GSIC AUDIO

[LTC8K6]

Yep, no music on CD's, and no movies on DVD's either. Just a lot of digital ones and zeroes.

Nothing much inside a GSIC either.

 

[LostAngeles]

All right. Let's stop playing with Mr. Anda now. We're getting as bad as my sister's cat with her flayed and tailess toy mice. The horse is dead and I will call in PETA's militant wing to firebomb his threads. Me, me, me, me!

Protocol! (Remeber, the point of this thread? Once we get this settled, we can back to the horsie.)


As I see it, we have two options:

Since BPSCG incorporated Moose, we have this one:

# Mark the disks sequentially, one through ten.
# GSIC-treat discs randomly, as specified elsewhere here.
# Seal a written record of which numbered discs have been treated ("1 - treated, 2 - treated, 3 - untreated... 10 - untreated").
# Load the numbered disks into the numbered slots in the jukebox all at once, in accordance with their sequence number (disc one - slot one, disc 2 - slot 2, etc.).
# Shut the jukebox access door and duct-tape it shut to prevent tampering.
# Cover the rest of the front of the machine with duct tape except for the display that shows which numbered slot is currently being played, as well as the playback controls.
# LA could then go back and forth between CD's as much as she wants without annoying anyone, and write down her guesses ("1 - untreated, 2 - untreated, 3 - treated... 10 - treated"). You'd need no more than one observer, to confirm that she didn't tamper with the machine; of course, a video would supplement that observer. Alternatively, LA could be required to use the jukebox's remote, to prevent her from actually touching the machine.
# When she's done, open the machine, and confirm that the discs' locations were not tampered with (i.e., disc 1 is still in slot 1, etc.).
# Compare LA's written responses with the previously sealed actual record of which discs were treated.

I like it.

Alternately, we find one that holds a large number of discs or one that comes in multiples of three and do the ABX test. The ABX has the distinct advantage of being an established method that is accepted by the audiophile community. Although, once again, we're not really out to convince the majority of them, are we? Nevertheless, as much as I like the straight forward version, we're likely best off doing the ABX.

BPS(C)G/ABX protocol:
# Mark the disks sequentially, one through (36-48).
# GSIC-treat discs randomly, as specified elsewhere here.
# Seal a written record of which numbered discs have been treated ("1 - treated, 2 - treated, 3 - untreated... X - untreated").
# Load the numbered disks into the numbered slots in the jukebox all at once, in accordance with their sequence number (disc one - slot one, disc 2 - slot 2, etc.).
# Shut the jukebox access door and duct-tape it shut to prevent tampering.
# Cover the rest of the front of the machine with duct tape except for the display that shows which numbered slot is currently being played, as well as the playback controls.
# LA could then go back and forth between CD's as much as she wants without annoying anyone, and write down her guesses ("1 - untreated, 2 - untreated, 3 - treated... 1X - treated"). You'd need no more than one observer, to confirm that she didn't tamper with the machine; of course, a video would supplement that observer. Alternatively, LA could be required to use the jukebox's remote, to prevent her from actually touching the machine.
# When she's done, open the machine, and confirm that the discs' locations were not tampered with (i.e., disc 1 is still in slot 1, etc.).
# Compare LA's written responses with the previously sealed actual record of which discs were treated.

We get a remote, I use the remote. We need somewhere between twelve and sixteen triplets to do this, from what it looks like. If Piano Teacher hadn't up and left, we could have gotten more specifics from him.

Few stipulations: There will be no William Hung, Brittany Spears, boy band, X-tina, Avril, AFI, or Franz Ferdinad. None. None at all. No Yanni, no Raffi, and for the love of all that mankind has ever held holy, no "Brimful of Asha on a 45" lest you want a rain of fire and death to rain down upon L.A. And avoid the Scientology Center.

 

[jmercer]

Either protocol looks solid to me... I would suggest that you pick a series of titles that you are familiar with. This will enhance your chances of detecting any differences, no matter how slight.

And remember to pay off my cars if you win!

 

[jmercer]

Uh, I think that's not an issue, unless you're going to bring Adron back out of the lesser sea, and let him rebuild his machine... And if I see Vlad and Mario together, I am going to be a bit worried, too, eh?

Assuming you have time to be worried. They could decide to get rude, you know.

 

[BPSCG]

Okay, here I am, causing trouble again.

If you use recordings that employ any electric instruments, you have problems.

An electric guitar has no real sound of its own. Its sound is what gets captured by the pickups, sent to the amplifier, and comes out of the amp's speakers.

When you listen to a guitar recording, you're hearing the guitar strings picked up by the guitar's microphones (aka pickups), sent through the amp's speakers, through a studio microphone, onto tape, and into your speakers. I've left out a bunch of intermediate steps involving mixing boards and such, but you get the picture.

An electric guitar will sound different being played through different guitar amps.

So, when you're listening to, oh, say, Ted Nugent (just wanted to tick people off here) or Pat Metheny, you're not hearing the "natural" sound of the electric guitar in the same way you'd be hearing the "natural" sound of an acoustic guitar.

Now, let's assume the GSIC works as advertised (humor me here). You hear a dramatic difference between one recording of "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls" and another. You like one of the CD's better than the other.

But is that CD now a better recording, is it more true-to-life? It's impossible to say, because you don't know how true-to-life the original recording was; you don't know what Pat Metheney's guitar sounds like in the studio. All you know is that you like one recording better than the other.

Lest you think I'm full of it, try putting a cassette tape in your home cassette player (remember them?). Play the music for a little while. Now, punch the Dolby button. If you had the Dolby noise reduction on when you started listening, the sound will now be brighter, more brilliant. You'll probably like it better.

If you had the Dolby off when you started listening, the sound will now be duller, and you probably won't like it as much.

But the reason the sound is brighter, more brilliant when you have the Dolby off is because Dolby reduces hiss, and that apparent extra brilliance is simply hiss. The sound is more true-to life with the Dolby off, but I've known several people who never used the Dolby NR because they didn't like the way it made their recordings sound.

So what am I getting at? Just this: Use recordings that are as acoustic as possible. Solo acoustic piano, solo acoustic guitar, solo violin, etc. Human voice with as little processing as possible - if the singer sounds like he/she's singing in an echo chamber, don't use it for the test, even if it's your favorite album.

Honestly, classical music would work best for this, but I have a sneaking suspicion LA would sooner jab red-hot feces-coated knitting needles into her eyeballs than listen to Schubert's Trout quintet or Beethoven's Waldstein piano sonata. Too bad.

 

[IXP]

But the reason the sound is brighter, more brilliant when you have the Dolby off is because Dolby reduces hiss, and that apparent extra brilliance is simply hiss. The sound is more true-to life with the Dolby off, but I've known several people who never used the Dolby NR because they didn't like the way it made their recordings sound.

Actually that is not quite true.

The way Dolby works is by selectively amplifying the higher frequencies more than the lower frequencies when recorded, then using the mirror image curve to reduce them on playback. The hiss is reduced because the hiss is constant and the reduction on playback reduces the hiss while restoring the correct level of the highs in the recording.

So playing a Dobly recorded tape when Dolby off is much like turning up the treble control on your stereo. You may indeed like it better, most likely because your speakers fall off rapidly in the higher frequencies. It is not the hiss that makes it sound brighter, it is the amplified high frequencies from the source.

In any case, I agree with your suggestion on picking the music. Highly distorted music is much less likely to show a distiguishable difference than very well-recorded accoustic music.

I play a little guitar and have recorded some songs. I was very dissapointed with my recordings originally because I routed the guitar output directly into the recorder, which resulted in an incredibly bland sound. It was only after I bought a book about recording music that I learned that you have to mike a guitar amp to get anything like the sound you are used to. The limited response of a guitar amp / speaker and distortion they insert is just what is needed to give the sound some character!

IXP

 

[LostAngeles]

Okay, here I am, causing trouble again.

If you use recordings that employ any electric instruments, you have problems.

An electric guitar has no real sound of its own. Its sound is what gets captured by the pickups, sent to the amplifier, and comes out of the amp's speakers.

When you listen to a guitar recording, you're hearing the guitar strings picked up by the guitar's microphones (aka pickups), sent through the amp's speakers, through a studio microphone, onto tape, and into your speakers. I've left out a bunch of intermediate steps involving mixing boards and such, but you get the picture.

An electric guitar will sound different being played through different guitar amps.

So, when you're listening to, oh, say, Ted Nugent (just wanted to tick people off here) or Pat Metheny, you're not hearing the "natural" sound of the electric guitar in the same way you'd be hearing the "natural" sound of an acoustic guitar.

Now, let's assume the GSIC works as advertised (humor me here). You hear a dramatic difference between one recording of "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls" and another. You like one of the CD's better than the other.

But is that CD now a better recording, is it more true-to-life? It's impossible to say, because you don't know how true-to-life the original recording was; you don't know what Pat Metheney's guitar sounds like in the studio. All you know is that you like one recording better than the other.

Lest you think I'm full of it, try putting a cassette tape in your home cassette player (remember them?). Play the music for a little while. Now, punch the Dolby button. If you had the Dolby noise reduction on when you started listening, the sound will now be brighter, more brilliant. You'll probably like it better.

If you had the Dolby off when you started listening, the sound will now be duller, and you probably won't like it as much.

But the reason the sound is brighter, more brilliant when you have the Dolby off is because Dolby reduces hiss, and that apparent extra brilliance is simply hiss. The sound is more true-to life with the Dolby off, but I've known several people who never used the Dolby NR because they didn't like the way it made their recordings sound.

So what am I getting at? Just this: Use recordings that are as acoustic as possible. Solo acoustic piano, solo acoustic guitar, solo violin, etc. Human voice with as little processing as possible - if the singer sounds like he/she's singing in an echo chamber, don't use it for the test, even if it's your favorite album.

Honestly, classical music would work best for this, but I have a sneaking suspicion LA would sooner jab red-hot feces-coated knitting needles into her eyeballs than listen to Schubert's Trout quintet or Beethoven's Waldstein piano sonata. Too bad.

>=(

Buddy, Pal, Sidekick, Comrade, Gentleman friend. (Damn you thesaurus.) I used Peter and the Wolf as an example in an earlier post. My phone used to ring Toccata and Fugue because it was one of my favorite pieces from Fantasia. My favorite part of Eva was when |spoiler!| with Beethoven's 9th in the background.

Sure, I'd love to use some AC/DC or some old Smashing Pumpins, heck, Metallica's S&M was on the table for having both rock and classical elements (I won't mention the audience singing. It was not there. Lalalalala I can't hear it). I'm not going to cry if we can't use those. Years of Disney and Bugs Bunny cartoons plus a cool mom (who do you think introduced me to AC/DC?) has made me love classical.

Old classical. I f-ing hate KMotzart out here. BO-RING.

Edited to add: Imperial-freaking-March! Sweet AT-ATs crushing Ewoks!

 

[BPSCG]

I used Peter and the Wolf as an example in an earlier post.

Actually, Peter and the Wolf would be a good one; lots of extended solo instrumental passages and instrument group passages: bassoon=grandfather, clarinet=cat, flute=bird, oboe=duck, drums=hunters, horns=wolf, violins=Peter. Note how after the wolf is captured, Peter's theme is now played on the wolf's horns, rather than the violins.

Try to get a good solo piano recording. Next to the human voice, the piano is the most difficult single instrument to reproduce well.

Old classical. I f-ing hate KMotzart out here. BO-RING.

How sad... Like a fine wine, the delights of Don Giovanni only improve with age and as tastes mature. I've known that opera for forty years and I can still listen to it and find new little miracles.

Some years ago, my supervisor was pregnant and asked me for a recommendation for music to have playing when the baby was born. I recommended the second movement from Mozart's 21st piano concerto, because, "During his life, he'll see plenty of ugliness; at least let him start with something that is beautiful and perfect."

She kind of gave me a blank look and said, "Uh, okay... I was thinking along the lines of Born in the U.S.A...

 

[Z]

Actually, Peter and the Wolf would be a good one; lots of extended solo instrumental passages and instrument group passages: bassoon=grandfather, clarinet=cat, flute=bird, oboe=duck, drums=hunters, horns=wolf, violins=Peter. Note how after the wolf is captured, Peter's theme is now played on the wolf's horns, rather than the violins.

Try to get a good solo piano recording. Next to the human voice, the piano is the most difficult single instrument to reproduce well.
How sad... Like a fine wine, the delights of Don Giovanni only improve with age and as tastes mature. I've known that opera for forty years and I can still listen to it and find new little miracles.

Some years ago, my supervisor was pregnant and asked me for a recommendation for music to have playing when the baby was born. I recommended the second movement from Mozart's 21st piano concerto, because, "During his life, he'll see plenty of ugliness; at least let him start with something that is beautiful and perfect."

She kind of gave me a blank look and said, "Uh, okay... I was thinking along the lines of Born in the U.S.A...

Ahhh... This is a little embarrassing to recount, but Mozart's 21st Piano Concerto is what first attracted me to classical music - because a poorly rendered (and heavily edited) version of the first movement was the theme song for Whiz Kids.

But I still enjoy Elvira Madigan over anything by Liszt or Beethoven.

Nothing beats Toccata and Fugue though... Especially the thrash-metal version I once heard a couple of years ago! (Anyone know who did this piece?)

 

[KRAMER]

Chips For Chumps

This is a great article by Jim Austin that had some trouble being transalted in the pdf format when I posted it here, so forgive the inconsistencies in the Cut & Paste thingy.

============================================

Replaced with a link per request of Sterophile.

http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/505awsi/

 

[alfaniner]

Ahhh... This is a little embarrassing to recount, but Mozart's 21st Piano Concerto is what first attracted me to classical music - because a poorly rendered (and heavily edited) version of the first movement was the theme song for Whiz Kids.
...

Don't feel bad. Do you realize how shocking it was to listen to Beethoven's 6th (Pastoral) Symphony and realize "Hey! That's the Smurf song!" (from the Colecovision Smurf video game. Well, at least it did a lot to elimate the visions of flying horses...

Even now, it's hard to get the image of a kid riding his bike at 60 mph out of my head when hearing Mendelsohn's Italian Symphony.

BTW, the William Tell Overture has never been anything more than just that, to me.

 

[jmercer]

Truth is, anything that introduces kids to classics is OK by me.

 

[BPSCG]

The classic(al) Bugs Bunny cartoon, What's Opera, Doc? has the usual formula - Elmer Fudd is hunting that wascally wabbit - except it's all put to Wagner. If you've never seen it, imagine the following set to the tune of Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries:

"I'll kill the wab-bit, I'll kill the WA-bit..."

 

[alfaniner]

Unfortunately (or maybe not...), I still hear Elmer singing "I wanna hair-cut!" when I listen to the overture to "The Barber of Seville".

 

[patchbunny]

[Bugs Bunny]
How about a nice close shave
Teach your whiskers to behave.
Lots of lather, lots of soap
Please hold still don't be a dope.
Now we're ready for the scraping
There's no use to try escaping.
Yell and scream and rant and rave
It's no use, you need a sha-ave!
[/Bugs Bunny]

Gads, I love that cartoon.

--Patch

 

[TjW]

[Bugs Bunny]
How about a nice close shave
Teach your whiskers to behave.
Lots of lather, lots of soap
Please hold still don't be a dope.
Now we're ready for the scraping
There's no use to try escaping.
Yell and scream and rant and rave
It's no use, you need a sha-ave!
[/Bugs Bunny]

Gads, I love that cartoon.

--Patch

My favorite is "Rhapsody Rabbit"

Bugs playing piano. A mouse in the piano.
Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody.
No dialog.

 

[LostAngeles]

[Bugs Bunny]
How about a nice close shave
Teach your whiskers to behave.
Lots of lather, lots of soap
Please hold still don't be a dope.
Now we're ready for the scraping
There's no use to try escaping.
Yell and scream and rant and rave
It's no use, you need a sha-ave!
[/Bugs Bunny]

Gads, I love that cartoon.

--Patch

I remember an informal survery where only my mom didn't claim that as her favorite cartoon.

 

[stormer]

..... we have accepted an identical claim from an applicant who is also a forum member, whose solitary goal matched ours to the letter: to see this claim (and the GSIC chip) tested under controlled conditions.
--snip--

Just wondering why there is no record of this application in the Challange Applications thread? I remember Beth asking that her application not be posted, but that was denied.

Are the rules the same for all people?

 

[LostAngeles]

Re: Re: GSIC AUDIO

Just wondering why there is no record of this application in the Challange Applications thread? I remember Beth asking that her application not be posted, but that was denied.

Are the rules the same for all people?

So KRAMER either doesn't post it and gives another thing to be kvetched about or does and appears to cave into to kvetching. Which, might I add, seems to be your whole 5 post contribution, but then, I'm sick and cranky this early morning. I may think better of that comment later or I might not care. Likely, I'll be more concerned with some more exams, so it'll be the latter.

Like Beth, I too have "professional" concerns, though not on the Ph.D level and not for another three years or so. I have privacy concerns too.

And yet, none of those factor into why I think the application wasn't posted. Which I won't share because I'm not KRAMER and it's useless for me to even speculate privately about his motivations and thoughts.

Oh and Beth asked for anonymity, which isn't the same as not posting the application.

Are we good on the protocol? Use of Peter and the Wolf?

 

[Squidd]

I remember an informal survery where only my mom didn't claim that as her favorite cartoon.

It's not my favorite. It's a great cartoon, no doubt about that, but I'm partial to Duck Amuck.