Audio – Rocknerd

Snake oil never sleeps: MQA bought out by Lenbrook.

20 September, 202321 September, 2023 Audio 2

Lenbrook does have considerable experience straddling the fine line between “very good sound equipment” and “green marker pen on your speaker wires.”

Oh no! Snake oil “hi-res” audio company MQA is going broke.

12 April, 202312 April, 2023 Audio 0

Oh no! Where will I pay well over the odds for a 13-bit FLAC now?

FreeDB is gone — but the CD data lives on.

11 February, 2023 Audio 5

Guess it’s been a while since I touched the dusty old boxes of CDs — I only just found out that CD database FreeDB shut down some time in early 2020.

Capsule: Metro Pulse (2022).

3 February, 20233 February, 2023 Audio, Dance, Record 1

Yasutaka Nakata‘s much-anticipated synthwave masterpiece.

An opera singer shattering a glass, redux.

19 August, 2022 Audio 0

Your mission: document the resonant frequencies, and come up with an enormously popular banger of a tune that hits all of them.

Links: Virtual Reality still useless, why vinyl was bad, the Problem with Music gets tha roni, Nile Rodgers.

15 May, 202015 May, 2020 Audio, Industrial, Industry, Links, R'n'B 0

Here in the plague, I’m bored enough to write about music again, for my beloved audience of about a hundred. How are you all?

Records: Frog, Keen On Keys, Metal Disco (2018).

15 November, 2018 Audio, Indie, Industrial, Record, Rock 0

Metal Disco is today’s pleasant surprise winner.

Links: Spotify metadata, VU meters, songwriting camps, Disney defends fair use, the history of Smash Hits.

20 August, 2018 Audio, mp3, Musician, Pop, Writing, Your rights 0

Twenty deadly diseases.

Reripping the CDs, as you do.

12 June, 201815 June, 2018 Audio, Opinion 0

Here’s to cdparanoia and EAC, to turn the music trapped in the silver abominations back into the pure data they were meant to be.

Links: High-Definition Vinyl, Brian Hooper RIP, Eventbrite’s we-take-all ticketing contract.

21 April, 201821 April, 2018 Audio, Indie, Industry, Links, Rock 0

At least Twitter reaps a bountiful harvest these days.

Links: The grunge gold rush, the Lester Bangs play, headphone jacks, Chandra, the first Velvets gig.

17 February, 2018 Audio, Links, Post-Punk, Rock, Writing 0

A pile of writing.

Links: The Shakin’ Stevens game, Quincy Jones, death of the CD, Spotify songwriter credits, Snub TV.

9 February, 2018 Audio, Games, Links, mp3, R'n'B, Television 0

Now I’m trying to imagine an ’80s Quincy Jones game.

Links: The Face, streaming liner notes, vinyl, cassettes.

6 November, 201713 November, 2017 Audio, mp3, Writing 0

That coulda been me up there! Possibly.

Links: Warner copyright fraud, RightsCorp bleeding red ink, BBC audio woo.

21 August, 2017 Audio, Industry, Links 1

And a rousing topical singalong.

Links: The failed hi-res audio of the 1990s, the risks of piracy, Simon Reynolds’ glam faves.

20 July, 20179 May, 2018 Audio, Links, mp3, Rock, Your rights 0

And the Blockchain Robot!

Followups: Spotify “fake artist” speaks, SoundCloud, more audiophile networking.

17 July, 201717 July, 2017 Audio, Links, Media, mp3 2

And I have two or three days to get the book absolutely finished OH GOD

Severed Heads: Donut (2017). A single you can play as a CD or on a turntable.

8 July, 20176 August, 2017 Audio, Industrial, Record 1

Why? Tom Ellard, pretty much.

Links: FLAC on iOS, Allen Ravenstine of Pere Ubu, the cassette-compatible music player.

9 June, 20179 June, 2017 Audio, Links, Punk 0

And a video from Marcelo Andrea (Expreso Maniquí).

Links: iTunes still sucks, Spotify not compressing as much, the Great Cultural Fragmentation.

27 May, 201727 May, 2017 Audio, Links, mp3 0

“It’s like giving somebody a glass of hell in ice water.”

Links: Disney piracy hoax, New Order and Sunkist, wear yer earplugs, more Rocknerd in Hypebot.

25 May, 201725 May, 2017 Audio, Film, Links, Post-Punk, Rocknerd 0

♪ How does it feel
When a new day has begun
When you’re drinking in the sunshine
Rocknerd is the one ♫

Links: Music industry sexism, vinyl video game music, why do we want sound recording anyway?

23 May, 201723 May, 2017 Audio, Games, Industry, Links 0

As usual, the comments on an article on why feminism is needed in the music industry demonstrate why feminism is needed in the music industry.

Master Quality Authenticated — “high-resolution” audio with … lossy compression.

17 May, 201721 May, 2017 Audio, Opinion 8

An audacious innovation in the “high-resolution audio” field: hi-res audio that does lossy compression. And the record companies love it.

Links: How to rig the charts, musicians’ vending machine, a malware music player, Internet Archive.

7 May, 201718 May, 2017 Audio, Industry, Links, Musician 0

I’m sure Harry Styles will categorically deny that anyone from any of his teams paid anyone to do anything whatsoever toward this chart rigging effort. Any moment now.

Followups: Free money from YouTube, windowing and piracy, totally not Pono.

25 April, 201728 April, 2017 Audio, Industry, Links, mp3 0

Ongoing sagas that remain perennial bad pennies of stupid.

Links: uTorrent, bogus RightsCorp DMCA notices, International 8-Track Day.

23 April, 201724 April, 2017 Audio, mp3, Rocknerd, Your rights 0

Ignoring the previous National 8-Track Day, of course.

Links: The history of records, copyright troll woes, Chuck Berry in space, the other Top 40 charts.

27 March, 2017 Audio, Industry, Links, Your rights 0

“My mum had a record of Winston Churchill speeches that played at 16⅔rpm. As we never owned a record player with that speed, I only ever heard the Pinky & Perky version played at 33.”