Category: Tech

Ripping Station

Well, the little TEAC CD-ROM reader has met its match in a particular CD-R disc. After a certain point it got into trouble, gave up and popped the lid open. But everything up to that track was good, and having only one disc in the retry pile is certainly a lot better than it had been.

Ripping

Those headphones are the Pioneer SE-A1000. It’s one of those items that Amazon sometimes has in stock, other times it’s “fulfilled by Amazon” or some other seller. I paid $59 for my pair, and I recommend them highly for those with a large hat size, like myself, and where a very long cord is needed, which is not what I need them for at the moment. The SE-A1000 is excellent for very critical listening. The sibilance in the vocals of certain less-than-perfect recordings can sometimes be over-emphasized, but that same quality makes the SE-A1000 perfect if you’re comparing an MP3 copy to the original, or trying to distinguish between a CD data error and a splice in the master tape of a recording.

The little TEAC that could

I’ve been struggling with a project at home for some time, ripping a bunch of CD-R’s to MP3. Some of the discs simply could not be read by any of the combi-DVD/CD drives I have. The only player that worked at all is a dedicated CD reader that came with the Compaq computer I bought on October 25, 2001 — the day that Windows XP was released. But some songs wouldn’t finish ripping, and even if they did finish it could take hours, and even with error correction enabled on the drive the results were awful, as heard on the audio player’s first track. The song, by Bonnie Guitar, was #27 on the Billboard music charts the week of June 24, 1957. The second track on the player has a clean rip of the song from the CD-R.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/1st+rip.mp3,https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/2nd+rip.mp3|titles=Bonnie Guitar: Dark Moon – bad rip,Bonnie Guitar: Dark Moon – good rip]

You would think the first recording was taken from a badly scratched record, and the second from a CD, but they both came from the same CD-R. What made the difference? An amazingly nimble 10-year-old TEAC CD210-PU USB CD-ROM reader I got hold of that sails through the same discs that gave five other units a fit.

That same week in 1957, another recording of the song, done by Gale Storm, was #7 on the Billboard chart, and it makes for an interesting comparison to Bonnie’s version. I hear a definite Elvis influence here.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2013/12/GStorm.mp3|titles=Gale Storm: Dark Moon]

TV as you like it… for now

The Web site name TVonline.cc was registered this past February 2, by somebody in Iran — if the domain administrator information is to be believed — and the site supposedly originates in California, west of Reno, Nevada. Wait! Now it’s in Germany. I don’t know where the video I’m watching now is coming from. What’s the video? Last week’s installment of Breaking Bad.

TVonline

This isn’t a Torrent site, and it’s offering free embedded videos of popular TV shows that play through Flash, like most everything else does in a Web browser. I don’t know how they’re getting their material, but the quality is excellent, even in full-screen. I can’t imagine that any of the programs have been licensed, and I have to wonder how long TVonline will last before it’s forced to shut down.

Screaming about streaming

Next February with be the 20th anniversary of when I first connected to the Internet from home by dialup modem, and yet being online still seems like a new thing to me, maybe because streaming media is still in flux. Netflix started its streaming video service in 2007, and the turmoil in TV land continues with Aereo, the DVR in the Cloud. It’s taking way too long for broadcasters and cable TV providers to adjust to online services that challenge their out-of-date business models.

Ray Dolby, 1933-2013

Another audio technology pioneer has passed away. Ray Dolby started at Ampex, working on magnetic tape recorders that were based on German machines captured at the end of WWII by Jack Mullin. Later, Dolby made major contributions to Ampex’s development of the first video tape recorder. In the 1960’s, when recording studios went from four to eight tracks — leaving less surface area on the tape for each track — hiss was the result, and the Dolby A noise reduction system was developed to alleviate the problem. Dolby B was the consumer version of the circuit. Today, every HDTV has Dolby Digital decoding built in. I know somebody who worked at Dolby Labs. I’ll see if I can pry out a comment about the man.

Addendum: Somebody who worked at Dolby Labs says…

He was a very very nice man, quiet, extremely intelligent, good-natured. The company under his leadership was a marvelous place to work, where engineers had the ability to follow ideas, where the technology was cutting edge. He was also an extremely good businessman, and understood the power of licensing. His engineering contributions to early recording were ground-breaking.

… and the comments at this link are recommended.