Tag Archives: recording

FM Radio is Smart; Mandatory isn’t

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It’s interesting that we’re only now having the debate over whether or not FM radio in cell phones is a good idea, at least on a widespread forum, considering Nokia and others have equipped this feature for 5-6 years now.  The fact is, it’s not a good idea—it’s a GREAT idea.  Here’s why:

1 – The ratings for terrestrial FM radio still dwarf that of satellite stations, when you look at the local cumes, so while a Sat channel may have 650k listeners at a time, they may only have 15k in a particular local market.  Good for national advertisers; bad for community ones.  For this singular reason, FM isn’t going anywhere.

2 – It’s free to the listener, can be accomplished anonymously, and requires no subscription or membership.

3 – The digital terrestrial stream (ie. HD radio) is of excellent fidelity and provides a transport for digital (and even interactive) programming beyond what FM broadcasters are currently using, so there’s headroom below terrestrial’s technology ceiling.

4  – Terrestrial radio is more or less weatherproof. Sat radio isn’t.

Now, as to whether or not it should be mandatory–well that just sounds like a war between the recording lobby and the cell phone carriers.  I’m of the opinion that the FM broadcasters are generally in favor of it but hamstrung by the recording industry.

iPad/iPhone platform takes the shimmer off OS X

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I couldn’t help but wonder what the iPad hype machine is going to mean for OS X in the long wrong. Sure, OS X is the development environment for the iPhoneOS, but is there enough *there* with the mobile OS to make it the de facto environment of choice for folks like me?

As it is now, iPhone OS does a whole lot of things OS X does not–platform-wide UI support for multi-touch is just the beginning of the list. Still, it seems Apple has gone to great lengths not to cannibalize desktop PC sales, if not overtly saying so. No, iPad is not a desktop replacement, yet.  For starters, it synchronizes with iTunes, meaning that it doesn’t actually run iTunes, so its calendaring and music apps are still very mobile in nature. I also wonder if the lack of a user-facing camera was a design scheme to keep the iPad out of the desktop space, as opposed to a financial consideration to keep down manufacturing costs.

But the brushes app seems like an impressive utility with the potential to offset some productivity that’s normally reserved for the desktop.  And as I type this on a Macbook Pro, I realize that the iPad will never be suitable for video production, or for audio mixing. Even still, I can imagine great uses for multitouch in these kinds of apps.

Without the UI goodies, OS X shimmers less, and I believe it’s only a matter of time before touch-enabled desktop gear starts shipping from Cupertino.

A GarageBand Track for the Recording Geeks

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It’s been quite a while since I did a recording/music blog. But check this out. I’ve had this track setting on my Maxtor outboard drive for a few months. It’s a pop rock arrangement that was done to test my then-new microphone setup. Here are the techniques I used:

- Recorded two acoustic guitar tracks with XY close condensers. One pointed at the neck, the other at the bridge. One acoustic has a capo so it has that mandolin-ish sound.

- Recorded the drums on stereo track with four mics: XY overhead, inside kick, and close snare (AKG D88).

- Added software-generated keyboard pad.

- Added electric guitar and bass guitar tracks, direct to the mixer.

- Minimal compression on everything except the drums (hence the cymbals sound a little “dark”).

- A little reverb on the master track.

Tell me what you think after you have a listen.

The death of podcasting buzz

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Is it just me, or did the obsession with podcasting just GO AWAY? Perhaps it was the difficulty in monetizing the creativity model. Or maybe it just was never easy enough to produce and consume podcasts. Not to mention the non-live nature of it. I haven’t listened to one in a long time, probably because I’m swamped and I no longer have a iPod hookup in my Pacifica.

Nerds need to realize mainstream dollars are the only ones that matter

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Look, nerds, don’t take this the wrong way (because I’m a nerd too!) but your acquiescence to Apple’s Buck-Thirty DRM-free singles deal is the same as you selling out. Here’s why.

As much as we don’t want to admit it, the mainstream (ie. that 50% plus slice of the population that *still* doesn’t understand bitrates and sampling frequencies) still purchases their music on polymer platter. So when we whine about how we want better bitrates in our music singles, and we want them re-mastered from 24-bit or 32-bit digital sources, we’re crying a lamentation that the bulk of people just don’t care about.

As it stands now, the hipsters (ie. that 50% minus sliver of the population that lives a digital life and spends as much time online as off) are the only people that care about so-called higher-quality recordings. It’s been this way since long before iTunes. That’s why only .00024% of the population subscribes to Audiophile; that’s why cassette tapes, laborsome to produce and horrible-sounding after the second or third playback, lasted well into the mid-90′s as a primary means of distributing music. The mainstream doesn’t care about premiums. If they did, might we all be driving a Porsche? Same with music. You can charge more for a premium feature, but premiums like an extra 84 kbps of sample bandwidth aren’t going to make mainstream dollars flock to iTunes.The extra bandwidth only serves to attract nerd dollars.

Which was my whole point to begin with. If I’m a mainstream consumer that’s happy with a recording that costs me less to enjoy, I’m going to save my dough.  Apple should cut to the chase, sink the idea that you should pay more for something in low demand that does NOT exhibit higher manufacturing costs, and drop those EMI recordings to a buck just like everything else on iTunes.

The increase in quality doesn’t matter to Joe Six Pack. It was just a spoonful of sugar to make the EMI $0.30 anti-piracy fee an easier pill to swallow for people who pay attention: NERDS.

Headset pr0n: how ya like these apples

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After I chided the VoIP Girl a bit about her awesome-but-ample headset, Ken Camp added his fuel to the fire. So, here, I’m posting a picture of my headphones. These are Roland RH-120 stereo headphones, purchased in 1995 for what at the time was probably a week’s pay. I don’t use a boom mic set or anything like that. The built-in mic on my MacBook tends to work well enough. If I need to seriously record a VoIP chat, however, sometimes I’ll plug in my SM57 knock-off microphone into a mixer–one typically only used for music recording. But it’s a sensible low-noise mic that can be used for podcast recording and so forth.  Generally though, no special microphone for casual Skyping or Sightspeeding. By the way, this photo was a self-portrait snapped by the Nokia N73 because my MacBook’s built-in iSight is on the fritz.

EFF’s DRM manifesto leaves out some important points

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Tom Keating pointed me to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s page about its opposition to Digital Rights Management, and I read this manifesto in its entirety. I do have a few questions about EFF’s understand of DRM, however:

Major entertainment companies are using “digital rights management,” or DRM (aka content or copy protection), to lock up your digital media. These DRM technologies do nothing to stop copyright pirates, but instead end up interfering with fans’ lawful use of music, movies, and other copyrighted works.

This is partially untrue. DRM does have a measurable effect on the rate of piracy. The more difficult you make it to distribute media illegally, the less piracy will occur. The real problem isn’t that DRM doesn’t stop piracy (which is an outright myth), but that DRM stops media innovation, fair use, and media creation. It creates barriers to entry for artists. And so EFF’s explanation is only half true.

DRM can prevent you from making back ups of your DVDs and music downloaded from online stores, recording your favorite TV programs, using the portable media player of your choice, remixing clips of movies into your own home movies, and much more.

Again, partially true. You still have consumer choice and you still have analog. I know we aspire to live in an all-digital, all-networked world, one which DRM holdouts will be the very last to join. So another problem I foresee is that DRM retards the advancement of social assimilation into the all-digital realm.

The DMCA has been a disaster for innovation, free speech, fair use, and competition.

Amen on this point. And I would add that, though EFF won’t come right out and say it, DMCA-inspired controls have been a disaster for what I call “beneficial piracy”.  Pirated music sells mindshare. Mindshare sells albums. Sold albums equals more pirated music. More pirated music equals more mindshare. More mindshare sells more albums; infinity.

Today, these media giants want to use DRM to take away your legitimate fair use and home recording rights, hoping to sell those rights back to you later.

Yup, it’s a twisted scheme of a business model, ain’t it?

Worse still, recent DRM has invaded users’ privacy and created severe security vulnerabilities in computers.

If this is in reference to the Sony debacle, it sounds an awful lot like FUD coming from the EFF.  That Sony thing will never happen again, period. Get over it.

Fans shouldn’t be treated like criminals, and neither should the innovators who build the gadgets on which they rely.

I’ve long held that copyright profiteering should be a felony, and should be well-enforced–but charging a cover and offering free beers during a pay-per-view fight is against the law, and that’s just ridiculous.

Music execs talk from both sides of mouth on DRM

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According to the BBC:

The study revealed that about 54% of those executives questioned thought that current DRM systems were too restrictive.

Also, 62% believed that dropping DRM and releasing music files that can be enjoyed on any MP3 player would boost the take-up of digital music generally. However, Mr Mulligan pointed out that this percentage changed depending on which sector of the industry was answering.

Among all record labels 48% of all executives thought ending DRM would boost download sales – though this was 58% at the larger labels. Outside the record labels 73% of those questioned thought dropping DRM would be a boost for the whole market.

Among all those questioned, 70% believed that the future of downloadable music lay in making tracks play on as many different players as possible. But 40% believed it would take concerted government or consumer action to bring this about.

Despite these feelings, said Mr Mulligan, record labels are committed to using DRM because their digital music strategies revolve around these technologies.

“Despite everything that has been happening the record labels are not about to drop DRM,” said Mr Mulligan. “Even though all they are doing is making themselves look even less compelling by using it.”

It’s interesting how the music execs draw a parallel between DRM and proprietary lock-in. It’s almost like they’re saying it’s Apple’s fault iTunes Store songs only play on iPods. In reality, and Jobs stated this a few weeks back, iTunes enforces DRM in a number of ways–one, by keeping FairPlay close to the vest and two, by keeping the entire iTunes value chain close to the vest. He also stated that he doesn’t really like DRM, but more or less supports it through iTunes as a capitulation to the music industry. I would think the music industry would be flocking to Jobs and Co., seeing as how CDs aren’t generally DRM’d and can be copied using a simple CD-burner. Yet the growth of online sales, which some record execs believe is stunted or below its potential, is being laid at the feet of Apple because DRM’d songs only play on the iPod. Well, hello, guys!  It’s your own darn fault. Your insistence on DRM lock-in isn’t compatible with Apple’s desire to stay away from the patent licensing business. Does Apple want to sell security technologies or media solutions? Gee, that’s not a hard one to figure out. Down with DRM. Let’s just get it over with already.