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So if it's not the CD, what would be your ideal music delivery system?


Anderton

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I still like the idea of a celestial jukebox - we're getting very close to that, if we aren't there already. The biggest problem is that Smartphones and desktop/laptop computers, which seem like the most likely candidates for listening, aren't really hi-fi devices.

 

I'd also like to see more Pandora/Apple genius-type thinking where suggestions are made based on past preferences. Granted that's more or less in place, but it could be taken further. I'd love to see an "I want to hear something new" button where you could be served, for example, a choice of the top-selling music in 20 different countries. Or whatever.

 

But let's suppose you could design the Ultimate Music Delivery System. What would it be like?

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I'd be happy with portable players that play not only play MP3 but WAV or AIFF files, I suppose, and yes, I know that many of them do. I just miss the artwork and liner notes, so no, I don't have a good answer for this. I suppose if I had an iPad and the albums I purchased came with extensive liner notes like the kind you get when you purchase Smithsonian-Folkways, that'd be pretty good. A lot of the CDs I purchase are international music that often cannot be purchased via download...and have liner notes and interesting booklets that accompany the CD. Now, I totally realize that purchasers like me make up a tiny minority of the music-purchasing public, as I rarely meet anyone who has hundreds of 1940s-1950s field recordings of indigenous music from Africa, Asia, South America, or elsewhere, but it's often the liner notes and booklets that make such purchases so valuable to me. And I also realize that people who purchase "Friday" by Rebecca Black may not be as fascinated by liner notes.

 

[video=youtube;DPVTl9K0lqc]

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I feel like I'm most of the way there with streaming on demand subscription.

 

My current fave, MOG, does 320 kbps streams, and allows me to stream or DL 320's to any broadband computer or onto my phone -- over 4G, which I don't currently have and probably would run out of 'unlimited' bandwidth on sooner rather than later if I did, or WiFi, which I use all the time to load the phone up for the road -- or, if I don't have good connection, it'll let me stream small phone formats over my 3G connection.

 

Of course, neither my computer's built-in mobo nor my 'free' LG Android are really hi fi devices, as noted. They both sound OK patched up to my regular system, but the difference between either (computer's SigmaTel chip is a little better than the phone) and my MOTU 828mkII is fairly noticeable to me -- even using 320 kbps streams.

 

I don't know how the audio from the ROKU boxes is but I did notice that Sony had a video/audio stream box with a 192 kHz/24 bit output. But this guy didn't like the ROKU for a streaming audio subscription service outlet: http://jameswharris.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/mog-v-napster-v-rdio-v-rhapsody/ Although I think his complaint was more about interface...

 

 

 

With regard to finding new music... well, I'm afraid I've all but given up on robots offering suggestions. And don't even talk to me about most DJs.

 

Pandora seemed promising reading about it. What gear and tech loving 21st century citizen isn't drawn to the lure of giant computers grinding away deep-analyzing all the music of the world, and drawing out amazing algorithms that could suggest an infinitely expanding playlist...

 

Too bad that doesn't even come close to working, at least not for me.

 

I can't last 20 minutes with Pandora before running out of skips. About the only 'station' I've ever started that I was able to stick with over an hour was one 'seeded' with John Coltrane and Johnny Harman's sublime reading of "Lush Live." That was good for, I dunno, maybe an hour and a half? Not bad considering the far-less-than-hi fi offered by Pandora free, but it was very much the exception. Trying to see rock/pop listening streams from my choices led to fast frustration.

 

 

 

Now, more or less coincidentally, I am listening to a MOG 'radio' stream...

 

One of the current (new one's in beta) MOG player's quirks is that, when it runs out of playlist, it either loops back around to the first song or, if in 'radio' mode, it spews out a dynamic playlist generated by the songs in the playlist, combined with the effect of a continuously variable slider that goes from 'artist-only' to 'similar artists.'

 

And I do have to say, as far as it's generated that list, it does look promising. I had a gambling-themed playlist I was just starting to sketch out (it's like party tapes, you know? ;) ) with various versions of "Jack of Diamonds" and "The Cuckoo" as well as stuff like "Sin City," and "Ooh Las Vegas," and, I have to say, the robo-playlist generated of those seeds looking pretty promising...

 

Coming up, the MOG 'bots have selected up tracks by Doc Watson, Olla Belle Reed, Roscoe Holcomb, New Lost City Ramblers, Del McCoury and some others...

 

I just tossed in Johnny Cash's "Big River" and slid the artists almost all the way to the 'similar artists' side and it looks even better... Norman Blake, David Grisman, Carter Family, John Hartford, Leo Kottke, Mississippi John Hurt...

 

Maybe I shouldn't count out the robots so soon...

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And better fidelity.


And the ability to pick what you want to hear... and avoid what you don't...
;)

 

I'm perfectly happy with the fidelity. It's not live music, you know. ;)

 

And I like it when I find someone on the air who picks music that I enjoy without me having to select anything. If I like what he plays, I continue listening. If he goes too far off course for too long, I turn it off. For the times when I want to choose what I hear, I have CDs and records, and a few "learner" files on my computer. All the rest of the time, it's background music so I don't care as long as it's not something I dislike.

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I'm perfectly happy with the fidelity. It's not live music, you know.
;)

And I like it when I find someone on the air who picks music that I enjoy without me having to select anything. If I like what he plays, I continue listening. If he goes too far off course for too long, I turn it off. For the times when I want to choose what I hear, I have CDs and records, and a few "learner" files on my computer. All the rest of the time, it's background music so I don't care as long as it's not something I dislike.

Our last sidebar dialog on this topic led me to about 4 hours of listening to the online stream from WAMU's the bluegrass 'sub-station' -- which streams from http://bluegrasscountry.org/ -- if you sign up you can hear pretty good quality streams. And, I have to say, uninterrupted by commercials, with a knowledgeable host, it was a very nice way to catch up with some of the (to me) lesser known BG artists. The announcing was a little distracting, but in a charming way. So, I'm not completely immune to the charms of classic FM, at least from the nonprofit, non-chain sector.

 

That said, there aren't many radio stations that have the near-chaos breadth of many of my playlists...

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I'm perfectly happy with the fidelity. It's not live music, you know.
;)

And I like it when I find someone on the air who picks music that I enjoy without me having to select anything. If I like what he plays, I continue listening. If he goes too far off course for too long, I turn it off. For the times when I want to choose what I hear, I have CDs and records, and a few "learner" files on my computer. All the rest of the time, it's background music so I don't care as long as it's not something I dislike.

 

I'm with this. A lot of times I can't listen to my CD collection or iPod because, "Oh, I know the song already." A lot of times, I'll even feed CDs and tracks I'm not too familiar with into my iPod simply because I want to be surprised every so often. I like discovering new music. I doubt though that the masses feel the same way, although everyone has to hear new music for the first time eventually.

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I'm still scratching my head over this one... I mean, if the reporting here is correct it's real file under: wow, just wow stuff.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/20/blackberry-music-to-serve-up-50-songs-for-5-a-month/

By
Christopher Trout
writer_rss.gif
posted Aug 20th 2011 5:33PM


blackberrymusic-1313863899.jpg
Well, it looks like BlackBerry's banking on another
BBM
to pull it out of the enterprise-only lurch, and this one should be like music to your ears. Earlier this week, we reported that RIM was readying a new
music service
, and now
All Things D
is giving us some juicy (unofficial) details on the tentatively titled BlackBerry Music. The publication says
$5 a month will give users access to 50 songs
that they can share with their BlackBerry-toting friends (also signed up for the service). What's more, it could be officially pumping the jams to the UK, US, and Canada as soon this fall, with other territories to follow in 2012. Rumor also has it that users
won't be able to port the music to other devices
, unless they happen to have a
PlayBook
handy. Somehow we suspect that last bit won't be what draws the youngster in.

Wow. 50 songs for only $5 a month, Blackberry only. That's... just... totally... unbelievable.

 

Rhapsody, Spotify, MOG, Napster, all offer unlimited streams on demand from 11-12 million song libraries. I don't know the particulars on others, but MOG's service, as I noted above, gives you the option of unlimited streaming of relatively hi fi 320 kbps streams to your iOS or Android mobile for an extra $5/mo (which takes you up to the typical $10/mo for computer and mobile streaming).

 

 

Blackberry's corporate orientation has always been an odd fit in the consumer world -- but this is just bizarre. I take it they don't do market research. :facepalm:

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Our last sidebar dialog on this topic led me to about 4 hours of listening to the online stream from WAMU's the bluegrass 'sub-station' -- bluegrasscountry.org


The announcing was a
little
distracting, but in a charming way. So, I'm not
completely
immune to the charms of classic FM, at least from the nonprofit, non-chain sector.

 

 

There are about 4 people who are actually live on the air there, the rest record their shows at home and e-mail them in. The whole operation is automated. When there's a live announcer in the booth, he has to get out of the way of the promos that get fired off by computer at the specified times. The people who do those programs really know their stuff. Trouble is that they're not fully FM broadcast. Around here, they're HD Radio (digital, I-Biquity) and as part of a trade deal, took over a low powered standard FM broadcast transmitter out west of DC. I have a cheap HD radio (I won that at an NAB show) but it sounds much better via the computer with some halfway decent speakers. I can tolerate the HD radio when I'm in the shower, but that's about it. And I can get the standard FM signal in my car radio if I'm heading in the right direction, but I can't get it in my house.

 

Do you ever listen to Weenie Juke Radio? Or WWOZ? Or WEVL? You'll get your fill of eclectic stuff there. But they're all pretty lo fi. It's in keeping with most of the music they play, but Bluegrass Country does it better even when Gary Henderson is playing 78s live on the air.

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There are about 4 people who are actually live on the air there, the rest record their shows at home and e-mail them in. The whole operation is automated. When there's a live announcer in the booth, he has to get out of the way of the promos that get fired off by computer at the specified times. The people who do those programs really know their stuff. Trouble is that they're not fully FM broadcast. Around here, they're HD Radio (digital, I-Biquity) and as part of a trade deal, took over a low powered standard FM broadcast transmitter out west of DC. I have a cheap HD radio (I won that at an NAB show) but it sounds much better via the computer with some halfway decent speakers. I can tolerate the HD radio when I'm in the shower, but that's about it. And I can get the standard FM signal in my car radio if I'm heading in the right direction, but I can't get it in my house.


Do you ever listen to Weenie Juke Radio? Or WWOZ? Or WEVL? You'll get your fill of eclectic stuff there. But they're all pretty lo fi. It's in keeping with most of the music they play, but Bluegrass Country does it better even when Gary Henderson is playing 78s live on the air.

:thu:

 

I've been definitely impressed by the DJs.

 

___________________

 

 

 

I had to look up HD Radio to see what it is (sure, I've heard the term thrown around but never bothered finding out about it until now) -- oh, gosh, what a joke! It's unbelievable that the FCC went with a proprietary, commercial royalty-dependent standard -- in 2002, you could try blaming it on Bush but I suspect that it was probably still-sitting Clinton era folks calling at least some of those shots, but I dunno -- I know one thing, it looks like a real reaming of the US's 'public' airwaves.

 

Unbelievable.

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Blackberry's corporate orientation has always been an odd fit in the consumer world -- but
this
is just bizarre. I take it they don't
do
market research.
:facepalm:

 

And I say this as a Blackberry user...

 

They were King Of The Mobile World in 2008-2009. Actually there was a point in 2009 where RIM was the fastest growing company in the world.

 

But I guess keeping up with anticipated growth also stunted their ability to adequately plan and strategize. Within two years they plummeted from #1 in mobile market share to #6 or #8, depending on who you listen to. Apple has always been a steady competitor, but the Android platform came out of nowhere and simply whipped Blackberry's ass into submission.

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I liked my Blackberry Curve -- as a phone. Er... aside from the almost unusably tiny chiclet keys -- they would have done a lot better with a regular number pad wedded to the T9 text entry system -- I was much faster entering text that way... the notion of a QWERTY keyboard that is so tiny that one fingertip (and I do not have big fingers) hits nine keys at once is just nuts. I mean I'm a pretty damn quick touch typist -- but that's muscle memory. I practically have to 'air-type' to figure out where the keys were supposed to be. And trying to use the internet on it was an exercise in frustration. (Of course, that was accessing it over the old '2G' Edge network, which was barely faster than an old fashioned dial up connection.) But it got great reception and was delightfully small.

 

But, you know, my 'free' LG Android is also nice and small (although somewhat heavier) and the haptic feedback touchscreen is a delight to use... the number keypad is as big as a first-generation Cricket, and the text keypad is big enough to see, easing typing... and I've got really pretty good at Swype text entry. (The touch screen oriented text entry system by the inventor of T9 which allows the user to 'draw' a continuous line through the letters of the word he's typing and does on the fly correction that is often pretty good -- at least at long words (less room for ambiguity/confusion by the robot in guessing your target letters). And, of course, though the 3.2" screen is smallish, and 3G is a bit slow, it's a quite decent web device.

 

And then, of course, there are the apps. Some of them are pretty hip. I love my free (ad-driven) guitar tuner. I have a few decent enough free recorders, flashlight, bubble level, map stuff, a slick barcode/QR code reader -- and, of course, the MOG app which is my gateway to music. Since I got that, the only reason I've used the built in music player was to access some of my own impromptu phone recordings (the BB's mic recording really sucked, I have to say) and listen to the week's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me show.

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I'd also like to see more Pandora/Apple genius-type thinking where suggestions are made based on past preferences. Granted that's more or less in place, but it could be taken further. I'd love to see an "I want to hear something new" button where you could be served, for example, a choice of the top-selling music in 20 different countries. Or whatever.


But let's suppose you could design the Ultimate Music Delivery System. What would it be like?

Well I like your idea a lot Craig.... a system that gives me suggestions based on past listening. Honestly, though, and I know I`m...:deadhorse: but I would really love to have choices over how I listen to a record... give me choices between the audiophile mix, the squashed radio mix, etc... other than that, I could care less how its delivered as long as its convenient. I still like buying CDs and I also download about 50% of my music from iTunes.

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I was thinking about the fact that there are times when you're out in the world that a bit of program compression is a nice thing. Driving in the car, riding on a bike in the wind... but that is a technology that could be easily added on (and there may actually be some mp3 players that offer that -- although it would be kind of nice to be able to use my favorite plug in compressor... I know that puppy pretty well after all these years).

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Hmmm... If you use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip your CD, it will pull in whatever artwork and lyrics it can find on the web, along with all the MP3 metadata (song titles & such). I would think there would be a phone app out there that would pull up the artwork & lyrics when the music played, like WinAmp does.

 

I agree with Blue, also - going a bit further, it'd be really nice if there were an app that compresses the music based on the ambient noise, so if you're in a car or work or somewhere else excessively noisy, it'd crank up the compression so you can hear all the soft parts without getting deafened by the loud parts...

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Yes, that sounds like a really good idea. And I think some of us have also suggested having compressors on car stereos so we could adjust it according to what we were listening to and how loud it was, etc., although some people argued against this, saying that this was giving the consumer too many controls. :D I don't like to constantly underestimate people in this manner, though, and would argue for it.

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it'd be really nice if there were an app that compresses the music based on the ambient noise, so if you're in a car or work or somewhere else excessively noisy, it'd crank up the compression so you can hear all the soft parts without getting deafened by the loud parts...

 

 

My car has something like that, in fact it's pretty common on modern car radios. But I don't think any of them actually sense ambient noise, they work off a speed sensor from a wheel or the transmission, figuring that when you go faster, it's noisier. My GPS has the same feature but it works on the speed that it computes. But it doesn't know whether it's in my Lexus or your 1962 VW Microbus. There's no "ratio" control, so when I set the volume so that it's shouting at me when I'm driving on the highway, it's too quiet when I'm stuck next to a bus in city traffic.

 

I remember an article in, I think, Radio-Electronics magazine from probably the late 1950s on how to build an actual noise-sensing volume control for a car, but I never built one. I should have. With all the electronics DIY web sites around now, there's probably a project article for one using modern components.

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Speaking of controllable audio compression, as long as we're airballing, wouldn't it be nice if the industry were to adopt RPG volume indexing (the audio content is not modified but an RMS-type index is affixed to the header so that RPG-aware players have the option of adjusting their playback.

 

It's not a perfect system but it's a good start.

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Speaking of controllable audio compression, as long as we're airballing, wouldn't it be nice if the industry were to adopt RPG volume indexing (the audio content is not modified but an RMS-type index is affixed to the header so that RPG-aware players have the option of adjusting their playback.


It's not a perfect system but it's a good start.

 

 

That would be really cool, but hell, the labels haven't even figured how to release CDs with song title info embedded into the data... I don't hold out long odds on having them do anything that creative...

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As an ideal delivery system, I'd like something like a music-oriented Kindle, with features kinda like these:

 

 

Some choices in radio mode would be good. Basic genres maybe, or decades, that sort of thing, with some drill down to more specific categories as the mood dictates.

 

Some DJs, too. Like here in Austin, we have this DJ, John Aielli whose has had the morning slot on the Univ of Texas station KUT since the early 70s -the show called "Eklektikos" (yes, John is greek.) He has to be personally responsible for giving airplay to thousands and thousands of very eclectic artists and tunes that the public would just find a fraction of if left to the 10 40 lists and commercial radio, etc. The Austin music vibe is very eclectic and I think John to some extent contributed to creating that vibe. DJs can be important, true cultural lightening rods.

 

 

And of course, FLACC-level fidelity of course. Although I could deal with dumbing down the fidelity on the radio mode a bit, especially if that helped tease people in actually buying and owning for the better quality.

 

 

 

I think I'll bump this thread around Christmas time just in case I can get lucky...

 

nat whilk ii

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What's it cost to buy a band of frequencies from the fcc? I'm gonna release my back catalogue in 2030 for use with that fm pill you can take to to then receive 30 or 60 days of my station's programming in your head.

 

Go ask Alice! :lol:

 

Oh yeah, almost forgot... If you can hear the music in your head for more than four hours seek medical attention to avoid injury.

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