We are all animals.

02009-06-18 | Uncategorized

A friend sent me this link.

Animals can tell right from wrong – Telegraph
Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.

Until recently, humans were thought to be the only species to experience complex emotions and have a sense of morality. But Prof Marc Bekoff, an ecologist at University of Colorado, Boulder, believes that morals are “hard-wired” into the brains of all mammals and provide the “social glue” that allow often aggressive and competitive animals to live together in groups.

He has compiled evidence from around the world that shows how different species of animals appear to have an innate sense of fairness, display empathy and help other animals that are in distress. His conclusions will provide ammunition for animal welfare groups pushing to have animals treated more humanely, but some experts are sceptical about the extent to which animals can experience complex emotions and social responsibility.

Prof Bekoff, who presents his case in a new book Wild Justice, said: “The belief that humans have morality and animals don’t is a long-standing assumption, but there is a growing amount of evidence that is showing us that this simply cannot be the case.

Now go ahead and play nice, human.

Video killed the Radio Star?

02009-06-15 | Uncategorized

This article in the Guardian argues that since every person has a finite amount of spending money and since Games and DVD sales have gone upe dramatically – game sales more than tripled and movie sales and rentals nearly doubled – there was simply less money left to buy music.

But, one could also say that it is easier to obtain and download free music than it is to obtain free games and movies – the gaming and movie industries use much more serious DRM than the music biz, which has actually dropped DRM in most cases.

Are downloads really killing the music industry? Or is it something else? | Technology | guardian.co.uk
The first clue of where all those downloaders are really spending their money came in searching for games statistics: year after year ELSPA had hailed “a record year”. In fact if you look at the graph above, you’ll see that games spend has risen dramatically – from £1.18bn in 1999 to £4.03bn in 2008.

Meanwhile music spending (allowing for that * of adjustment in 2004 onwards) has gone from £1.94bn to £1.31bn.

DVD sales and rentals, meanwhile, have nearly doubled, from a total of £1.286bn in 1999 to £2.56bn in 2008.

Young music fans deaf to iPod’s limitations

02009-03-05 | Music

Young music fans deaf to iPod’s limitations – Times Online
Research has shown, however, that today’s iPod generation prefers the tinnier and flatter sound of digital music, just as previous generations preferred the grainier sounds of vinyl. Computers have made music so easy to obtain that the young no longer appreciate high fidelity, it seems.

The theory has been developed by Jonathan Berger, Professor of Music at Stanford University, California. For the past eight years his students have taken part in an experiment in which they listen to songs in a variety of different forms, including MP3s, a standard format for digital music. “I found not only that MP3s were not thought of as low quality, but over time there was a rise in preference for MP3s,” Professor Berger said.

LR comments:

mp3 doesn’t have the dynamic range of a .wav file, although surely it captures more than vinyl or a cassette! Ears are like eyes — not everyone can hear in high resolution.

The dynamic range of an mp3 does not differ so much from an uncompressed .wav or .aif file. The difference lies in how music has been mastered in he last decade. Too much limiting, too much compression during the mastering process. At this point many people are used to that clipping sound and many young people have grown up with it. It’s how all pop music sounds at this point

On the other hand, listen to an mp3 file from my One Guitar album, the source of which was NOT compressed at all and you will notice that the mp3 does a very good job of delivering the dynamics of the recording.

I would conclude that the professor looked at the wrong data. The culprit is not the mp3 file, which as LR points out can be no worse than a cassette was, but the way recordings are mastered today. The last Metallica album will sound flat as a pancake (no dynamics whatsoever) whether you listen to the CD or an mp3. (((I haven’t heard that album, but many people have written about it and Stevo has told me)))

Please note that the term “compression” is used for two very different events.

1. Compression AKA Audio Level Compression AKA Dynamic Range Compression is the act of literally squeezing the music file to make the soft parts as loud as possible. This results in music that can be heard over the engine of your car or in noisy restaurants, but it also means that the dynamic range is lost. Hm, imagine Dürer using a sharpie instead of pencil. On or off, no gradation, so subtlety etc.

2. Compression AKA Data-Compression, is designed to reduce the size of audio files. There is Lossless Compression, e.g. FLAC or Apple Lossless, and there is Lossy Compression, e.g. mp3, OGG and nearly every movie on DVD!

Related Links:
Everythink Louder Than Everything Else
Dynamic Range