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Quality audio cables = quality audio bulls**t.

Published by boz at March 5, 2008 in blogs, gear, opinion and sound. 1 Comment

You know, boingboing is such a great blog. A lot of stuff I post here comes via bb and I’m seriously thinking that I should just rename my site thecoolaudioandmusicstufffromboingboingrepostingblog.com.

Anyhow…

Does more expensive cable sound better?
A guy does a blind test with his buddies between expensive, hyped, flashy Monster Cable and a couple of coat hangers. They discover that the sophisticated and complex work of audiophiledom that they once inhabited has suddenly become a room full of marketing exec’s yelling at them:

I’m so sorry, but I do not buy into 90% of the hype brought to us audiophiles by the commercial sector of our hobby and the home entertainment industry at large. My brother, an audio engineering whiz kid has proven to me what is real and what is not. Let me rehearse with you an example of how he does this.

We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my “old” Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 Db at 1000K Hz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnectd them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occured, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right…most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is.

via audioholics.com
via consumerist
via boingboing
- yeah!

Why records DO all sound the same | Word Magazine

Published by boz at February 29, 2008 in blogs, mastering, music, opinion, pro-tools, sound and studios. 0 Comments

Another great article today from Word Magazine on the state of making records and all the issues involved, from sound quality to making hits. This article was written by Tom Whitwell who also maintains the awesome Music Thing blog.

Why records DO all sound the same | Word Magazine

“Why does most music sound the same these days? Because record companies are scared, they don’t want to take risks, and they’re doing the best they can to generate mainstream radio hits. That is their job, after all. And as the skies continue to darken over the poor benighted business of selling music, labels are going to cling to what they know more fiercely than ever.”

(Via Music Thing.)

Picture of Jack Joseph Puig in his studio.

Great stuff about SONY/BMG’s MusicPass scheme/scam

Published by boz at January 9, 2008 in blogs, friends, opinion and the biznez. 0 Comments

My mate Jon, put me onto this great post from John Scalzi’s Whatever blog. Killer stuff.

Sony BMG spokesperson: We’re pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can’t trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what’s with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?

Sony BMG dude: They appeal to the sort of mainstream consumer who will see the convenience of our revolutionary music cards!

Kid #2: Like my mom? Dude, she’s not going to buy a card. She’s going to buy a CD. Because she’s at the CD store. Where she can buy CDs.

Sony BMG dude: They also make lovely gifts!

Kid #1: If she gets one as a gift, all she’s going to do is ask me how the heck she’s supposed to use it. And then she’s going ask me to get the download for her. Like I’m not busy. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to return the card for cash, and then I’m going to download the album off of Pirate Bay, because you’ve confused and upset my mom. And annoyed me.

Sony BMG dude: Uh.

Kid #2: So to recap, what you’ve got here is a system that makes people leave their house in order to download music at their house, and makes them go to a store to get music that they could get at the store, somewhere else.

Sony BMG dude: Er.

Kid #1: Why don’t you just sell non-DRM’d MP3s off Amazon, like every other major music corporation?

Sony BMG dude: Well.

Kid #2: You don’t actually want to sell unprotected MP3s, do you? You want to be able to say you’re doing it, but really, you want to make it so ridiculously inconvenient that people keep just keep buying CDs and DRM’d tracks off iTunes. Just admit it, bro.

Sony BMG dude (pointing): Look! It’s Celine Dion! And Barry Manilow! (runs away as kids avert their eyes in terror)

Poor, stupid deluded Sony BMG.

This MusicPass thing: six months at the outside.

Jon also sent me this gold - Vinyl Sleeve Heads

Fake Steve takes it to the bridge

Published by boz at July 4, 2007 in apple, blogs, music, opinion and the biznez. 0 Comments

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Fake Steve Jobs at his finest. This is the most succinct thing I’ve read on the music biz in ages.

The music industry nobs have finally figured out what we’re doing: “So you’ve no doubt seen this story or one like it explaining that Universal Music Group won’t renew its iTunes deal. And you’ve seen people saying that the majors are trying to ‘recalibrate’ their relationships with us. Actually what’s happening is they’re crapping in their pants. They woke up one day and realized that we’ve got 80% share of digital downloads. Suddenly all the power in the value chain resides in one player. Oops.

Here’s the thing. These guys could have done what we did. If you’ll recall, in the early days of the Internet, that’s what everyone figured was going to happen. The majors would build digital distribution arms. But they didn’t do it, because they didn’t understand technology, and they didn’t want to invest in building this expertise, and they were freaked out about piracy and paralyzed with fear. So we stepped in. We invested in people. We developed software that’s easy to use and works flawlessly. (And if you think that’s trivial, think again. It’s huge.) We promoted it, we marketed it, we haggled with all the majors and struck deals. We took all the risk. And yeah, now we’re reaping the reward. And guess what. The majors want a bigger slice. Um, for what? We did all the work. Ain’t gonna happen, slick.

Here’s the back story. The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: They put up money to make records, and then they force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution. They’ve got big warehouses and they control the shipment of little plastic boxes that happen to have music in them. We’ve seen what the Internet has done to brick-and-mortar retailers. Next to go are the brick-and-mortar warehouses. The guys running the labels are pretty stupid — most are just dirtbags who started out as band managers or promoters — but they’ve now figured this out, and they are fighting like cornered rats.

The labels are finally sort of vaguely getting clued in to the fact that in this value chain the power resides not with the creator of the product but with the distributor — and that by letting us make the online music store they’ve taken themselves out of the distribution business. In the world of digital, the distributor is Apple. We’re also the retailer. And the marketer. Another way to see this value chain: Think of the kids in China who make iPods. In the music industry value chain, the artists are the equivalent of those kids. And the labels are the equivalent of the Chinese companies that employ those kids. (Not a perfect analogy, I realize. But it’s kinda sorta how things are.)

In the days of vinyl and then CDs, the labels managed to hold on to a larger share of the power in the value chain by having loads of retailers in a highly fragmented market, and playing them off each other. In the digital world they’ve got us. And that’s it.

Ironically the mistake the major labels made was the same one that IBM made when it gave the DOS franchise to Microsoft nearly 30 years ago. They had a piece of work that they couldn’t do on their own or didn’t want to do on their own and they didn’t view it as critical or important so they outsourced it to a partner. (’Go make us an online music store.’) The partner turned that seemingly unimportant work into a way to accrue power and create a monopoly and control the industry. Today in the music business we’re about where IBM and Microsoft were in 1989, when IBM finally got hit with the clue stick and realized what Microsoft was doing.

How will it play out this time? I don’t know, honestly. But I like our chances.”

(Via The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.)

visual mapping

Published by boz at June 25, 2007 in blogs, film, rmit and technology. 1 Comment

AntiVJ sent me this awesome footage of some work done with projecting onto 3D surfaces. The results are really beautiful and makes you wonder what this technique would look like if it was applied to the side of a building or some other large scale outdoor construction. With technologies like LCD paper beginning to emerge you also have to wonder what ideas like this will mean when instead of projecting, we can just cover surfaces with image design like this.

This installation also reminds me of the design of Storey Hall: RMIT where we have done some of the Liquid Architecture concerts in the years gone by. Liquid Architecture 8 is just around the corner BTW. Check out this years line up!

Cool video technique demonstration

Published by boz at June 24, 2007 in blogs, film, friends, gear and opinion. 0 Comments

This popped up on boingboing yesterday.

Cool video technique demonstration: “Mark Frauenfelder:

This is a cool video technique that uses time-delay to make bodies warp and twist. Link (Thanks, Fizzgig!)

(Via Boing Boing.)

This is similar to the technique that my good friend and partner in art crime, Daniel Crooks uses to generate much of his work. Dan has taken this technique in a bunch of different directions - from shooting off moving vehicles with one camera to shooting with up to 7 cameras at the same time. All use a post-production technique similar to the one mentioned above, which Dan likes to call “time-slicing”. One of his multi-camera shoots was blown out to the same number of plasma screens (all set in profile orientation) to make a gorgeous shifting and morphing 360º panorama of downtown Sydney. Dan has just completed a major exhibition of a whole range of these works (which he also renders as landscape style photo prints) at Sherman Galleries in Sydney.

Picture 2-50
Dan pretending to be busy at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

I’m lucky enough to get to work with Dan on sound for these pieces and it’s always interesting to sit and talk with him about the ways we can render this technique in sound in a way that is as aesthetically and conceptually interesting as the visuals. Over the years we’ve tried a bunch of techniques and a mixed bag of results. One of our earlier attempts was for a train piece which you can see here.

If you ever get the chance to go and see these works, I’d recommend it. Not as a self-serving recommendation due to my involvement, but because I think Dan’s work is truly interesting and involving. His ability to envision a different way to see the environment around us and then render his ideas with such interest and detail is rare in video art. Too much video art requires high concept - reading a bunch of supporting text (usually bullshit), or being up to speed with the post-modern justifications (usually bullshit with flashing lights). The great thing about Dan’s work, is that you can walk right up to it and appreciate entirely on it’s own terms - no art school education required. However, if you wanna go and box it in with a bunch of words, then there is plenty there for you to get verbal about.

Dan’s Homepage with a still from the 7 camera work

Dan’s time-slice page

An example of his work at the Australia Center for the Moving Image

Dan’s profile at Sherman’s

Device turns waste heat into sound, then electricity

Published by boz at June 17, 2007 in blogs, technology and webage. 1 Comment

Device turns waste heat into sound, then electricity: “Mark Frauenfelder:

A team of doctoral students led by University of Utah physicist Orest Symko have constructed a device that ‘converts heat into sound and then into electricity.’ They believe it could work as an alternative to photovoltaic cells and be in production in two years.

The project was funded by the US military as a way to harness the waste heat produced by radar systems and power electronics in the field.

When heat is applied — with matches, a blowtorch or a heating element — the heat builds to a threshold. Then the hot, moving air produces sound at a single frequency, similar to air blown into a flute.

‘You have heat, which is so disorderly and chaotic, and all of a sudden you have sound coming out at one frequency,’ Symko says.

Then the sound waves squeeze the piezoelectric device, producing an electrical voltage. Symko says it’s similar to what happens if you hit a nerve in your elbow, producing a painful electrical nerve impulse.

Longer resonator cylinders produce lower tones, while shorter tubes produce higher-pitched tones.

Devices that convert heat to sound and then to electricity lack moving parts, so such devices will require little maintenance and last a long time. They do not need to be built as precisely as, say, pistons in an engine, which loses efficiency as the pistons wear.