Posts by M Gale

something that will never be possible with any digital format.

Better than 192KHz 24/32 bit non-compressed digital audio? The default VIA HD audio chipset on my motherboard can handle rates that high, let alone a "decent" sound card or ADC/DAC combo.

When the sample rate and accuracy of the digital portion exceeds the noise floor of the analogue portion of the circuit, I fail to see how the ol' spinning black disks can possibly exceed the quality of a good digital reproduction solution.

I also mentioned time-coded vinyl earlier. You should give it a try: The user interface that you're used to, plus all you ever need is two records and maybe a couple of spares just in case something bad happens at a gig. The audio comes from a bunch of MP3s, MP4s, lossless FLACs or uncompressed WAVs, and you can cue, speed up, slow down and scratch about with it just like it was recorded onto the vinyl. You also get the extra advantage that any feedback travelling into the stylus is basically ignored by the computer that's reading the time code.

It really is an awesome thing.

Re: Zero compression

It's got a pretty picture on it! oh...but you already ruined the look trying to get to those hidden tracks.

To be fair, if they've been halfway sensible about it, the "label" track will be etched onto printed/coloured vinyl. Same stuff that gets used to make records where the entire face is a 12" round picture.

Though as for whether sticking a track so far toward the spindle that anything outside of a professional DJ deck won't be able to play it is sensible or not, I leave for the reader to decide.

Re: Too Good to Be True?

Somebody didn't really use a tiny needle to scratch all those interference fringes into the master, did they?

Apparently they can be done.

I remember reading about them before Youtube came along, but I could never get a sharp enough needle nor be patient enough to make anything useful. That and old CD jewel cases aren't really the best for the task. Nice that the guy who made the site put that video up to demonstrate how it works more clearly.

I think there's some debate as to whether these are "real" holograms because you don't use a laser to make them; but since they are the same sort of etched-pattern affair that credit card holograms use, just on a larger scale, I don't see why they aren't.

Re: Vinyl-fetish hipsters don't have a point

Ah see, some headphones leak a hell of a lot more than others. I have a set of cans that I have for indoor use that I'd never bother with on the bus, partly because they are ridiculously huge, and partly because they seem to double as loudspeakers.

These days there is an EU-enforced limit on the volume of anything you can plug headphones into (which some manufacturers have a magic-hack way around). Generally if your ears are ringing after listening, that's a cue that the sound was too loud. It's still unlikely though, that you're going to be seeing many 18-30 year olds with burst ear drums due to loud headphones.

However, my hearing still goes up to a good 5, 6 or more KHz higher than other people my age and younger, with some teenagers not able to perceive the range of audio that I can. Of course, some have better ears, generally young children, but I still consider myself either damned lucky or just sensible.

Though it is a bit annoying to walk past one of the local curry houses when they've decided to turn the anti-chav "ultrasonic" blasters on. Affects teenagers only? My pasty white arse it does.

Re: "Side A plays from the inside out"

JAMin does.

Looks nice. Just a shame it's part of JACK. A more fiddly audio set-up I have yet to encounter. "Professional Quality" quite possibly, but also in the same way that 3D Studio Max requires a degree-level education to get past "render a sphere with a texture", and Cisco's IOS generally shouldn't be attempted by anybody who still possesses a shred of sanity.

Re: Vinyl-fetish hipsters don't have a point

Anyone else remember being able to hear the CRT scan sound from CRT TVs?

Oh yes. I have frankly amazing hearing for my age, so I can tell if a CRT has been fired up in the next room. Or even, three feet from my face as the case is right now. Probably has something to do with me not habitually playing headphones at full blast or cranking the amp volume up to 12 in my younger days.

And yes, it's an AOC 5glr, TCO '99 compliant as an indicator of age. It works.

Also one cannot skin-up on a MP3.

I hope you were using the record sleeve, and not the vinyl itself.

Though if you were using the vinyl, I would like to smoke your stylus.

Re: "Side A plays from the inside out"

Audacity does indeed have such an option.

Effects->Equalization.

Select the "RIAA" curve from the little drop-down menu.

Re: Thats got to be a wind up

Ah, but do they have a 16RPM option?

I miss the 16RPM option.

(Edited to add "RPM", because I'm sure some jokers will come up with some kind of pun based on barely-legal or pedobear)

There was me thinking you stick a record on and let it play.

This.

The Monty Python example can just about be forgiven because they're as mad as a box of frogs. However, I don't expect to buy a record and then have to play Where's Wally to hear the damned music.

I'm also wondering how the auto-lift record players are going to cope with the inside-out track or the one "hidden" in the centre label. In fact I don't wonder: They won't cope with it. Well done, I guess we all have to go out and buy either a shit USB vinyl player or a stupendously expensive set of Technics or Stantons just to play the record?

How about just make it work?

There's a warmth to the sound from vinyl you just can't recreate with CD's or MP3's

Record amps/pre-amps have an RIAA-declared standard set of filters that produce the sound you're looking for. Without that, vinyl would, and does, sound bloody awful.

However what vinyl does allow, which CDs don't, is the ability to cue up by grabbing the medium itself and spinning it about a bit. It's something that's kept vinyl alive even up until today amongst the DJ crowd, though these days it tends more toward time-coded vinyl than buying a separate slab for each EP, LP or single.

Lovely user interface, but I won't pretend it has "better quality", any more than valves have "better quality" than transistors.

Re: Windows 8.1 - the secret update

I say on a desktop or laptop, it is a program and not an application.

Applications have been around a lot longer than the iPhone. A lot longer than Java - why do you think the preferred term for miniature Java things embedded in a web page is an "applet"?

An application is one or more programs that work together to apply the computer toward a particular task (like for instance, writing a letter, creating a spreadsheet). A collection of applications tends to be called an application suite (for instance, Office suites).

I hope that argument about "but apps are what phones have" is now thoroughly killed.

Pretty much accounts for 98% of the users. They do after all have an Android phone as well.

Sigh.

Don't look at the man behind the curtain.

Re: Won't wow?

One problem for Firefox and ZTE is that the Motorola G already hit that price on a lot of plans

Thing is, I already have the perfect rolling monthly plan for me (as in, unlimited-means-unlimited data and tethering allowed). I want a phone, and you're never going to up-sell me to another contract.

Take that 24 month ball and chain away, and the SIM-free Moto G, while a nice price, is very much not as cheap and very much a sealed unit. No battery, no SD, no sale.

Re: Sony lost more.

At least Nintendo are still making traditional Japanese console games.

Honestly, asides the occasional crackpot title like Parodius, why is this a good thing?

And Parodius was/is made by Konami anyway. Probably one of the better side-scrolling shooters of the 16 bit and early 32 bit era. Not a Nintendo product.

Re: Good stuff

Maybe if he lets you sell it when you're bored with it.

Otherwise, no thanks. My copy, my license, my property. To give away or throw in a bonfire if I so choose. Not yours, Mr "I hate Second Hand Games" Braben.

Re: Sir

I'm wondering, if there's going to be another test flight, how feasible it would be to stick a ginormous tailfin on one side of the payload and a counterweight (perhaps just a long pole) on the other? See if the weathervane effect can be used?

If it works, it might even be useful to make sure LOHAN fires into the wind.

Re: Blowhard Boring Green RegMidnight 40 years in prison @Plump & Bleaty

See? Straight into the 'drink and fags are worse' schpiel.

Because they are.

But you just said alcohol and tobacco are so bad that you would want to stop them

Where? It would certainly be a sensible idea not to take up tobacco as it's bloody addictive and bloody harmful, but where did I mention "wanting to stop" them? Thanks, but I don't want to expand your war even further. It's just not worth it.

And, as you obviously failed to notice, our democratically elected politicians maintain the laws on illegal drugs because they are supported by the majority of the electorate, so it is you and your drug-addled chums that are in the minority.

When slavery was abolished, only a minority of people supported it.

A majority voted to ban gay marriage in California.

In neither case did the baying mob get what they wanted. Sometimes, the minority needs protecting from the tyranny of the majority. Like now. A free country is far more than an X on a ballot paper. Just because it's the best out of a bunch of bad ways of choosing which bastards tell everyone else what to do, doesn't mean that mob rule is suitable for everything.

Ultimately, your war is futile and costing more than it saves, in human life and money. There is no logic to it. However, it does give a few authoritarians a nice erection I'm sure.

Wow, that doesn't sound like the ringing endorsement of the virtues of hard drugs you insist it is!

Where am I endorsing hard drugs?

Oh, and 72% of the organised crime in Holland is still drug-related.

Because. It. Is. Illegal.

Really Matt, learn to stick 2 and 2 together and come up with 4, instead of -1.

Or maybe Switzerland, which tried a crackdown, then gave in to liberal pressure and started treatment including not just methadone but professionally administered heroin. The result has been that heroin abuse has hit a steady population of long-term addicts, whilst other drug abuse has seen a steady increase in Switzerland over the last thirteen years.

Background Heroin-assisted treatment has been found to be effective for people with severe opioid dependence who are not interested in or do poorly on methadone maintenance.

Conclusions: Heroin-assisted treatment is more effective for people with opioid dependence who continue intravenous heroin while on methadone maintenance or who are not enrolled in treatment. Despite a higher risk, it should be considered for treatment resistance under medical supervision.

--Christian Haasen, MD, Uwe Verthein, PhD, Peter Degkwitz, PhD and others (2007) Heroin-assisted treatment for opioid dependence [online] Available at http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/191/1/55 [last accessed: April 2014]

Indeed, the public were so alarmed that the Swiss government could not pass a law to decriminalise cannabis in 2004.

Which just shows you what a bunch of FUD can do. You're also guilty of lumping everything together under the umbrella term "DRUGZ" yet again. Fine, so long as you include ethanol in that.

But I thought you were arguing FOR the drug dealers?

Where?

Re: Boring Green RegMidnight 40 years in prison @Plump & Bleaty

If we're going on anecdotes, I've seen too many people trashed by the effects of ethanol. But, that's just damned inconvenient for your argument, isn't it?

Never mind that unless you want to turn the world into North Korea, you will not, ever, in a million years stamp out recreational use of drugs. Hell, I bet even the Norks have a problem in that regard.

So keep waging that war. We all love a good war. Especially when it has a total positive benefit of around the square root of fuck all and a massive cost economically and socially. Meanwhile, those few countries that have liberalised their laws, that do not punish, torture and/or kill you for what you choose to put in your body, continue to see drops in the usage of hard drugs. In fact, drops in the usage of all recreational drugs.

But that's just damned inconvenient for the sadistic psychopaths who want a good excuse to fuck someone over, isn't it?

Re: How long before..

Will they spiral out of control or will they run out of things to say and just be quiet...

I've done this with IRC chatterbots based on Bucket and MegaHAL. It takes a while, but eventually they seem to "learn" whatever they are going to learn from each other and reach some kind of equilibrium with the same messages going back and forth.

Re: first 10 days is when most fail

You think the problems with Maps and "you're holding it wrong" are worse than a camera that COMPLETELY fails?

A camera is a nonessential function on a phone, unlike the phone antenna.

No excuses. It's a fuck up that needs fixing. However, even without a camera, you can still make calls. Something you couldn't do on the iFlaw if so much as a pinkie finger got in the way.