| Author |
Message |
    
Ligeti Man Meat
Citizen
Username: Ligeti
Post Number: 757
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 3:16 pm: | 
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I can spin the dial on my old transistor radio and pick up gobs more stations than I could with a fancy digital tuner.
Your reaction. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15201
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 3:51 pm: |
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I liked stereos from the 70's. They had what they called "quartz locked loop" tuning which meant that it had digital tuning of a sort. But it had a round knob you turned. And when you were to the left of a station or to the right of a station, you heard "fuzz" or white noise. It made turning the dial and finding a station a LOT quicker than holding a button is now.
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TomD
Citizen
Username: Tomd
Post Number: 604
Registered: 5-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 4:56 pm: |
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But I can go from 88.1 to 106.3 with my remote control a lot faster than you can spin your dial from the far left to the far right. And I can do it without having to get up and walk over to the radio.
I love this Cambridge Soundworks radio:
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TarPit Coder
Citizen
Username: Tarpitcoder
Post Number: 104
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 6:13 pm: |
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Digital tuning can be fine - take a decent modern ham set and give it a spin. They *had* to get it right. Some early digtal tuning sets were shunned by hams due to more 'noise' in the circuitry... Brain dead digital tuning like having an UP and DOWN button that moves in specific modulo KHz steps sucks terribly.
The flipside is being able to program in common frequencies your interested in and scanning them.
There's also this extremely annoying tendancy to replace peoples decisions with machine decisions. I remember arguing with a VCR salesman that the last thing I wanted was a VCR that had autotracking - with no manual override. If a human is going to be the ultimate judge then taking away a manual option is a bad move IMHO.
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Ligeti Man Meat
Citizen
Username: Ligeti
Post Number: 758
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 6:23 pm: |
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It's not about the thrill of pushing buttons, cool blinking lights and glitzy gadgets.
My concern is for content, a core value of low technology.
Reject the digital lifestyle. |
Glock 17
Citizen
Username: Glock17
Post Number: 1669
Registered: 7-2005
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 6:55 pm: |
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Why listen to radio when you can get an mp3 player, pirate a bunch of music..and listen to it without having to worry about reception? Barring the ONE DECENT news station we get around here.
newspaper reporting is better than radio or TV anyway.. |
TarPit Coder
Citizen
Username: Tarpitcoder
Post Number: 105
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 7:57 pm: |
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Ligeti,
It's ALL about the blinking lights mate, without those the bat-cave would be pretty dark.
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scrim
Citizen
Username: Scrim
Post Number: 50
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 9:19 pm: |
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"And if listeners are no longer in touch with what the real thing sounds like, can it be surprising that a medium that actively abandons quality can become successful? In his item on Internet audio in "Industry Update" ......"
From this link:
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/727/
The only thing I don't like about this piece is that I didn't write it! |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 15206
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 4, 2006 - 7:21 am: |
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I listen to the radio more than CD's, mp3s, etc., because I like being introduced to stuff I wouldn't know about if I went by what my friends and I know. I listen mostly to WNYC.
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TarPit Coder
Citizen
Username: Tarpitcoder
Post Number: 107
Registered: 12-2004
| | Posted on Friday, August 4, 2006 - 9:03 am: |
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scrim,
Too right. Lossless compression would be good. I do disagree with one of the stabs in the article - the complaining about using deltas from a preset channel.
If you have the same dynamic range, what, beg tell, is the difference between encoding two channels by encoding the second channel as a delta from the first channel. If you have enough bits to cover the dynamic range that is.
It's the psychoacoustic stuff that I think is most interesting about MP3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustic
I wonder what MP3's sound like to other animals sometimes. |
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