Best Kept Secret in Technology

Every once a while a technology product comes along which is just an absolute bargain.  And very often those bargains are unknown to the general public.

The one that I want to tell you about today is the Nokia Lumia 520 (or 521) smartphone.  I’m sure you’re thinking, “but I already have a smartphone!”  But I’m suggesting this not as a replacement for your current smartphone, but rather something that is neat to own in addition to your smartphone.  But it would be a great thing to own for anyone who doesn’t already have a smartphone of their own.

Nokia Lumia 520 Nokia Lumia 521

Most of the time when you buy a cell phone you have to buy it with a contract, or pay out the nose for it up front.  Most smartphones, if you buy them outright, will cost $500 or more, and if you don’t pay that out-of-pocket it is figured into your monthly bill one way or another.  The Lumia 520 and 521 are inexpensive (both are easily less than $150) and don’t require you to sign a contract or even activate the phone.  But why would you ever do that?

Well, consider all of the things that people like to do with their phones… browse the web, check for email, listen to music, watch videos, play games, get driving directions.  Imagine being able to do all of that without a monthly payment.  Zero.  None.  No contracts, no monthly payments, ever, unless you want to.  That’s what’s great about these two models of phone.

A few scenarios…

Much of the time when you want to listen to music, it is music you already own – you don’t need an active Internet connection to stream it.  Maybe you have an iPod Touch that you listen to music on.  But those start at $229.  The Lumia 520/521 play all of your music just like the iPod Touch does – and in my opinion does a better job of it.  And they are a lot less.  And with an iPod, if you run out of storage you have to buy an entirely new device.  With the Lumia 520/521, if you run out of storage you can buy a Micro SD Card (up to 64 GB) and pop it in.  The Lumia 520 + a 64GB of storage is less than half the cost of the cheapest iPod Touch.  And it has an FM radio too, which the iPhone does not.

Now say you want directions from A to B.  Yes, I know that smartphones already do that.  But to do that they nearly always require Internet access and a data plan.  Because the Lumia 520/521 runs Windows Phone 8, you can pre-download maps (state-by-state or country-by-country) at home over WiFi before you leave, and store them on the device for use even when you don’t have Internet access.  You get door-to-door directions, like a dedicated GPS unit, for a lot less than a dedicated GPS unit.  And unlike the budget GPS units, it even knows how to pronounce street names so directions are specific – “turn right on Juniper Avenue” instead of “in 300 yards, turn right.”  If you do activate the device as a phone or tether it over WiFi to a smartphone or tablet, you even get up-to-the-minute traffic information, so it can route you around problems.  And I actually believe that Nokia Drive is the best navigation software out there for any smartphone.  It’s fast, accurate, and touch-friendly so it works great in the car, and best of all, it’s totally free.  And since it doesn’t require a data connection, it works in the middle of nowhere when your cell phone won’t.  (Nokia, incidentally, owns Navteq, which easily has the best map data anywhere – easily besting Apple [cough] and Google – and this is where the map data for Windows Phones comes from.)

Watching movies is easy too.  Since you can pop a Micro SD card in, you can store a lot of video for the kiddies to watch in the car.  It isn’t the biggest or best screen, but it’s more than adequate.  And at 800x480 pixels, a lot higher resolution than you’d get from an Android device in the same price range.  Most of those are 320x240 – or maybe VGA if you’re really lucky.

Say you’ve got a kid that is bugging you about wanting an iPod Touch or iPhone to play games on, but you’re not excited about the cost.  These two Nokia phones do an excellent job of playing games.  It’s true that you won’t get the same selection of games you get on an iPod, but you also aren’t shelling out a ton of money for something that is probably going to get lost, broken, or stolen and have to be replaced over and over.  If one of these phones gets lost or broken, it isn’t that big a deal because they’re so inexpensive.


And of course whenever you’re in range of WiFi you get all of the benefits of a smartphone that you’ve come to expect.  It will check your email (best email client on a smartphone I think), it will browse the web (not the best browser, but certainly more than serviceable).  And play games.
So why a Windows Phone?  Well, because in this price range nothing else comes close.  Apple doesn’t make an i-device for less than $200, and anything in that price range running Android is just, well, a downright ugly experience.  The 520/521 might be the slowest Windows Phones out there, but they aren’t slow.  They feel very fast.  They’re certainly a lot faster than anything running Android at three times the price, and faster than any Apple device more than a year old.  And they don’t feel cheap like many similarly priced devices do.  They feel well built so they should hold up to the abuse that you or your kids throw at them.

The only difference between the two is that one is sold by AT&T and the other is sold by T-Mobile.  You don’t have to have an account with either carrier to buy one – just order it from Amazon or pick it up at Wal-Mart.  As of this writing, the Lumia 520 is only $59.99 at Amazon, and the 521 is $119.99.  Again, you don’t sign up with the carrier if you don’t want to.

These two phones are absolutely the best deal on technology out there today.  You get the functionality of a good smartphone at a tiny portion of what it would cost you to get it otherwise.  Nothing else even comes close right now.

The one thing to note is that these phones are locked to either AT&T or T-Mobile.  Which means you can’t just pop in a SIM card from the other carrier and have it work.  If you want to use one as a phone, only AT&T SIMs will work in the 520, and only T-Mobile SIMS will work in the 521.  So if you want to have one as a backup phone, buy the one that is tied to your carrier.  But, again, you don’t have to be (or become) an AT&T or T-Mobile customer.
They also only come with 8 GB of storage.  So you probably will want to consider getting a MicroSD card for additional storage.
Is this the perfect device?  Certainly not.  But for the price, nothing else even comes remotely close.
Bonus tip: If you do happen to be a T-Mobile customer, go to their web site or one of their stores and sign up for a free tablet account, even if you don’t have or plan to buy a tablet.  You get 200 MB of 4G data every month at no cost (and if you go over that data allotment they just slow you down – there are never any overage charges).  You can then use that SIM card in the Lumia 521 and use it to access the Internet on the phone without paying for a phone line – you won’t have to pay a dime in service charges, ever.  You won’t be able to make phone calls (unless you use an app like Skype over the 4G connection), but you can do everything else you'd be able to do on a smartphone, and it won’t cost you anything to do so.

First Video of Sonnet

I posted this forever ago on my Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts, but forgot to include it here on the old blog.

This is the first released video of the week with Sonnet.  There are lots more to come… you’ll just have to be patient with me.  I still have a bit of editing to do.  And the videos will be released periodically as Sonnet feels it’s time to do so.

So here’s Sonnet’s “Without You” as performed at her acoustic house concert in June.

This was a lot of fun to work on.  We had quite a few technical problems (don’t get me started), but the good things far outweighed the bad.  Not only did I get to get out my audio and video toys, and play with new video editing software, I got to work with some great people.  Sonnet is so much more than just a gifted singer and talented writer… she’s an amazing person as well, and I’m really glad that I’ve had the opportunity to work with and get to know her.  And I’m really looking forward to the other projects she and I have in the works.  I always enjoy working on projects with Dave and Paul… both are extremely talented filmmakers, and lots of fun to be around.  The music video they’re putting together is going to be fantastic!  And Brad is amazing as well… always so willing to help out with my little projects, and just brilliant when it comes to all things musical and electronic.  He was such a lifesaver helping setup for the house concert, and directing the camera operators.  Thanks so much to everyone!

So there it is… the first public release of anything we did that week.  It was such a whirlwind (I literally got 12 hours of sleep between Monday and Friday), but in a good way.  I’d do it again in a heartbeat… but plan to spread things out over two more days if possible.

How it came to be…

So a few people have asked me how this all came about… a girl I had never met from California getting hooked up with a group of guys from Utah… well…

Let’s backup to early summer 2009.  I’m watching TV late at night and a commercial for Lagoon Park comes on.  And it’s got this cute, quirky, catchy song for its soundtrack.  The sort of song you’d never pick for a theme park, because it’s just this sweet sounding girl with rich but subtle harmony and a piano, to a slow beat—far from the stereotypical loud in-your-face sort of song one might associate with an amusement park.  But extremely intriguing nonetheless.  I really liked it, so I looked up who it was.  It took a little digging, but I finally found out that it was a girl from Los Angeles named Sonnet (yes, that really is her name), that managed to land a contract providing the song for the 2009 Lagoon/Coke ad campaign.  I found her website, saw that she was on Twitter, and followed her (that’s how you “friend” someone).  And she pretty much immediately responded by following me too.  Kewl!

Fast forward a few months.  Over time I had made a few comments to Sonnet on Twitter and she always wrote back, and was always very gracious.  We didn’t have what I’d call frequent communication, but it was steady.  At one point I mentioned to her that I did sound and that if she ever wanted to do a concert in Utah I’d be glad to provide my services, but nothing more came of that (I assumed as much… she really didn’t know me from Adam, and knew nothing about my ability as a sound engineer). At one point she did come to Utah and performed a couple concerts at Lagoon, and despite how hard I tried to get there, I arrived at the park too late and couldn’t get in.  So I missed the one opportunity I had to actually meet her and hear her perform.  That was a sad day.

Anyway, as Christmas approached one day she tweeted (that’s how you say that you posted something on Twitter) that she was looking for an idea for a Christmas present for family and friends.  I mentioned to her (since she was a singer) that she ought to record a song and give that to people.  There wasn’t really time before Christmas to do that, but it started a little bit of a dialog about working together on recording a song together someday.  Completely hypothetical, but it did begin to open up the possibility that someday something could maybe possibly happen if I rubbed my lucky rabbit’s foot during a full moon while the planets aligned just so.  Long shot, but not impossible.

Fast forward another couple months to February… another girl I was following on Twitter had been advertising to her followers that she was going to be doing a live streaming concert.  She started announcing it several weeks beforehand, making it seem like a really big deal.  This other artist was better known than Sonnet, had multiple CDs out, a recording contract with a major label, and had recently landed a nationally-broadcast TV commercial with a huge company in a very public advertising campaign, so for sure this was going to be something big, right?  So I made a point to tune in, only to be very disappointed.  Instead of being something professionally produced (you know, with at least a real microphone), it was her sitting on her bed, playing her guitar, being recorded by just the webcam and microphone in her laptop under really bad lighting.  You could barely hear her sing or play.  My first thought was, “What a waste!  She has lots of fans watching, has spent a lot of effort promoting this event, and this is what we’re getting?”  It was technology heartbreak for me.

At that point I had the idea that her disappointing production was probably due to the fact that she didn’t know the right person to pull off something better.  And I also thought, “I have the equipment, the know-how, and other resources to pull off something much better.”  The problem was, this other artist was too well known to even bother responding to anything on Twitter, so there wasn’t any way that she’d even consider taking the time working with some no-name from Utah.  And frankly, her music wasn’t something that I really got that excited about, so I didn’t even really want to pursue that anyway.

So the next day as I thinking about the disappointment of the previous evening, I thought, “who do I know that is good enough to justify spending the time, has enough of a following for there to be interest, and yet is not so well known that they’d consider working with me to produce a streamed concert?”  Of course Sonnet came to mind, so I sent her a casual message on Twitter asking if coming to Utah and doing a live, streaming Internet performance was something she’d be interested in doing.  She said it was, so we connected via IM and started talking about the possibility.  Nothing definitive, but it got the ball rolling nonetheless.

I don’t really know what she thought of the whole thing at that point--I’ve never asked, but she was game for the idea.  And before long we started making plans.  Eventually we connected via email and on the phone, then started regular video conferences planning things out.  Once we found a location, and a suitable timeframe within her schedule and mine, things finally started coming together.

Sonnet was totally on board with the ideas that I had for what the concert was going to be like.  I wanted to keep it small (for many technical as well as other reasons) but completely professionally produced, with real lighting, multiple cameras, moving cameras, nice piano, high end audio equipment, shot in high definition at a nice location, etc.  The idea of just a small concert in someone’s living room struck a chord with both of us.  I’m really glad that she and I have been on the same page through the entire process… it has made it that much more fun.

Somewhere along the line I asked Dave and Paul if they’d be interested in running cameras for me for the concert.  They’ve always been really good about helping me out with projects when I ask, so they agreed.  But I think at first they just thought it was one of my silly little just-for-fun things that I do when I’m bored of the rest of my life, so there wasn’t a lot of excitement coming from them initially.

After a couple more weeks, I was frankly a little frustrated that they weren’t more excited about the project… I wanted them to be excited about it.  And to see what I saw in Sonnet—a sweet, beautiful, extremely likeable and talented singer with a catchy sound—so I showed them a couple of her YouTube videos.  Fortunately, they got it right away.  They saw the same things I was seeing, and they finally started to show some enthusiasm. 

So as we started talking about plans for the concert, somehow the idea of shooting a music video while Sonnet was going in town came up.  I don’t remember who it was that had the idea, but after asking her if she would be interested, plans for the video started coming together.  A song was picked.  Then a different song picked.  Then back to the first song.  Ideas for the story started to come and be discussed.  Too many ideas, in fact.  Later, two days before Sonnet flew to Utah her image consultant called me and Dave and we had an emergency two hour phone conference to simplify and focus things drastically.  Yes, two days before she got here we were making major changes.  Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.  Anyway, we landed in a place we were all comfortable.  (Okay, Doug, enough with the plane metaphors!)

Anyway, thankfully we had a lot of other people jump in at the last second to help out.  A few days before we started shooting Sae Sae volunteered to help, and she did some amazing recruiting… she found people to help with lighting and moving equipment around (grips), hair, and makeup.  We owe a lot to her making things go as smoothly as they did!

Honestly, I can’t take much credit for the music video.  Dave and Paul really took the idea of the video and ran with it.  I really didn’t have that much to do with putting the video together.  Other than providing some of the equipment, while it was going on my main job was to make sure that Sonnet was where she needed to be when she needed to be there, and that she was being taken care of.  Sure, I’d step in to run a second camera, or move stuff around, but ultimately my biggest role for the video was really making sure that Sonnet was comfortable.

The Internet streamed concert was another story altogether.  Where I took a back seat during filming of the music video, I stepped in and took charge for the concert.  That was really my baby of the whole week.  Multi-camera videos are something that the others do rarely, but something I do with some degree of regularity.  Fortunately I have acquired all of the equipment to do so over the last several years, even designing, building, and writing software for quite a bit of it as well.  And I actually enjoy working with audio more than video, so this was going to be my only chance during the week to do what I enjoy most. 

I’ll save the many stories from the week when we actually shot everything for another post (and maybe some of the other people involved will post something on their own blogs… hint, hint?).  It really was quite an adventure, but in a good way.  So much fun, and definitely an experience I will never forget.  Frankly I can’t believe we pulled off what we did in so little time.  And that we survived the week of no sleep, super late nights, in the heat, on little food, without hating each other by the end (much to the contrary, actually—we’re all better friends), is kind of a miracle in and of itself.

Looking for some assistance…

Next week, a very talented singer/songwriter named Sonnet (www.sonnetmusic.com, www.youtube.com/sonnetsings) is coming to Provo/Orem from Los Angeles to shoot a real music video and perform a house concert which will be broadcast over the Internet.  Sonnet is well known in Utah for her “You’re So Good For Me” song, which was featured as the music for the 2009 Lagoon Park advertising campaign.  If you were in Utah last summer, you most likely have heard the song.  Her other music is just as good.

My role in it all?  Well, I kind of organized the whole thing, and I’m providing the equipment to make it all happen.

This is going to be an affair that lasts for several days and is going to require a significant number of people to pull it off, so we’re looking for a few extra hands to help out.

Before you stop reading thinking, “I don’t have any technical skills, so I can’t be of any help” please do take the time to finish reading.  While we do require some technical skill for some tasks, most of those are already filled, and many of the remaining roles do not require any technical expertise. 

Music Video – Tues-Wed, June 8th & 9th

We’ll be shooting the music video for her new song “Seesaw” on Tuesday and Wednesday (June 8/9) at various locations in and near Utah valley.  We have technical crew more-or-less covered for these events, but we could use a few extra people for various other things that it takes to shoot a video: extras to appear in the background in a few scenes, people to hold reflectors and other lighting elements, someone to be in charge of music playback, people to move props and equipment, and maybe even run errands at various times both days.

Unfortunately this whole project is being done pro-bono so we can’t offer any sort of financial compensation.  You will, however, appear in the credits for the video, and food will be provided while we are shooting.

For the technically minded, we are doing something new and trendy: we are shooting the entire video on Canon digital SLR cameras, just like this season’s finale of House, and some feature films currently in production.  The video quality is amazing!  We’ll also be doing a significant amount of green-screen work.  This is the real deal here, folks – it’s going to be shot professionally, complete with special effects, and is going to look fantastic.

If you’ve ever wanted to be involved in the creation of a real music video, whether as an extra, or crew, this is a great opportunity.  And certainly something that can go on the resume of anyone wanting to do any video or film work.  We don’t require that you be available all day, but if you have a few hours to help out it, we would be very grateful.  We’ll have a schedule of events finalized by this weekend, which I will send to anyone who expresses any interest in helping.

House Concert – Thurs, June 10th

Rather than doing a big concert in a regular venue, we have elected to do a small, intimate concert.  House concerts are currently popping up everywhere, and are becoming quite popular, even for well-established artists, so that’s the directly we have elected to take.  Her concert will be next Thursday at 7pm in Orem.

Sonnet has invited about 30 guests, giving her the opportunity to actually interact with those who attend and talk about her music in an informal setting.  We will also be shooting and broadcasting that event over the Internet for any of her fans to view (at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sonnetlive).  The resulting video will be re-edited later and be uploaded to her web site and YouTube for all to see.

Even though it will be informal, from a technical point of view it will be very sophisticated: we’re going to be shooting on 6 cameras, have everything professionally lit, and audio will be first-rate.  It will have the feel of something small and intimate, but look and sound like a first-rate production.

We have most of the technical assistance we need (though we could use one additional camera operator), but are still looking for a little bit of additional help.  We need someone to welcome guests and make sure they are seated comfortably.  We need a few people to assist the camera operators by making sure that cables stay out of the way.  We need someone to help with the camera dolly.  We might need someone to help with controlling the lighting.  A few additional hands to move equipment in and out in the morning and evening would be very much helpful.  None of these are difficult tasks, but we’re a bit short on people-power.

Again, we can’t offer any financial compensation, but your name will appear in the credits, and you’ll get to attend a concert with excellent music, and meet the artist. 

Can you help?

If you’re at all interested, and are available any time Tuesday through Thursday next week, drop me an email at sonnetevent@djmail.org and let me know what interests you and when you’re available.  And if you know someone who is interested in this kind of thing and would be interested in being involved, please pass a link to this blog post along.

Thank you!!!

Please Pay For Your Software (and Music & Movies)

Probably everybody reading this blog knows that I write software for a living.  Many of you may also know that one of my pet peeves is people using software that they haven’t paid for.

The software I have been selling for the last 10+ years, FileBack PC, took me years to develop.  Actual years.  If I had to re-write it again, it would probably take me two full years of long (16 hr) days.  That represents a huge investment of my time.  Tens of thousands of hours even.

Imagine how it must feel to me to go out on the internet and find web sites that are devoted to finding ways to cheat software manufacturers by providing commercial software for free.  My own software has been found on such sites.  And I know that people are using them because occasionally someone who is using an obviously fraudulent unlock key has the audacity to ask me for help.  It is extremely disappointing to me that people will willingly take my work without placing any value on it.  It is if they are saying, “I don’t care that you spent 8 years of your life working on this, that time you spent means absolutely nothing to me.  So I’m going to take it from you anyway.”  These people are robbing me of my time and taking money out of my pocket by not compensating me for my efforts. 

Some will justify that they would never use the software anyway, if they weren’t getting it for free.  But they are still getting the benefit of having that software, which in some way is saving them their own time and effort (or they wouldn’t bother).  Even with this argument, they are saying that their time has value, but mine doesn’t.

Some will justify that the software they are using is too expensive, or that the company that produces it already makes enough money and won’t be hurt by people stealing it.  If it’s too expensive, find a less expensive (or free) tool to do the same thing.  (Or, better yet, write their own software to do the same thing.)  And if that company sold more copies of their software, they could employ more workers, or provide their employees with a better standard of living.  Or create more software.  Most companies aren’t interested in throwing away their money; most will re-invest it into growing the company, or their employees.

The whole “too expensive” argument is kind of funny to me.  If someone were to come to me and ask me to create something like FileBack PC for them, I’d charge them about $50/hour.  And it would take roughly 10,000 hours to do it.  So the project would cost $50 x 10,000 = $500,000.  And yet I only ask $55 for my efforts.  Think how many people and how much time it took to create something like Photoshop, or Microsoft Word.  Those products represent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hours of work by actual real people.  The price the company is asking in return really isn’t so bad.

Without making this post too long, I beg you to be honest in the way you use your software.  Somebody has taken time to create it.  And they are asking for a small amount in return. 

The same goes for music and movies.  It is very expensive to create and market both.  Considering the budget for most movies is multiple millions of dollars, for a movie studio to ask $20 for a copy of that effort is really kind of a bargain.  Recording studio time to create a song runs well over $100/hr for the better studios, and most songs take a lot of hours to record and mix.  Add marketing and distribution to that, and the $0.99 or $1.29 that music labels and artists are asking for their songs is really a bargain as well.

Zune HD vs iPod Touch

Just a relatively quick comparison between my Zune HD and the iPod Touch (2nd gen).  More information to follow sometime later.

• The OLED screen on the Zune HD is amazing. It is quite bright, and very vibrant. When I held my ZHD up to my Touch, the display on the Touch looked, well, pathetic. It hadn't ever been so obvious how much backlight seeps through until I compared it to a device without a backlight. And as a result of the backlight, colors on the iPod look very washed out and poorly rendered when compared to to the Zune. One quick photo to compare below… The original is on the left, Zune HD’s rendering in the middle, and iPod Touch on the right.
  
  
  
  I played with the camera settings to get a better image from the Touch, and I couldn’t do it.  Its display just isn’t very good.  I’ll be posting more pictures later.
  
• Brightness on the OLED is NOT a problem. At equivalent brightness levels (the Zune only has Low, Mid, and High to choose from) the Zune's display is at least as bright as the iPod's. The real plus side for the Zune is that picture quality doesn’t deteriorate at lower brightness levels like it does on LCD.  So you can comfortably use the Low setting and it doesn’t detract from the experience.
  
  In direct sunlight the Zune is a bit harder to see.  But the difference wasn’t huge, and who attempts to use their device with sunlight falling right on it?
  
• I have been trying for several days to take a picture that shows a decent comparison shot. But none come out quite right. The white balance of the two displays is quite different (ZHD tracks in at D6500, while the iPod Touch is closer to D5000), so either the iPod's display looks yellow, or the Zune's display looks blue when they are in the same shot. And for some reason the Zune's display shows up a little bit blurry in pictures, which I can't explain. When you see the display IRL it is extremely crisp and sharp.
  
• The Apps on the Zune don't even begin to compare to those on the iPod Touch. iPod wins hands down here.  Microsoft promises more apps later, and they will be free, but they’ll never catch up to where the iPod Touch/iPhone App Store is.
  
• The browser on the Zune is better than expected. It is a hair sluggish while a page is loading, but once the page is loading the Zune zooms and pans a lot faster than the iPod. Page rendering is fine, but it seems like a substantial number of web sites are serving up their mobile version to the Zune where they serve the full version to the iPod, so direct comparisons aren't really possible. On sites that serve the full version, though, the Zune page rendering seems fine. One obvious lacking on the Zune is that only one page can be open at a time. It doesn't attempt to mimic the multi-page capability of the Touch.
  
• The user interface on the Zune is much snappier and responsive than that of the iPod Touch. Where the iPod is rendering page transitions at roughly 10 frames per second, the Zune is easily doing 30 fps or more. Scrolling on the Zune is also at least 30 fps, where the iPod is less. The iPod Touch never really felt at all sluggish to me until I compared it to the Zune's interface.
  
• The experience of listening to music on the Zune is WAY better than the iPod Touch. Between having a more logical and flexible layout of the menu structure for finding music, and the additional features that MS has added to link between artists and provide information (and photos) about the artists in your collection, the Zune provides a much more pleasing experience. And these features are available without the Zune Pass subscription. If you add the Zune Pass subscription, the Zune leaps further ahead because you can not only download but stream any of the music in the Zune catalog in real time. So any track is available at any time so long as you have access to WiFi. And the Zune's Channels feature is a lot cooler than I had eve anticipated. It not only makes music suggestions, but it actually downloads the recommended songs directly to the device automatically so they can play anywhere even without WiFi. Apple ought to be taking notes here.
  
  I’ll be doing a full video or blog post about this.  The Zune HD changes the way you experience music.
  
• Video playback on the Zune is better primarily because of the better screen. It also does a better job of organizing your video collection, because you can manually tag video files as being movies, TV shows, music videos, or other. iTunes doesn't let you do that on your own; the only things tagged this way are the ones you download from the iTunes store. Letting the user catalog their own collection makes it much easier to find your way around.
  
• The Zune's battery capacity is technically lower than that of the iPod, but it seems to be better at managing it. After two hours of watching video my iPod Touch is dead (my unit could be an anomaly, but it doesn't seem to be). I watched more than 4 hours of video on the Zune HD and the battery meter hadn't fallen past half yet.
  
• The HD radio is cool, but I have a hard time picking up the HD feeds in my basement. Then again, I can't pick up stereo in my basement on any radio either. When I take the device upstairs or outside, the HD kicks in, and it is definitely clearer than the analog transmission. The primary benefit here is that all static goes away and you get a clean signal, and higher frequencies are much better reproduced in the digital feed.
  
• One feature on the Zune I find particularly useful is the WiFi syncing. It is very convenient to be able to click three buttons and have the device connect and download updated podcasts, music, and video from anywhere in the house.
  
• Another thing I noticed is that the Zune software automatically picks up on changes in files in the music and video folders, and reflects them in the software automatically and virtually instantly. So as I was moving files in and out of my music folders the tracks would instantly appear and/or disappear. It has always bugged me that iTunes doesn't automatically pick up on music or videos that I add to my folders.
  
• As demonstrated in my last blog post, the iPod Touch seems to have some issues with sound quality.  The Zune did much better in testing.
  
• The Zune desktop software is also significantly snapper than iTunes on Windows. And I think I like the design and interface better. With its polished interface, it is certainly snazzier and more refined. iTunes looks relatively dated at this point.

Complaints

My biggest complaint is mostly with touch-based devices in general, and isn’t specific to the Zune HD.  And honestly it is something that I’m surprised we don’t see talked about.  It’s the lack of physical buttons for navigating through music tracks.

Recently we have had the dangers of text messaging while driving crammed down our throats, and it surprises me that some of this hasn’t spilled over into other areas.  Attempting to operate a touch-screen music player while driving is just as dangerous.  In order to control the device you have to take your eyes off of the road for significant amounts of time.  And many operations on both the Zune HD and the iPod Touch require two hands to perform effectively.  Just adding two buttons for changing tracks would be huge in attempting to fix this problem.  But the current trend is to move away from buttons, and I believe this is a mistake.  I’m not asking for a device with 47 buttons for every possible function, but there really ought to be dedicated buttons for the most basic functions of the device.

I took my Zune HD with me the day I got it when I went out running a few errands.  I found that it was extremely inconvenient and potentially dangerous to do even the most basic of tasks.  This isn’t limited to the Zune, either; it is a problem with every touch-screen based music player, whether it be the Zune, iPod Touch, or iPhone.  It’s enough of a problem that I must publicly shun anybody that operates one of these devices while behind the wheel.  It’s dangerous, and it shouldn’t be done.  Apple and Microsoft both really need to rethink their designs a bit to make these devices a little more friendly to situations where full attention can’t be given to their operation.

As a result of this, I will continue using my previous Zunes in my truck.  The Zune HD will probably become my primary travelling device, but not the PMP that gets used the most.

Wrap-up

So to summarize, when comparing the Zune and iPod Touch, people looking for a device primarily for music and video, the Zune will provide a much richer and more interactive experience. For people looking to take advantage of the App Store, the iPod Touch can't be touched (hardy, har, har). So if you’re buying to listen to music, I recommend the Zune. If you’re buying for the App Store, the Touch is the only way to go.  For web browsing, the iPod has a bit of an edge, but it isn't much.  Both will provide a similar experience there.

If someone already has a significant amount of DRM protected content from the iTunes store that they want to keep, there is probably no reason to consider the Zune (though they need to get out from under the thumb of the music industry). But if someone doesn't care much about the App Store and their main focus is music and video, the Zune HD provides a significantly better experience for both. Since the Zune can play all of the file formats supported by the iPods (plus more), switching from the iPod to Zune isn't too painful, and it’s a switch that I bet a lot of people would be thankful to have made later on.

Apple Tablet: Small Mac, or Big iPhone?

There are rumors circulating that Apple will be releasing a tablet device sometime early next year.  There are certainly a lot of Apple fans that are very excited about such a device, even though they don’t even know what it will be.  (Can you think of anyone besides Apple that can get people excited about something that doesn’t even exist (and hasn’t even been announced) yet?)

There is very little information to go on at this point.  The rumors seem to be indicating that it will be a 10.1” touch screen device priced around $799.  Other than that we really don’t know much, including what it will do, or even whether it would run a full version of OS X or a modified version of the iPhone OS.  There is a rumor that the device will have some sort of cellular radio for Internet connectivity as well, but again, none of this is confirmed.

But even amidst Apple’s perpetual silence on future devices, I think there is a lot about it that we can conclude, should such a device actually come to pass.

The pricing alone could tell us a lot.  If it is priced at $799, it is $200 below the price of the white MacBook.  And about $200 over the selling price of the iPhone (price to carriers, not consumers). That alone tells me that the device will be one of two things: either it’s going to be a lobotomized netbook, or a large multimedia device.

I come to that conclusion based on the products that Apple already has in its lineup.  Think about this: the current Mac “netbook” is the MacBook Air.  In a lot of ways it is much like the PC netbooks that are on the market: small device, lightweight, low power, missing devices like optical drives and myriads of connectivity.  In fact the specifications on PC netbooks aren’t that far off of the MacBook Air, aside from the 13” screen that the Air offers where the screens on netbooks are usually 9-10”.  (Even the CPU isn’t that different between the two.)  An Apple netbook would have to be essentially a smaller, even more stripped down version of the Air at a lower price.

But we know that the device will have a touch screen.  That adds to the cost of a device.  And Apple won’t be happy if it doesn’t support multi-touch, and multi-touch capable touch devices are more expensive than the touch screens used on Tablet PCs.  For Apple to be able to release an OS X-powered computer that offers decent performance, plus a multi-touch touch screen, the price is going to be somewhere near where the MacBook Air is now, if not higher.  Nobody would buy it.

The other problem with trying to go the OS X route is that OS X just isn’t designed for a touch screen interface.  I develop software for touch screens and have learned a lot about what works and what does not work.  Menu bars, like the one that stays at the top of the screen all of the time in OS X, are totally unusable on touch screens.  Buttons, in order to be clickable, must be at least 3/4” wide and high.  A typical button in the OS X user interface would only be about 3/8” high on a 10.1” screen, making them too hard to press accurately.  A screen that size is simply WAY too small to even consider doing general purpose computing.  Even the 15” screens we use as part of my business are too small for that without software being designed specifically for that application.  Applications on OS X are not.

This, of course, ignores the fact that a tablet device lacks a keyboard.  Much of what people do on computers is based on having a keyboard.  People, especially Mac users, use their computers to browse the Internet, read email, write documents, edit photos, listen to music, and watch and create videos.  As we have seen with the iPhone, browsing the internet can be done on a keyboard-less touch screen device, but it is usefulness is limited.  Composing email without a keyboard is totally impractical.  And editing photos and creating video are both difficult (at best) on a low resolution screen, especially when the likely low capacity hard drive of the device is considered.  That leaves us with browsing (sometimes), watching video, and listening to music.  What does that list of activities sound like?  Yep.  There’s your iPod Touch/iPhone functionality.

Yes, I know the iPhone has an on-screen keyboard.  And that works okay for creating short text messages, or even short emails.  But for composing larger emails or documents, a touch keyboard just won’t do.  People like having the tactile feedback of actual keys to press when typing, especially as keyboards become larger than the screen on an iPhone.  A decent size on-screen keyboard on a tablet would fill more than half of a 10” screen, and that doesn’t leave any sort of room for software to run.  You couldn’t even rest your fingers on the screen because the act of just touching the screen would activate the capacitive touch sensor, so you’re left hovering your hands above the display.  This becomes very tiring very quickly.  Short of the tablet device being a netbook with a real keyboard, I just can’t see Apple trying to run OS X on a device this size. 

I think the prospects of an Apple tablet being based on the iPhone OS, however, are much higher than something based on OS X.  Nearly everything sort of falls in line with what we know. 

Since tablet devices are, by their very nature, touch-based, it would make a lot more sense for Apple to start with a product that is already based on touch.  OS X is not, and it would take a major overhaul of not only the OS but all of the applications that run on it to work in a touch screen environment.  The iPhone OS, on the other hand, is totally designed around a touch screen.  Touch, swipe, pinch; all of these are the fundamental operations that take place on a touch device and they’re already supported on the iPhone. 

One of the problems with the iPhone and iPod Touch is the small screen.  Watching videos on something that small is not fun, especially if you are trying to share content with someone else.  You can’t comfortably have a group of friends crowd around an iPhone to watch a video; it makes a lot more sense to take turns.  Or for Apple to release a device with a larger screen. 

An iPhone-like device with a 10” screen could be a very good multimedia player.  It’s big enough for the kids to watch in the back seat of the minivan.  Or large enough to watch a video comfortably on an airplane.  Or perhaps even large enough to become an ebook reader that competes with the Amazon Kindle.  (Yeah, battery life wouldn’t be as good, but I think most people are used to charging their electronics every night anyway.)

Creating such a device wouldn’t be without its own set of hurdles, though.  Something with a 10” screen absolutely has to have a higher resolution screen than the iPhone, so all of those apps in the App Store aren’t going to work without significant reworking to fit the larger screen (or look absolutely horrendous after being blown up to fill the larger display).  So should the mysterious Apple tablet be iPhone-based, expect that it will be limited to off-the-shelf iPhone capabilities for a while after release until developers have a chance to rewrite their software to fit the new screen.  But it would surely have music and video playback as well as web browsing built-in from the start.

But one of the biggest indicators to me that something like this will be iPhone OS-based is that Apple has a hole in their lineup of multimedia devices.  You can listen to music and watch videos on tiny devices like the iPods and iPhone, or something big like a computer monitor or TV by using the Apple TV.  There is a class of devices between the iPod and computer that is missing.  Apple wants to sell you iTunes content, but they don’t have anything that competes with portable DVD players.  The largest portable device (aside from laptops) for watching iTunes video is the iPhone. 

Also consider this… there are rumors that Apple is in talks with Verizon for a partnership for mobile data for the tablet device.  $799 might be a little steep for the average consumer.  But if the device were to be tied to a mobile data plan (like the iPhone is), that $799 might come down to $299 or $399 with Verizon contract.  That puts the out-the-door price right in line with the iPod Touch and Apple TV, and iPhone.  All of which target the same demographic they are already catering to.

I really don’t see Apple releasing a device based on OS X if it is strictly a touch screen.  And such a device certainly wouldn’t cost $799.  There is already a Mac-based device with a tablet display, the Axiotron Modbook.  It’s very expensive, and its only interesting to a very small segment of the market.  A $799 multimedia device is much more appealing to a nearly infinitely larger group of people.

The other thing that really leads me to believe that this will be a multimedia device rather than a computer is that tablet computing is not something that the masses are interested in just yet.  Microsoft’s Tablet PC features are very well implemented in Vista and Windows 7 and yet those devices are only being picked up by a very select group of people.  Outside of the world of doctors, salespeople, and maybe a few in the construction industry, a tablet computer just doesn’t make a lot of sense.  And among that group, a device at $799 might as well be $1999; they’ll pay whatever it costs.  Trying to target people for a $799 tablet just doesn’t make a lot of sense for Apple or its shareholders, especially considering how much they like their premium product markup. 

Since Apple likes to charge a 50-100% premium for their products, we ought to look at what’s in the market that would compete with a $799 product.  Yes, netbooks fall into that category, but not tablet PCs.  The other thing we find in that segment would be… you guessed it, portable video devices.

All of this coupled with the total lack of rumors or information leaks of Apple’s upcoming Snow Leopard having any sort of support for a touch-based Mac, and the rumors of an unidentified device running the iPhone OS lead me to believe that there is absolutely no way that a touch screen 10” tablet device is going to be running OS X as we know it now.  Aside from creating a brand new OS family for such a device, the only choice Apple has is to base something on the iPhone OS.  It makes perfect sense, while all of the other possible options just defy logic.

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.

Free Coldplay Live Album

Did everybody get their free copy of Coldplay’s live album LeftRightLeftRightLeft?

If not, get it here.

Celtic Woman

Last Tuesday night I went and saw Celtic Woman perform at the E-Center in Salt Lake as part of their Isle of Hope tour.  They were amazing.  Virtually everything about the concert was amazing.  It was so great!

I have known about the group for about 18 months now, and when I first heard them I immediately bought all of their CDs and DVDs.  I loved their music.  But somehow I missed out on hearing about their 2008 tour, so I missed when they came to Salt Lake last year.  While I was visiting my parents over Christmas break this last year I saw that they were coming to Salt Lake for their upcoming tour, I immediately bought a couple tickets in eager anticipation of being able to see them live. 

I did have a little bit of trepidation about that whole “live” part of the show.  The vocals on the DVDs are clearly dubbed with post-produced studio recordings, and there is some talk around the Internet that the girls they selected for the group were selected more for their appearance than their voices.  So I felt like there would be a small possibility that this concert would be lip-synced, which would have been a big letdown for me.  I don’t really want to pay to see a group if I’m just going to hear a recording; I can do that at home.  But it wasn’t lip-synced.  It was definitely live.  At least the vast majority of it.  (There were two songs that may have been pre-recorded; I couldn’t be 100% sure either way.)  The girls are amazing vocalists.  Every note on pitch.  Perfect articulation.  Great expression.  Tasteful choreography.

Being the techie guy that I am, I spent nearly as much time taking in all of the technical aspects of the show as I did the music… the lighting, sound system, sound mix, acoustics, etc.  It was all extremely well done as well.  I was definitely impressed.

I had no idea how long the concert was going to be.  It went on for quite a while before they announced an intermission.  Awesome!  We were only half way through.  In all the concert was well over two hours long.

I was so impressed with the whole performance that later that night after I got home I logged on to the Celtic Woman web site to see if there was any possibility I could see them again on their current tour… maybe in Las Vegas or Denver?  With the exception of a handful of performances last week, the rest of the performances are far away in the southeast.  Far enough away that going to another show was going to be difficult.  I saw that there is going to be one in Tulsa at the end of June, and this would have been a good excuse to visit my parents for a few days, but that concert is on a Sunday night, and I didn’t feel right about doing that.  So, I was kind of disappointed that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off.

That was until I opened the back of program I got at the concert and saw that they had two performances coming up in Denver at Red Rocks Amphitheater that aren’t listed on their web site.  Wheels start to turn.  What do the tickets cost?  Are any good seats still available?  What about airfare?  Check the price of hotel and rental car.  Then I decided that I was just going to do it.  Enter credit card number into the various web sites… so, yep, it’s a done deal… I’m flying to Denver to see them perform at the beginning of July.  And my ticket for the concert is RIGHT in the MIDDLE of the FRONT ROW (well, technically it’s the second row, but the actual first row is reserved for special needs visitors)!  Woohoo!  Major excitement going on.

So yeah, I’m going to fly somewhere just to see a concert.  That’s a first for me.  And I’m very excited about it, even if it is going to cost me a small fortune to do it.

New MP3 Players

Within the last week I’ve gotten two new MP3 players.

1st: iPod Touch, 2nd Gen

First I’ll start with my new iPod.  My brother was looking at maybe getting an iPod Touch, and since I’ve been considering upgrading mine to one of the 2nd generation models, I sold him my first gen and used that money toward an upgrade to the newer version of the 16GB player.

The newer version is definitely an improvement on the first gen model.  I’ve been somewhat critical of the iPod Touch (blog posts here and here) because I don’t believe (and still don’t believe) that touch screen interfaces work well for control of music playback.  But one of those complaints has been addressed with the newer version: it has dedicated volume control buttons on the side.  This is a huge plus!  Now we can adjust the volume without waking it up, looking at it, and finding the virtual on-screen controls.  If only Apple would add a play/pause button, and buttons for selecting tracks they’ll have a nearly unbeatable device.  But we already know that Steve Jobs hates buttons, so that isn’t going to happen.  Too bad… they’re close to having something great, but their pride is getting in the way of usability utopia.

Other changes over the first gen are the addition of an internal speaker so you can hear the sounds made by games, listen to music, or watch videos without plugging in headphones (this is a very cool feature that should be included on ALL MP3 players), a curved back like the iPhone 3G (thinner at the edges but thicker in the middle than the 1st gen Touch), and support for an external microphone or headset.  That last feature will allow me to use Skype, or to use it as a simple audio recorder.  Nice touches, all, and definitely steps in the right direction. 

I do have one major complaint with it, and that is its battery life.  If I’m watching a video or playing games on it, the battery is dead in a hair over an hour.  I’ve gone through the charge –> use for an hour cycle about 6 or 7 times now and it’s pretty consistent.  If the screen is on and it’s making noises, the battery is only good for about an hour.  At 45 minutes it pops up a warning that only 20% of the battery charge is left, and 15-20 minutes later it dies. I haven’t tested it for battery life for music playback (again, it’s not that great of a music playback device and I don’t intend to use it that way), but for video and games an hour is not good.  Especially considering how Apple advertises it as a great gaming device by calling it the “funnest iPod ever” [sic].  Fun for an hour, then you’re back to playing tic-tac-toe on a pad of paper, making flipbook drawings, and singing to yourself.  In contrast, my 5-year-old PDA will play games or video on a larger, higher resolution display for 3+ hours on a charge, even with all of the wear I’ve put on the battery over that time.

It still has a shiny metallic back, so it scratches VERY easily.  A protective case is a must.  I can’t figure out why Apple won’t switch to a textured back, or coat the metal with some sort of enamel or varnish layer to protect it?  I guess they like having their devices look bad after they’ve been used a while.  Or maybe it’s enough justification for people to buy new ones and they sell more that way.

Other than that, it’s pretty much the same as the 1st gen model.  The web browser is top notch.  The App Store makes it easy to find fun flashlight and fart noise applications.  The ability to read email is also nice.  Audio quality is fairly good, but still lags a little behind virtually every other line of players on the market.  (Apple hasn’t had any serious competition for the iPod line, so they seem to be okay with their audio quality suffering a bit compared to everyone else.)  The screen is bright and sharp, though this version renders the image with a warmer tint than we have seen before, not that this is bad; just different.  As usual, the included ear bud headphones are terrible, and Apple clearly deserves any amount of criticism heaped upon them for continuing to insult our ears; these are literally the worst headphones I have ever heard in my life; nearly anything else is a significant improvement. 

I’m excited to see what Apple has up its sleeve for the 3.0 firmware coming out this summer.  We do know that Bluetooth support is being added to the 2nd gen Touch, so that will be cool, along with a slew of other features that have been missing since day one.  And there should be more welcome goodies in the works with the forthcoming update.

2nd: Another Zune

I have had my 80GB Zune now for almost 18 months.  And I still really like it.  For music playback it is my device of choice.

But, like any hard-drive based player, it’s a little big and heavy compared to the flash memory models.  And I kind of get tired of lugging it back and forth between my desk and my truck just to synchronize it, so I have played around with the idea of getting a smaller capacity Zune to keep in my truck permanently.  I usually listen to podcasts and just a few of my favorite artists, so a small capacity player would work well for around-town driving.

Brent and I were in Best Buy last week and saw that they were clearing out the 4GB Zunes for $80.  I was going to get one but they didn’t have any left in stock, so I came home and tried to find a similar deal on the Internet.  I was able to find a brand-new 8GB model instead for $99 on eBay, with free shipping.  Awesome deal!  So I bought it, and it arrived today.

The one I got was apparently really old stock because the battery was COMPLETELY dead – it hadn’t been turned on or charged at all since it was manufactured in the fall of 2007.  Which means that it didn’t do anything when I plugged it in; it almost seemed like it was broken.  After plugging it into AC power and letting it charge for a couple hours it finally woke up from its coma and I was able to synchronize it with my computer.  First step was to install new software onto it (thank you, Microsoft, for continually adding new features for free!), and then I began selecting the content to copy onto the device.

I discovered something cool about the Zune software while setting this one up.  It lets you connect and synchronize multiple devices simultaneously.  So while I was setting up my new Zune today, my older one was still connected, and the two didn’t conflict with one another.  The software recognized both by adding a second icon for the second device.  That way I could choose what to synchronize with each one separately without disconnecting either by dragging to the right icon.  I didn’t think anybody would even attempt this, because synchronization is tricky enough without trying to do it with two devices at the same time.  Color me shocked and impressed.

My audio podcasts only take up about 800 MB.  I would have consider synchronizing my video podcasts as well, but it probably isn’t a good idea to watch them while I’m driving, so I elected not to include those in the sync.  I then setup two synchronization rules in the Zune software: one to synchronize any of the music I have marked as a favorite, and another rule to synchronize any music I have added to my collection in the last 90 days.  And since its 8GB of storage space is limited compared to the size of my music collection, I also set it to down-convert any high bit-rate audio files down to 192kbps on sync.  Since a lot of my music falls into that category, much of it had to be converted while it was synchronizing, so it took about 30 minutes to copy everything over.  In the end there was about 6.5GB of content copied over, leaving about 1GB of free space.  Nice fit.

One advantage the Zune has over other players is its ability to sync with a computer wirelessly.  This is why I will be leaving this player in my truck… I don’t have to bring it inside to sync it.  Just pop into the menu, select Settings, Wireless, Sync, and it connects to my wireless network and synchronizes my latest podcasts, any changes in my favorite music, and adds anything I’ve added to my collection since the last sync.  At the same time if I had purchased any music on the Zune (another great feature, BTW) it would sync it back up into my music collection.  Very cool.  And if I were to plug the player into a constant power source (or let it sit for a few minutes after finishing a playlist) it would synchronize automatically without any intervention on my part at all.  But I don’t want to drain my truck’s battery when I’m not driving it so I will be starting the sync manually.

Here’s a shocker… I actually like two of the songs included on the device.  It comes with a handful of songs and videos on it from the factory, and I actually like two of them.  Usually anything included like this is, well, not very good, and most of it wasn’t that good, but two songs and two videos actually were.  Huh.

The sound quality of the flash memory Zunes is very good.  With good headphones this Zune sounds excellent; very clear and totally noise free as far as I could discern.  The headphones included with these models aren’t very good, but they are without question better than the ones included with any iPod.  The Premium versions included with my 80GB Zune were a world better than either of those though.  But even the Premium model pales in comparison to either the Shure E3 earphones or Sony MDR-7506 headphones that I use to listen to music.  If you are at all serious about your music, consider investing in a real set of earphones/headphones.  Music will take on a new life when heard the way it was meant to be heard.

The disappointing thing about this player is that it doesn’t have video output capability.  So I can’t hook it to a TV and watch videos that way.  I have really gotten used to and liked that feature on my 80GB Zune (and I wish I could do it on my iPod Touch without dropping a fortune on a special cable), so it will be missed on my 8GB version.

For Music, Get a Zune; For Apps, Get an iPod Touch

Even after the updates to the iPod Touch line, I still feel like the Zunes are better for music playback.  Between having a more functional and easier to use interface, dedicated buttons for controlling playback, and more attention to the importance of sound quality, the Zune line is better for listening to music than any iPod sold today.  Apple has been putting all of its eggs in the iPod Touch / iPhone basket lately, so the rest of the line has been allowed to wither on the vine.  The iPod Classic still has its classic dated and limited-in-functionality interface.  The Nano is okay, but still is limited in its capabilities.  And don’t get me started on the new Shuffle, which is a joke.  The iPod Touch may be more suited to video playback than the Zunes are because of the huge screen, aside from the need to buy an extremely expensive cable to get video out to your TV and what appears to be battery life that is too short for video playback.  For playing games or doing non-multimedia tasks, though, the iPod Touch is in a league of its own for now despite its need to be kept near a charger. 

Being that these are, first and foremost, music players, my current Zune has gotten a lot more use than my iPod ever has, and I’m sure that trend will continue with my newly acquired models.  Which is fine, considering the Zunes seem to be better suited to that task anyway.

Cheaper iTunes

Apple just went live with their variable pricing, which means that most new music is now $1.29 per song instead of the $0.99 everybody is used to.  The Amazon MP3 store, on the other hand, is still $0.89-$0.99 or less for its music tracks. 

A guy named Robert Palmer has created a program called Advantageous MP3, which provides a link between iTunes software and Amazon’s MP3 store, so you can shop for your music in iTunes, then actually purchase from Amazon for the cheaper price. 

The software is free, and there are versions for Windows and the Mac. 

Personally I haven’t tried it, as I don’t use iTunes.  But I hear good things about it, so I’m passing it along to you.  Enjoy!

Inside the Studio: Perfect Vocals?

I just read an article about how two well known R&B artists have just been caught using “Auto Tune” software to correct the pitch of their vocals on their latest CDs. I had to snicker a bit inside, as if this is some sort of major revelation, or something that is an anomaly in the recording industry. Truth is, nearly every vocal recording made these days is run through Auto Tune, at least in part. Some artists, on the other hand, base their whole careers on the ability of the Auto Tune software to correct their pitch, because otherwise they couldn’t sing their way out of a wet paper sack.

The process is called “Auto Tune” after the software that is used to do it, AutoTune by Antares. You have all heard the effect… remember the chorus of “Believe” by Cher in the late 1990s? That’s AutoTune, just cranked up to it maximum correction level. I, too, have this software, and have used pitch correction on virtually every recording I have made in my home studio for more than a decade (though I have moved on to something better since… more on that in a minute). The difference, I believe, in the way I use it vs. many pop artists is that I only use it to fix a handful of notes that are slightly off, not to construct a passable performance from one that wouldn’t be otherwise. There is a real expectation of perfection for anyone attempting to perform vocally by the public, and using pitch correction software is really the only way to achieve perfection. Even with those who have excellent vocal abilities, I still will run through their performance and fix anything that is even slightly off. Recordings are permanent, and nobody wants to be remembered for that one sour note.

Using technology to achieve a better recording is certainly not a new thing. Before AutoTune came around, singers would be asked to perform pieces of their music over and over again until a perfect performance could be put together from the various takes… use a little from Take 1, a little bit from Take 6, pick up a syllable from Take 2, go back to Take 1, and so on. This was typical of recordings made in the 70s and 80s, but the process still continues today, even before Auto Tune is added to the mix. (In fact, it isn’t uncommon for parts of a song that occur multiple times, like a chorus, to be recorded only once, then be copied and pasted elsewhere in the song.)

Like all technologies, pitch correction can really be abused as well. In fact, virtually all of the pop music scene has abused pitch correction technologies for years, but it is worse now than it has ever been. Many very well known performers would have no career if it weren’t for the ability to correct pitch. I dare say that a lot of the most popular artists, no matter their preferred genre, rely on the technology to make their careers viable. I won’t name names, but more artists rely on it than don’t. These days it’s more about how a performer looks rather than their singing ability, because even if someone sings poorly it can be fixed. So if you have a favorite performer who you believe to have an outstanding vocal ability, the odds aren’t in your favor that they actually do. And there isn’t any 100% sure way to know if they can or can’t sing either, unless you see a live performance which is really live (and not taped [taped performances are usually remixed in a studio afterward] or lip synced). But even in those cases Antares and others make processors that can correct pitch in real-time; all they need to know is the chord progression of a song (and some even create the harmony parts automatically too). Cheating, isn’t it??!?

As if this isn’t enough, the newer generations of pitch correction software correct more than just pitch. These days I’m using a product called V-Vocal (screenshot), which in addition to fixing pitch can also correct timing. So if someone doesn’t have a good sense of rhythm, no problem. If they always come in late or end early, it’s easy to correct with a single click and drag of the mouse. Not only that, but it can be setup to match the timing of another instrument or vocalist automatically. And as if that wasn’t enough, but it will also alter the formant of someone’s voice in case they sound too nasal or thick. Anybody want to sing like a chipmunk?

While I believe that software like this does have a place as a single tool in a much larger collection, somehow it has become the real performer, not the vocalist whose pipes are being run through it. It’s sad, too, that so many people who have genuine talent are cast aside because they may not look the part, or aren’t willing to sell their souls to a record company in order to get ahead. I certainly wouldn’t make AutoTune, V-Vocal, and other similar tools go away in a perfect world, but it would be really nice to see them take less of a critical role in the arsenal of tools used by recording engineers. But that’s out of my control, so I guess the best I can do is to use my own best judgment when it’s me at the controls of the mixing board (or computer, as is really the case). And so far, I think I’ve done okay.