And where exactly do you think the noise floor of a real LP player is?
Oh, the noise floor can be pretty high depending on how much regrind is in the Vinyl stock and what kind of turntable it is. Idler drive? Belt drive? Direct Drive? One of those mag lev or fluid damped suspension turntables that weigh 400 pounds?
If you apply all the proper turntable voodoo (along with the anti-resonant tone arm putty, silver Litz wire cartridge leads and vacuum tube preamps - with the good Hungarian tubes) the noise floor can get to within a few db of a CD.
Well, since a CD doesn't really have a noise floor, the effect down there is different - extreme distortion. The antidote to that is... add noise, only call it "dither". The analog humans of old would put up with audio 6 db below the noise floor but it still wasn't distorted or gritty like the CD way down there.
The problem with CDs is that the internal layer oxidizes and can't be read.
Roger that, Chief. I've got several store bought CDs which are no longer playable on the outer edges because of degradation. They were stored properly, not abused etc... and this is how they pay me back.
Anybody remember the Telarc digital recording of the 1812 Overture released on Vinyl? They used real cannons and the cannon shots were so loud, they had to dramatically increase the groove pitch in that area of the record to accommodate the waveform. It would have crossed over six grooves or so if they hadn't.
That record was literally a stereo killer. I saw phono cartridges lose the diamond tip or jump out of the groove when it hit that spot. Power amp fuses blew. Speakers were damaged etc. The only way I could capture it to tape was to play the record at 16 RPM, record the tape at 15 IPS and play it at 7.5 IPS (yes, there was a slight pitch shift but so what).
Vinyl does sound better than a 16-bit CD in quiet passages... MUCH better, actually. It has to do with bit depth which decreases as the audio level goes down. CDs are mastered with between 12db and 20db of headroom before absolute clipping, so you're only using about 14 of your 16 bits right there. As music passages get quieter, you're using fewer of the available bits until the really quiet stuff is 4-bit bit audio which sounds like shit no matter what the sample rate. It's very gritty sounding.
Recording studios won't do anything less than 24 bits which is not available on a CD. Back in the day of early digital recordings, it was a real California thing to use a DBX compressor/expander system to "fix" those problems with low range recording.
However, you're right on about records degrading, of course. You should only play them once per day (I've been told) because the stylus friction deforms the record and it takes a while for the groove to "heal". Twenty years from now, someone is going to discover that ripping CDs sounds better and is more convenient than Internet delivered music.
Yeah, I've hit that with scanners, too. Although, things like Dell printers really have Lexmark guts and work fine on a Mac. These days, any manufacturer that makes "Windows Only" peripherals must have a screw loose.
Warner throws behind Blu-Ray, Retailers put HD-DVD stock on sale in response...
That's exactly the potential outcome - HD-DVD could still win out unless all 174 Corporate Blu-ray backers figure out how to make cheaper consumer examples of their players.
There are 138 Corporate HD-DVD backers of which Microsoft is one. Microsoft has recently primed the pump by helping (funding/bribing) studios to create lots of HD-DVD titles - the other factor of format choice for consumers. There's some contention that Microsoft is just trying to fuel the format wars so they can swoop the download market.
Oh, yeah.. the download market. LG and Netflix partnership, Apple and a dozen others may obsolete both physical standards.
Dell has a great support system for broken machines, that's for sure. However, we didn't think we could stand 3 years of those Inspirons so they were all abandoned between 8 and 18 months. I had a closet full of them which would crash/die/vapor lock/restart themselves if you just waited long enough. The Apple laptops we got to replace them are all over 4 years old with one fatality after multiple drops. We sell our Macs when they get obsolete but we've never sold a PC - they only ever made it to the scrap metal stage.
That's funny. Most Linux distros use CUPS which is owned by Apple now.
It's got some irony to it. The Mac was the first computer I plugged in back in the day (OS 10.2) which would actually work with most printers properly. Some printers only had CUPS drivers on the Mac but most also had native drivers. I would avoid the CUPS drivers if possible back then because they were... strange.
With my office mate's Linux installation (don't recall what flavor), he had CUPS drivers which would sort of work - took all day to get a test page, could print one sided, missed half the printer features from the PPD, couldn't print two sided, didn't understand page orientation or scaling and couldn't use the CD adapter - pretty borked. Plugged the same printer into the Mac (an Epson somethingorother) and it worked great. Could even check the ink levels and run the ink waster utilities.
But most housewives and teenage girls are too blinded by the apple hype machine to notice.
A little bitter about something, eh? What the fuck is the problem here? Apple wasn't ahead of the curve - they actually came several years late to the game. The competing music players at the time were junk and many still are. You didn't absorb one thing out of my previous post.
The iPod and iTunes have provided more choices with how the media is used than any other system. Sure, a USB stick will play music but won't do 10% of what the combination of iTunes and iPod can do. You may not like it but you've got the right to just use a USB stick if you want.
So, where's the monopoly? They've kept prices low for the consumer (for EVERY online music store), music libraries are growing including indies, they'll let you transcode the audio to and from other formats including WMA and CDs and they really don't want the RIAA driven DRM. Apple also isn't making a boatload of money off their music store - it's more of a free service for the music industry and they're not gouging the buyer. Actually, you don't even need the music store. Just rip CDs or load MP3s from Pirate Bay if you want.
Being popular and functional doesn't constitute a monopoly and the hype machine is always driven by the press and word of mouth. All Apple did was put a competent product on the shelf with a silly name and the rest took care of itself. Keeping the technology advancing isn't a crime. What's most puzzling is that real competition hasn't shown up yet. That's what you should be pissed about.
Just be glad Microsoft didn't win this round. You'd be paying $0.99 (or more) every time you played a song - with advertising in between.
The Cheap Dell Laptop (with or without Ubuntu) will be ready for the dumpster in no time. Every Mac we've purchased at my job has outlasted 2.4 PCs and the Dell laptops were the first to fall apart.
Read again... iTunes Music Store. That's a separate thing from iTunes the software. You can use iTunes to manage a massive music library, transfer selected parts to an iPod with two way metadata and never buy anything from the iTunes Music Store. Most people prefer to rip CDs into their iPods and iTunes will even manage that, fetching track info and album art for you.
The Ipod got huge because it was marketed and sold to people who did not know any better.
Huh? All of the people I know who bought a 1st or 2nd generation iPod did so because they tried it and said "now, that's how a music player should work". The alternatives were nothing but klutzy, clumsy pieces of junk. The iPod relatively felt like a giant Swiss watch.
Couple that with a relentless improvement of function, capacity, alternate form factors and integration options - all in the face of almost NO competition - it's quite a remarkable device. Had it been any other company, once they achieved market dominance, development would have stopped and music prices would have shot through the roof.
This is only a case of competitors being unwilling/unable to innovate and compete in a market where consumers absolutely know better.
You can load the iPod from competing stores like AmazonMP3 and eMusic and iTunes does not disallow the media.
If you use iTMS (which also offers a range of unprotected AAC files), there's an exit door from FairPlay through burning industry standard Red Book CDs from the encumbered purchases.
So, what's the issue again? In a nutshell, iPod/iTunes is a relatively flexible platform on either Macs or PCs.
The IE-Microsoft-Netscape issue was about bundling IE into the operating system as an "inseparable" component. That along with a hundred other abuses surrounding Java, QuickTime, Real Media, bullying vendors, exclusive contracts etc. led to the conclusion that Microsoft was a treacherous monopolist.
WMA is a proprietary format also, with or without DRM. So, Apple not interested in paying royalties to Microsoft for WMA capability is monopolistic? Unless Microsoft is giving it away for free, that doesn't sound like a case. Why not sue Warner for monopolizing their own catalog? Or EMI?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, the noise floor can be pretty high depending on how much regrind is in the Vinyl stock and what kind of turntable it is. Idler drive? Belt drive? Direct Drive? One of those mag lev or fluid damped suspension turntables that weigh 400 pounds?
If you apply all the proper turntable voodoo (along with the anti-resonant tone arm putty, silver Litz wire cartridge leads and vacuum tube preamps - with the good Hungarian tubes) the noise floor can get to within a few db of a CD.
Well, since a CD doesn't really have a noise floor, the effect down there is different - extreme distortion. The antidote to that is... add noise, only call it "dither". The analog humans of old would put up with audio 6 db below the noise floor but it still wasn't distorted or gritty like the CD way down there.
ELP Laser Turntable, anybody?
At the risk of getting slashdotted, I wrote a few papers quite a while ago about the very subject of HDTV and Film.
Roger that, Chief. I've got several store bought CDs which are no longer playable on the outer edges because of degradation. They were stored properly, not abused etc... and this is how they pay me back.
Anybody remember the Telarc digital recording of the 1812 Overture released on Vinyl? They used real cannons and the cannon shots were so loud, they had to dramatically increase the groove pitch in that area of the record to accommodate the waveform. It would have crossed over six grooves or so if they hadn't.
That record was literally a stereo killer. I saw phono cartridges lose the diamond tip or jump out of the groove when it hit that spot. Power amp fuses blew. Speakers were damaged etc. The only way I could capture it to tape was to play the record at 16 RPM, record the tape at 15 IPS and play it at 7.5 IPS (yes, there was a slight pitch shift but so what).
Vinyl does sound better than a 16-bit CD in quiet passages... MUCH better, actually. It has to do with bit depth which decreases as the audio level goes down. CDs are mastered with between 12db and 20db of headroom before absolute clipping, so you're only using about 14 of your 16 bits right there. As music passages get quieter, you're using fewer of the available bits until the really quiet stuff is 4-bit bit audio which sounds like shit no matter what the sample rate. It's very gritty sounding.
Recording studios won't do anything less than 24 bits which is not available on a CD. Back in the day of early digital recordings, it was a real California thing to use a DBX compressor/expander system to "fix" those problems with low range recording.
However, you're right on about records degrading, of course. You should only play them once per day (I've been told) because the stylus friction deforms the record and it takes a while for the groove to "heal". Twenty years from now, someone is going to discover that ripping CDs sounds better and is more convenient than Internet delivered music.
Open... as in goatse.
Not dead yet: Toshiba execs standing there with stopwatches saying "Wait for it... wait for it..."
OK, I'll correct you. It's actually spelled Blu-ray and it's not a fad. Stupid yes, but not a fad.
Microsoft announced they were discontinuing support for "HD-DVD For Sure" in favor of their new media player, the Zoob Toob.
Ballmer? Is that you?
Yeah, I've hit that with scanners, too. Although, things like Dell printers really have Lexmark guts and work fine on a Mac. These days, any manufacturer that makes "Windows Only" peripherals must have a screw loose.
That's exactly the potential outcome - HD-DVD could still win out unless all 174 Corporate Blu-ray backers figure out how to make cheaper consumer examples of their players.
There are 138 Corporate HD-DVD backers of which Microsoft is one. Microsoft has recently primed the pump by helping (funding/bribing) studios to create lots of HD-DVD titles - the other factor of format choice for consumers. There's some contention that Microsoft is just trying to fuel the format wars so they can swoop the download market.
Oh, yeah.. the download market. LG and Netflix partnership, Apple and a dozen others may obsolete both physical standards.
Dell has a great support system for broken machines, that's for sure. However, we didn't think we could stand 3 years of those Inspirons so they were all abandoned between 8 and 18 months. I had a closet full of them which would crash/die/vapor lock/restart themselves if you just waited long enough. The Apple laptops we got to replace them are all over 4 years old with one fatality after multiple drops. We sell our Macs when they get obsolete but we've never sold a PC - they only ever made it to the scrap metal stage.
It's got some irony to it. The Mac was the first computer I plugged in back in the day (OS 10.2) which would actually work with most printers properly. Some printers only had CUPS drivers on the Mac but most also had native drivers. I would avoid the CUPS drivers if possible back then because they were... strange.
With my office mate's Linux installation (don't recall what flavor), he had CUPS drivers which would sort of work - took all day to get a test page, could print one sided, missed half the printer features from the PPD, couldn't print two sided, didn't understand page orientation or scaling and couldn't use the CD adapter - pretty borked. Plugged the same printer into the Mac (an Epson somethingorother) and it worked great. Could even check the ink levels and run the ink waster utilities.
It wasn't a coincidence that Linux came with developer tools... bought a printer? Write your own damned driver.
Offtopic? The mod must be new here.
A little bitter about something, eh? What the fuck is the problem here? Apple wasn't ahead of the curve - they actually came several years late to the game. The competing music players at the time were junk and many still are. You didn't absorb one thing out of my previous post.
The iPod and iTunes have provided more choices with how the media is used than any other system. Sure, a USB stick will play music but won't do 10% of what the combination of iTunes and iPod can do. You may not like it but you've got the right to just use a USB stick if you want.
So, where's the monopoly? They've kept prices low for the consumer (for EVERY online music store), music libraries are growing including indies, they'll let you transcode the audio to and from other formats including WMA and CDs and they really don't want the RIAA driven DRM. Apple also isn't making a boatload of money off their music store - it's more of a free service for the music industry and they're not gouging the buyer. Actually, you don't even need the music store. Just rip CDs or load MP3s from Pirate Bay if you want.
Being popular and functional doesn't constitute a monopoly and the hype machine is always driven by the press and word of mouth. All Apple did was put a competent product on the shelf with a silly name and the rest took care of itself. Keeping the technology advancing isn't a crime. What's most puzzling is that real competition hasn't shown up yet. That's what you should be pissed about.
Just be glad Microsoft didn't win this round. You'd be paying $0.99 (or more) every time you played a song - with advertising in between.
The Cheap Dell Laptop (with or without Ubuntu) will be ready for the dumpster in no time. Every Mac we've purchased at my job has outlasted 2.4 PCs and the Dell laptops were the first to fall apart.
How many times do we need to see this cut and paste flame from the last century?
...and millions of Vista machines suddenly explode...
Read again... iTunes Music Store. That's a separate thing from iTunes the software. You can use iTunes to manage a massive music library, transfer selected parts to an iPod with two way metadata and never buy anything from the iTunes Music Store. Most people prefer to rip CDs into their iPods and iTunes will even manage that, fetching track info and album art for you.
Now THAT is the smartest thing anyone has said here.
Huh? All of the people I know who bought a 1st or 2nd generation iPod did so because they tried it and said "now, that's how a music player should work". The alternatives were nothing but klutzy, clumsy pieces of junk. The iPod relatively felt like a giant Swiss watch.
Couple that with a relentless improvement of function, capacity, alternate form factors and integration options - all in the face of almost NO competition - it's quite a remarkable device. Had it been any other company, once they achieved market dominance, development would have stopped and music prices would have shot through the roof.
This is only a case of competitors being unwilling/unable to innovate and compete in a market where consumers absolutely know better.
The general music catalogs are available from other sources. It's not like iTunes/iPod prevents people from listening to music in other ways.
If you really examine the issue, WMA with DRM is the odd duck here, not iPod/iTunes.
So, what's the issue again? In a nutshell, iPod/iTunes is a relatively flexible platform on either Macs or PCs.
The IE-Microsoft-Netscape issue was about bundling IE into the operating system as an "inseparable" component. That along with a hundred other abuses surrounding Java, QuickTime, Real Media, bullying vendors, exclusive contracts etc. led to the conclusion that Microsoft was a treacherous monopolist.
WMA is a proprietary format also, with or without DRM. So, Apple not interested in paying royalties to Microsoft for WMA capability is monopolistic? Unless Microsoft is giving it away for free, that doesn't sound like a case. Why not sue Warner for monopolizing their own catalog? Or EMI?
Trolls