Literature Is News That Stays News



There have been recent developments in some news stories we reported in 2012. Let's catch up.

1. The Voices of the Little Monsters Were Exceedingly Unpleasant

In 2012 scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs used non-contact 3D imaging technology to "play" the audio from an 1888 tin sound cylinder from an Edison Talking Doll. This feat enabled the cylinder to be enshrined in the Library of Congress National Recording Registry of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" recordings.

Now, they've done it again, digitally recovering a 128-year-old recording of Alexander Graham Bell's voice, enabling people to hear the famed inventor speak for the first time. The recording ends with Bell saying “in witness whereof, hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell."

In the case of the Bell recording, 2D scanning technology was used to map the surface of a circular disc to rectangular format, a technique developed over many trial runs harvesting audio from damaged 78 rpm records. The great inventor's voice can be heard here. Details and images from the project are here as Cat. No. 287881-A.

2. The Social Bandwagon: Everyone {Likes, Retweets +1's} a Winner

Artistic works that build their audience slowly and sustain it for long periods are becoming rare. Most works live and die with their debut. Hollywood has known this for a long time. Cast, director, genre, story, and production values are irrelevant. The only thing that can predict the long-term box office success of a film is its opening weekend numbers.

But now,  according to the New York Times, a former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success.

At best, the results confuse correlation with causation, the so-called Nickels Paradox. At worst, the analysis ignores originality. While, according to Mr, Bruzzese, bowling scenes tend to appear in many films that fail [TGD: for other reasons] and are thus "statistically unwise," bowling figures prominently in the enduring hit The Big Lebowski. Bet on the Coen Brothers for a hit, no matter what the historical numbers say.

3. Would Pandora Survive Russian Winter?

Since October 2012, Apple has been hinting they would introduce a streaming audio service in iTunes to compete with Pandora. Google already beat them to the punch, announcing Google Play Music All Access for $7.99/mo. But I don't think Google is a Pandora-killer.

However, Marketplace Radio now reports that an Apple announcement is imminent. Using their industry clout, Apple is securing support for "more functionality, like the ability to rewind or advance or announce the next five songs that are coming up. Things you can’t do on Pandora.” The temperature is dropping.


            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #57            

Artist: Steve Kuhn

Title: Last Year's Waltz
Genre: Jazz
Year: 1982





[Amazon.com] For a time, singer Sheila Jordan was a regular member of pianist Steve Kuhn's quartet, a group also including bassist Harvie Swartz and drummer Bob Moses. This live set finds the band performing five Kuhn originals, one apiece by Swartz and Steve Swallow, plus "I Remember You," "Confirmation" and a brief medley. Although Jordan functions as a member of the band, her highly appealing singing is the main reason to acquire this memorable and well-rounded disc. (The presence of this disc in my library may explain why I also own one title by Bob Moses as bandleader. Follow the metadata.)


© 2013 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

What Would You Pay for Used Digital Access Rights?

The United States Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 to uphold your right to resell legally-purchased physical goods contaning copyrighted elements, even if the copyright holder objects. Meanwhile, a U.S. District Court judge ruled to block your right to resell legally-purchased digital downloads containing copyrighted elements. Where does this lead?

If companies cannot limit consumer ownership rights to physical goods, that may just hasten their transition to all-digital delivery. But courts are fickle, and future rulings could extend re-sale rights to digital downloads. Better for companies to keep digital goods in the cloud and sell access to them.

The major players are taking steps to make non-exclusive rights to access cloud-based digital goods feel like ownership. Since the November 2012 announcement in that the Supreme Court would hear the Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons case, both Apple and Amazon have received patents indicating they are working on technology to permit buyers of e-books and cloud-based music files to resell these products. Don't be fooled into thinking this will give you full ownership rights.

Physical media — books, LPs and the like — are scarce objects. No matter how many are made, the number is finite, the individual objects are unique, and are subject to wear, damage and loss over time. The ones that survive retain value according to their condition. And you are free to re-sell them to a willing buyer.

Digital media files — information stored in bits-only form — are infinite objects. There is no limit on the number of people who can simultaneous possess the information, each copy is identical, and does not degrade over time. The value of infinite objects is in the information transfer; the objects themselves have no retained value. But you should be free to re-sell them as long as you actually transfer possession to a buyer; the value of the transaction is based on its convenience.

Cloud-based digital media files are shared objects. Only one copy need exist because possession is retained by the owner (Apple, Amazon) who can sell an infinite number of individual rights to access the file. Amazon's rumored system for selling your "used" Kindle titles merely turns off your access to the book(s) and enables access for someone else. There is no transfer, making it impossible to place a value on the transaction. Why are "used" digital access rights worth any more or less than the original rights?

Furthermore, Amazon has announced Coins, a virtual currency obtained via credit card which will be used by Kindle Fire owners to purchase games, apps, content, and in-app purchases on their tablets. Expect any transaction in the virtual secondary market to be denominated in virtual currency, which amounts to "store credit" issued to the seller. (We all know how coupons convince us to spend more money.) Hard currency enters these walled-off digital ecosystems, but it never comes out.

Ownership of music still trumps access in the cloud when audio fidelity and freedom of choice are considered. All my weightless digital library files play identically, whether the material was originally sourced on vinyl, CD, or legally-purchased download. That same homogeneity should extend to selling any or all of the files, or donating the library after I'm gone. Stand up for First Sale protection everywhere.


             Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #55            

Title: The Big Band Sessions

Artist: Anita O'Day
Genre: Jazz
Year: 1979

The Big Band Sessions (2-LP, Verve VE-2-2534) is a re-packaging of five Anita O'Day titles: Anita O-Day Swings Cole Porter with Billy May (V-2118), Anita O'Day and Billy May Swing Cole Porter (V-2141), Trav'lin' Light (V2157), Cool Heat (V-8312) and All the Sad Young Men (V-8442). I recently purchased it at an estate sale for $2 and made a high-res digital transfer with tracks organized according to original title and album sequence. (Yes, you can do that.) If First Sale Doctrine is not universally applied, how many copyright holders' permissions (euphemism for payments) would be necessary to sell this digital re-packaging — one, five, six? Any number greater than zero is too many.

© 2013 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

The Social Bandwagon: Everyone {Likes, Re-Tweets, +1's} a Winner

Mumford & Sons released their 2nd album Babel a few weeks ago. It's hard to know what any listeners think of it. But one thing we all seem to know — Babel sold 600,000 copies in its first week. That statistic was re-blogged and re-tweeted thousands of times, blindly hailing "the best debut of 2012." Everyone "shares" a winner.

Does a splashy debut lose significance as the music industry transitions from physical media to weightless digital? We'll get to that later. In any case, debut has replaced legacy as a benchmark of worth.

Artistic works that build their audience slowly and sustain it for long periods are becoming rare. Most works live and die with their debut. Go big or enjoy staying under the radar. In music, Adele's 21 is the outlier. No one saw it coming, and then nothing could displace it for more than a year.

Hollywood has known this for a long time. Cast, director, genre, story, and production values are irrelevant. The only thing that can predict the long-term box office success of a film is its opening weekend numbers. Big hits that opened small — My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Slumdog Millionaire, for two in recent memory  — are the outliers. To generate buzz, a film has to be able to trumpet an immediate historic feat, whether it be the best opening weekend (of ...), or opening night, or midnight debut, or whatever. Get people on the bandwagon before the next big thing comes along, because it's right behind you, already working the hype machine.

At the polar opposite of the sustained hit is what I'll call the hit-and-run, designed to open big and disappear fast before anyone can know how mediocre it might be. This applies equally to music, movies and books. Frozen Heat by Richard Castle debuted at #7 on the 30-September-2012 New York Times Fiction Best Seller List for combined print and e-book sales, dropping Mitch Albom's The Time Keeper from #6 to #8. The next week, it was gone.

Trouble is, while Mitch Albom is a real-life best-selling author — Tuesdays with Morrie spent more than 200 weeks on the best seller list — Richard Castle is a make-believe best-selling author (turned amateur cop) on an eponymous TV show. The release was a publicity stunt coinciding with the start of the new season. Hyperion Press published both books, and I think they owe Mr. Albom an apology.

A splashy book or music debut may be increasingly easy in the weightless digital world. Apple can't sell more iPhones than it can manufacture and distribute. A movie theater can't sell more tickets than it has seats. E-book and digital music sales make it possible to respond to demand instantly and infinitely, without having to plan, produce, ship and stock physical inventory. Bits are never sold out. Mumford & Sons fan base was ready for a new release and downloaded accordingly.

Less newsworthy was the fact that sales of Babel dropped 72% in week two (though still topping the charts). Social media had already moved on to tweeting the debut of a new album from Muse at #2.

            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #44             

Title: Voices Carry
Artist: 'Til Tuesday
Genre: Alternative
Year: 1985



If you read The Lefsetz Letter, you know that sales of Aimee Mann's album Charmer dropped 63% in its second week on the charts. If you're on social media, you probably know (and have re-tweeted) that the video for the single Labrador is a shot-for-shot remake, featuring Mad Men's Jon Hamm, of her iconic 80's video for the song Voices Carry. I know that I got my first CD player in mid-1985, and the album Voices Carry may be the last new title I have ever bought on vinyl.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

Would Pandora Survive Russian Winter?

If the world was fair, a new rival entering your market would have to compete head-to-head on features. Innovation would rule. But the world is not fair, and new rivals often enter your market specifically because they can win with inherent advantages that make head-to-head comparisons irrelevant. The software industry coined a term for this—Russian Winter. (Why?) And Pandora may be about to experience it.

Russian Winter has been a factor in the rise and fall of many products. Two examples:

• Mosaic, the first inernet browser, was invented at NCSA. Netscape commercialized Mosaic in 1994, and Netscape Navigator commanded 80% market share at its peak in 1996. Microsoft countered by introducing Internet Explorer. Whether or not it was a better browser than Netscape Navigator was irrelevant. As a stand-alone product, you can't compete with "pre-installed with Windows." Microsoft achieved 80% market share by 2000, 95% at its peak in 2002, completely defeating the invasion of its Desktop.

• Similarly, the market for simple chart-drawing software was once dominated by Visio and Autodesk Actrix. Feature-for-feature, you could make the case for either one. But when Microsoft bought Visio (the company) in 1999, the climate became much chillier. As a stand-alone product, you can't compete with "bundled in Office." Autodesk cancelled Actrix almost the same day, ceding the market to Microsoft.

In both cases, the victory virtually shut down disruptive innovation in these technology areas.

Pandora invented user-customized radio. You select a song and it will program a stream of more like this music based on its musical "genome." It now streams more than a billion user hours per month. Consumer awareness of Pandora is 50% among internet users, double that of its nearest competitors.

But a new competitor may be entering the market. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that Apple is preparing an audio streaming service to compete with Pandora. How does Apple bring Russian Winter to the streaming audio market? Five things are immediately apparent:

1. Installed Base. You can't compete with "pre-installed on 365 million iOS devices."
2. Halo Effect. There is no brand loyalty like Apple brand loyalty. Not only will an Apple streaming service trigger an exodus of Pandora users who were there merely because there was no equivalent Apple service, the cool factor of Apple will bring many new users into the sector who were sitting on the sidelines. Pandora desperately needs these subscribers.
3. Lack of Transparency. Pandora is having trouble turning a profit, and has to say so every fiscal quarter in SEC filings, incurring negative brand image. Apple will bundle its streaming service with iTunes, burying the costs inside the rosy financials of the world's largest music retailer.
4. Leverage. The New York Post reported that Apple is negotiating directly with music labels for content, rather than adopt Pandora's disadvantageous statutory licensing model. Apple doesn't need Congressional support to make its business work.
5. Game-Changing Ability. Pandora's service defines user-customized radio. But, with more that $100B in cash and securities available, Apple could raise the stakes by introducing new capabilities requiring capital investment that Pandora couldn't match in its current financial condition. Or, taking another cue from the software industry, Apple could offer its service free to listeners. In August 2012, UK retailer Tesco announced that it was closing its MP3 store, citing the rising capital costs of trying to stay competitive with the big players, Apple and Amazon.

Could it be that the real target of Apple's ambitions is Amazon? By adding a streaming music service to iTunes, Apple would force Amazon to roll out a similar service to stay competitive. Being acquired by Amazon could be Pandora's way out of the cold.

            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #43             

Artist: Paul Winter Consort
Title: Earthdance
Genre: New Age
Year: 1977



I'll admit, I chose this library title for this piece because of the artist name. But The Paul Winter Consort is a foundation group in my collection, with metadata tentacles radiating through many other titles. Among the descendent links: the groups Oregon and Gallery, and the musicians Glen Moore, Paul McCandless, Collin Walcott (1945-1984), David Darling and Ralph Towner.

© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.



Mastered for Mom: The High-Resolution Audio Debate Hits Home

Rolling Stone reported that musician and studio-quality digital audio advocate Neil Young has applied for trademarks indicating he has a high-res audio streaming service in development. The inventor of a lossy compressed audio codec used his website to argue that high-res digital is a waste of bandwidth. So who gets caught in the middle of this high-fidelity debate? My mother.

Mom now has an iPod, a birthday gift from some of my siblings. And I have accepted the challenge that, by Mothers Day 2012, I will have transformed two shoeboxes of her cassette tapes into a collection of iPod-friendly digital song files. The project enables me to confront the high-res v. compressed audio debate head-on.

The tapes cut a swath through some of the easiest of Easy Listening: Michael Crawford, Vic Damone, Ferrante & Teicher, Kathy Lee Gifford. (When did KLG record and release enough material to have a 2-tape "Best of ..." collection?) Cynics or audiophiles would argue that some combination of my mother's untrained ear, her relatively low-fi playback path (iPod to JBL personal speaker) and a lack of subjective artistic merit in the material would justify a quick-and-dirty A2D transfer process. But we don't advocate quick-and-dirty at In Aurem.

Apparenly, neither does Neil Young. According to the press release, his Pono service will present "the studio quality sound that artists and producers heard when they created their original recordings." Mom's music deserves nothing less. Recording the digital archive copy of a tape is linear and real-time; recording at low bit rate saves you no time over recording at high bit rate. So why not record in high resolution? Your downstream tools in the audio clean-and-repair pipeline produce better results with more information to chew on.

Christopher "Monty" Montgomery (of Ogg Vorbis fame) would take exception to that. But all his time-worn perceptual and subjective arguments — 16-bit/48 KHz source resolution is "good enough" and compression effects are "inaudible" — can be dismissed by the fact that 24-bit/96KHz (or higher sampling rate) is the standard for digital recording. If we can accommodate the bandwidth and storage, we might as well play back the studio master that the talent approved.

Only, I don't have the bandwidth and storage in this case. I have an 8 GB iPod and a lot of material to store on it. Ulitmately, I need an iPod-compatible compressed format in which to export my 24/96 masters, striking the optimal balance of fidelity to the original and small footprint. The finalists are:

1. 256KBit/sec constant-rate Apple AAC produced from iTunes.
2. 256KBit/sec constant-rate MP3.
3. Variable bit-rate MP3 targeting "standard" quality.

Using the methodology and test set from my "Mastered for iTunes" analysis, the variable-bit-rate MP3 was proven to be closest (or near-closest) to the 24/96 master than the other two formats in all cases, and produced a signifcantly (>20%) smaller file in all cases. Results below.

(Blue text represents best result per column.)

Fidelity is always important. Compression is sometimes necessary. My approach to Mom's music is: 1) record in 24/96; 2) process in 32-bit floating-point; and 3) export tracks to "-V 2" variable-bit-rate MP3 files. The results so far are proving it was the correct choice. See you on Mothers Day.


            Analog-to-Digital Restoration #27           

Artist: Frank Sinatra

Title: Point of No Return
Genre: Vocal
Year: 1951



As they used to sing on Sesame Street, "one of these things is not like the others." Standing apart from the Easy Listening titles in my mother's shoeboxes is this Sinatra collection of brooding ballads. I may keep a high-res copy for myself; a little something, you know, for the effort.

© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

And You May Ask Yourself: Mastered for iTunes? Same As It Ever Was.

Apple's Mastered for iTunes process has been publicly criticized for not producing audio files that were subjectively 'closer to the CD' than standard iTunes. Turns out, the test methodology was flawed and the negative conclusion was the only one possible under the test conditions. The conclusion may be true, but is not interesting or informative.

The Mastered for iTunes toolkit (MfI) is free. Anyone can get it. I thought it would be a more interesting exercise to download the tools and process our 24-96 WAV test set and examine whether the result was closer to the source than standard iTunes. My conclusion from the exercise is interesting and informative, but not in the way I expected.

In all cases, MfI produced an AAF file virtually identical to standard iTunes. Darn near entirely identical.

RMS amplitude measured for the difference wave between the MfI AAF file and the WAV master is numerically identical in all cases to the result reported for standard iTunes. And the difference wave between the two AAF files in each case is virtually silent, modulo an occasional burp or murmur. The two files may not be exactly alike, but the difference does not reflect different approaches to processing the audio source.

What do we make of this?

1. The afconvert program supplied with Mastered for iTunes is the same afconvert program under the hood at iTunes. The Mastered for iTunes tools do not a priori produce better-sounding compressed audio files. According to Apple's white paper, the MfI version is instrumented to optionally produce additional information about the output files, most notable the presence of clipping (sample values outside the [-1, +1] range truncated to fit).
2. If you are a professional mastering engineer, you already have tools that can detect the presence of clipping in sound. Heck, I am a non-professional doing analog-to-digital audio archiving and restoration at home, and even I have tools that can detect (and allow me to correct for) the presence of clipping.

So mastering engineers have always had the tools and technique to create master recordings optimized for compression, the same way they have created unique masters for other formats, like CD and SACD. By offering transparency into their mastering process and with the carrot of a premium certification in the world's #1 music retail source, Apple is now encouraging the music industry to do it.

Some in the industry have called this a perfectly normal development, a good thing. But as a consumer, I question the value of a label that says that experts certify they have now done what they may have silently been doing all along. Same as it ever was.

Thanks to my Harman colleagues Jonathan Moss and Rahul Misra for their invaluable assistance in data collection.

            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #26           

Title: Remain in Light

Artist: Talking Heads

Genre: Alternative

Year: 1980

David Byrne is one of my musical heroes. Put him together with producer Brian Eno, and it's no surprise that Remain in Light is my favorite Talking Heads studio release. I never saw them live, but the once-in-a-lifetime performances of some of this material in Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense are mesmerizing.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

'Mastered for iTunes is BS?' Bad Science Meets Rampant Retweeting

Mastering engineer and writer Ian Shepherd took exception to Apple's new Mastered for iTunes process being characterized in an interview as 'sounding closer to the CD.' So he took to YouTube and his website to prove that it does not. "Not true. Testably not true."

His result was re-blogged and re-tweeted without comment (2000+ times) until it not only became news, it threatens to become fact.

Unfortunately, his test design and logic are flawed, and the false conclusion he draws is the only conclusion possible under the test conditions. Let's take a look. [Disclaimer: I have no connection to Apple or its products.]

Basically, Mr. Sheppard used a well-known test that identifies differences between sound waves to compare a 16-44 WAV file ripped from a CD against two files.

1. File A: Mastered for iTunes AAC of the same track professionally created from a 24-96 master, downloaded from iTunes store.
2. File B: AAC created on his computer from the 16-44 WAV using iTunes with default program settings.

He then listenened to the files and concluded that File B sounded subjectively closer to the CD than File A. So it was "testably not true" (extrapolated from a sample set of 1) that Mastered for iTunes files sound closer to the CD than regular iTunes files. (Viewers of the YouTube video proof have to take his word for it; they can't hear exactly what he is hearing.) Test set size and possible equipment bias aside, I have two hypotheses as to why his conclusion isn't significant or surprising.

• Hypothesis #1. Files A & B were produced from different sources. The basic iTunes WAV-to-AAC converter will create a unique result from any particular master recording of a song (varied by sampling rate, bit depth, equalization, etc.).
• Hypothesis #2. An AAC file will have a stronger statistical correlation to its specific master file than to any other version.

If both hypotheses can be proven objectively, File B sounded closer to the CD because there was no other result possible. Mr. Shepherd's pronouncement is a tautology, a logical statement in which the conclusion is equivalent to the premise. And, as confirmed by the blogosphere and twittershpere,  another definition for tautology is "needless repetition of an idea, without imparting additional force or clearness."

My full test methodology can be found here. Using results from a sample set of three songs, we find the following:

Hypothesis #1. In all cases, the iTunes encoder produced a different AAC file from the 24-96 version of a song than from the 16-44 version, verified with the same null test used by Mr. Shepherd. The titles were chosen essentially at random from my 24-96 WAV collection and cross genres, so there is no reason to believe the result won't be repeated for any 24-96/16-44 file pair that does not have special characteristics.

Hypothesis #2. To get an objective measure of correlation, I mixed aligned versions of all WAV/AAC pairs (one in-phase, the other phase-inverted) and calculated the RMS volume of the resulting difference wave. That is, on average, how measurable the difference is between the WAV file and AAC file tested. Results below.

(Lower values indicate closer correlation between AAC and WAV files.)

In all cases, the closest correlation was between the 16-44 WAV and its corresponding AAC. This makes sense, as there is less information lost from compressing a 16-44 master to AAC than a 24-96. And in all cases, the off-diagonal files (an AAC mixed with a file other than its master) showed no closer correlation than the main-diagonal files (AAC mixed with its master), to the precision of the measuring tools.

Therefore, we can conclude that Mr. Shepherd's test was unwittingly biased toward hearing a closer match between the CD master and File B (created directly from the CD by standard iTunes) than File A (ceated by Mastered for iTunes from a different master). It is not surprising or significant that he did, in fact, prefer File B.

Nowhere in Apple's technical literature or advertising do they actually say the goal of Mastered for iTunes is to create audio files that sound 'closer to the CD.' Apple does say they set out to create a process and tools that produce audio files that are closer to the source. So we repeated our test method to compare Mastered for iTunes v. standard iTunes to see which produces files closer to a 24-96 master. Come back to see results.


            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #25            

Title: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook

Artist: Ella Fitzgerald

Genre: Jazz

Year: 1956

I didn't become aware of Ella Fitzgerald until the 70s, when her TV commercials. ("Is it live, or is it Memorex?") made her almost seem a caricature of herself. I'm very glad to have restored an original-edition copy of this LP from my father-in-law's collection to get insight into her earlier career. It reveals Ms. Fitzgerald delivering interpretations of Cole Porter songs that the composer himself must have thought true to his intent.

© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

How Vinyl and iPods Ganged Up to Kill the Audio CD

NPR reported that CD sales tanked in 2010, particularly among younger buyers. The trend has continued until now and suggests that vinyl and iPods are sinking the audio CD into the so-called "fidelity belly," where mediocre products go to die.

[Image: Race to Obsolesence, David Lane.]

In his book Trade-Off, journalist Kevin Maney wote that a truly successful product provides either the richest user experience (fidelity) or the greatest convenience. Less successful products fall into what he labeled the fidelity belly, "the no-man's-land of consumer experience," characterized by commercial apathy, insufficient fidelity and insufficient convenience. (See diagram below right.)

Apple succeeds in the consumer computer market by providing the richest pre-sales experience in its retail stores. Dell and HP succeed by providing an ultra-convenient pre-sales experience online. Who is in the belly? Everyone else.

Sinking into the fidelity belly is essentially the fast track to obsolescence. Staying out of the belly is never assured, because customer expectations for fidelity and convenience constantly evolve.

While it may seem that the audio CD thrived for more than 20 years because of high fidelity, what it really offered over its fraternal twin on vinyl was convenience — better robustness, more portability, multi-disc changers, in-vehicle players, random/repeat play, remote control.

In the last decade the iPod arrived to match all the conveniences of the CD, adding small (and ever smaller) player size, ubiquitous portability, invisible storage, and greater (and ever greater) capacity. Nothing can match the convenience of weightless digital audio, now available in a variety of formats at both lower and higher resolution than CD quality (choice is convenient, too).

On several online forums catering to vinyl aficianados, I posed the question, "what is it about playing an LP that appeals to you?" After all, the fundamentals of record playback haven't significantly changed in 100 years. It isn't necessarily sound quality (except among self-described audiophiles). Almost unanimously, the response came back that the real appeal of vinyl stems from interaction with an LP as a satisfying physical object — large format album art, liner notes, even having to flip sides. Respondents were quite eloquent about it.

When was the last time you ever heard anyone wax rhapsodic about interacting with a CD? Has anyone ever considered a CD collectible for its nostalgia value or status as an art object? The audience for vinyl will keep it out of the belly by uniquely defining fidelity for themselves, establishing a multi-sense standard no other physical medium is likely to meet.

Thus the CD has been forced back along the convenience axis by dematerialized digital audio, forced down along the fidelity axis by vinyl, and ultimately swallowed up in the fidelity belly. It is now or will be soon become obsolete. (What to do with obsolete CDs? Here is one idea.) At least one study concluded that less than 10%  of listeners will be buying physical media in 2-4 years; that population will likely consist almost entirely of vinyl buyers, not CD buyers.

Way out in fidelity/convenience space is Maney's "fidelity mirage," a product that can deliver both super-high convenience and super-high fidelity. It is virtually impossible to do this in the commercial marketplace. Companies that attempt to reach the mirage usually fail and sink back into the belly.

But consider a high-resolution digital transfer of an LP, taken on the owner's own equipment, calibrated to his exact specifications, and restored in software to the best possible sound quality. The dematerialized result delivers super-high convenience, the original physical object retains its super-high fidelity. Is the fidelity mirage real?


            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #24           

Title: Social Studies

Artist: Carla Bley
Genre: Jazz
Year: 1981



Carla Bley (b. 1936) has composed and performed in a wide range of styles over her long career, including free jazz, jazz opera, political jazz with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, and one of most beautiful Christmas records ever. But the music that resonates most with me comes from the large ensemble with the ever-shifting lineup known as The Carla Bley Band. Social Studies is a fine example of their work. But, of all my Carla Bley LPs, I really chose to highlight this one here for its cover art still life of endangered physical media.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

Modern Playback: Lossless Digital Audio Streaming through the Fog



[Edited 2019-Jan]

I am not so much interested in getting my albums back in the rotation as I am in getting rid of them, just like I got rid of my audio CDs.

OK, I didn't "get rid" of the CDs. I transferred their content to 16/44.1 lossless WAV files, then retired all those jewel boxes and cardboard sleeves to a closet with the rest of my no-longer-needed install discs. That reclaimed much-needed shelf space, simplified the main audio stack by eliminating the need for a CD player, and created a new world of playback options.

Playback from physical media by dedicated players is 20th century. The CD player is obsolete. When music is captured in bits and streamed digitally, virtually any electronic device can be a player to varying degrees. (I'm convinced digital video streaming will eventually obsolete the Blu-Ray player and TV DVR, too.)

Protocols like Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and AirPlay enable computers, network-aware audio components, and hand-held devices to organize dynamically as:

• Digital Music Servers (DMS)
• Digital Music Players (DMP)
• Digital Music Renderers (DMR)
• Digital Music Controllers (DMC)

A DMR is a limited type of DMP that cannot locate content on its own. It must be set up by a third party—the DMC.

Once devices have connected, digital audio can stream from DMS to DMP/DMR via standard network transport—if not through "the cloud," then certainly through "the fog" (the wireless cloud inside your house).

Any computer in my house can send music to any other computer. Computers can send music to the networked audio video receiver (AVR) in the den. My smartphone can play files stored on computer. Computers or the AVR can play files stored on phones.

My preferred playback configuration is a UPnP smartphone app acting as a DMC, directing the AVR as a DMR to play WAV files accessed through the computer in my office as a DMS. All wireless and controlled from wherever in the house my phone and I happen to be, a solution more elegant than any point-to-point wireless audio gizmo. (The AVR controls audio distribution to speaker sets in various locations. I most often listen to music in the kitchen/dining area during meal prep and enjoyment, or outside on the patio when it isn't Michigan winter.)

This is playback at its most flexible, most powerful and most convenient: over 1 TB of indexed uncompressed audio—my entire dematerialized library—literally in the palm of my hand. And there is no reason why music currently confined to LPs can't join the digital party in a way that preserves the unique sonic characteristics of vinyl.

Then the physical LPs can join their CD brethren in retirement.

               Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #3              

Title: Einstein on the Beach

Artist: Phlip Glass Ensemble
Genre: Opera
Year: 1978




A funny thing happens when you ephemeralize an LP from a physical object into streaming bits—the particulars of its pedigree become less important. The Fog doesn't care whether my Philip Glass bits originated with the cool indie Tomato Records box set or the mass market Sony Classics re-issue. (For the record, my bits came from the former but the album art above came from the latter.) So, with your digital transfer safely stored, you are free to find a collector willing to pay a premium for a late 70s cultural artifact.

© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.