I still have physical floppy disks. You know...just in case there is something important on themSimilarly, a newish project management system I work with also has a floppy disk icon for savealways makes me smile!
Kids these days.
Star Trek Discovery in trouble, and a de facto reboot?
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The floppy disk as a symbol will long outlast the actual item. There's not really an easy alternative symbol for 'create copy of the data I'm creating on the hard drive'Similarly, a newish project management system I work with also has a floppy disk icon for save
Close, they were stone tablets; the ultimate in ROM-based information storage.
Cool, I didn't know tablets are such an early technology!
We'll they are un-erasable; you have to destroy them the wipe the memory clean.
Legendary jazz producer Rudy Van Gelder on the LP:
"The biggest distorter is the LP itself. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium."
^ And confirmation bias.
The funny thing about the vinyl resurrection is most of the LPs sold now are all pressed from a digital source. The sine wave is broken. Forever. So essentially people are going out and spending $30 on what is like 80-90% placebo.
I first started getting vinyls because I upgraded my headphones, and the clipping on some of my CD's started to stand out. But admittedly, LP's aren't always immune from that either.
That, and you simply can't get some albums on CD or (officially released) digital downloads. Whether it's artist preference (Philip Glass releases a fair few LP exclusives,) or just older albums that are out of print.
That, and you simply can't get some albums on CD or (officially released) digital downloads. Whether it's artist preference (Philip Glass releases a fair few LP exclusives,) or just older albums that are out of print.
Gotta say I am extremely exited and positive for Discovery. My main problem with the Abrams movies is that they contained too much of the 1960's version of the 23rd century. This doesn't seem to be the case here (I doubt they'd put their lead into a mini dress and go-go boots for example)
This is the first time since the end of Enterprise that we will get completely original Trek and well it needed to be updated, we aren't in the 90s anymore.
Also considering Voyager and Enterprise, I don't see anything wrong with them not having any of the people that "guided Trek from TNG on-wards" if anything fresh talent is a very good idea.
How does the trans-dimensional stuff negate anything? It's just another of the millions of possible worlds (if anything the idea that any of those timelines is the "prime" one or more real than the others is rather odd) The parallel universes/quantum realities theory is reality in Trek since TOS allowing them to, theoretically, create an infinite number of iterations.
I also look at it this way: I'm an X-Men fan. I like the comics, I like the movies, I like all three of the cartoon shows as well as a couple of excellently done fan universes. Neither of those iterations "negates" or "destroys" the other and I'm able to enjoy them in their own right.
I'm pretty stocked, this could very well be the "Second TNG" which could only mean good things. Plus in a proper series there is so much more room to introduce or reference stuff from the old shows and movies than the Abrams movies ever could.
It will be fun, I reckon.
Don't think of it as losing the old things, think of it as gaining more good stuff to have fun with.
This is the first time since the end of Enterprise that we will get completely original Trek and well it needed to be updated, we aren't in the 90s anymore.
Also considering Voyager and Enterprise, I don't see anything wrong with them not having any of the people that "guided Trek from TNG on-wards" if anything fresh talent is a very good idea.
How does the trans-dimensional stuff negate anything? It's just another of the millions of possible worlds (if anything the idea that any of those timelines is the "prime" one or more real than the others is rather odd) The parallel universes/quantum realities theory is reality in Trek since TOS allowing them to, theoretically, create an infinite number of iterations.
I also look at it this way: I'm an X-Men fan. I like the comics, I like the movies, I like all three of the cartoon shows as well as a couple of excellently done fan universes. Neither of those iterations "negates" or "destroys" the other and I'm able to enjoy them in their own right.
I'm pretty stocked, this could very well be the "Second TNG" which could only mean good things. Plus in a proper series there is so much more room to introduce or reference stuff from the old shows and movies than the Abrams movies ever could.
It will be fun, I reckon.
Don't think of it as losing the old things, think of it as gaining more good stuff to have fun with.
The bottleneck with all digital media, audio and video is compression. We still can't handle the huge file sizes and the even more huge processing requirements necessary to deliver uncompressed analog level data in a digital format. Everything we buy digitally is compressed to some degree. In the years to come they'll overcome this, and remaster again at levels exceeding analog possibly.
I caught the tail end of vinyl in the early 80's and it is the best format bar none. Having said that, I never want to deal with vinyl again. It's a pain in the arse. Long live digital (especially hi-res)!
I caught the tail end of vinyl in the early 80's and it is the best format bar none. Having said that, I never want to deal with vinyl again. It's a pain in the arse. Long live digital (especially hi-res)!
Are you sure it's clipping? True clipping in any red book audio is extremely rare, like non existent. And even when it does happen, it's usually due to a bad disk. What most people confuse as clipping is just excessive loudness war era (sound) compression, which became all the rage once people started listening highly (data) compressed audio files through cheap low impedance ear buds. But this shit really starts to stand out when listing through higher impedance (like anything over 100 ohms). The thing is, there are things you can do make it at least sound a little better--though it's really about as effective as spying Lysol over a really smelly fart.
Really, I think 24/192 is going to be a plateau. Anything beyond that gets into the realm of being purely academic because there's so many other variables to consider. And that's not even considering the whole debate over what the human ear can and can't "pick-up."
As for the compression, I think the better lossless formats are good enough. We even have the infrastructure support to deploy it as the primary streaming source should the market demand ever arise. Unfortunately, I don't think enough people care.
And for my money, reel-to-reel will always be the best audio format for quality. The problem is is so terribly impractical. Truth be told, in terms of quality vinyl is a pretty poor medium. Hell, I would argue that a brand new cassette sounds better than a brand new LP. The obvious caveat there is, that advantage the cassette has is gone after you play it once. (And of course, you need a high-quality deck with a properly maintained motor and meticulously cleaned heads.) Most of what makes vinyl so great is inherit in its culture.
Like I said earlier, the best analog audio format is actually not vinyl, but reel to reel tape that costs about $300 per album (as opposed to $30 for a new LP or $15 for a CD or whatever for a digital download).
But back to your regularly scheduled Star Trek: Discovery thread...
Kor
But back to your regularly scheduled Star Trek: Discovery thread...
Kor
I miss minidisc.
The best audio format for cost and quality would be a container the size of an album, with a micro SD card contain the album in a hi-res format. But then people can't pretend they are holding some kind of artefact. This second LP resurgence is even more faux nostalgia driven than the first from the late nineties.
Reel to reel is best but I consider that a pro area because the player quality has such a great effect, much like LP's where you can spend 50K on a stylus cartridge or more. For now only really high end hardware can discern the difference past 24/192 (some would argue 24/96 and less)....for now. Just like the home hifi in the 70's, CD and walkman from the 80's, better sounding, more affordable hifi is always just around the corner. How many times does one want to upgrade(re-buy or pay Apple upgrade fee) their file compression to keep up. Remember when iTunes defaulted to 160MP3 and people argued 128MP3 was more than enough, and those files are now unlistenable in many cases. If the media the consumer purchased was as uncompressed as analog, there'd be no need to upgrade. The files would sound better with each tech improvement just as an LP or reel tape would.
Cassettes in theory are just mini reel to reel tapes, but in reality, their small size coupled with the abuse of the deck heads against the tape, besides causing instant damage as you said, affected all playback due to the varying strength of the motor driving the head. So even a new cassette could sound like a warped LP.
But even with all those hassles, I loved working with all stuff. I'd advise anyone with the means to experience analog media and hardware before it becomes overly cost prohibitive.
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