Fifteen to twenty years ago, Winamp was the MP3 player that everyone used. It was the first MP3 player not to suck: playlists, shuffle, convenience. And you can still download the last version.
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Category: Audio
Oxygen-free wax cylinders.
Links: AirPod woes, MegaUpload 2.0 delayed by dodginess, classic anti-piracy ads.
“Sorry but there has been an expected hiccup. Will tell you all about it later today. Let this play out and give me some time to update you.”
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Links: Dee Dee Ramone, how to work Spotify, talking rubber, American Recordings.
GIRLS LEAD PUNK ARMY ON RAMPAGE
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Links: Storytelling, the rump hi-res streaming consortium, the end of newspaper critics, Jim Bob.
Also, Wikipedia started sixteen years ago today.
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Links: Ticketmaster, digital property, not liking music, the biggest UK debut album of 2016.
Every nun needs a Synthi.
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Links: AdNauseam blocked, Facebook video takedowns, hi-res Tidal, a wrist vibrator subwoofer.
Seriously, $199 for a vibrator for your wrist.
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Streaming links: Google and SoundCloud, hi-res audio, codec snobbery.
From the world of your music on other people’s computers.
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Niland’s music classifier and similarity searcher, and a demo you can play with.
Niland are an “AI startup” who sell a search and recommendation engine for music companies. They have a demo for you to play with: paste in a track from SoundCloud and see what it makes of it.
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The time has come to listen to Ethernet cables.
The sound with the Pearl becomes lighter and has less impact and detail compared to the Supra. Stereo image shrinks, but more obvious is a reduction in detail. Changing to Cinnamon with only one switch in my network produces a surprising result.
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Links: High-resolution consumer audio, London for music sales, the worst Beach Boys album.
Audio snake oil, London still the centre of the universe, Summer in Paradise.
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Links: China’s top music site, 808 The Documentary, Shazam is listening.
Douban.com, a movie about a drum machine, software that grabs your microphone.
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Of course audiophiles still want vacuum tube computer audio.
At last, a followup on the legendary AOpen AX4B-533 Tube computer motherboard from 2002, and your options for cheap glow-in-the-dark amplification in 2016.
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Recording links: a new vinyl process, Brexit and UK records, Pono no mo’.
Exploring new frontiers in obsolete technology, why Brexit will affect UK music precisely how you think it would, and the state of Neil Young’s Pono.
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Links: Psychoacoustics for recording, blockchain band names, Dépèche Mode demos.
Scurvy recording trickery, scurvier buzzword-compliant scams and Dépèche Mode so too has the accents in.
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Apple’s shiny new headphone adapter turns out to suck. Gosh, etc.
The shiny new iPhone headphone adapter for Lightning isn’t actually powerful enough to drive headphones properly, and Bluetooth linking inexplicably doesn’t work so well for non-Apple headphones.
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Links: Records and machinery.
Online streaming, ’70s music technology and ’90s record shops.
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Audiophile buys his own utility transformer for cleaner electricity. Queen never sounded clearer.
82-year-old retired lawyer Takeo Morita buys his own utility pole, with transformer, for cleaner electricity and perfect sound forever.
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Matrix HiFi: Blind-testing high-end audio equipment.
As usual, a well-set up blind A/B test of supposedly stupendous audio equipment. And as usual, the actual answer (from ridiculously famous sound engineer
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AcousticBrainz: An open database of song fingerprints from MusicBrainz.
MusicBrainz, the database of everything music-related, has launched AcousticBrainz, a database of song characteristics in the manner of Soundhound or Shazam, but with the
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How to deep-clean your vinyl records: wood glue.
Really. Pretty laborious, but this seems to actually work. Anyone tried it?
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The audiophile woo motherlode: Wat Hifi?
Some kind person has been collecting this stuff. Enjoy. HT Paul Makepeace.
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The stupidest audiophile argument against double-blind testing to date.
Paul Wilson writes, in Audiophile Review, possibly the stupidest argument against double-blind tests I’ve read in some time. He doesn’t just argue the case
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Neil Young launches new music player based on magic beans and unicorn poop.
Neil Young has unveiled at SXSW a new $400 pocket music player that only plays one specific file type, encoded at “high resolution”. The
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Deaf from birth, Austin Chapman hears music for the first time.
Filmmaker Austin Chapman was largely deaf from birth until, a year or so ago, he finally got hearing aids that didn’t suck. “It was
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The completely recyclable LP record.
And if her 3D-printed records made of petrochemicals are too icky and modern, Amanda Ghassaei has followed up with a wooden record. Cut with
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Monty explains how digitising signals actually works.
As a followup to his detailed explanation of why 24/192 downloads are complete and utter snake oil, Chris “Monty” Montgomery of Xiph.org has produced
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Perfect sound forever! Probably.
I’m trying to get a skeptical blog going, in the name of RationalWiki. Yesterday and today I have posted rants about audiophiles: part 1
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Record your voice! Amazing novelty!
And you thought Peter King’s polycarbonate records were indie. How about 3D-printing an LP as the do-it-yourself trump card? Amanda Ghassaei’s printer does 600dpi,
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So what was Maxicut?
In case you ever wondered what the EMI “Maxicut” process you saw listed on all those Australian LPs was, learn about the rationale and
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AN END TO THE LOUDNESS WARS.
I bet you’ve always wondered what music would sound like if the bottom 8 bits of 16-bit sound were ever used for anything at all.
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