting for one day ;-) Thanks for your time
Let me get this out of the way first - my original post was questionably topical, so I'll accept the off-topic modding. But a troll it was not; that's just piffle, and mod should have thought it over a little more.
As was pointed out, I'm not the typical music consumer - my music consumption habits are the product of having the wool lifted from my eyes, and the tunes being put back into my ears. Also, music is extremely important to me, and I am willing to go to some rather great lengths to enjoy it. I'll avoid that discussion, lest you all think I'm really nuts.
Your challenge re: vinyl transcription to CD is one I would readily take up. At least with my equipment, I'd be able to tell the vinyl from the copy in about five seconds. That's about how long it takes me to tell the difference between a first and second press of Peter Gabriel's first solo record (the Atco, car in the rain) - differentation between digital and analog source is a trivial matter compared to the latter. This is not a jest, and it's not bragging - it's part of what I do for a living, and I'm good at my job.
Anyway, short answer: you are all correct. Long answer, you're all semi-correct but your equipment is extremely mundane and you've likely never heard a really decent phonograph or set of electronics in your lives. Until about ten years ago, I hadn't either.
And if dispelling the analog myth is so trivial, why hasn't analog been six feet under since 1982?
When I was a kid, growing up in the 1970's, I bought and listened to records. My friends and I would sometimes loan our records to each other so that we could 'share the love' - records weren't cheap, and sometimes it just didn't make sense for several of us to own the same title. Sometimes we took it a step further, and made a cassette tape of a record.. and shared it around that way. But in the end, the 'real music' was the record itself, not the copy on the cassette.
Sometime in the early 1980's, I (well, may of us) got duped into buying CDs. Perfect sound, now and forever we were told. I sold my records and my collection of CDs grew, but for some reason, by the mid 90's I'd stopped buying and listening to my CDs. I was doing a lot less music listening in general, but when I was listening, it was to tapes of my old records and mix tapes / tapes of CDs that were floating around. At the time, I just assumed it was the natural progression and change of interests in my life, and life went on.
Then something amazing happened. I struck up a friendship with a guy ten years my senior, who was a big vinyl junkie and in possession of some very trick analog gear - turntable, tube amps, etc. I was frigging blown away! From the first time the needle hit 'Zombie' by the Cranberries, I was sold. The reason I wasn't listening to my CDs, is that they sounded like shit, and I'd been duped by the Digital hype. The folly of my ways was apparent, and I immediately went out and sold all my CDs, and bought a turntable - as well as a simple little tube amp - and I was in heaven. Today, my LP collection is over a thousand titles and growing, and the music just keeps on playing.
So what's the point of this boring backstory? It's this: Digital media, at least music, is a joke. It's not real, and it doesn't even sound like it. CD playback has gotten a lot better, and I don't begrudge someone for buying a new CD - especially if there is no vinyl release. But the idea of paying actual money for a crappy sounding compressed version (MP3) of an already crappy sounding CD is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard of. These $0.99 music downloads are completely worthless, and the record companies / RIAA know that. Not only are you getting a poor replica of a music track, but it's totally without any tangible value. You're just one hard disk crash away from losing every song you ever bought - but never really received.
Sorry for the chiche, but the emperor really has no clothes - the entire business model of selling songs for download is nothing more than that - a model of business; a marketing breakthrough. And when you are selling worthless products on a large scale, you'd better be carrying a damn big stick. Or carrying a bunch of lawyers, who themselves have big sticks.. possibly with nails through them.
Thanks for your time, and my regrets if this wandered off-topic. I think you get my point.
Who modded the parent informative? That's simply pure nonsense.
The Dvorak layout was patented in 1932, and thus the patent is expired. It was designated an alternate standard keyboard layout by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1982. The reasons it never 'took off' are twofold - First and foremost, 99.9% of anyone who learns to type, learns on a QWERTY keyboard. Secondly, and more to the point, it's been shown over and over that there is no inherent speed advantage to the Dvorak layout. Yes, some people prefer the Dvorak layout, but if you put two groups of fast typists head-to-head, QWERTY vs. Dvorak, the results will tend to be a toss-up.
My father listened to records, I listen to CDs. My son listens to MP3s, and his son will listen to records.
Oh come on people, LAUGH.. it's FUNNY.
Who the heck modded that FB?
It's probably useful to know what happens when you keep rubbish in space for several years anyway
Don't you think you're being a little hard on the ISS?
Next time, get ahold of Richard Benjamin, Tim Thomerson, Richard Kelton, Tricia Barnstable, Cyb Barnstable and Conrad Janis.
Actually, it was *over* 1,000 Trust and Safety employees.
See, 1,000 is a lot.. that's a lot of Safety and Trust employees, and they've got even more than that! How many Safety and Trust employees do you think they actually have? 2,000? 5,000? Whatever it is, it's over 1,000 - and that's a lot of Safety and Trust employees.
Strangely enough, things take a very different turn if you attempt to sell an OEM version of a Microsoft product, without the prerequisite "hardware".
If it's eBay's goal to 'wipe out wrongdoing', then why don't they even enforce their own policies? Title spamming on eBay runs contrary to policy, yet is so rampant as to make many searches useless.
Of all the simple things eBay could do to clean up the end-user experience, building a crawling engine to sniff out and flag this kind of nonsense might be among the most trivial. But yet, nothing is done about it.
But of course.. it's a simple fact that eBay benefits any time a sale occurs. If title spamming increases the rate of sales, and possibly the final bid price, it's actually in eBay's financial interest to turn a blind eye. In the end, eBay is a for-profit corporation, with a primary duty to line the pockets of the execs and shareholders.
Just something to consider, next time you ask yoursef "Why the hell don't they *do something* about this?".
Agreed, but I think there were several emissions. Still, it made for good light reading on current events.
Wait a second.. two 800 pound gorilla companies, who might ostensibly be considered competitiors (The RIAA and Comcast are both involved in distributing media content) are working together to gain additional control over a marketplace.. I know there's a name for this.. what is it again.. oh yeah, it's:
Collusion: In the study of economics, collusion takes place within an industry when rival companies cooperate for their mutual benefit. Collusion most often takes place within the market form of oligopoly, where the decision of a few firms to collude can significantly impact the market as a whole.
Collusion is largely illegal in the United States due to antitrust law, but implicit collusion in the form of price leadership and tacit understandings still takes place.
(The above is courtesy Wikipedia.org, reprinted here under fair-use terms)
This may be OT, and mod it so (...) if you wish, but: Why is it that we cannot have a prime-time TV Sci-Fi series that does not contain one or more pointless romantic subplots? This is one of the things that really irked me about Enterprise, and kept me from giving a rat's ass about the show. It's as bad as that whole pathetic Riker/Troi thing in TNG.. the whiny dating the pompous.
Does any real Sci-Fi fan care who is banging whom? Let's just all assume they are banging each other, and get on with the relevant content please.
If I hadn't read this /. article, I'd never even have noticed it was gone.
...Touchstone is owned by the Walt Disney Company...the creative decisions that Disney makes have no bearing on the creative decisions that Touchstone makes.
Right. The century-old Disney empire has absolutely no sway when it comes to deciding what kind of content they, or their sub-group will release.
Puh-leeze.
If I buy a car and don't like the rims, I don't ask the manufacturer or dealer for a refund. Don't buy from that vendor. No one put a gun to your head. This is stupid.
This is a really weak analogy.. despite the fact that you don't like those rims, they are still certified by a non-corporate entity (the DOT in the USA) to not fail under normal use and render your ass to grass. In addition, if the car manufacturer were to ship a model with rims/tires that were not roadworthy, they would be in quite a fix. Contrast this with the "safety" of the popular OS - your physical life my not be on the line in this instance - but in our modern technocracy, your personal information, credit, banking data etc, are pretty much "your life".
Anyway, I see you've become quite accustomed to corporate bullying strategies.
Just got my Windows XP Pro refund from MS last week. Package contained several foreign coins, a coupon booklet, and one human soul.
As someone who builds hand-wired analog electronics, I can understand fully the lack of competition. Not only are electronics of this ilk difficult to build from the start, but finding people with the required skills to execute a given design is becoming more difficult by the day. And even when properly built, these units require maintenence and repair - when's the last time you met anyone who fixes pinball machines for a living? An even better question: When's the last time you met anyone who is training to do any of the jobs mentioned?
And of course, no two designs are the same.. not only do they have different logic (for scoring, etc) but this logic has to translate into solenoids, bumpers, magnets, springs, switches, etc etc. The complexity is astonishing, especially for something that is a (relatively) low-production item.
My hat is off to the folks who can design, build and then keep these machines running - sometimes for 20+ years.
Of course I haven't read TFA, but the concept of "Information" is pretty nebulous, as there is no absolute measure of being informed - it's purely subjective. However, "Data" does exist, and knowledge is power.. so there.
Robert DeNiro will rappel into your living room and install a Linux machine, then set up your internet connection, while discussing the problems with Microsoft. That would so rock.
Sorry, but like an extermination-bent Dalek, I can neither get too excited nor too fearful of anything that can't climb the freakin' stairs.
Wake me up when it hovers.
we have trouble coughing up $4 mill a year when it comes to funding a scientific expedition which has the potential for giving us greater insight into our place in the universe
That's only par for the course, when the top officials in the US Government live in a "universe" that was made 6000 years ago, fossils and all, by an invisible superhero in outer space. They already know where we came from, and what our place is - that is, top dog - in all of creation.
Scientific exploration is ultimately pointless, when we already have all the answers we need in our little black book. Why would we waste millions of dollars trying to answer questions that were answered in Sunday School?
Of course, of course.. unless, of course it's a mouse; in which case it's actually neither.
What do they do for an encore, rape Donkey Kong Jr with an Atari controller?
Yes, while pouring sugar into his coin slot.
Hey, it's one of several /. running jokes, and we all have a right to use each one, once. I've already used Soviet Russia and Let Me Be The First One, so you really haven't much to worry about at this point... except for Old Koreans - up next.