To Netbook, or Not To Netbook, Part II

Yes, I have written about netbooks before. But it keeps coming up and people keep asking me questions. So here’s take two.

For about the last year or so there has been a huge craze around “netbook” computers. They are selling like hotcakes. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever purchased any hotcakes, but I’m told that they set the standard for product sales. Nevertheless, netbooks are very popular. But before you consider buying one yourself, it might do you well to understand what they are and aren’t good for.

Simple Tasks, Simple Machines

Netbooks can be manufactured and sold at low prices because they use lower cost (slower, often older) parts than regular notebook computers. The price you pay (in addition to the lightening of your wallet) is performance and usability. Netbooks are fine for some tasks, but are horrendous at others.

Simple tasks like reading email and browsing most web pages usually work fine on netbook computers if you can live within their attached limitations. Personally I don’t find their slow processors to be much of an issue (most of us don’t really need fast CPUs), but they have other limitations that might be show stoppers.

Tiny Screens

The most significant for most netbook computers is the screen. Not only are the screens small, but they are of low resolution so you can’t display very much on screen at a time. In fact, if you install a couple of toolbars in your browser, nearly HALF of your vertical screen space will be used up with buttons, menus, etc. even with your browser set to Full Screen mode. That’s an awful lot of space being taken away from the web site you wish to view. Email might not be much better. The Preview Pane in Outlook only shows about 4 lines of each message… hardly useful at all.

Dell and HP both make netbooks with High Definition screens, which are MUCH better, but these are rare, must be specially ordered, and add noticeably to the price tag. (Don’t expect to pick one of these up at Best Buy.) The screen resolution on netbook computers is typically 1024 pixels wide by 600 (or 576) pixels high (that’s 0.6144 megapixels for anyone counting). The width is fine, but the height can become a real limitation. We’ve become used to high resolution monitors on our desks, and so have software developers and web page designers. Everything is designed around larger screens, so expect to do a lot of vertical scrolling no matter what you’re doing on a netbook. And please don’t expect to be editing photos or videos on screens that small unless you happen to enjoy pulling out your hair.

Storage

Storage may or not be an issue as well. Many netbooks come with Solid State Drives (SSDs for short). These use memory chips to store your data instead of rotating hard disk drives. While being more resilient to vibration, SSDs are much more expensive than hard disk drives for an equivalent amount of storage. So to keep prices down, netbooks with SSDs have VERY small amounts of storage when compared to models that have hard disk drives. One of the main virtues of more expensive SSDs is that they can be much faster than hard disk drives, but don’t expect any wonderful performance in the low-end SSDs used in netbooks. My advice: the only real reason to consider a model with an SSD is to lengthen battery life. Otherwise I recommend going with a traditional hard disk drive instead.

Keyboard

One last limitation to look at is the keyboard. Some models are okay. Others stink with a capital S. The keyboard on my Dell Mini 9 is infuriating. In order to make a keyboard fit on a small device Dell decided to relocate the apostrophe/quotation key to its bottom row. Each time I go to add a ‘s to the end of a word I die a little inside. Other keys have been moved too, and it’s really hard to adjust back and forth between the keyboard on the Mini 9 and a regular keyboard. Most other models tend to be much better about this, but I strongly recommend taking a look at a netbook’s keyboard before considering a purchase. Any funkiness in the layout will be sure to enrage later on.

Memory

Netbooks also nearly always come with 1 GB of RAM or less. This is probably fine for people who run one or maybe two programs at a time, but it probably isn’t enough if you’re someone who regularly keeps 5-6 applications open all of the time.

Saving Money… Really?

The most common reason for people buying netbooks vs. a notebook computer is their low price. (Some truly buy for portability, and I won’t argue with that… much.) But I’m not sure that the apparent lower price is worth it.

A typical usable netbook configuration is going to be in the $400 ballpark. Sure you can get one for a lower price, but you have to give up something to get there. For between $400 and $500 you can also buy a reasonably-spec’d full-size notebook computer. Yes, the prices have dropped that much. Most manufacturers offer at least one or two models in that price range. And you get a lot more. Faster processor, more memory, bigger hard disk drive, larger (higher resolution) and higher quality screen, more external connection ports, bigger battery, just to name a few. If you’re considering a netbook because of its price, you’d probably be a lot happier buying a notebook instead, without denting your wallet too much more, if at all.

It also isn’t uncommon to find that low price netbooks run the Linux operating system instead of Windows. This is strictly a cost-saving measure. Linux is free, Windows must be paid for. But unless you’re already a Linux guru (in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this post), skip it. It isn’t worth it.

It’s Cute ‘Cause It’s Little

Size is a different issue altogether. Netbooks are indeed smaller and lighter than notebook computers. They typically come in at around 2.5 pounds, and around an inch thick. They tend to be much smaller in person than you expect based on pictures online. Modern small notebook computers, on the other hand, are usually 4.5+ pounds, have a much larger footprint, and are just over an inch thick.

While netbooks are small, they aren’t tiny. If I were a woman I wouldn’t carry one in my purse “just because.” I certainly don’t take mine everywhere I go, but when I need something to browse the internet, check email, or answer a customer support call, my netbook is my preferred device because of its small size and light weight.

Time to Buy?

Now is probably not the best time to be buying a netbook; it might be better to wait until late this fall if you can. The reason is Windows 7.

Windows Vista does not run well on netbook hardware. Vista's hardware demands are a little bit too much for netbooks to handle, so netbook manufacturers have been shipping the machines with Windows XP instead. Windows XP runs pretty well. But Windows 7 runs very well on them also, often better than XP.

Windows XP was discontinued before the netbook trend even started, so it hasn't been updated or optimized for netbook hardware. Windows 7, on the other hand, has been. It knows how to handle and optimize for the CPUs and storage devices used in netbooks; XP doesn't. I have been running Windows 7 on my netbook for several months and it works wonderfully! It has fewer issues than XP ever did, and the performance is just as good, if not better. It was also much easier to setup on W7 than XP because I didn't have to go find drivers for the hardware that was too new for XP to recognize.

Many regular notebooks being sold with Windows Vista are eligible for free upgrades to Windows 7 when it ships in October. But netbooks are left out for two reasons: (1) Windows XP, and (2) pricing. Windows XP doesn't qualify for the free upgrades, and computer manufacturers are actually paying for the Windows 7 upgrade on behalf of Vista users. Since the price on netbooks is so low, there isn't enough markup in any netbook for the makers to pay for that upgrade, even if they did include Vista.

Presumably sometime this fall netbooks will begin to ship with Windows 7. The official release of Win7 is October 22nd, but manufacturers are free to decide when they will begin to put 7 on the machines after that date. Some will probably act quickly, while others drag their feet. But either way, I really think it is worthwhile to wait for Windows 7 instead of running Windows XP now.

Should I Get One?

If size and portability are more important to you than power and capability, a netbook might be the right thing for you. I don’t think price alone is a good reason for one, though.

One last bit of advice: don’t make it your only computer. You’ll probably learn to hate computers if you don’t have something else to work on regularly. Netbooks are supplementary devices, not designed to be anyone’s primary machine by any stretch of the imagination.

Using a netbook can be sort of like trying to ride a scooter on the freeway. Yeah, it gets you to your destination, but it probably won’t be very fun getting there.

8% Cash Back on eBay Purchases

You can get 8% cash back on eBay Buy-It-Now purchases from Microsoft by using their Bing search engine.

1. Sign up for a Bing Cashback account (it’s free, only Windows Live and PayPal accounts are required).

2. Perform a search of what you are looking to buy using the bing.com search engine.

3. If there isn’t an eBay link at the top of the page, do another search for something more common or generic (like iPod, Xbox, etc). 

4. Click the eBay link in the tan box to perform the search again at eBay.

5. After arriving at the eBay site, you can search again for the item you are looking for. 

6. Buy an item using Buy-It-Now, and pay for the purchase using PayPal. 

7. On the page that confirms your auction has been paid for there will be a link to claim your cash back.  Click that link and log in to your Cashback account.

8. The credit will not show up in your account immediately; it will take a few minutes. 

9. Funds will be available in your Cashback account in about 60 days, at this point they can be transferred to your PayPal account.

I just bought a projector lens this way, and sure enough, 8% of the purchase price showed up in my Cashback account.  Pretty easy way to save.

There are restrictions that apply.  You should probably click the cashback link on the eBay site and read over them there.

Finally Got a P&S Digital Camera

I finally broke down and got a decent point & shoot digital camera this last weekend.  I’m sure some will be surprised that it took me this long.

I did have one before, but I hated it, so I never used it.  In 4 years I shot a couple hundred pictures on it in total, maybe.  Probably significantly less.

So this time I did a little bit more homework, and decided on the Canon PowerShot SD960 IS. 

I got the pink one.  Just kidding!  They only had silver, and that was fine with me.

I ultimately picked it over other models because it’s small enough to fit in a pocket, has pretty good image quality (though no P&S comes even close to the quality of a DSLR), has a 4x optical zoom, and it does 720p HD video.  It also has a really fast user interface, so I don’t have to wait for it to react to my button presses like some other cameras I played with.  It still has some shutter lag (time between you press the button and when it actually takes the picture), but it’s better than most, and the only way to cure that problem is with, again, a DSLR. It’s also the first P&S from Canon with the widescreen LCD, which is nice, as I prefer wider images over the standard almost-square 4:3 aspect ratio that most cameras use.

So far I like it, though I haven’t really had much of a chance to use it just yet.  I bought it for a concert I was going to go to on Saturday night, but I was late because of an accident on the freeway on the way, and they had stopped selling tickets before I finally arrived, so I missed it.  D’oh. Oh well, I’ll find other occasions for it.

Once in a century

Happy 12:34:56 7/8/09!

Celtic Woman at Red Rocks

So this past Wednesday I flew to Denver to see Celtic Woman perform their Isle of Hope show at Red Rocks Amphitheater. I absolutely loved their Salt Lake show back in May, and wanted to see it again, but a little closer. In Salt Lake, my friend Phyl and I were quite a way back and couldn’t see the performers very well, so I wanted to see it again, but with a better view.

I actually managed to get a ticket for the front row for the Red Rocks show, and pretty close to the middle too. My seat was so close… there was absolutely nobody between me and the girls as they sang; they were literally as close as 15 feet at times, and never more than 25 feet away. What a way to see a concert!!!

My view of the stage. Just the rope and railing between me and them.

I had relatively little difficulty getting out to Denver. I arrived at the Salt Lake airport with plenty of time to make my flight. The flight ended up being delayed by about 20 minutes, but I had planned some extra time into my schedule so I could still make the show on time even if I were delayed somewhere along the way. But we made up some extra time in the air and I was able to get my rental car pretty quickly. I went straight to my hotel to check in, but I didn’t even bother to go up to my room before I headed back out to the car to head up to Morrison where Red Rocks Amphitheater is actually located. The show was scheduled to start at 8:00, with the gates opening at 6:30. I heard that parking at Red Rocks was a real problem, so I arrived at 6:00 to make sure I had a place to park.

Red Rocks is a gorgeous venue. I hadn’t ever been, so it was a pleasant experience taking in the view for the first time. And it is huge! I had no idea. I had seen pictures, but pictures just don’t do its size justice. It has to be at least 100 yards deep, and at its narrowest point 40 yards wide. The rows of seats are spaced about 3.5 feet apart, so even while you are seated there is plenty of room for people to walk in front of or behind you. No crowded knees there.

I had a lot of time to kill, but when I sat down the gentleman in the seat next to me had already arrived. We talked for a bit. He was from southern Colorado and had driven up to see the show. Two years ago he did the same thing but they had canceled the show due to rain, so he missed out on that one, and was looking forward to seeing the girls live for the first time. Since I had already seen it I knew both he and his wife would thoroughly enjoy it.

The show started about 15 minutes late. The girls looked and sounded great. They are amazingly talented. Being on the front row, there were many times that I was able to hear their voices over the PA system, and I can vouch for the fact that the show is live… at least the vast majority of it. There were a few numbers (mostly the large group ensembles) where I still wondered if there were some vocal parts that were prerecorded. But even if they did do that, it certainly wouldn’t be because of a lack of talent… it would have to be for a technical reason, like not being able to have that many microphones turned on at the same time without feedback or something similar. If they did use prerecorded audio for any of the vocals (and I think there were a couple of songs where they might have) it was because they didn’t have a choice.

If you haven’t ever been on the front row of a big concert, there just isn’t any way to adequately describe what the experience is like. Because there is nobody between you and the performers, you forget that the show is for a bazillion other people too… you just don’t see them as the show is going on. From the front row, not only can you very clearly see the performers, but they see you, and they react to you. When you smile or wave, they do the same back to you. I caught each one of the girls looking in at me more than once. That is something you just don’t get when you sit farther back. During one particularly powerful, well-performed, and favorite songs, I teared up a little and the girl singing saw that. The experience is great, and I highly recommend it for any shows that I don’t go to. (I don’t want you taking my seat.)

The other interesting thing about being in the front was something I didn’t think about. Most of the time the first few rows are where the most serious groupies and wealthiest patrons will sit. I wasn’t really prepared to hear people all around me talking about their experiences going to many of the shows along the tour (one guy to my right had been to at least a dozen in this tour alone), and their experiences meeting and socializing with the girls. Another guy to my left had been to so many meet-and-greets with the girls that he had long ago lost count of just how many. He had actually flown to Ireland for the taping of one of their DVDs too. Aside from the very boastful nature of his discussion, it was interesting to hear some of the things that he had learned about the girls as he had interacted with them over the last few years. The sort of things that don’t get posted on any web sites, either official or fan.

I was also among the youngest in the front few rows. Each of the front rows at Red Rocks holds about 80-90 people, and in the first three rows there were probably less than a dozen people my age or younger. In some ways it almost felt like I was in the geriatric section, as the average age was at well above 50.

Of the songs that the girls performed, their classics are definitely among my favorites. While some of their new songs are great (“Fields of Gold” and “Isle of Hope” come to mind), I feel pretty “meh” about some of the others. “True Colors” was okay, while “You’ll Be In My Heart” felt very out of place and… well, just awkward. Their all-new “O, America” song is intended to tug at the heartstrings of any patriotic American, but the song itself has some pretty bland lyrics. The whole song is chocked full of cliché phrases repeated over and over, with just the order of the wording switched around a bit: “America, I’ll be true to thee… True to thee, I will be.” Bleh. I appreciate what they were trying to do, but the writing of the song felt amateurish. Fortunately even on the awkward songs the girls sang them beautifully, so it wasn’t like I was bored.

Of the 27 songs on the set list, my favorites of the evening were “The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun” (their opener), “Fields of Gold,” “Orinoco Flow,” “The Blessing,” “Mo Ghile Mear,” “At the Ceili,” (that one is a lot of fun) “Sing Out,” and “You Raise Me Up.” They did “Spanish Lady” for one of their encores in Salt Lake, and that is a really fun one too, but they didn’t do it in Denver (more on that in a second).

Lisa Kelly is my favorite of the group. She has an amazingly wide range with a beautiful tone to her voice. I definitely really like all of the girls, but Lisa consistently delivers my favorite performances, and this show was no exception. She had solos for her standard songs (“The Blessing,” “The Voice,” to name a couple), plus “Fields of Gold” was added for this tour. Hopefully they’ll add “Send Me a Song” to the set list of a future show. That would make me very happy. I also discovered while researching the tour that her youngest sister Helen is also a part of the ensemble as a choir member, and is just as beautiful and talented (it’s really too much talent for one family). She definitely caught my eye as part of the supporting cast this time.

Seeing the same show twice was an interesting experience. The first time through everything was new, even though I knew most of the songs. But it all kind of ran together in my mind as a result. The second time I knew what to expect, and it made it a lot easier to remember the show overall. If you had asked me after the first time which songs they had done and in what order, I could have only given you a blank stare. But if you were to ask me after the second show, I’d have a pretty good shot at being able to name most of the songs, in the right order, and who sang them. I was also better able to watch for and take in the smaller nuances I missed the first time around. At the same time, it all felt very familiar… the new songs weren’t so strange this time, and felt much more familiar and comfortable. I couldn’t go so far as to say that I think everyone should see every show they can multiple times, but it is a very different experience the second time, even while being familiar at the same time.

I wish I could say the Red Rocks show was without any glitches, but I can’t, because there were a few. I think that the sound engineers, for both the Front-of-House (what the audience hears) and monitors (what the performers hear) must not have been the regulars. (I suspect the regulars are back in Ireland getting ready for the DVD that is being shot later this month.) There were several times during the show that the mics for instruments or performers weren’t turned on when they should have been. On numerous occasions I could hear the instruments directly with no sound coming out of the PA at all, which meant that anyone farther back heard basically nothing for those bits of the show. It seems like the monitor engineer wasn’t quite doing his job quite right either, as there were many times throughout the show that the girls would pull out their earpieces, an almost sure sign that they aren’t hearing what they need to hear.

There were a few issues with the lighting too… One of the projectors projecting video on the rocks behind the set was badly misaimed and inverting the image. It was a little distracting. There were also several missed lighting cues in the show, where the spotlights would come on at the wrong time, or be pointed at the wrong performer. Many of the moving lights were also misaimed, and missed their targets, especially in the first half of the show until they were re-aimed during the intermission. I was really sensing an inexperienced crew. This was the 96th show on this tour, and any technician active for the whole tour wouldn’t be making those kinds of mistakes.

Even with those mistakes, though, all of the performers took it in stride and it didn’t phase them in the least. True professionals.

The weather was mostly cooperative for most of the evening. About two hours into the show we started to get a little rain. Most everybody was prepared for it, though. I brought along a poncho, which I put on after the rain started to really come down. Chloe (one of the vocalists, and the selected spokesperson for the group), joked that they had brought their Irish weather with them. That got a good laugh. Chloe also said (just as she did in Salt Lake) that this show by far had the best audience yet. I’d beg to differ on that, though…

Most everybody was coping with the rain pretty well, but I think it did dampen people’s spirits some (pun intended). The energy of the audience was definitely a lot lower than it was in Salt Lake, especially after, but even before, the rain started. Where at the Salt Lake show there were probably 6-8 standing ovations for various songs throughout the evening, at Red Rocks there were just two… one just before the intermission, and one at the end. And at the conclusion of the normal set list, and the girls thanking everyone for coming, everybody just got up and left. Apparently the audience didn’t want the encores, and we didn’t get them. So we had an extra few songs at Salt Lake that we didn’t get in Denver. That was disappointing, as the songs they had selected for their encores are some of their more fun ones.

I had heard that traffic getting out of Red Rocks is a nightmare, so I was really expecting it to take forever to get back to my hotel. That turned out to not be the case at all. It took about 10 minutes to get from the venue back to the highway, so I was back to my hotel about 35 minutes after the show got out. (Much better than the 90 minutes it took to get home from Stadium of Fire fireworks last night.)

Getting my rental car returned and back to the airport had a few hassles… When I asked my GPS software to find me a gas station near the rental car return it took me to the airport parking lot instead. Which meant that I had to bite the bullet and pay their outrageous $7/gallon rate to make it to the airport on time.

The Denver airport is a bit of a labyrinth. You walk in at ground level, go upstairs to check in, back to ground level to go through security, then downstairs to catch a train to your concourse. And it isn’t very well labeled, so if you’re new to the airport you feel kind of dumb trying to figure out where you’re supposed to go. And then my flight coming back to Utah was actually delayed by about a half hour, which meant that my poor sister Suzanne had to wait for me that much longer after her flight to Salt Lake to meet up to head back to Orem (she had already been there two hours). I’m not a big fan of the hassles of flying.

But as far as the show itself goes, I don’t want any of this to sound like it was bad , because it certainly was not by any stretch of the imagination. It was still amazing. It just wasn’t as amazing as the show I saw in Salt Lake. I’m still very glad that I went… you can’t trade the experience of seeing a concert (especially one by people so talented, and so well produced) in the front row for anything. It’s certain to be one of those things I remember for the rest of my life. The only thing better would be to do it again, and actually be able to meet the girls in person.

Audio Revelations

The evening started out innocently enough… I was just going to check online to see what professional audio reviewers have had to say about a backup set of studio monitors (speakers) that I have had for like 4 years but have only taken out of the box a few times since I got them, only to be surprised that for the most part they have gotten glowing reviews almost universally. I haven’t ever thought incredibly highly of them, mostly because my expectations were low because they were quite inexpensive for monitors, and from a brand that doesn’t have the best reputation among audio professionals. But I haven’t ever spent enough time listening to them to really get a feel for how good or bad they were. So I decided to pull them out, hook them up, and listen to a few songs I know well to see just how good these things actually were. It turns out, just like the reviewers have said, they are excellent.

But, I digress. The most significant part of the whole experience, and my main reason for creating this post, was having some revelations about what a quality set of speakers can do, and how things have changed over time with regard to the way that music has been recorded.

Revelation #1:

I almost feel bad for the vast majority of people who enjoy listening to music, because very few will actually have the opportunity to listen to it on a good set of speakers, and they have absolutely no idea what they are missing. These days iPod headphones are the most common device people use to listen to their tunes, and that is terribly unfortunate because they are, well… atrocious. A good set of speakers (like studio monitors, for example) nearly become totally transparent, and you are almost transported to a place where a performance is taking place. Contrary to popular opinion, this does not mean loud, or anything typical of a rock concert, what it means is that the overall feel is that you are sitting in a small room where it is just you and the musicians… the electronic devices used to reproduce the music almost disappear. With a well recorded selection and well-written and performed song, it becomes an almost religious experience. I wish more people could experience what good audio sounds like, because there aren’t words that accurately convey what it is like to hear music the way it is really meant to be heard.

Revelation #2:

In the process of listening to a wide variety of music from the last three decades I began to notice a trend. Though we have come a really long way in terms of our technical ability to record music, it doesn’t mean that we have done a better job. In fact, it seems like over the last 10-15 years that things have actually degraded. Somewhere in the mid to late eighties seems to be where we peaked as far as the ability to capture popular music in a meaningful and artistic way. Prior to the 1980s the equipment to get a good recording was scarce and expensive. Engineers had to be clever about the way they captured a performance to get a decent version of it electronically. Somewhere during the 1980s the equipment became affordable enough for many professional studios to have access, and at the same time those rascally clever engineers from the previous decades were still around, taking full advantage of the new tech at their disposal. Then in the late eighties things began to change again… radio engineers got involved and decided that louder was better than real dynamics, and all of a sudden every recording became very in-your-face and buried in piles of digital effects. The biggest tradeoff to being loud was the loss of clarity in some of the things going on in the background. Subtle instrument parts that used to exist as an enhancements to the front stage had to become a part of the front stage in order to be heard at all. Mixes became something like a line of people all screaming at you at the same time rather than everybody in a room taking their own turn.

I may be a little biased since I was in Jr. High and High School in the mid-to-late 80s and that’s when I really started to become familiar with popular music, but listening to recordings from back in the day now, compared to newer songs which I otherwise enjoy just as much seems to validate the theory.

Revelation #3:

Another side effect of the “loudening” of recordings was that they have almost become tiresome to listen to. Again, back to the analogy of a line of people in front of you. If they’re all yelling at you at the same time, it’s going to become exhausting trying to focus on any one of them. But if they’re taking their turns, it’s a much more pleasurable experience.

Revelation #4:

Generally artists from decades past had to be more talented and skilled.

A good set of speakers reveals things about a recording that we wouldn’t pick up on otherwise. A LOT of things. For example, on Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” did you know that on a good set of speakers or headphones you can clearly hear the click track coming from her headphones while she was singing her vocal? It’s almost painfully obvious that it’s there. Did you know that most of the lower notes that Britney Spears “sings” are actually synthesized, and that it is unmistakable when heard through the proper equipment. Okay, so you probably knew that already. Artists that use pitch correction too much become totally obvious, like one of the hottest country female artists out there now. You can tell when an artist does their own backup parts vs. having another singer doing it for them. You can often hear when a vocalist’s microphone is turned on and off in the recording, or where various takes are pieced together to make one good one. The list goes on and on. The better the equipment used to listen to music, the more you find out about how good or bad an artist really is.

Revelation #5 (okay, it’s a continuation of #1):

It’s quite the revelation to go back and listen to recordings that I am very familiar with only to discover that there are 1, 2, 3, or sometimes 4 or more additional instruments being played that couldn’t be heard at all before. Vocal harmonies jump out like never before. You can very clearly hear every little nuance of the mechanism of a real piano vs. a synthesized one. You can hear fingers sliding up and down guitar strings. People taking breaths between phrases, or while playing a woodwind instrument. Or the saliva in a singer’s mouth. Or pick out that what you thought was a single guitar was actually two or three. Or that a particular take of a vocal was considered to be good enough to be used in a final recording even though it actually distorts or has other imperfections (this is much more common that you might think).

Revelation #6:

Music recordings are much bigger than most people will ever know. With cheap speakers or headphones, you hear sound coming from two distinct places… the left speaker and the right speaker. You can’t really hear anything coming from anywhere else. With a good set of speakers things open up much more. It’s almost shocking. Instead of just having a range of positions between the two speakers for sound to come from, things get opened up much wider. And higher. And deeper. Just as an example, as part of my auditioning process I put on Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection.” Several of the songs on that album are engineered particularly well (ignoring what you may or may not think of Madonna). But a few of the songs on that CD really open things up quite a bit. One song has a drum part that not only appeared to come from outside the set of speakers, but WELL outside the speakers… as in, immediately to my right. And several feet above me. Another song had another drum part that appears above the right speaker, while another has another instrument part that appears about 18” to the left of the left speaker, just above the plane of the speakers. Another instrument part comes from about 3 feet between the speakers, and 1 foot above them. But those same songs, played on standard equipment sound flat and lifeless. I have heard numerous songs over the years that have parts that appear to come from BEHIND the listener. Or between me and the speakers (and not from them). Impressive stuff. I wish everyone could experience it.

Revelation #7:

Audio engineers in the 1980s and earlier were much more creative in the way they mixed songs. These days nearly everybody puts the vocalist “up front” in a mix, drums way in the back, and all of the instruments somewhere in between. (Or at least they try to; adding the “loud” factor effectively puts everything in the same place.) I have plenty of examples of songs where the engineer moved things around a bit. I just finished listening to “Kyrie” by Mr. Mister, and hadn’t really ever noticed before that that song is mixed in such a way that the lead vocal is sort of placed in the “middle” of the stage, both left to right, and front-to-back. The instruments are all placed around the vocalist, not just behind him. There are instruments that are in front of as well as in back of the vocal part. Michael Jackson’s (may he RIP) “The Way You Make Me Feel” was recorded with the verses with Michael set way in the back, with the harmonies and choruses off to the sides and in way up front. (And it’s kind of hard to tell on regular equipment that it is him doing the harmonies and counterpoint on that song). Yes’ “Owner of a Lonely Heart” has a breakdown that moves things all over the place, front to back, left to right, top to bottom. The guitar solo in Mike+The Mechanics “All I Need is a Miracle” is all around the listener, totally separate from the main soundstage. The drums on The Human League’s “Human” are HUGE, and fill a space much wider than the speakers they’re being played on while being somewhere at the back of the stage at the same time.

Unfortunately I still haven’t really come up with any good examples of any of those sort of techniques being used on any popular music recordings made since 1990. [UPDATE: I found a post-1990 recording with an interesting mix... "Harder to Breathe" by Maroon 5. The mix puts the lead guitar way up front (outside the speakers), and the lead vocal pushed way back. Unusual for such a new recording.]

Revelation #8:

The audio output on the iPod isn’t very good. (I’m shocked! Okay, maybe I’m not, and I already knew that.) Many of the details I’ve talked about here are virtually non-existent on an iPod, but are obvious in the original recordings or when played on other devices.

Revelation #9:

MP3 is a terrible file format. I’ve known that for forever, but it really stands out when heard on quality equipment. We’re really extremely unfortunate that it has become the de facto standard for music. So many of the nuances that music a pleasing experience are lost being converted to MP3. Virtually every other format out there is a lot better. But none, even CD, are without some sort of compromise. CD is as close as most people will ever get to hearing a good quality recording.

Revelation 10:

Most music is best listened to unaltered. That means not adding any effects. In other words, for most people this means turning OFF the equalizer that they have tweaked to give their system more bass and treble. These adjustments are usually made to compensate for the missing sound quality of their speakers or headphones, but what they don’t realize that in doing so they have actually covered up even more of the subtle nuances that were already nearly difficult or impossible to discern. The more you make a speaker work harder to play sounds that you want to accentuate, the more you take away its ability to reproduce the other sounds that are barely there. In most cases turning on the EQ or any other effect just makes a muddier mess of an already dirty listening experience.

Wrap-up

When I say “good speakers” I’m not talking just about the $100,000-each models that are out there, or even the $3000 speakers you can buy locally at some Best Buy stores. I’m talking about speakers that are affordable to anyone willing to invest. The set of speakers I have been listening to tonight were $280 for the pair brand new, and they have their own built-in amplifiers so an iPod, Zune, or other music player can be connected in directly without any other fancy or expensive electronics.

I still feel bad that most people who enjoy music will never really experience the music they like so much. They’re missing out on so much, and an awful lot of that is the emotion that was put into a recording, so in essence we’re missing out on much of the whole experience.

One last note before I wrap up this (now extensive) post. If you are someone who is considering building yourself a home theater or stereo setup, I recommend avoiding consumer speakers altogether. They all not only have their own nuances that color the sound coming through them, but this coloration is DESIGNED into them to make them stand out from other models and manufacturers. This coloration, by definition, is taking away from the original intent of the recording. Why not go with the same type of speaker used by the engineers and artists making the recordings, so you hear exactly what they did when they made them? So I STRONGLY recommend skipping the consumer speakers and going directly to studio monitors. They’re harder to find, and they can be more expensive, but I’ll take a $500 studio monitor over a $3000 consumer speaker any day. They make for a much more pleasing experience. Music becomes an experience, not just a pastime.

The light at the end of the tunnel

For the last 3-4 weeks I have been keeping myself very busy working on rebuilding my video production equipment rack.  “What is that?” you might ask?  I’m glad you did. 

There are two primary ways that video is created.  There is taped video production, and live video production.  Most of the people that I know that work with video do taped production primarily… making movies, commercials, and the like.  Each shot is planned out ahead of time, shot multiple times from different angles. Video made this way can take a long time to create.

The other is live production, where a crew of camera operators, a director, and other technical crew members will setup multiple cameras at some type of event and switch between the cameras live.  A director sits and monitors the different shots from the various cameras, selecting different shots to go out “live,” and giving instructions to the camera operators on what shots to get to make the video interesting and flow naturally.

I love working with video, but I’m not a huge fan of the editing phase, so focusing on live video production interests me more than taped production.  Not only that, but there aren’t very many people that do live production, so it’s a relatively easy market to create a niche in, especially for lower budget productions.  So I have concentrated on building an arsenal of equipment to handle live video easily.  It’s a lot more of a financial drain than taped production, as it takes multiple cameras and very expensive live switching equipment at a very minimum.  I have 7 professional quality video cameras (5 HD), and sometimes even that doesn’t feel like enough.

After a technical disaster I had shooting the graduation of a local college recently, I decided it was time to rebuild my existing rack of video production equipment.  We were having issues with the video from different cameras cutting in and out, problematic communication equipment, just to name two of the major issues that came up.  When I found out that my stake is having another conference a few weeks after that (this coming Saturday and Sunday) my pace for rebuilding was picked up drastically.

The 48 cables removed from the previous video rack.
These are NOT going into the new rack.  Good riddance!

This was also a great opportunity to upgrade the capabilities of my equipment.  The focus of the new setup is a 64x64 video router, which has inputs for 64 different video sources (like cameras, DVD players, etc.) and outputs for 64 different destinations (like DVD recorders, video monitors, etc.)  (For comparison, my previous router had 16 inputs and 2 outputs.)  I have had this thing for about two years but it has been sitting idle waiting to be used.   The router itself can be seen in later pictures; it’s the big blue thing on the back side of the rack, or the device with tons of blue wires coming in and out of it in the “inside” pictures.  Here’s a screenshot of some software I threw together to control the video router during the testing phase.

I had used some inexpensive cables in the old rack, and this was causing at least some of the problems I was having, so this time around I spared no expense on cabling.  I used extremely high quality video cable, with the best connectors available on each end.  Each cable was cut to the exact length needed, and the ends were crimped on.  Here’s an example of what a completed cable looks like:

I had to make about 80 of these cables in various lengths from a few inches to a couple feet.  Each one takes about 5 minutes to create.  A few shots of some of the cable after installation…

I especially like that last shot.  The 16 short cables all lined up like that are kind of pretty.  :)  But even with those, it still doesn’t look like there are 80 blue video cables in there… but there are!

The making of cables didn’t end there.  Because my rack also processes and mixes audio, I had two panels of various audio connectors, and a pile of cables to create for integrating an audio mixer.  The connectors in the next shot were particularly time consuming, as there are six individual wires that need to be attached to each one, in a relatively small space.

Instead of being crimped, the audio connections all must be soldered… on both ends.  That took quite a while to get all of that done.  I spent several days sitting at my workbench soldering connectors.

The rack also houses communication equipment.  A sort of intercom system that allows communication between the director and the camera operators.  None of that is visible directly here, but it took nearly as much time to wire as the audio connections did.

Those of you with a keen eye will notice that there is a considerable amount of twisted pair (CAT-5) cable in the rack.  This is because my former roommate Brad and I developed a system about 5 years ago that sends all of the audio and video signals over a CAT-5 Ethernet cable (one per camera).  Each cable carries two video signals (one from the camera, one to the camera), an audio signal from the camera, bidirectional intercom audio, and tally (the red light that lights up on the active camera).  An Ethernet cable is run from the back of my equipment rack to a small box of electronics at each camera.  Yes, we did build these from scratch:

This makes setup much easier, as once the production rack is setup, it’s just a matter of running a single Ethernet cable to each camera to get things going from there.  Much faster than running four or five cables to each camera, though I still do have that option if I choose to exercise it.

So here’s the finished rack…

One thing obviously missing is a video switching console.  I may be one of the only people on the planet that does video switching that doesn’t use a conventional console to do so.  I have come up with something much more innovative and easy to use.  It’s all done on a computer with a touch screen monitor.

One of the pieces of equipment in this rack takes up to 16 of the 64 video sources and compresses them down into a single signal that is sent to my laptop.  The laptop then displays these sources in a 2x2, 3x3, or 4x4 grid (depending on how many cameras I might be working with at the time), then the touch screen of the laptop is used to select video sources.  So all I have to do is touch the video I want to be “live” and the computer sends out the signals to the equipment in the rack to re-route the signals as needed to make the transition to the new video source.  I’ll try to remember to get some screenshots while I’m using it for conference this weekend, but it’s very slick (though VERY unpolished at this point).  It only takes about a minute to train people on how to use it, which is certainly not the case with conventional video switchers.  My system also announces (verbally) the typical instructions that directors give (“Ready 3…. Take 3…. Dissolve 2”) automatically over the intercom, freeing me up as a director for other tasks, like monitoring all of the cameras and giving meaningful instructions to the camera operators.

One other innovation I have come up with, and has been made possible by using the huge 64x64 router is the ability to send different video sources to the different camera operators.  Each operator has an LCD monitor mounted on top of their camera so they can see the live video that is being broadcast or recorded.  With this new rack of equipment I can now each allow operator to select which video source they want to see on their monitor, whether that be the live program feed, the preview feed (the next source about to go live), the feed from another camera, their own camera, or even a script or set list coming out of a computer somewhere.  But as of now I can also send a combination of these things.  Each camera operator can now see which video source is live, plus all of the other cameras at the same time should I choose to send it to them.  An example may help to illustrate:

This isn’t exactly what an operator will see, but it gives you the idea.  The top 3/4 of the screen show the program feed (active video program), and the bottom row shows feeds from three cameras (the same source is being used for all three here, but normally these would be different), and the preview feed.  So each camera operator can see what the others are doing, and know which source is about to go live.  That makes my job as a director a lot easier, as a good camera operator will make sure to give a different type of shot than everyone else, and especially different than the live feed. 

Another example of what can be sent to the cameras, this time using color bars:

Even though the rack is finished I’m still not done with the project.  I need to spend a couple days working on my switching software to make it work with the new setup, and take advantage of its capabilities.  Hopefully it will all go smoothly.  And if I remember I’ll post some screenshots to show just how easy to use this system is.