Code/Tea/Etc... : Digital Music and Media

This blog has moved... notice #2...

Duncanma — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 05:17:00 GMT

For various reasons, the biggest being my desire to play around with .Text, I've moved my blog to my own server at http://blogs.duncanmackenzie.net/duncanma

following the 3 leaf model when they moved, I thought I should post this notice a couple of times...

This blog has moved...

Duncanma — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:11:00 GMT

For various reasons, the biggest being my desire to play around with .Text, I've moved my blog to my own server at http://blogs.duncanmackenzie.net

The first post over there shows the app that I wrote last night and then used to copy all of my posts and categories over from this blog to the new location... I'll post the code for that app at some point, as boring as it is...

Oh man... I guess this isn't new, but I'm impressed...

Duncanma — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 04:47:00 GMT

I installed MCE onto my main home computer recently, which happens to have a modem that supports caller id.... and I was just sitting in front of it tonight watching a recorded episode of “The Dead Zone” when someone called... a nice transparent message floated up telling me their name and #.... and when someone else answered the phone, it just faded away...

Sweet

Just saw a concert... already have the live CD...

Duncanma — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 07:20:00 GMT

It is like bootleg concert recordings but the quality is better and I had to pay for it :)

Tonight my wife and I went out to a Jewel Concert, which was great... although our position on the grass gave us a better view of one of the main support poles on the stage than of Jewel herself... and at the end of the show, we picked up our "Instant Live" CD of the concert (yes, the concert that had just ended). I wasn't keeping exact track, but it seems like it was approximately 15 minutes from the end of the show until the first boxes of CDs, already in 'jewel' cases, came out for distribution.

Now, if you really wanted to, you could just leave and then go to their website and order a recording (for $5 more, but only if you already had paid for a CD at the show), but I really wanted to have the actual disc within minutes of watching the show, so I made Laura (my wife) wait :)

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, the quality of the music was good... I'd even say excellent... so if you like live CDs (and don't mind the ambient crowd noise) then you'll really want to check this out if you see it at a concert.

Check out the "Instant Live" website for more information...

Somewhere inside me... an audiophile just died.

Duncanma — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 06:54:00 GMT

I am a closet audiophile, with all the usual history.... did the 'music man' thing for plays, moved up to music guy for bar bands, blah, blah, blah... spent way too much time worried about the alignment of my high-end tape deck, etc... but at some point my obsession with all things audio related slipped down in my priority list. I'm not sure exactly when, but at that point I stopped being willing to spend money on improving the quality of sound in my house, car or work. I still care about sound quality, and I think I'm still a pretty good judge of sonic fidelity, but I stopped being willing to pay money to achieve the best results.

Never has this been clearer to me than this weekend. I have hit the bottom in an ever decreasing level of concern about music quality; I bought a FM transmitter to hook into my WMA portable so that I can listen to it in the car. In case this doesn't make you cringe, let me walk you through the various crimes I have committed, one step at a time.

First, I've completely switched to digital audio over the past few years, which in itself is nothing to be ashamed of, but my encoding rate is a bit embarrassing. Like many music lovers, I embraced the lossless and variable bit rate options that WMA9 offered, encoding my music at rates floating around 300kbps (it is variable, that is the whole point of VBR, but it seems to range from around 160kbps for something like Rolling Stones to 415kbps for Diana Krall...), and my audio equipment (including my ears) is nowhere good enough to detect any flaws in music encoding at rates like that. But... I decided to build my music system using a relatively slow processor, which I then severely under-cooled (to remove the need for any fans in my system; can't have noise while music is playing), making me very aware of CPU usage rates... and suddenly VBR seemed overkill for the majority of my music collection. So, as the first real crime in my story, I'm down to 192Kbps, regular WMA 9 codec (not VBR or lossless), which still sounds great but it is a step down from what it could be.

Next, I started using a portable Rio device quite a bit, and the range of my light-weight headphones is not so great... so to make the most of my 128mb of space on the device I decided to transcode my music down to 64Kbps when I'm copying it for use on the portable device. That would be my second crime... but it was just for working-out right? I still have the higher-bitrate content on my computers for my regular listening.... ah, denial...

It is worth noting that even at 64Kbps (with WMA) the music still sounds pretty good... but we are certainly at the point now where you can tell this music has been through some processing.

Finally, I decided that buying a new car stereo head unit that has aux-input was outside the range of money I'm willing to spend, so to hook my portable up to my existing car stereo, I've bought a FM transmitter. I'm taking low-bitrate compressed music, broadcasting it over FM frequencies from a little $29 dollar device and into my car stereo. I've completely given up on top-end audio for the extra convenience of bringing my WMA files out to the car... and I'm enjoying it...

I think I need to join some sort of 12-step program for former audio lovers... slowly working my way back to a point where I could be entrusted with a real mixer, or even just the monitor board...

Tried the "new" Napster tonight...

Duncanma — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 06:56:00 GMT

Hmm... pretty cool so far, guess I'll see when I decide to start moving music around to my MCE box, my laptop, my Rio device... etc... found the Cake song I wanted though :)

[Listening to: Short Skirt/Long Jacket/Album Version - CAKE - Comfort Eagle (03:24)]

DirectX Drum Machine in C#

Duncanma — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 08:17:00 GMT

A version of this code appeared recently on MSDN Belux, and it was so cool I asked Ianier Munoz if he'd mind turning it into a column for my Coding 4 Fun series.... lucky for me, he said yes and here we are

You have got to check this one out...

Another interesting product from Roku

Duncanma — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 06:59:00 GMT

I was pretty impressed with the first Roku offering, a HDTV focused media player that included "art packs" to use your HDTV flat panel as artwork... not that I have one of those flat LCD or Plasma displays... but the idea was appealing. Now they've come out with the Soundbridge (a networked audio device) and I'm impressed again.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually seen either of these products, just the specs on the site, but the feature set and design are interesting.

[Listening to: Love To Love You Baby - No Doubt - Zoolander Soundtrack (04:23)]

Digital Media and Media Center Topics

Duncanma — Sat, 03 Jan 2004 04:55:00 GMT

I'm getting back into my column writing, and I'm looking for topic suggestions... I actually have a long list of ideas already, but I'm always interested in hearing what you folks want to read about!

So... suggest away! Feel free to include topics related to the Media Center edition of Windows XP as I'm planning to spend some time with the developer side of that product over the next few months.

New Coding 4 Fun Column up on MSDN

Duncanma — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 00:53:00 GMT

The latest 'issue' of my Coding 4 Fun column has been published to MSDN;

Duncan Mackenzie describes how to control a serial-port–connected LCD panel using Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual C# .NET.

It is probably worth mentioning that I have hidden a CRC16 class in the code download as well, so even if you aren't into hooking up an LCD panel, that CRC stuff might be of use!

I think I've found a music service I can use...

Duncanma — Tue, 21 Oct 2003 23:35:00 GMT

I'm going to buy an album as download-only today, from www.buymusic.com, and I hope it all works out as good as it sounds (no pun intended!). My biggest worry when downloading music from the various sites is that I won't be able to fit the DRM requirements into my digital music lifestyle. I listen to music on my laptop, my home computer, on my music system PC, on my Rio WMA player and sometimes on CDs in the car... but most of the music sites out there (that I've visited) didn't seem to allow all of those uses... but buymusic.com says it allows use on 3 PCs (just enough for me to avoid moving my licenses around all the time!), on a portable device and burned onto CD a few times (10 I think). That should cover me perfectly, but I have to try it out to be sure. I think I'll buy the new Sting album tonight for $9 something USD, and see how it goes.
I wonder what happens when I wipe and rebuild my machine? Maybe that isn't common for most of their customers, but it certainly is a regular occurence for me!

(Listening To: Apparitions [Matthew Good Band / Big Shiny Tunes, Vol. 3])

New Dancers... but still no 'Master Chief'?

Duncanma — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 06:07:00 GMT

Ok, maybe a night of Halo with my coworkers has skewed my perspective on this topic, but come on... wouldn't that just be the coolest... maybe the little alien guys, the chief, Cortona (not sure on the spelling for that one)...

Ah well, the update seems pretty cool, even without the Chief...http://EraBlog.NET/filters/19351.post

Hmm... interesting side affect of Google AdSense

Duncanma — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 06:18:00 GMT

Now, it is helping me to find things! The blog page on my personal site has become stuck in DVI/HDTV/Component Video land after one of my posts, all of the ads are about HDTV related stuff... but, this just appeared and it looks pretty cool. Not the most visually appealing device, but I'm thinking that it could be hidden away and just controlled by a IR emitter...

I am definitely going to need more HD inputs on my TV

Duncanma — Sun, 05 Oct 2003 07:16:00 GMT

I have been drooling over this for that last few weeks...

inner monologue: it doesn't do anything that I really need, and if I ever get around to hooking my current music system up with something better than S-Video, I could probably replicate its functionality in a pretty short period of time....

but, it sure looks cool, and that has added it to an overly long list of 'things I would buy if I had the $$ to order them and the time to use them'.

It seems like a slightly more efficient idea to pay the $120 for a VGA-Component adapter for my music system (so that it displays at 720 progressive, instead of 480 interlaced) and then build photo-viewing/slideshow support into it, but gadget-love isn't about efficiency.

We (the content strategist team at MSDN) are heading down to Fry's en masse on Tuesday, which should be a wonderful display of technology lust and perhaps even acquisition (although not by me, I've sated my gadget lust for a few months with that DVI-equipped DVD player)... yup, should be a fun time for all.

Digital Destiny

Duncanma — Tue, 30 Sep 2003 06:22:00 GMT

Was it fate, or mere coincidence? Today, I checked out a little online message board where MSFT employees sell/trade various used items (computers, appliances, furniture, baby clothes... whatever) and someone was selling one of those new Samsung DVD players with DVI out... yep, the very same one that I decided to buy, and then changed my mind after seeing the price of the DVI cables...

It was around a month old and $100 off retail price... so I bought it. I'd add some appropriate emoticons here, but I'm not sure I can find one that appropriately describes the girlish giggling I'm currently producing.

I'm picking it up at 9am tomorrow, and then it will be sitting in my office not hooked up to anything for the entire day. That seems wrong in some way, but I will just have to be strong :)

I still don't have a DVI cable though, so I likely won't even hook it up for a few days... but I'll put it near the TV and they can start to get acquainted (you don't want to rush something like this). Maybe I should bring the TV's remote into the office and set it on the DVD player's box during the day tomorrow... so that it will be less of a shock when they meet for the first time? I'm sure they'll hit it off though, no worries.

I'm a little more concerned about the TiVo though, the TV has DVI just like the DVD player, so they have something in common... the TiVo doesn't even have component out (not that it needs it, I love the little guy, but the video quality is definitely lacking) ... it will likely feel left out, and perhaps jealous... hmmm, maybe I should buy it something?