So it's a C major chord played on a synthesizer? Got it.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Agreed.
Not sure if this is the best choice of genre for a discussion of subtlety and dynamics, but it's a good point. There is another video somewhere on the sift that makes the same point. There are other factors to take into account, like production and medium. A poorly produced recording will sound like shit regardless of compression/dynamic range, and when we transitioned to mp3s, it was the first time in history that a new format has actually taken a step back as far as detail and quality goes.
There are all kinds of new, higher quality formats competing at the moment, and one of them is bound to be crowned champ within a few years. Maybe this will inspire artists and their sound engineers to rediscover the beauty of subtlety and dynamics in order to take advantage of technology. Probably not though, especially among macho hardcore bands who may fear putting out an album that isn't as loud as their peers. Heaven forbid their fans should have to manually adjust the volume knob.


It's not just through audio compression from CD that audio has taken a step back. A lot of portable audio players in recent times, have sacrificed on hardware audio components for slimness and ended up sounding resoundingly worse than the CD players of the last generation. Not to mention that most people nowadays find it acceptable to listen from mobile phones, which comparatively have even cheaper chips in them.

To be honest though, compression doesn't really worry me. I've got a pretty decent headphone/DAC setup, and as much as I try I can't hear the difference between V0 and CD audio.

What annoys me more is that most people are willing to settle for iBuds. I guess it's to be expected though, most modern music is heavily synthesized, containing few if any non-electronic instruments, including voice of course which with Auto-Tune is perfectly in tune, removing just about all subtlety or uniqueness from the singer. In that sense, heavy compression and cheap equipment in modern music probably doesn't lose you much in detail. If there's no texture or imperfection to be heard from a string instrument because the whole song is composed of virtually mono-tonal looped beats generated from a keyboard, then compression and cheap equipment isn't going to make the song sound any less natural because it wasn't attempting to in the first place.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Thanks for that. Sounds good. I'm going to see it.
>> ^therealblankman:
I went to a sneak-preview of the film that they don't bother to promote in the above interview. Really enjoyed it! Below is the review I wrote for Cinemaclock...
Here's the deal with this flick- if you're a fan of 1980s style comedy cop flicks a'la Lethal Weapon and especially Beverly Hills Cop, then you'll really enjoy this lightweight action film from Kevin Smith. Hell, it's even got an 80s Axel Foley synthesizer soundtrack.
Bruce Willis is the grizzled veteran cop, Tracy Morgan (or is it Jordan? I get confused) plays his goofy partner. There's a plot of sorts- revolving around the pair trying to get back a valuable baseball card stolen from Willis' character by a gang of frightening hispanic ethnic stereotypes, the leader of which is a sports memorabilia collector.
There are a bunch of chases- both on foot and in cars- a couple of shootouts, and some minor sub-plots with a few twists. All of which serve solely as situations for Morgan to riff off of Willis' straight-man like a manic comedic madman. These guys have some great chemistry together, in the finest buddy-picture tradition.
A couple of cameos- notably Jason Lee as the slimy step-father of Willis' daughter, and Seann William Scott is hilarious as a strung-out cat burglar.
This movie's quite a change of pace for director Smith- a straight-up mainstream comedy. But it's still got a lot of his trademark clever dialogue and the characters are better fleshed-out and more believable than is usual for this genre. It drags a little bit in the second act, but moves on soon enough and pretty much succeeds in entertaining on every level.

I went to a sneak-preview of the film that they don't bother to promote in the above interview. Really enjoyed it! Below is the review I wrote for Cinemaclock...

Here's the deal with this flick- if you're a fan of 1980s style comedy cop flicks a'la Lethal Weapon and especially Beverly Hills Cop, then you'll really enjoy this lightweight action film from Kevin Smith. Hell, it's even got an 80s Axel Foley synthesizer soundtrack.

Bruce Willis is the grizzled veteran cop, Tracy Morgan (or is it Jordan? I get confused) plays his goofy partner. There's a plot of sorts- revolving around the pair trying to get back a valuable baseball card stolen from Willis' character by a gang of frightening hispanic ethnic stereotypes, the leader of which is a sports memorabilia collector.
There are a bunch of chases- both on foot and in cars- a couple of shootouts, and some minor sub-plots with a few twists. All of which serve solely as situations for Morgan to riff off of Willis' straight-man like a manic comedic madman. These guys have some great chemistry together, in the finest buddy-picture tradition.

A couple of cameos- notably Jason Lee as the slimy step-father of Willis' daughter, and Seann William Scott is hilarious as a strung-out cat burglar.

This movie's quite a change of pace for director Smith- a straight-up mainstream comedy. But it's still got a lot of his trademark clever dialogue and the characters are better fleshed-out and more believable than is usual for this genre. It drags a little bit in the second act, but moves on soon enough and pretty much succeeds in entertaining on every level.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Inner City Pressure, FoTC, Jermaine, Bret, New Zealand, synthesizers' to 'Inner City Pressure, FoTC, Jermaine, Bret, New Zealand, synthesizers, pet shop boys' - edited by dystopianfuturetoday

I'm late to this party, but I really enjoyed having the mono Beatles releases made available. Hard panning and "crazy" mixing on stereo was the fad of the day like Autotune is now or synthesizers were in the 80s. Just another then-new technique to get people to buy more records or new stereo players and receivers. Think about it... without the hard pans it would have been difficult to "show" the difference between the two formats at the time. Marketing works.

The best thing about the mono releases as well is there was no limiting or DRC applied to the final mixes, the modern bane of loudness war infecting remastering of old tracks.

Don't ask where, but I've also listened to a few of the 4 track masters (without anything done to them) and compared to the resulting product that is the 2009 release... they did an absolutely fantastic job. (Hint: unmixed the songs sound like utter dogshit without any work applied to them)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'stylophone, synthesizer, eye of the tiger, the final countdown, jump' to 'stylophone, synthesizer, eye of the tiger, the final countdown, jump, brett domino' - edited by Zonbie

Tags for this video have been changed from 'stylophone, synthesizer' to 'stylophone, synthesizer, eye of the tiger, the final countdown, jump' - edited by dystopianfuturetoday

2+2=Allah

The process by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water, using sunlight, is called Allah.

E=mcAllah

The number of moles in a molecule is Allah.

Best synthesizer music documentary ever. Some of the footage here is just amazing.

In reply to this comment by Nithern

What makes you think I am talking about healthcare? You are a new poster, and that just happens to be the first thread I saw you comment in; I had a hunch, and it appears, thus far, that my hunch was correct

You view the President as King...if anything he is a Queen or lesser - but still just another pawn. When the president tries to act like anything more than a pawn, what happens?

Assassination / Military Coup / Revolution.

The Kings are those in the top 1% who hold the majority of the world's wealth. Ever hear of one of them being assassinated, for example? You probably don't even know their names but they influence every aspect of your life - what you eat, what you were taught, what positions you hold on social issues, where you will work, what your ambitions are, what you think the purpose of life is....

Kellogs, Bayer, Halliburton, The Vatican...those are your kings.

You must be naive indeed, if you think you are going to become a trillionare, with the mind of a pawn. If you discover a medical cure for cancer, you wouldn't be the one to profit from it. Ever heard of Frederick Banting? Jonas Salk? Nobody ever got rich working for someone else; and do you mean to tell me you plan to synthesize novel pharmaceuticals in your basement? No, if you do you would be the employee of some major company - and thus have no legal claim to any of the "cures" you devote your life to.

We are alike in that we were both born pawns, I'm different in that I refuse to live or die as one...

"I'm not very good at singing songs"

No, but you sure could write some beautiful poetry:

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch

You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes

You might emerge somewhere else in space

Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us

If we do not destroy ourselves

We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits

Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise

A morning filled with 400 billion suns

The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths

Of exquisite interrelationships

Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully

On how well we understand this cosmos

In which we float like a mote of dust

In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect

It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes

it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one

Has an elaborate logical underpinning

The brain has it's own language

For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]

For thousands of years

People have wondered about the universe

Did it stretch out forever

Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes

From dark matter to a possible big crunch

Our image of the universe today

Is full of strange sounding ideas

[Sagan]

How lucky we are to live in this time

The first moment in human history

When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean

Recently we've waded a little way out

And the water seems inviting

>> ^Fusionaut:
quality
Now we know why HAL sang it!
http://www.videosift.com/video/HAL-Sings-Daisy-as-he-Dies


OK, my geek pride is a bit wounded by the implication that 'we' didn't already know this.

That was really one of the cool things about that scene, the way Hal's brain digresses back to his first programming. But before this I'd only read about Daisy being the first synthesized voice program. Awesome to finally hear it.

I only discovered of this series, by watching one of the videos hehe. Their videos are amazingly and creatively created. It all just very fun stuff and I love how they made their insects fit in their world.

>> wiki:
Minuscule is a growing collection of short animations that follow the day-to-day existence of anthropomorphic insects. The characters are modelled on computer in 3D and are then set against real scenery. Each animation has a short, self contained and often humorous storyline. The audio is a combination of genuine insect and ambient recordings, and sound effects such as car or helicopter or aircraft engines, synthesized buzzings etc. Throughout each episode, no (human) words are ever spoken, Nevertheless, Anthropogenic 'insect like words' are often trumpeted by the various protagonist insects. The background settings are mostly of rural France, and include farm houses, fences, cars, road surfaces, drains, gutters and garbage bins. Humans themselves appear only peripherally (if at all) & the only consistent peripheral witnesses to many of the goings~on, are cows that appear as disinterested bystanders.

*promote
Now I'm off to watch the other ones

>> ^rychan:
Anyone else really dislike that narrator? His cadence and emphasis seems so random.


No kidding. He sounds like a voice synthesizer reading from a text file. Either that or he's trying to mimic William Shatner (and doing a really bad job at that!).