Category: Audio

Stuff for listeners and amateur engineers

Categories
Audio Copyright

The end of the humble music CD

Damn, Mark Cuban is intelligent. I guess that’s why he’s a millionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I’ve started reading his blog, and he’s got an interesting essay on the beginning of the end for the humble music CD.

Then it occurred to me, that I haven’t used my CD Player, portable or at home, in a long, long time. That I rarely, if ever see anyone walking around with a portable CD player anymore. They have all been replaced by MP3 players. If everyone is switching to MP3 players, whether they are iPods, in phones, in PDAs, in cars, whatever, then that means that everyone is going to have to go through a multistep process in order to get the music from where or how they buy it, to the place they want it.

That’s not good for the people selling music. Particularly retail stores…

This is something my Uncle Melvin would be interested in reading. I’ll have to point him there. The rest of you already know:

Categories
Speech Tech

See, If You Can Hear This.

I heard an awesome documentary on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks entitled “See, If You Can Hear This.” about a technology called “The Voice” that allows blind people to see with their ears. The Voice consists of a digital camera and a pair of headphones and the computer in between that translates the visual image into an audio “image”. It is up to the person’s brain to process the audio information as a visual image, much like is done with light patterns collected by one’s (working) eyes. Basically, researchers know that we form images in our brain, not in our eyes. The eyes are just used to collect the light. Sound and touch and our memories are then combined with the light information from our eyes to form a visual image. Using the Voice, the blind are able to take advantage of the same process. The image they can form is not the same or as good as with the eyes (the frame rate of the Voice is 1 frame per second), but a visual image is definitely formed in the mind. The blind woman featured in the documentary tells the story of when she first saw the mountains over the desert using the Voice. Incredible!

The entire documentary is featured in a downloadable mp3, so go have a listen.

Categories
Music Swing

AccuRadio’s “Swingin’ Pop Standards”

Cool. This latest I Love Radio .org post turned me on to AccuRadio, an internet radio station with some specialized feeds. Of course I went straight to the one with “Swing” in the title. Check ’em out. They even have a Chinese page!

Categories
Speech

David Sedaris’s “Santaland Diaries”

I just heard a great story entitled “Santaland Diaries” by David Sedaris, where he talks about working as an elf at Macy’s Department Store during Christmas. Hilarious. Apparently there’s a drug test to become an elf.

It’s part of a larger hour-long show, but it occurs near the beginning. Only a Real Audio stream, but worth sitting down and listening to.

Categories
Audio

All about Reel Reviews

There’s a great interview featuring Michael Geoghegan of Reel Reviews posted at blogcritics.org that really captures the essence of why podcasting is so cool. If you love movies, but never know what to rent, check out the Reel Reviews podcast. But start with the article:

Categories
Audio

Magnatune Records: We are not evil

I’ve just finished listening to an interesting interview with the CEO of Magnatune Records, John Buckman. Magnatune is an Internet record label that is quite unique. They allow you to try out any music they offer (via streaming), the customer gets to set the purchase price, and half of the purchase price goes to the artist. (Half!) They even offer genre streams of their music so you can listen all day at work. Another interesting facet of this company is that they are trying to be as transparent as possible, publishing stats and income figures on their website. They sound really cool, and artist- and customer-friendly. Check out the interview:

Categories
Audio Rant

CJSR should be podcasting

I just sent an email to Daryl Richel, program manager of CJSR Radio, the campus/community radio station from the University of Alberta, proposing that the station take up podcasting. Here’s the text of my letter:

Dear Daryl:

Hey, this Darren Griffith. Back in 2001/2002 I used to produce promos for Alternative Radio as a volunteer at CJSR. I’ve since moved to Beijing. I still tune in to Prairie Pickin’ when I can over the web. I love that show. 🙂

Anyway, I’m back in Edmonton on vacation and I’m sorry to say I’m not listening to the station as much because I’ve discovered podcasts on the Internet. As a radio professional, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of this, but just in case I’ll describe it briefly. It’s an aggregation of simple ideas that allows an individual to subscribe to “radio” shows and have them downloaded over the Internet and appear in their personal mp3 player, usually overnight. For a more complete description on what it is and how it works, see this Wikipedia article on podcasting.

Now this pertains to CJSR because many radio lovers are finding that they can now personally construct their own programing and have it on demand and always with them. And once they set up the subscription, they don’t have to think about it. So they are listening less to broadcast radio.

So, perhaps the time is right for CJSR to consider podcasting some of its content. This would consist of producing mp3 files of individual shows and offering them for download, and the further step of producing an RSS feed for each show, which is the main technology of podcasting. (Don’t worry, it’s not very hard.) I realize that you currently offer mp3s of Radio Outpost for download. This show would be an excellent candidate for podcasting. The only extra step would be setting up the RSS feed that would allow podcatching clients to know when a new show appears and download it.

Basically, any content that you are licenced to offer for download could be made into a podcast. CJSR-produced news programming would be perfect for this. Music shows (or news shows that have a music intro, for example) are problematic because the licensing issues of podcasting have not been worked out yet (because it’s downloading and not Internet broadcasting).

To further my case for podcasting, I’ll mention that CBC is now doing a podcasting trial of /Nerd and Quirks & Quarks, which is really cool to think the CBC is forward-thinking enough to try this.

I hope all is well with you and the station, and I hope that you will consider using podcasting as a way to spread the great content produced at CJSR to a wider audience.

I’ll keep you readers informed of what comes of this. CJSR produces very good content, and it would be great to see it available on this new and growing distribution medium.

Categories
Philosophy Speech

God is Talking to Me, by Hans Anderson

This is an amazing piece of audio. At just under 10 minutes, it’s one man’s story of the day he finds that God is talking back to him. Listen carefully, cause it happens very quickly. Highly recommended!

Categories
Philosophy Speech

Why not God? by the Evil Genius

I listen to Dave Slusher’s Evil Genius Chronicles on a regular basis. I love this guy. He’s great. As a special episode, he recently recorded an audio essay entitled “Why I don’t believe in God”. As a religious philosopher, I’m interested in this kind of thing. It’s not a point-by-point diatribe on his atheistic beliefs, but a more personal story of his journey. As a former Christian myself, I can relate to his background. While I didn’t arrive at atheism like he did, I get the sense that we share the same values nonetheless. So I recommend that the readers of my blog head on over there, download his essay, and have a listen. Someday, I’ll have my own essay to write (or record).

Categories
China Speech Tech

LugRadio Clip

Here’s the clip from the LugRadio show where they talk about me. (See yesterday’s post). Note: just as a warning, you should avoid this if you’re sensitive to off-colour humour and language. Otherwise, enjoy!

LugRadio clip (3:08, 1.43 MB)