From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V17 #280 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, October 27 2009 Volume 17 : Number 280 Today's Subjects: ----------------- A global plea for understanding [kevin studyvin ] Re: A global plea for understanding ["craigie*" ] Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! [] Re: A global plea for understanding [2fs ] Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! [] Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! [] REAPs (plus trailer with Robyn song) [HwyCDRrev@aol.com] Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! [] Re: REAPs (plus trailer with Robyn song) [2fs ] Funny [Jeremy Osner ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:38:41 -0700 From: kevin studyvin Subject: A global plea for understanding So do any of the inhabitants of the feg kingdom have any technical insight as to why "classical" recordings are mastered at drastically lower levels than "pop" recordings? Been listening to a lot of chamber music recently and it's drivin' me nuts. Pieces that don't have a wide dynamic range, you have to crank the volume waaaay up, and ones that do involve a lot of dynamics you can't do that with because you hit a good crescendo and it'll blow yr farging speakers up. It's annoying and I'm curious whether anyone knows if it's a matter of culture at the "serious" music labels, or what? Yours / Cranky Old Guy Also, finished reading Logicomix last nite and that was pretty entertaining. Can't wait for the movie. I'm thinking Ian McKellan as old Bertrand Russell and Danny DeVito as what's-is-name in the Hawaiian shirts, Sean Penn as Wittgenstein, maybe Cate Blanchett as Athena. np St Vincent: Marry Me, some Holland by the Beach Boys. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:51:56 +0000 From: "craigie*" Subject: Re: A global plea for understanding My first instinct would be that it's to accomodate longer playing time.... but that might vary. Certainly, they haven't succumbed to the Loudness War of pop mastering (which can only be a good thing) c* 2009/10/26 kevin studyvin : > So do any of the inhabitants of the feg kingdom have any technical insight > as to why "classical" recordings are mastered at drastically lower levels > than "pop" recordings? Been listening to a lot of chamber music recently > and it's drivin' me nuts. Pieces that don't have a wide dynamic range, you > have to crank the volume waaaay up, and ones that do involve a lot of > dynamics you can't do that with because you hit a good crescendo and it'll > blow yr farging speakers up. It's annoying and I'm curious whether anyone > knows if it's a matter of culture at the "serious" music labels, or what? > > Yours / Cranky Old Guy > > Also, finished reading Logicomix last nite and that was pretty > entertaining. Can't wait for the movie. I'm thinking Ian McKellan as old > Bertrand Russell and Danny DeVito as what's-is-name in the Hawaiian shirts, > Sean Penn as Wittgenstein, maybe Cate Blanchett as Athena. > > np St Vincent: Marry Me, some Holland by the Beach Boys. > - -- first things first, but not necessarily in that order... I like my girls to be the same as my records - independent, attractively packaged and in black vinyl (if at all possible)... Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc (the motto of the Addams Family: "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us") ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:40:34 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Nectar At Any Cost! wrote: > currently watching season one of *Mad Men*. kinda reminds me of *Feaks 'n' > Geeks*, in that i very loved the first two or three episodes; but then all > of the period references started getting old, and the writing seems to > generally be not up to the same level. OK, I love that someone else isn't crazy about FREAKS AND GEEKS - and I thought a lot of period stuff wasn't quite right with it, too, especially since I was the same age as the titular geeks (huh huh huh, titular) at the same historical juncture. But you clearly are watching a different MAD MEN than I am, because I've been seeing the one that's splendid all the way through what is now nearly three seasons. Then again, I never know what the fuck you're gonna think about anything. That's not a bad thing. I'm just sayin', with some folks you kinda know that they'll love this thing or hate that thing, but I never can predict what you're gonna say. later, Miles - -- over a year of feeling guilty about not blogging enough! http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:45:55 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: A global plea for understanding On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 11:38 AM, kevin studyvin wrote: > So do any of the inhabitants of the feg kingdom have any technical insight > as to why "classical" recordings are mastered at drastically lower levels > than "pop" recordings? > They're not. What they are is not compressed all to fuck. That is, the loudest part of a classical recording is (as you note) as loud as the loudest part of a rock record*...but the quiet parts are, in fact, quiet. The only way to make the quiet parts louder and not have the loud parts distort is to compress the dynamic range - but this is something classical producers are loathe to do, because (and they are correct) it distorts the sound quality. I think this is less of an issue in rock (although Google "loudness wars" and you'll see that it is an issue) because there's little pretense that a recording is merely a passive reproduction of a real-time acoustic event. No one has any problem with a quiet little glockenspiel hit being the same volume as five full-gain Marshall stacks full of electric guitars doubled by pipe organ and a full brass section. But if you insist, if you have any audio editing software, you can use the "compression" feature to squash the dynamic range, and so your quiet little string section will be nearer in volume to your full-bore Wagnerian blowout. *Actually, I lie: even the peaks of classical recordings tend not to be right smack up to 100%. A more technical person than I am could explain the gradual evolution, from the analog days, of leaving plenty of headroom on top of the loudest passages, to preserving headroom on digital recordings or masters, to nowadays there being no headroom at all. A lot of contemporary rock & pop recordings, viewed graphically, look like a solid mass of sound - a "brick," as they're called - with everything first compressed so there's almost no dynamic range and then brought up to the maximum volume. This "works" because we hear loudness not only as a matter of absolute volume but also as a function of other acoustic clues: we *know* that that softly-hit glockenspiel is "quiet," and the guitar-organ-orchestra combo is "loud," so even if a digital recorder "hears" them as being the same volume, we hear them differently. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.wordpress.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:30:42 -0400 From: lep Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! Miles says: > Then again, I never know what the fuck you're gonna think about > anything. That's not a bad thing. I'm just sayin', with some folks > you kinda know that they'll love this thing or hate that thing, but I > never can predict what you're gonna say. it's true. i'm hoping someday, as an a measure of encouragement, they'll be offering $1M for an algorithm to predict eddie's taste in television and movies. xo p.s. but, like mathematics, it's probably incomplete (sorry, LOGICOMIX joke for kevin.) - -- "people with opinions just go around bothering one another." -- the buddha ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:44:42 +0100 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! - --On 26. Oktober 2009 14:40:34 -0500 Miles Goosens wrote: > OK, I love that someone else isn't crazy about FREAKS AND GEEKS - and > I thought a lot of period stuff wasn't quite right with it, too, > especially since I was the same age as the titular geeks (huh huh huh, > titular) at the same historical juncture. > > But you clearly are watching a different MAD MEN than I am, because > I've been seeing the one that's splendid all the way through what is > now nearly three seasons. FWIW, I really, really like both series. I'm not personally familiar with either of the ears depicted (at least not in the US), so if they aren't 100% accurate, I don't really mind. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:37:41 EDT From: HwyCDRrev@aol.com Subject: REAPs (plus trailer with Robyn song) http://f52stations.blogspot.com/2009/10/news-102709.html My Bob Dylan Examiner Column http://www.examiner.com/x-21829-Bob-Dylan-Examiner Fun music news http://f52stations.blogspot.com/ my blog is "Yer Blog" http://fab4yerblog.blogspot.com/ http://robotsarestealingmyluggage.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:23:05 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and my Internet-business selling Ken Dolls customised to be able to receive nightly enemas is doing spectacularly (dare I say "explosively"?) well -- thanks much for asking! On Oct 26, 2009, at 12:40 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: > But you clearly are watching a different MAD MEN than I am, because > I've been seeing the one that's splendid all the way through what is > now nearly three seasons. There are some MM episodes which are clearly written just to move the arc forward. But three or four times a season there are those that are just brilliant. The whole show could use more drinking though. - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:59:52 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: REAPs (plus trailer with Robyn song) On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 8:37 AM, wrote: > http://f52stations.blogspot.com/2009/10/news-102709.html > > From that opening screen shot it looks like "Woman with Future Back Troubles"... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.wordpress.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:17:59 -0400 From: Jeremy Osner Subject: Funny Music industry commentary from Adam Clayton, and a response: http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/?p=7155 ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V17 #280 ********************************