We've also seen the same issue with Google Desktop, but also, for some reason we've never quite figured out, a number of "my outlook is acting weird" problems solve themselves once we remove Google Desktop.
As a result, if we get a machine that is "acting weird", the first thing that comes off is Google Desktop. Has saved us a bunch of time.
Only if the perceived end result is justified by the investment. For most folks, the "investment" is a one-time purchase of a stereo setup (if that) and an endless stream of low-priced music purchases.
Spending hours, days, weeks, months and years learning the detailed ins and outs of music reproduction just isn't worth it for most folks.
I've played guitar for coming up on 20 years now, and I can say with confidence that guitarists are on-par with audiophiles in that regard.
Now, I will say that as with any instrument, there are demonstrably better quality parts on some than others, and with a trained ear, you *can* tell the difference between some woods.
HOWEVER, none of it will make a bad player better, or make a good player bad. Go on youtube and can out "Joe Satriani in my basement", where he plays "Surfin with the Alien" on a 15w solid state practice speaker and sub-200$ strat knockoff through a cheap Digitech multi-effect unit (for those not in the know, Joe Satriani's signature Ibanez series starts at a grand for the "cheap" one, and the ones he gets custom made can be got retail for about $2500).
Tone is in the fingers, man:D
I call the folks that spend all the time worrying about guitars and gear "guitar fetishists", not guitarists.
And, as has been said many a time on the harmony central forums, "Less eBay, more Mel Bay."
Interestingly, I've only ever run into one song that I could not get to sound good. It's "Stockholm Syndrome" by Blink 182. The rest of the albums sounds perfectly fine as an iTunes download, but that one song sounds like it's a 96kbps mp3 from the original napster days.
I suspect that it is a mastering issue (i.e. the song itself was heavily compressed), but I've never casually run across the song on CD to do a comparison.
For most people, listening to music is the hobby, not building the system to play the music. You're giving good advice, but attempting to fix the wrong problem.
And I've been telling people for years that the "weakest link" concept in audio reproduction is an oversimplification and therefore wrong.
There are orthagonal distortion components introduced by various devices. An MP3's digital distortion (sizzle sounds, to borrow from another article somebody linked to) would be IN ADDITION TO poor frequency response and mechanical distortion. It isn't "masked" by it. And it doesn't take significantly more bitrate to go from "crappy" to "great." 128kbps CBR MP3 is pretty crappy, but 160kbps VBR MP3 is indistinguishable from the source "even on great systems." I don't intend to argue what bitrate you consider "sufficient," just that "Listen to a low bitrate because you have crappy speaker" implies that crappy speakers mask MP3 compression artifacts.
If I were to go out on a limb, I'd say its possible for crappy speakers to distort even more with overcompressed MP3s than good speakers do.
I completely agree. MP3 compression removes frequencies. Speakers, cables, amps, won't replace those frequencies, and the modifications done to the signal can only be done to the frequencies that are left behind.
Eh, mostly irrelevant with a lot of music today. Those details you're listening for often don't exist on the CD, either. They were eliminated by a mastering engineer long before it got put on a CD, or encoded for an online music store.
If someone likes something vs something else, that's a fairly easy comparison.
Granted, they are two different encoding methods, but to a trained ear, 48kbps AAC is not very good anyway, at least not with decent source materials.
The study doesn't surprise me at all. It lines up perfectly with peoples' buying habits and non-concern with low-bit-rate mp3s going back to the mid-90's.
There's two main things that happen in music that are similar to your example, and only one of them is at the encoding stage.
The first, and the PRIMARY issue is that the mastering philosophy for popular music is very, very different than it was even in the early 1990's (pre-mp3). Namely, compression is used very heavily in the mastering process, even before the CD is pressed (but after the mixing happens). There's a lot to say about this, but I direct you to The Loudness War for further edification.
A byproduct of this, however, is that highly compressed mastering recordings will sound mostly the same if encoded using a highly lossy method. It may not sound *good* to the trained ear, but most peoples' ears aren't trained. The other benefit, that many people don't know about, is that this form of mastering (and encoding, optionally) enables songs to cut through ambient noise very easily. This comes in useful in places like, for example, bars.
The other outcome, though, is that there's nothing the typical end user can do to improve a recording that has been mastered in this fashion. You can mess with the EQ a bit, but you'll never get back those details that were compressed out by the mastering engineer, because those details were eliminated and only now exist on the original studio media. No setup in the world will make it sound "good".
The "secret" way you can tell if something was poorly encoded, btw, is listening to cymbals. If the encoding is poor, cymbals will "wahwahwahwahwash" instead of having crisp attacks (so they stay defined during continued stick hits) and will decay cleanly.
It's not even "FM" quality, since even on FM, a song that is mastered well will sound very decent and authentic.
It's that the advent of compression in mastering, *in general*, has been so gradual that unless you knew about it beforehand, you wouldn't have noticed it.
Anecdote: I have two friends who heard me complaining about the shitty mastering and compression that has been happening in hard rock and metal for a while now. They finally made me sit down and explain what was happening, and then I found some examples on YouTube for them to listen to (of songs they knew, best of all).
Now they hate me, because now they *notice* it, but can't do anything about it:P
You can have all the greatest audio equipment in the world (leaving aside the argument about audiophiles and their dubiously useful accessories and beliefs about what results in "better audio quality), but the real problem is at the mastering stage, not the consumer output stage.
Also a UK masters is traditionally only one year, afaict a US masters is traditionally longer.
~2 years worth of coursework and a thesis if its a terminal Masters. Depending on the field and the program, sometimes you end up getting the Masters on the way to a PhD (if you're a candidate), or you skip it entirely.
You sound like an idealogue. The rightest of rightiests (aside from the libertarians) were all for the TARP funds with Bush/Cheney was handing them out.
Sorry, you are wrong. I regularly go to a news and comment site that is explicitly conservative. The comments on the site were overwhelmingly opposed to TARP when it was proposed by George W. Bush. So, no conservatives were not for the TARP funds even when Bush was handing them out. That conservative opposition was part of the reason why Bush was unable to get Congress to pass a bail out bill for the auto companies (and then went on to use TARP funds for that purpose in what was probably an unconstitutional use of funds in a way not approved by Congress).
If not, then that might explain why it's hard to find an American who can write code but easy to find highly skilled developers from India or China who can and do.
Strawman. It's hard to find skilled developers from the US that will work for as little as those in India or China (aside from the fact that their code is often the same or worse in terms of quality).
In any event, it's in the taxpayers' interest to have an electorate with a diverse education. That alone makes it worth having taxpayers pay for it, so as a society we're not all on the "dumb" rocket, destined to plunge into the sun.
Your CC community college (I also had both CC and traditional University physics instructors) teacher, though, likely did not have the budget to do any experimental research of any real consequence. Which is fine, if he wants to only teach. If you want to do research in basic sciences, "tenure" and "grant(s) du jour" are absolutely necessary.
Ragging on them pretty much shows you don't understand the purpose and reason for both systems existing.
But it's not "for you". It's "does the machine not boot up?" If the answer is "yes", then it is bricked. If it is "no" then it's broken.
In short, if it could be fixed by another software patch (as seems to be indicated in more than a few cases), or even by a non-firmware component replacement it isn't bricked.
I always figured that "dilithium" was just shorthand for some sort of more complex formulation for the crystal compounds. At least, that sort of retcon made old Star Trek (i.e. pre-DS9) work well enough in my mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup yup.
We've also seen the same issue with Google Desktop, but also, for some reason we've never quite figured out, a number of "my outlook is acting weird" problems solve themselves once we remove Google Desktop.
As a result, if we get a machine that is "acting weird", the first thing that comes off is Google Desktop. Has saved us a bunch of time.
I only speak the truth! :D
If they didn't want to know, they shouldn't have asked >:D
Only if the perceived end result is justified by the investment. For most folks, the "investment" is a one-time purchase of a stereo setup (if that) and an endless stream of low-priced music purchases.
Spending hours, days, weeks, months and years learning the detailed ins and outs of music reproduction just isn't worth it for most folks.
I've played guitar for coming up on 20 years now, and I can say with confidence that guitarists are on-par with audiophiles in that regard.
Now, I will say that as with any instrument, there are demonstrably better quality parts on some than others, and with a trained ear, you *can* tell the difference between some woods.
HOWEVER, none of it will make a bad player better, or make a good player bad. Go on youtube and can out "Joe Satriani in my basement", where he plays "Surfin with the Alien" on a 15w solid state practice speaker and sub-200$ strat knockoff through a cheap Digitech multi-effect unit (for those not in the know, Joe Satriani's signature Ibanez series starts at a grand for the "cheap" one, and the ones he gets custom made can be got retail for about $2500).
Tone is in the fingers, man :D
I call the folks that spend all the time worrying about guitars and gear "guitar fetishists", not guitarists.
And, as has been said many a time on the harmony central forums, "Less eBay, more Mel Bay."
Interestingly, I've only ever run into one song that I could not get to sound good. It's "Stockholm Syndrome" by Blink 182. The rest of the albums sounds perfectly fine as an iTunes download, but that one song sounds like it's a 96kbps mp3 from the original napster days.
I suspect that it is a mastering issue (i.e. the song itself was heavily compressed), but I've never casually run across the song on CD to do a comparison.
For most people, listening to music is the hobby, not building the system to play the music. You're giving good advice, but attempting to fix the wrong problem.
And I've been telling people for years that the "weakest link" concept in audio reproduction is an oversimplification and therefore wrong.
There are orthagonal distortion components introduced by various devices. An MP3's digital distortion (sizzle sounds, to borrow from another article somebody linked to) would be IN ADDITION TO poor frequency response and mechanical distortion. It isn't "masked" by it. And it doesn't take significantly more bitrate to go from "crappy" to "great." 128kbps CBR MP3 is pretty crappy, but 160kbps VBR MP3 is indistinguishable from the source "even on great systems." I don't intend to argue what bitrate you consider "sufficient," just that "Listen to a low bitrate because you have crappy speaker" implies that crappy speakers mask MP3 compression artifacts.
If I were to go out on a limb, I'd say its possible for crappy speakers to distort even more with overcompressed MP3s than good speakers do.
I completely agree. MP3 compression removes frequencies. Speakers, cables, amps, won't replace those frequencies, and the modifications done to the signal can only be done to the frequencies that are left behind.
Eh, mostly irrelevant with a lot of music today. Those details you're listening for often don't exist on the CD, either. They were eliminated by a mastering engineer long before it got put on a CD, or encoded for an online music store.
Anyone who actually buys music is a fool in the first place (unless you are a fan of an artist in which case support is appropriate).
Under what circumstance would the average person purchase music that they didn't like?
You like listening to it, buy it.
If someone likes something vs something else, that's a fairly easy comparison.
Granted, they are two different encoding methods, but to a trained ear, 48kbps AAC is not very good anyway, at least not with decent source materials.
The study doesn't surprise me at all. It lines up perfectly with peoples' buying habits and non-concern with low-bit-rate mp3s going back to the mid-90's.
There's two main things that happen in music that are similar to your example, and only one of them is at the encoding stage.
The first, and the PRIMARY issue is that the mastering philosophy for popular music is very, very different than it was even in the early 1990's (pre-mp3). Namely, compression is used very heavily in the mastering process, even before the CD is pressed (but after the mixing happens). There's a lot to say about this, but I direct you to The Loudness War for further edification.
A byproduct of this, however, is that highly compressed mastering recordings will sound mostly the same if encoded using a highly lossy method. It may not sound *good* to the trained ear, but most peoples' ears aren't trained. The other benefit, that many people don't know about, is that this form of mastering (and encoding, optionally) enables songs to cut through ambient noise very easily. This comes in useful in places like, for example, bars.
The other outcome, though, is that there's nothing the typical end user can do to improve a recording that has been mastered in this fashion. You can mess with the EQ a bit, but you'll never get back those details that were compressed out by the mastering engineer, because those details were eliminated and only now exist on the original studio media. No setup in the world will make it sound "good".
The "secret" way you can tell if something was poorly encoded, btw, is listening to cymbals. If the encoding is poor, cymbals will "wahwahwahwahwash" instead of having crisp attacks (so they stay defined during continued stick hits) and will decay cleanly.
It's not even "FM" quality, since even on FM, a song that is mastered well will sound very decent and authentic.
It's that the advent of compression in mastering, *in general*, has been so gradual that unless you knew about it beforehand, you wouldn't have noticed it.
Anecdote: I have two friends who heard me complaining about the shitty mastering and compression that has been happening in hard rock and metal for a while now. They finally made me sit down and explain what was happening, and then I found some examples on YouTube for them to listen to (of songs they knew, best of all).
Now they hate me, because now they *notice* it, but can't do anything about it :P
You can have all the greatest audio equipment in the world (leaving aside the argument about audiophiles and their dubiously useful accessories and beliefs about what results in "better audio quality), but the real problem is at the mastering stage, not the consumer output stage.
Also a UK masters is traditionally only one year, afaict a US masters is traditionally longer.
~2 years worth of coursework and a thesis if its a terminal Masters. Depending on the field and the program, sometimes you end up getting the Masters on the way to a PhD (if you're a candidate), or you skip it entirely.
You sound like an idealogue. The rightest of rightiests (aside from the libertarians) were all for the TARP funds with Bush/Cheney was handing them out.
Sorry, you are wrong. I regularly go to a news and comment site that is explicitly conservative. The comments on the site were overwhelmingly opposed to TARP when it was proposed by George W. Bush. So, no conservatives were not for the TARP funds even when Bush was handing them out. That conservative opposition was part of the reason why Bush was unable to get Congress to pass a bail out bill for the auto companies (and then went on to use TARP funds for that purpose in what was probably an unconstitutional use of funds in a way not approved by Congress).
Freepers aren't conservatives, they're radical ideologues.
If not, then that might explain why it's hard to find an American who can write code but easy to find highly skilled developers from India or China who can and do.
Strawman. It's hard to find skilled developers from the US that will work for as little as those in India or China (aside from the fact that their code is often the same or worse in terms of quality).
In any event, it's in the taxpayers' interest to have an electorate with a diverse education. That alone makes it worth having taxpayers pay for it, so as a society we're not all on the "dumb" rocket, destined to plunge into the sun.
Your CC community college (I also had both CC and traditional University physics instructors) teacher, though, likely did not have the budget to do any experimental research of any real consequence. Which is fine, if he wants to only teach. If you want to do research in basic sciences, "tenure" and "grant(s) du jour" are absolutely necessary.
Ragging on them pretty much shows you don't understand the purpose and reason for both systems existing.
basically a step up from the community colleges on the reputation scale
I'd say a couple steps up, at least, depending on the state you're talking about.
What's wrong with these Islamo-fascists that they don't want the sex-&-drugs-&-rock-&-roll and porn American life style.
No one in their right mind doesn't want that sort of lifestyle, I say.
She just looks very toned. We're not talking competitive bodybuilder-like, here. Look at some recent life footage and you can see what I mean.
Anonymous' idea of a "deserving target" is not something usually lines up with any rational persons' idea, rescuing abused felines aside.
I'd criticize him for it, too. She's got some guns for a woman her age, that's for sure. It's awesome.
But it's not "for you". It's "does the machine not boot up?" If the answer is "yes", then it is bricked. If it is "no" then it's broken.
In short, if it could be fixed by another software patch (as seems to be indicated in more than a few cases), or even by a non-firmware component replacement it isn't bricked.
I assume because they assumed the contractor would build the thing to specifications.
QC problem, to be sure.
I always figured that "dilithium" was just shorthand for some sort of more complex formulation for the crystal compounds. At least, that sort of retcon made old Star Trek (i.e. pre-DS9) work well enough in my mind.
GotY version, likely.
I know you're joking, but TECHNICALLY that was the contractor, not JPL/NASA