Podholes #03: I Have Become the Matrix
December 15th, 2006 by 
Steve Eley
More rants, more questions. Topics covered:
- Mike does way too much podcast editing
- How to be the best in the world: practice and push yourself
- Mike’s hidden superpower: reading waveforms
- Explore the dark corners of your sound editor
- Steve’s Rant: Buy good headphones before you upgrade anything else
- Mike’s Rant: Why he’ll never buy Behringer again
- Question (from Les of The Signal): “What are the ‘best’ MP3 options?”
- Question (from Dylan): “How can I play music without getting sued?”
P.A.P. Smear #1: We’ll be critiquing episode 73 of The Command Line. Listen to it too, and follow along at home!
Have any questions or want to provide feedback? Just let us know!
Posted in Shows |
December 15th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Thanks for answering my question about mp3 options. You did a great job for covering the breadth and depth of the question. One thing I didn’t hear you talk about was compatibility or other issues (if any) with variable (VBR) or average (ABR) bitrate encoding vs the more common constant (vs CBR) bitrate encoding.
Thanks,
Les
December 18th, 2006 at 6:43 am
Same goes for this, as for other options in MP3. Keep it simple. Constant bit rate (CBR) is the norm and all players will interpret this setting. As for the others, some will, some won’t. Be safe, stay away from fancy new-fangled ideas and stay on the well-worn path. CBR is the way to go.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Hey Mike, Steve - What do you guys think about the Bose headphones?
December 20th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
I have no idea why I didn’t know about this podcast. I just finished downloading your first three episodes and will listen to them tomorrow.
Zombies rule!
December 21st, 2006 at 8:53 am
You mentioned your Beyerdynamic headphones, Mike? What model was that? one of the 770s?
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:00 pm
I replied to this once before, but it did not come through, so here it is again.
The Bose Headphones are nice enough. Not sure that I would pay the extra $50 for the Bose name branded on it, but they are certainly better than most on the market.
I still think the Sennhieser or the Beyerdynamic is better value for the money, but to each his own.
One thing I will say for the Bose, they are very comfortable and you can wear them for a long time without you ears going numb. (Something else to consider when forking over the cash)
December 29th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Yes, the DT 770’s are what I use. Got them at Guitar Center after making them pull down every headset in the store and play my $200 Audio Test CD through them using the -0/+0 flat EQ test track.
They won hands down from anything else in the store.
January 8th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Steve & Mike,
I wanted to point out some things you missed in this show.
1) The problem with the iPod rebooting has been fixed with the latest software. The problem was, as far as I know, limited to the latest 60 and 80 GB iPods. Although the bug mostly was seen on mono mp3 files, there was a lot more to it than that and other files, including stereo files, trigger a reboot. Anyone still having the problem should install the latest firmware update from Apple, available through the iTunes program on your computer.
2) Regarding sample rate, Steve states: “a 22.05 sample rate can reproduce a 11.025 KHz frequency, which is about half the range of normal human hearing.”
The following is from http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/pages/Recorders.htm which was found on Wikipedia under “Sampling Rate” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_rate
————– clip —————–
In this chart you can see the relationship between the sampling rate and the waveforms it’s sampling. [a] 1kHz [waveform] will have 44.1 samples taken of each of its waveforms as its oscillating at 10,000 [ERROR: he means 1,000 here not 10,000] waveforms a second. 100Hz will have 441 samples taken of each of its waveforms [which oscillate at 100 waveforms a second]. But 10kHz will have 4.41 samples taken of each of it’s waveforms.
[edit]
That is why digital high frequencies sound harsh!!
[edit]
At a sampling rate of 96kHz you get 9.6 samples of a 10kHz wave and believe me, you can hear it.
————– clip —————–
What I get from this is higher frequency waveforms get sampled less often per wave form. The higher the frequency the less accurate the digital description of the waveform. And, the higher the sampling rate, the more accurate the sound reproduction, especially for the higher frequencies.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the what frequencies you can hear, only how often a sound wave is being sampled. Simply put, higher sampling is better, but most gear on the market today can only handle 44.1 KHz sampling.
This explains why, when I crank my Focusrite Saffire up to a 192 KHz sampling rate I get much richer, fuller, and truer sound. I doubt many MP3 players could handle a file recorded at such a high rate, but it does sound much much better.
I would appreciate it if you could revisit the discussion on sample rates as I do not believe it was completely covered in Episode 3.
After reading the links in this post, I learned a whole lot more. But I still don’t have a unified theory of sample rate, bit rat, accuracy bits, and frequency spectrum.
That being said, your recommendation of 16-bits, 44.1 KHz, joint stereo, and 96 Kbps for speech sounds excellent to me. I too bump the bit rate up to 128 Kbps.
One final thing, your ID3 tag for this episode had “Dragon Page C2C”.
Just trying to keep you honest and learn a lot more,
Paul Fischer
http://addcast.net
http://balticonpodcast.org