craigb

Good stuff! (Is it true that that video was actually just shot in Australia a couple of months ago? ?)

Of course there is! *Goes to find a pointy stick...* ?

No, that was just me not verifying correctly but trying to give the vinyl-lovers a nod. I guess there really isn't anything better than, eh? ? In my wanderings just now, I stumbled on this quote which is interesting: "Having actually engineered and mastered CDs (and vinyl) I can assure you there are some errors here. In 16/44, the first two bits are not for error correction, that's entirely separate, and structured depending on the storage medium. There's no 10-15dB of dither, it's more like 3dB, and carefully shaped if done properly. The maximum is not dropped several dB because computers, or anything else, "doesn't like all 1's. What is avoided is full scale clipping, or signals where inter-sample clipping could occur. The adjustment isn't several dB. Vinyl's dynamic range is dependant on frequency, because vinyl doesn't have a flat maximum output curve. PCM of any flavor has a flat response to FS. When I cut a master for vinyl and a CD master from the same digital master tape, they sounded pretty much the same except for the noise floor. Yes, vinyl was noisier. By a lot."

[pedantic] Shouldn't there be two knees? One after the "U" and another after the corn? [/pedantic] ?

You didn't think that was a didgeridoo Rolf was holding, did ya? ?

Although almost on-topic, this is a bit of a side-nerd-journey... When computers first started having color the most popular was 8-bit (256 colors), then the resolution kept increasing (32-bit being most common now, but 48-bit is available) and, therefore, the number of colors that could be represented became more and more. The next limitation was the pathetic resolution of the monitors. Since they originally adopted the television NTSC standard of 640 x 480 (where 480i, for interlace, or 480p, for progressive, came from), everything looked blocky. The PAL standard, common in Europe, was 625 lines instead of 480, but not much better. Side note, both actually produced the same TV image because power frequency needed to be taken into account to produce a correctly managed frame (50 Hz vs. 60 Hz). For decades, computer users were stuck having to buy stupidly expensive "monitors" because TV's were stuck with the lower resolution. When TV's finally became "high-def," their resolution started to catch up and pass most monitors (1920 x 1080 for HD TV's versus 1600 x 1200 for monitors). Now, the bleeding edge for TV's has hit what they call "16k" (with a bunch of stupid names after it like "Quad Ultra High Definition"). This equates to 15,360 horizontal pixels by 8,640 vertical pixels. Now, while the human eye can purportedly see about 7 million colors, even 24-bit can create over twice that (16,777,215 colors). There's also a big debate whether humans can really tell the difference between "normal" sized 4k TV's and 8k let alone 16k (i.e., 80" or less - not Samsung's 292" monster)! Unlike visual information, it seems like we've stopped trying to go beyond human limits with sound. Obviously, the resolution and sampling rate are what controls just how much of the recorded source makes it into a digital medium. While there was a push starting all the way back in the 80's to improve the sound (24-bit with 96k or even 192k sampling rates), it seems like we're going backwards. Now most people (including me) tend to listen to .mp3's that have had areas of the sound removed to save disk space (but that's gotten soooo much cheaper now...). I've also observed that most people listen on devices that are nowhere near the "hi-fidelity" gear we used to use. The part I think is funny is when people say vinyl sounds better. Sure, it's all subjective (and I think how we heard things when we were young definitely colors what we like now) but, for the past couple of decades, almost all vinyl LP's have been made from the same master that the CD's are created from. I think the issue is that CD's have both better sound in some areas AND worse in others. We lose the headroom that vinyl provides, but we gain more frequencies and harmonics that can seem foreign to our ears. So, what's my conclusion? I think it's time to up the resolution of digital material AND master them differently so they more accurately represent the original sound. Just because you can alter the original doesn't mean you should. Side-note 1 - From my PhD work I know that humans actually CAN process frequencies much higher than the ever-publicized 20k Hz. Experiments with frequencies up as high as 100k have shown increased learning and memory. I have some devices capable of working with audio at this level (which came from studies originally used when trying to understand dolphins - lol). I also know a couple of subjects who were able to play back songs much easier when heard with the higher frequencies included. I'd love to play around with this area more someday, though I'm not sure how (I'm guessing most audio tools have no way of handling more than the usual range of frequencies - very curious!). Side-note 2 - Here's an interesting site I just found that also says some of the above: Myths (Vinyl) *Puts on fire-proof clothing and waits for the inevitable.* ?

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How about ripping the new album? Then you get a digital version that you won't wear out.

I've been working some crazy hours and not keeping up, so I thought I'd throw a few in here!

I would have asked the cop, "So, I guess it's ok if I steal it back then, yes?"

She looks a little horn-y.

Absolutely. The registry is actually just one big file and, Windows being Windows, it gets gunked up (a technical term ) over time and can end up with needing to be cleaned up.

Particle entanglement neutralizes interstellar space.

Vinyl LP's go flat with repeated play. I was a DJ for four years from 1980 thru 1983 and we were always looking across the edge. If it was dull and grey, into the trash it went. If it was black and shiny, we kept playing it. Anyone caught being an idiot back then and "scratching" an album would be fired. I had at least a couple thousand albums when CD's came out. I tried a couple on my really nice stereo system and the sound was SOOOO much better that I sold my albums immediately and began replacing my collection (starting with "Best Of's" then filling in the rest).

Now THAT one I can reuse for all sorts of things! Nice.

Knights -> Nights Close enough!

You should never defrag an SSD, it only shortens the life of the drive and doesn't speed things up anyway. Defragging the registry is a totally different process.

I'm going to guess that another contributing factor is that it was recorded with far more headroom than most CD's. I, for one, do NOT miss all the clicks, pops and annoyingly short album sides.