geir ove rapp’s weblog

Previously I have mainly been writing about technology and then digitized music. But some times I get the pleasure listening to the original. Yesterday Neil Young was playing in Oslo, and I was there, of course. It was a great concert, despite the bad location in Oslo Spektrum, with two hours of mainly old classics and full of energy from the Old Man. The set list contained classics like “Hey hey my my”, “Cortez the killer”, “Cinnamon girl”, a fantastic acoustic version of “Helpless”, “Heart of gold”, “Old man” and of course a very energic version og “Rockin’ in the free world”.

There are a lot of spam comments trying to enter my blog, about 20-25 every day, but fortunately my spam filter is working perfect :-)

Finally things start to happen. HDtracks is a new online record store offering DRM free downloads of uncompressed music. Currently they are offering AIFF, FLAC and MP3 (320 kbps), which means its files are compatible with all digital players, and they even they plan to extend their offer to also include downloads in HD, meaning 24 bit/96 kHZ, which match the quality of DVD-Audio. I really need to buy the Slim Devices Transporter soon…

The catalog of HDtracks is currently quite limited, but it holds some titles of i.a. Henry Rollins Band, Ray Davis and The Kinks, Norah Jones, The Byrds and some other interesting artists. The price charged for a complete album is $ 11.98 which is quite reasonable.

I’ll test it out as soon as I get home to my Squeezebox. You should test it out too at www.hdtracks.com.

The Vacuum Tube State of the Art Conference is to be held in Vancouver later this month. On the agenda is not surprisingly topics like vacuum tubes, transformers, magnetic tape recordings, turntables, dynamics and room acoustics. More surprising is the session about Digital Music Servers for the Home.

Although I have left both turn tables and tape decks long time ago I’m still a big fan of vacuum tubes. Not that they sound “right” from a measurement point of view, but they sound great! I still believe my Marshall Studio 15 tube amp outperforms any transistor amp when it comes to sound quality. It sounds much warmer and full of life! Also, I am currently working on a vacuum tube headphone amplifier DIY project :-) More news on that later.

More on the Vacuum State of the Art Conference is found here.

Nine Inch Nails have just released their latest album “The Slip” for free download on the net! This is the second album available as download from NIN, the previous being “Ghosts”.

The Slip is available in both MP3 (320 kbps), FLAC and high-resolution WAV (24 bit/96 kHz). Downloading of the largest files are offered as torrents and downloads in just a few minutes. And not only is it free, but they even encourage to distribute it and share it with friends under the Creative Commons licence. The physical CD will not be available before July. It will be interesting to see how much that will sell… But even though NIN offers this download for free I would be happy to pay for such services in the future.

As you may have notices from my previous postings, I have been waiting for someone to do this for a long time. Until now I have been forced to by the CD for then ripping it to achieve this quality. Now I finally get full CD-quality and above without having to go via the physical media. (Unfortunately my Squeezebox only supports 24 bit/48 kHz).

This is the way to go, Trent!

Download the album at www.nin.com.

This is fabulous news for those of us who are pure Neil Young fans and audio freaks :-) Neil Young, well known for being an audio freak himself, has announced that he will launch his “Archives” on Blu-ray. The Archives project has been going on for a while, and will be a complete biography of Neil Young’s more than 40-years musical career. First out is the ‘Volume 1: 1963 - 1972′ a ten-disc collection including previously unreleased studio recordings as well as live performances. Release date will be sometime this fall. The 2006 ‘Heart of Gold’ DVD was fantastic! This will probably be even better!!!

Previously Neil Young has released many of his albums on DVD-Audio as his high-resolution audio format and I guess Blu-ray will be comparable to DVD-Audio regarding quality both formats supporting 24 bit/192 kHz in stereo, although it will not match SACD :-(

One of Young’s main arguments for using Blu-ray is the possibility to navigate the extras while listening to high-resolution music. He also plans to release even more extras via the Internet. To get this you will need a player supporting the Internet functions of profile 2.0.

I just recently got my car back from the workshop after some “reds” broke into it and stole my air bag and stereo. To my surprise the workshop had replaced my CD-player with a brand new cassette player!!! I didn’t even know those things were made anymore! Fortunately I still have my iPod adapter.

“Well, I wus sittin’ home alone an’ started to sweat,
Figured they wus in my TV set.
Peeked behind the picture frame,
Got a shock from my feet, hittin’ right up in the brain.
Them Reds caused it!
I know they did . . . them hard-core ones.”

(Bob Dylan; Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues)

OK, I admit it. I am a follower! (That was hard for a guy who claims to be a techno-geek) 

Just recently I bought a pair of Koss PortaPro headphones to replace my crappy earplugs. The PortaPro has been in the market for over 20 years, launched in 1984, and is just as image building as the iPod for portable music, and they are more popular than ever. I must admit that is quite impressive.

The PortaPro sounds great, maybe a little too much BASS, but very open and clear. They are also very comfortable to wear, and they have a open construction, meaning you hear the surroundings good as well (important feature to avoid being hit by a bus or bicycle sneaking up from behind :-). I can now even look street cool and listen to good music at the same time.

Source of music from this brief test was Steely Dan’s Aja, which is a fantastic album, encoded and compressed at 192 kbps WMA and played back from my Sony Walkman. I haven’t tested the PortaPro on my Hi-Fi setup yet, and I very much doubt they will even get close to my AKG K 240 studio monitors, but then again, they weren’t designed for that purpose either.

Please share your experience!

After last weeks HD DVD defeat to Sony and Blu-ray, Microsoft is now in discussion with Sony to implement Blu-ray into their Xbox. Sony has already got Blu-ray as a standard feature in their PlayStation 3 console, which obviously is a great competitive advantage the way this format war turned out. Microsoft used to be one of the main supporters of HD DVD, but has admitted their defeat and is now turning the other way. A deal with Microsoft of course means even more money to Sony.

Traditionally EBU and ITU has recommended a viewing distance of between 4 to 6 times screen height for standard definition television and down to 3H for high definition. BBC has taken it further and performed a survey on the relationship between resolution, screen size and viewing distance. If you sit 2.7 meters from the TV screen, which is average viewing distance in Europe, then you want a pixel size of 0.8 mm. By this logic you should be content with the standard definition 576 lines up to screen diagonal sizes of 37″, 720 lines up to 45″ and 1080 lines up to 70″.

This means that Full HD 1080 has no effect on a 42″ if you sit more than 2.5 meters from your TV screen. I have a 42″ Panasonic and my viewing distance is about 3.3 meters, which implies I don’t need HD at all, or turned the other way around, I should have at least a 55″ to be able to enjoy Full HD 1080 :-) Can someone please tell my wife?

I must however argue that I can clearly see a difference viewing the same material in standard definition 576i and 720p. It should also be noted that the tests performed by BBC are all using progressive scanned source material, even for standard definition. And progressive scanned material does in any case outperform interlaced scanned material, hence my observation (see EBU B/TQE; High Definition for Europe - a progressive approach).