28 days
Because lemmy and mastodon don’t have manipulative algorithms! Maybe we should just outlaw those kind of algos? /showerthoughts
Übercomplicated
Linux nerd. Music lover. Specialty coffee obsessed. The list goes on; stop using so many gosh darn periods!
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- 91 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: February 19th, 2024
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Does anyone still talk about Keeper password manager? I feel like I used to hear about that one a lot, and now it has just disappeared off of the face of the earth.
The beauty of open source
Well, I unfortunately failed.
Do they install DNS filters locally on the machines at all?
No, the kids are allowed to bring their own laptops, because some rich parents insisted on their kids using MacBooks. I tried pushing Linux for the kiddo, but turns out whatever CISCO wifi system the school is using actively blocks Linux (including, for some reason, black listing the arch repos). A lot of stuff is blocked — though easily bypassed by VPNs or the wireguard router proxy I set up — by wifi black lists, including random stuff like duckduckgo and dict.cc
Actually, I did get an ad for a vibrator on dict.cc once, so maybe that makes sense after all. I, a man. Not sure what I’d use it for.
I’m unfortunately not a parent, just a relative, so there is only so much I can do to harass the school about it. I also live abroad, so 🤷 — I try though.
Nah, I managed surprisingly well. In third grade I did really intense dyslexic-specific tutoring (9h a week), and it helped massively. I actually ended up scoring the highest reading comprehension score in my random regional school’s class in 5th grade, I think because of it. There were struggles, but nothing I couldn’t live with. One of my best friends was trans (not publicly back then, ofc), and trust me their school experience was far, far more difficult. I just felt some camaraderie, finding someone else with a audio processing disorder; I didn’t mean to fish for sympathy or anything like that.
Fountain pens for the win, nothing as nice as writing cursive with a good, wet fountain pen. I learned in primary and hated it, and then got obsessed with calligraphy in 10th grade and got a proper fountain pen and good ink and fell in love with the experience.
Learning to write well is really wonderful. I wish I had learned properly in school, instead of having to teach myself. I will teach my offspring, though! If I ever have any — not looking so promising in the current climate. As in political, but also climate change.
There’s an argument to be made against standardized testing. Very neurodivergent individuals, for example, can suffer a lot under bad standardized tests. Idk, though, it would be better to just make a better system, rather than letting people opt out. As long as that’s not happening, there is, however, an argument against standardized tests.
Same!!! I have the auditory thingy and dyslexia, so writing (words, not math) was hell on earth for me for most of highschool. Getting to use a laptop in 11th and 12th grade was a godsent.
But in 10th grade I actually did something that mostly solved my hatred of handwriting: I taught myself calligraphy and whole-arm-writing. Now I love handwriting, don’t have pain doing it anymore, people compliment my writing, etc.
Though I still can’t listen to stuff while writing 🤷 luckily I was able to use a laptop in lectures (philosophy is very notes heavy), and after college it becomes irrelevant, thank god.
I did! The IT department literally laughed at me. I also tried to get them to let teachers install uBlock Origin, because they apparently will watch educational YouTube videos in class sometimes, and then get random ads for everyone to suffer under. But uBlock Origin doesn’t have their support… Ironically, they only support Windows computers and iPhones on the school network. Android, MacOS, and Linux are all officially unsupported.
This is why I switched!!! I don’t use streaming services much, but I hated spotify’s shuffle and general music suggestions. So I tested qobuz and tidal, and can confirm that tidal’s suggestions are far superior to Spotify’s. I still prefer collecting albums and listening to them individually though
Nowadays, it’s about how they mastered it. I can tell you for a fact Ozzy’s no more tears CD sounds like shit and the double record mix is FARRRR better, because it doesn’t have the life squished out of it from brickwalling. Is that digital vs analog? No. Its mastering.
This is 10000% true!! I worked as a mixing and mastering engineer for a while, and lemme tell you… the loudness wars never ended. This is why I still collect vinyl, the medium is kinda shit, but the masters are so much better that it’s hugely worth it for a about 2/3 albums I own (1/3 are duds; I can live with that).
I don’t about you, but in my country Tidal is cheaper than Spotify. But that might be placebo
/jk, though tidal is actually cheaper here. I can’t tell the difference in blind testing between 320 kbps mp3 exported in Reaper and the original wav; they’re indistinguishable to me. Actually, I can tell them apart with some airwindows dithers, but that is a pretty esoteric exception.
Thank you!
I suspect you haven’t missed anything and the audio tracks provided have been either inadvertently or deliberately manipulated by some other factor unrelated to the RCA cables.
This is very, very possible, especially given that the measurements were hardly taken scientifically or with video evidence. And that suspicious pre-amp…
Apart from something extraordinarily badly designed, broken or dirty, there is no plausible reason why a cable carrying a signal with no significant current and no high frequency components can have any effect on that signal - high frequency audio is approximately DC in the wider scope of Electronics Engineering.
This has been and still is my understanding, but the video just freaked me out a little, as it makes very tall claims about it’s magical measurements. But it’s good to get the reality confirmed by an expert, thank you!
That answer doesn’t suite people trying to get rich selling ridiculous cables though.
Yeah, I’m still a little in shock that the weird cable costs $200… how can people take that seriously when cables for $5 sound identifical in blind testing??
I looked the actual cables up, and all of them look pretty dang fancy. The brands and specific cables, according to the video’s description, are these:
- Mogami: https://mogamicable.com/category/bulk/microphone/quad/ (this website’s description makes me very suspicious, as they mention RFI interference, which is 100% irrelevant for audio, since it’s well past the audible realm)
- Belden: https://www.belden.com/products/cable/audio-cable/analog-audio-cable/8402
- Neotech: https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/balanced-cables/neotech-nemoi-1220-dual-shielded-up-occ-silver-interconnected-cable-o10mm-p-13584.html (that price is… quite something)
I actually own an old monster cable! It looks awesome, but has horrible shielding. Today, I usually get Cordial cables from Thomann, because they’re pretty cheap, have beefy connectors, and decent shielding. But for anything professional it’s balanced all the way, I would never use RCA if I can help it, to avoid ground-loops and stuff.
I’m not reading all that
lol, I can’t blame you. Brevity is not my strength.
TLDR (I’m very long-winded): this YT video took measurements of three different audio cables, including a 200€ one, and found differences where there should be none. My physics knowledge (and general consensus among the scientific community) says the measurements of the different cables should be identical or near-identical — or I am, at least, under that impression. My own measurements, because the channel does provide the files, confirm that the expensive 200€ cable does measure differently from the others. But surely something else must be causing this? Please help me find out what that is, Lemmy!
Edit: see this and this other excellent comment.
Below, I go into a little more detail and context, and I go through what I have tried, etc.; I tried splitting everything up into chunks to make it easier to read, but I was never good at being succinct. Sorry about that 😬 :P
Context: What Am I Talking About?
Firstly, I should clarify that this isn’t relevant to most people, only really physics and audio-technology nerds. But I’m desperate. This question has been tormenting me for days…
I should provide some context. For some reason, YouTube gave me a rather odd video suggestion. I am very interested in audio technology, mixing, and mastering, but I’m not a snake-oil audiophile type. I guess you could call me a lover-of-audio, e.g., audiophile, but I don’t attach myself to that community. So you can imagine my confusion when this video was suggested to me on YouTube.
For anyone unwilling to click on an ambiguous YT link like that, here is a brief description: audiophile guy (who believes that cables affect sound) compares three cables, two of which are “cheap” (e.g., approx. 50€) and one of which is expensive (like 200€ — for a cable). His conclusion is ultimately (yes, I watched that far) that they don’t really affect sound, because they’re just interconnects (so RCA cables), and not speaker or power cables. But he actually records each cable and provides those music files — which means I can compare them as well…
By “records each cable,” I mean that he used each cable to connect a CD-player to a pre-amp (for some reason) and then an analogue-to-digital convert (ADC) into his computer, where he can record the output; this way he gets just the supposed difference the cables make. I realize that the CD-player might have some inconsistencies, since CDs are a moving medium, but jitter compensation and stuff like that is very advanced these days, so this is getting pretty close to an accurate measurement of the cables, I think (correct me if I’m wrong!).
In the video, this guys claims that the measurements show a difference between the cables. This debate around cables is something I thought was quite contested, so I naturally decided to download the tracks (which he provides in the description) and compare them myself. Here’s what happened.
My Own Testing: They Don’t Null
So I downloaded his recordings, phase-aligned (which they weren’t already) everything and normalized to peak (which, again, was necessary, and creates the lowest delta compared to LUFS, etc.), and then null-tested. That means I inverted the phase of one, played two of the files at the same time, and thus got the delta between them.
The Mogami and Belden cables (the cheap ones) are nearly identical; there is a slight difference in the null-test, but it is statistically small enough, that I attribute it to measurement inconsistency (e.g., CD-player, DAC, or ADC performance, but also maybe natural conditions, etc.). I especially suspect — given that most differences occur at higher frequencies but aren’t really audible when listening — a jitter related issue, causing the timing to be just a little off, thus creating a delta in the higher frequencies. This could be due to the CD-player, but I have no idea.
…the Neotech (the expensive one), however, is significantly different.
Firstly, he provides the file for the Neotech cable with a significant phase delay compared to the others, of about 50 ms, and it is also about 0.02 db louder than the others. That is rather suspicious on his part. This alone makes it sound better, but when I correct this volume and phase difference — it still sounds better, and the null-test confirms that it is still quite different (we’re talking differences up to -40 db here, which should definitely be audible).
It turns out, the volume difference actually changes throughout the song; meaning that in some places the difference is 0.01 db, and in others 0.03 db. But I can correct for that! I don’t know why it happens (someone smarter than me, please explain), but I can correct for it… And yet, the null test still shows a clear difference (especially when the singer makes s-sounds, i.e., sibilance).
Please Help Me
What is going on? My physics knowledge tells me this should be impossible. I can only imagine that for some reason the Neotech is more conductive, or something like that, and therefore recreates the harsh and very fast dynamics of sibilance more accurately. (edit: crossed out because this is a little too ridiculous) But the difference in conductivity should not be enough to cause that… I really am confused. Someone with more expertise please explain this!
For context, I cannot blind test ABX the Neotech. I cannot hear any difference whatsoever. This is very subtle stuff here. But I can see a difference, the null test shows differences as high as -45 db when the singer does those s-sounds and everything has been normalized. So clearly something is happening (and again, this is phase aligned and normalized and everything). So what could it possibly be?
Edit: here, for clarity, screenshots of the null test at different moments in the tracks from the youtube vid (here nulling between the magomi and neotech).
Normal part of song, no sibilance or cymbals, but otherwise singing, piano, bass guitar, drums, etc.:
When the singer creates sibilance with an s-sound:
The null test was performed in the Reaper DAW with Voxengo SPAM and Reaper’s built-in phase align, normalization, and phase inversion.
Lemmy, please show me what I have missed! Show me the obvious error I or the video creator made. Sorry to make such a long post on c/asklemmy, but I don’t know where else to ask.
Fiio is excellent, 100% agree. Everything I’ve ever owned from them has had superb build quality. I don’t like their headphones or desk amps much, but all their portable stuff is, in my opinion, the best available.
Gesaffelstein is hardly a pop culture figure, though; I don’t think many gen-z kids know him. But he’s an absolute icon of the 2010s dark techno scene.
The Conspiracy singles were legendary. My Conspiracy Pt. 1 record has a More Cowbell joke on it, which I love. Weird record though, it’s 33 1/3 on one side and 45 on the other. And it doesn’t say that anywhere on the record, so it took me years before realizing I was listening to a slowed down Hatred. I kinda love the slowed down version, funny how that happens :P
- 3 months
I am a small indie artist. I earn nearly no money from streaming services, but I do from Bandcamp, SoundCloud (though fuck Soundcloud, they also suck), actual LPs and CDs sold, etc.
If someone decides to listen to my music over Spotify, or really any streaming service, they are also “stealing” my music. Because I get no money from that, and listening to my music over those platforms strengthens their monopoly (this mostly applies to Spotify).
I need to publish my music on Spotify et al (fuck you discogs) for discoverability, because they have an evil fucking global monopoly, but the moment anyone finds my music there, I would ask them to listen to it elsewhere.
It will literally benefit me, and indie artist, more, if you bootleg my music instead of listening via streaming services, as this weakens their monopoly. Seriously.
I have a different job, I don’t need to live from my music right now, so the stakes are fairly low for me. But it still sucks to see streaming services ruin independent music like this. I would ask everyone to bootleg music, and then support artists like me through Bandcamp (especially CDs and LPs) and donations (or merch, though I don’t have any), if you appreciate the art.
I don’t expect anyone to immediately buy niche music they don’t know, so bootlegging until you become a fan seems reasonable to me. I’ve discovered many of my favorite albums like that, eventually buying LPs online and donating to the artist; that is far more beneficial to those artists than listening over any streaming service (including the slightly better tidal and Amazon music).
/rant over
While it may have used machine learning, it was definitely not in the ‘slop’ category. I generally think of slop as things which try to imitate some kind of creative or human element (like the enhancements from DLSS 5), but FSR and earlier DLSS used machine learning to replace anti-aliasing like MSAA, etc., through super-sampling and temporal technologies (frame gen kinda sucked though). So, to answer your hopefully literal question, DLSS has, in the past, not been a AI slop filter.