Well, what do we really expect to learn from it that we already haven't? We know what's up there, we know how to get there, we know how to get back. We learned all that over 30 years ago. Also it's kind of unfair to discredit some of the residual accomplishments of the race to the moon because they were discovered in the process of getting somewhere else.
Did you take credit away from Christopher Columbus when you learned he was actually trying to go to India? He took a leap and landed somewhere no person from his continent or any continents he had ever known before had landed before (yeah, that's a confusing line, but it's correct.) His accomplishment(s) changed the world. Of course someone else would have done the same thing eventually, but he still get's credit for being the first we know to have made the trip (how other people were already on the continent is still in debate.)
In Seattle we have 5 ClearChannel affiliated stations, out of 36 FM stations and 73 total AM and FM stations in the graetter Seattle area. Thats a 6.8% market coverage, which coincidently is the same share that another conglomerate Ifinity holds, but Entercom (another one) has 7 Seattle stations. Out of the 5 ClearChannel stations I regularly listen to none of them, and occasionally listen to The Funkey Monkey. Of the Entercom stations I occasionally listen to 3 of them, but none regularly. I do regularly listen to one Infinity station (KZOK) and my wife regularly listens to one as well (KBKS/Kiss.)
The album also sold more copies than any other live recording ever, which means there are millions out there. The market was saturated, so the worth per item is low. That doesn't make it any less good though.
As much as I can somewhat agree that a quality producer can be instrumental to shaping a quality sound, some sounds just work well in general. Take the Animals. In 1964 they recorded Houe Of The Risgin Sun, which was produced by Mickey Most in a basement in London. The recording was mixed straight to mono, recording and mixdown took half an hour and cost them 30 shillings including the tape, which using exchange rates of the time comes out to less than $4. This song was a big hit that was the first british single to make it to #1 in the US after the Beatles. This song has been used in many movies, TV shows, commercials, etc, to the point where almost everyone can recognize it.
This goes to show, that it doesn't always cost a whole lot to make something good if you're good, just that money can make things better. Imagine if it was recorded in a good multi-track studio on better tape to at least get rid of the hiss and maybe have it in stereo, but of course part of that could add to it's soul, so I guess it's a 50/50 or personal preference.
I still think Wish You Were Here is their best album, it's less of a "hey, look, we're progresive influential rock" and more of a "let's play some music and make a tribute" album.
S/N raio, is the ratio of volume between the signal and the noise. If the signal is louder, the S/N is better, if the noise is louder, the S/N get's worse. The noise at a concert is 99% the crowd, using directional mics placed well you can cut out a lot of the crowd, but the crowd can also be considered part of the program. The program volume in a concert is very loud, much louder than anyone would dare play in a studio. The signal to noise ratio in a live album is funnny, since the noise isn't standard hiss noise we're used to, it's crowd noise, which we see as part of the recording ambiance, so we don't see the "actual" noise acompanied in most recordings. So a live recording can be somewhat considered to have a better signal to noise ratio since we can't hear the "noise" above the crowd.
Look at cables too. Signal rejection, noise shielding, capacitance and impedence make a big difference in the studios. Studio runs can also be long, not the 1000 foot runs you might get on a tour or anything, but when you have 1000, 100-200foot cables the intereference can multiply quickly. Cables also wear out, which can be time consuming to track down and replace, and expensive for the actual cable as well.
A lot of the $20-$30 older recordings fall in to the obscure market, which anyone in retail or distribution is often a money loosing segment of their business. It often costs very little per copy to ship an order of disks, when they're all the same. Now, to put together a shipment of special order disks is much more expensive to stock, track, and ship. Also, those recordings are often re-mixed for CD, often times from the original master recordings, which is great acoustically, but expensive in studio time (still a studio in the recording sense, even though it's not a performing studio,) and that cost is passed on to the consumer, and when there are less consumers for a particular recording, then more of that cost is passed on to you.
If you're looking for good older recordings Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs is a good place to look, they offer recordings from as clean of a master as they can find, always using machines calibrated for the best sonic clarity for each recording, also using the highest quality materials and presing plants. They're also one of the few places that still offer vynil, and their vynil is about the highest quality vynil you can find.
Think of it like a Car Rental buisiness. You go a buy a bunch of cars at a big one time cost, but you're not done there, cars need to be repaired and replaced at times, to the point where there are none of the original cars left. Same with the studios, they'll go through small replacements and maybe total remodeling and re-gearing eventually, not only with upgrading to stay with the market, but also as things wear out.
Upgrades are also for time/sanity sake, a lot of the new gear may technically be "cleaner" than some of the older gear, but a big part of it is new features and time saving. Going from tape to hard disk can save a lot of cue time and can make punch ins a whole lot easier, as well as instant feedback on effects and switchouts. Add to that easier "un-do's" and archiving of the steps, and losless copies. Now, of course with Dat you can have losless copies, but only so many, eventually that Dat wears down as well, especially if you're tracking back and fourth a bunch of times over one spot.
Mics also wear out over time, not always to the point where it stops working, but can loose some of it's acoustic clarity, dynamic range, and ability to deal with loud input (especialy true with close instrument mics; like for drums, trumpets, saxophones, electric guitar amp stacks, etc.)
Mixers also wear out, pots, pre-amps, plugs. Mixers can go obsolete as well, many producers and engineers would get lost without a computer controled mixer, especially with the 24, 48, 96 or more tracks available to them now. Many producers and engineers like to mic and track each drum head, cymbals, etc seperately to mix. Same with electric guitars, they'll take a raw feed from the instrument and a multi-mic feed from a stack, then pick and choose from there. Options and quality are a big deal, and innovations can make huge strides in both.
Now, those are just studio costs, but record companies don't always own the studios they use, often time in the studio is rented, expensively. Then paying all the engineers (often multiple) and various setup people. Things get real expensive real quick, and that's just to lay down the tracks, after the track are laid down, they must be mixed. The mixdown proceedure takes many things in to consideration, and things can change drasticaly from the original recording to output from the mix with effects and other sounds. Look at albums like U2 Zooropa, there are lots of studio effects and lots of coordination in that album (compare it to the Joshua tree, funny how the basic make up of the song styles fit almost track for track) that probably took up close to the same ammount of time in post production as in the actual recording.
There's also a lot of equalization that goes in to each recording, watch a good recording in a spectrum analyzer and you'll see peaks and everything, but you'll also see program across the spectrum. The "wall of sound" is an important part of music as a basic "rule," although, if you're good any rule can be broken, something that a little band called Strawberry Alarm Cock proved to many producers long ago. They proved that rules are there for people who need guidelines to make "good" sound, but if you're naturally good enough, you can ignore those rules and at times intentionally break them and still come out with a good sound. Take the time to listen to Incense and Peperments and you may see what I mean, or you may just hear a good song, either way you'll win.
Of course, with the original question, you do have to take in to account that all of those "albums" produced aren't all done the same way, and at the same cost. You can have a few hundred albums at well over $2 million to produce, and a few thousand at $5000 to $100,000. That's also assuming that those numbers are correct, and not inflated (ala the RIAA inflation of cd burners incident.)
Costco is also a Membership Only store. I'd think that posting a price posting from a place anyone can walk in to a purchase would be much more prudent to the debate.
If it wasn't an anonymous coward I would go to more trouble to write out a rebuttal.
Basically, roads don't build themselves, schools don't build themselves, and the people that make both of those possible aren't free, and 99% of the population doesn't pay directly for their schooling (their own or their children.) Taxes pay for these things with little to no direct user fees (other than toll roads which we don't have in my state.)
Taxes may be annoying, but it's usually the profile of inneficiency of the use of those taxes that annoy more people more.
Case in point:
Western Washington State recently implemented a commuter train. Each city that hosts portions of the railway built a station (just a place to get on and off the train, not ticket sales or anything.) My city, Puyallup, built it's station in a central area of the town on the site where an old building was falling appart. The station is simple, effective, and pleasing to the eye. The city next to us, Sumner, built it's station on a main thouroughfare called Traffic Avenue. Traffic Avenue was a straight 2 lane road with a few turnoffs that got a little backed up at times, but was easily managable. When the station went in they increased Traffic Avenue to 4 lanes and a turn lane (2 in each direction.) Which would have been fine, but they made the road curve back and forth like a squiggly line, then added small side parking areas to pick up and drop off people, which are inthe middle of the curves and are not safe because people constantly drive through them. They also made one of the railroad crossings in to a right turn only, so if you come out of the station and want to turn left (to get to the freeway) you have to go around through the other busy 5-way intersection, after you turn left on to Main street with no signal assistance. The station itself looks nice, with new trees and new sidewalk, but it was not built all at the same time. The station was put in, concreete poored, sidewalks laid down. A month later concreete was ripped up to put in the streetlights, then ripped up again to put in trees. Of course it would have been much more efficient to put them in all at the same time, IMO. They also blocked a street the used to go around behind the firestation since it now goes through the parking lot for the new train station. To block it they put up yellow pole barriers. Basically, this big construction, while adding a nice train station, also added to the traffic, made the commute confusing, and closed popular routes. Our tax dollars paid for this, and I pay for it every day with my time and stress being I have to go through it almost every day.
We also get charged to recieve calls, which makes advertising illegal through those channels. I gladly pay to recieve SMS messages if it means I don't get them from advertisers.
I am poor, I work hard, I own my own business, I rent an apartment. My Grandparents suffered through the Depression and worked hard all their lives. They own a home they built, they are in their late 70's. When they die I stand a good chance to inherit this house. If the government taxes half of the estate saving the house may not be possible and we will have lost a sign of my Granparents' accomplishments. It's the dream of most Grandparents to hand down something of lasting value to their surviving family, I don't see any reason that the government should be able to take half of it when they've already taken half of their money beforehand in sales, income, and property taxes.
One of my customers is a large furniture store (largest West of the Mississippi, literally 10 acres.) The owner of the store recently died of natural causes, he was the sole proprieter of the store. He willed the store to his wife, being he willed it to her the government does not tax the estate... yet. If she dies the estate is taxed half of it's worth for on her death, and the taxation that would have taken place when he died takes place when she dies (the other half.) The government effectively owns the business at that point. The government is not going to run this business, I imagine they would auction it off, in part or in whole. This company employes over 120 people, as well as multiple smaller companies that depend on this company as their sole distribution. One furniture manufacturer actually resides on the premesis (rents space.) Basicaly the government estate taxes would cost well over 200 jobs at minimum and would more than likely cause my business and a few other businesses to fold as well being they are one of our major customers. (The only way to avoid such a situation is to convert the company in to a corporation, which is what they're working on now, which invovles exceedingly large lawyer and filing fees being this is a multi-million dollar a year company.)
Not so much, it's the perverbial Gillete syndrome. Ms sells the Xbox cheaper than it costs to produce in the plan that owners will buy the highly profitable games.
So, if an Xbox is sold, but it spawns no game sales from that one Xbox than MS should, in theory, actually loose money on that sale.
My Dad actually had that happen at an old job with an Air Conditioner that was being installed after a fire (he worked for the company that had the fire, not the contruction company.) The new Air Conditioner was making a klunking sound, they couldn't figure it out, and called a tech from the company. They sent out a tech, he came to the site (the ac unit was in a strange place in a ceiling, but not on top of the roof, and there was no ceiling in place yet so you could see the AC Unit from the floor of the building) and listened to it and asked for a hammer. He backed up, eyeing his position carefully and telling people to stand back and threw the hammer at the AC Unit. It hit the side with a big bang and the sound went away. He submitted his bill for $5000. The Contractor wanted an itemized list, noy that there was a problem with the ammount, and the contractor actually had a smile on his face when he asked. The tech took the invoice back, wrote on it, $5 Throwing a hammer, $4995 for knowing where to throw it. The contractor knew what he was going to write, he was just curious what the going rate for a hammer throw was. Of course they paid it without question.
Slashdot Mirror
But what would we do up there that we already haven't done?
Well, what do we really expect to learn from it that we already haven't? We know what's up there, we know how to get there, we know how to get back. We learned all that over 30 years ago. Also it's kind of unfair to discredit some of the residual accomplishments of the race to the moon because they were discovered in the process of getting somewhere else.
Did you take credit away from Christopher Columbus when you learned he was actually trying to go to India? He took a leap and landed somewhere no person from his continent or any continents he had ever known before had landed before (yeah, that's a confusing line, but it's correct.) His accomplishment(s) changed the world. Of course someone else would have done the same thing eventually, but he still get's credit for being the first we know to have made the trip (how other people were already on the continent is still in debate.)
oops, looks like I'm a little bit redundant today. Maybe I should learn to read down further before posting.
it's more of a "Been there, done that" stance.
In Seattle we have 5 ClearChannel affiliated stations, out of 36 FM stations and 73 total AM and FM stations in the graetter Seattle area. Thats a 6.8% market coverage, which coincidently is the same share that another conglomerate Ifinity holds, but Entercom (another one) has 7 Seattle stations. Out of the 5 ClearChannel stations I regularly listen to none of them, and occasionally listen to The Funkey Monkey. Of the Entercom stations I occasionally listen to 3 of them, but none regularly. I do regularly listen to one Infinity station (KZOK) and my wife regularly listens to one as well (KBKS/Kiss.)
The album also sold more copies than any other live recording ever, which means there are millions out there. The market was saturated, so the worth per item is low. That doesn't make it any less good though.
As much as I can somewhat agree that a quality producer can be instrumental to shaping a quality sound, some sounds just work well in general. Take the Animals. In 1964 they recorded Houe Of The Risgin Sun, which was produced by Mickey Most in a basement in London. The recording was mixed straight to mono, recording and mixdown took half an hour and cost them 30 shillings including the tape, which using exchange rates of the time comes out to less than $4. This song was a big hit that was the first british single to make it to #1 in the US after the Beatles. This song has been used in many movies, TV shows, commercials, etc, to the point where almost everyone can recognize it.
This goes to show, that it doesn't always cost a whole lot to make something good if you're good, just that money can make things better. Imagine if it was recorded in a good multi-track studio on better tape to at least get rid of the hiss and maybe have it in stereo, but of course part of that could add to it's soul, so I guess it's a 50/50 or personal preference.
I still think Wish You Were Here is their best album, it's less of a "hey, look, we're progresive influential rock" and more of a "let's play some music and make a tribute" album.
yes and no. Signal=volume. Noise=volume.
S/N raio, is the ratio of volume between the signal and the noise. If the signal is louder, the S/N is better, if the noise is louder, the S/N get's worse. The noise at a concert is 99% the crowd, using directional mics placed well you can cut out a lot of the crowd, but the crowd can also be considered part of the program. The program volume in a concert is very loud, much louder than anyone would dare play in a studio. The signal to noise ratio in a live album is funnny, since the noise isn't standard hiss noise we're used to, it's crowd noise, which we see as part of the recording ambiance, so we don't see the "actual" noise acompanied in most recordings. So a live recording can be somewhat considered to have a better signal to noise ratio since we can't hear the "noise" above the crowd.
Look at cables too. Signal rejection, noise shielding, capacitance and impedence make a big difference in the studios. Studio runs can also be long, not the 1000 foot runs you might get on a tour or anything, but when you have 1000, 100-200foot cables the intereference can multiply quickly. Cables also wear out, which can be time consuming to track down and replace, and expensive for the actual cable as well.
A little of both, but Windows or Mac machines will probably give you more options (sorry, but it's true.)
A lot of the $20-$30 older recordings fall in to the obscure market, which anyone in retail or distribution is often a money loosing segment of their business. It often costs very little per copy to ship an order of disks, when they're all the same. Now, to put together a shipment of special order disks is much more expensive to stock, track, and ship. Also, those recordings are often re-mixed for CD, often times from the original master recordings, which is great acoustically, but expensive in studio time (still a studio in the recording sense, even though it's not a performing studio,) and that cost is passed on to the consumer, and when there are less consumers for a particular recording, then more of that cost is passed on to you.
If you're looking for good older recordings Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs is a good place to look, they offer recordings from as clean of a master as they can find, always using machines calibrated for the best sonic clarity for each recording, also using the highest quality materials and presing plants. They're also one of the few places that still offer vynil, and their vynil is about the highest quality vynil you can find.
Think of it like a Car Rental buisiness. You go a buy a bunch of cars at a big one time cost, but you're not done there, cars need to be repaired and replaced at times, to the point where there are none of the original cars left. Same with the studios, they'll go through small replacements and maybe total remodeling and re-gearing eventually, not only with upgrading to stay with the market, but also as things wear out.
Upgrades are also for time/sanity sake, a lot of the new gear may technically be "cleaner" than some of the older gear, but a big part of it is new features and time saving. Going from tape to hard disk can save a lot of cue time and can make punch ins a whole lot easier, as well as instant feedback on effects and switchouts. Add to that easier "un-do's" and archiving of the steps, and losless copies. Now, of course with Dat you can have losless copies, but only so many, eventually that Dat wears down as well, especially if you're tracking back and fourth a bunch of times over one spot.
Mics also wear out over time, not always to the point where it stops working, but can loose some of it's acoustic clarity, dynamic range, and ability to deal with loud input (especialy true with close instrument mics; like for drums, trumpets, saxophones, electric guitar amp stacks, etc.)
Mixers also wear out, pots, pre-amps, plugs. Mixers can go obsolete as well, many producers and engineers would get lost without a computer controled mixer, especially with the 24, 48, 96 or more tracks available to them now. Many producers and engineers like to mic and track each drum head, cymbals, etc seperately to mix. Same with electric guitars, they'll take a raw feed from the instrument and a multi-mic feed from a stack, then pick and choose from there. Options and quality are a big deal, and innovations can make huge strides in both.
Now, those are just studio costs, but record companies don't always own the studios they use, often time in the studio is rented, expensively. Then paying all the engineers (often multiple) and various setup people. Things get real expensive real quick, and that's just to lay down the tracks, after the track are laid down, they must be mixed. The mixdown proceedure takes many things in to consideration, and things can change drasticaly from the original recording to output from the mix with effects and other sounds. Look at albums like U2 Zooropa, there are lots of studio effects and lots of coordination in that album (compare it to the Joshua tree, funny how the basic make up of the song styles fit almost track for track) that probably took up close to the same ammount of time in post production as in the actual recording.
There's also a lot of equalization that goes in to each recording, watch a good recording in a spectrum analyzer and you'll see peaks and everything, but you'll also see program across the spectrum. The "wall of sound" is an important part of music as a basic "rule," although, if you're good any rule can be broken, something that a little band called Strawberry Alarm Cock proved to many producers long ago. They proved that rules are there for people who need guidelines to make "good" sound, but if you're naturally good enough, you can ignore those rules and at times intentionally break them and still come out with a good sound. Take the time to listen to Incense and Peperments and you may see what I mean, or you may just hear a good song, either way you'll win.
Of course, with the original question, you do have to take in to account that all of those "albums" produced aren't all done the same way, and at the same cost. You can have a few hundred albums at well over $2 million to produce, and a few thousand at $5000 to $100,000. That's also assuming that those numbers are correct, and not inflated (ala the RIAA inflation of cd burners incident.)
Without going too much in to weight debates, maybe the point is if you're too heavy for the Segway the excercise may do you some good.
The Philips Velo 500 was good too, too bad mine eventually broke (screen just shows lines now.)
Costco is also a Membership Only store. I'd think that posting a price posting from a place anyone can walk in to a purchase would be much more prudent to the debate.
If it wasn't an anonymous coward I would go to more trouble to write out a rebuttal.
Basically, roads don't build themselves, schools don't build themselves, and the people that make both of those possible aren't free, and 99% of the population doesn't pay directly for their schooling (their own or their children.) Taxes pay for these things with little to no direct user fees (other than toll roads which we don't have in my state.)
Taxes may be annoying, but it's usually the profile of inneficiency of the use of those taxes that annoy more people more.
Case in point:
Western Washington State recently implemented a commuter train. Each city that hosts portions of the railway built a station (just a place to get on and off the train, not ticket sales or anything.) My city, Puyallup, built it's station in a central area of the town on the site where an old building was falling appart. The station is simple, effective, and pleasing to the eye. The city next to us, Sumner, built it's station on a main thouroughfare called Traffic Avenue. Traffic Avenue was a straight 2 lane road with a few turnoffs that got a little backed up at times, but was easily managable. When the station went in they increased Traffic Avenue to 4 lanes and a turn lane (2 in each direction.) Which would have been fine, but they made the road curve back and forth like a squiggly line, then added small side parking areas to pick up and drop off people, which are inthe middle of the curves and are not safe because people constantly drive through them. They also made one of the railroad crossings in to a right turn only, so if you come out of the station and want to turn left (to get to the freeway) you have to go around through the other busy 5-way intersection, after you turn left on to Main street with no signal assistance. The station itself looks nice, with new trees and new sidewalk, but it was not built all at the same time. The station was put in, concreete poored, sidewalks laid down. A month later concreete was ripped up to put in the streetlights, then ripped up again to put in trees. Of course it would have been much more efficient to put them in all at the same time, IMO. They also blocked a street the used to go around behind the firestation since it now goes through the parking lot for the new train station. To block it they put up yellow pole barriers. Basically, this big construction, while adding a nice train station, also added to the traffic, made the commute confusing, and closed popular routes. Our tax dollars paid for this, and I pay for it every day with my time and stress being I have to go through it almost every day.
We also get charged to recieve calls, which makes advertising illegal through those channels. I gladly pay to recieve SMS messages if it means I don't get them from advertisers.
I am poor, I work hard, I own my own business, I rent an apartment. My Grandparents suffered through the Depression and worked hard all their lives. They own a home they built, they are in their late 70's. When they die I stand a good chance to inherit this house. If the government taxes half of the estate saving the house may not be possible and we will have lost a sign of my Granparents' accomplishments. It's the dream of most Grandparents to hand down something of lasting value to their surviving family, I don't see any reason that the government should be able to take half of it when they've already taken half of their money beforehand in sales, income, and property taxes.
One of my customers is a large furniture store (largest West of the Mississippi, literally 10 acres.) The owner of the store recently died of natural causes, he was the sole proprieter of the store. He willed the store to his wife, being he willed it to her the government does not tax the estate... yet. If she dies the estate is taxed half of it's worth for on her death, and the taxation that would have taken place when he died takes place when she dies (the other half.) The government effectively owns the business at that point. The government is not going to run this business, I imagine they would auction it off, in part or in whole. This company employes over 120 people, as well as multiple smaller companies that depend on this company as their sole distribution. One furniture manufacturer actually resides on the premesis (rents space.) Basicaly the government estate taxes would cost well over 200 jobs at minimum and would more than likely cause my business and a few other businesses to fold as well being they are one of our major customers. (The only way to avoid such a situation is to convert the company in to a corporation, which is what they're working on now, which invovles exceedingly large lawyer and filing fees being this is a multi-million dollar a year company.)
Still in favor of the Estate Taxes?
All it did to me was close IE.
Naw man, I just want to be able to turn down my neighbors' stereo... from the conveineience of my computer.
Not so much, it's the perverbial Gillete syndrome. Ms sells the Xbox cheaper than it costs to produce in the plan that owners will buy the highly profitable games.
So, if an Xbox is sold, but it spawns no game sales from that one Xbox than MS should, in theory, actually loose money on that sale.
I believe the author of the previous post meant $200 ($100 less than the $300 the article states as the price for XBOX)
Hey!!! My Name is Matt.
My Dad actually had that happen at an old job with an Air Conditioner that was being installed after a fire (he worked for the company that had the fire, not the contruction company.) The new Air Conditioner was making a klunking sound, they couldn't figure it out, and called a tech from the company. They sent out a tech, he came to the site (the ac unit was in a strange place in a ceiling, but not on top of the roof, and there was no ceiling in place yet so you could see the AC Unit from the floor of the building) and listened to it and asked for a hammer. He backed up, eyeing his position carefully and telling people to stand back and threw the hammer at the AC Unit. It hit the side with a big bang and the sound went away. He submitted his bill for $5000. The Contractor wanted an itemized list, noy that there was a problem with the ammount, and the contractor actually had a smile on his face when he asked. The tech took the invoice back, wrote on it, $5 Throwing a hammer, $4995 for knowing where to throw it. The contractor knew what he was going to write, he was just curious what the going rate for a hammer throw was. Of course they paid it without question.