BlakeBlog

iTunes Match First Impressions

As I mentioned on Twitter a few days ago, I took the plunge and decided to give iTunes Match a try. My home library has about 12,500 tracks, and much of it has been ripped from physical CDs and stored in Apple Lossless format. My library lives in a Drobo attached to an old Mac mini with a G4 processor. Since backups and slinging music around the house aren't terribly processor intensive tasks, the mini's been able to soldier on quite nicely in this role.

Well, it took the mini about 2.5 days to match all my stored music to what's available in Apple's library. It seemed to do a good job of matching music that I'd purchased from Amazon or the iTunes store. However, it seems to have done a pretty poor job of matching the ripped tracks stored in Apple Lossless. In fact, right now my mini's trying to upload about 2/3 of my music library to Apple's iCloud.

I'm not sure that that's what Apple really intended.

Even weirder, quite a few albums didn't match all the tracks. For example, all the tracks on Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" matched with the exception of "He Can Only Hold Her." Conversely, The Beatles' "Beatles VI" only matched two of the twenty-two tracks: "Kansas City" and "Every Little Thing."

Another thing to note is that my iOS devices were a bit confused while my mini was matching, especially while I was on the plane and had no data service. I would try to shuffle the music that was physically on the device and the shuffle would stop after a random number of songs. I say "stop," but I kind of wonder if it was just trying to play tracks that were on iCloud and timing out, slowly, on each song? I've since learned that in Settings-->Music there's an option called "Show All Music". I'm guessing that turning that off prior to hitting play would eliminate this.

With all the travel I do it's nice to be able to call on my home music library whenever I want. Assuming that all my music gets uploaded in a reasonable amount of time, I'd have to say that the service is worth the $25/year.

24 bit iTunes? Stop the loudness wars first.

Everyone's debating the value of 24-bit music downloads, but the implicit assumption in most discussions is that 24 bits will sound at least a little better than the current 16-bit tracks. I call BS.

Until the music industry abandons the loudness war, the music will sound just as miserable regardless of the number of bits used. Give me 24-bit recordings with the full dynamic range and then we'll talk. Until then, save yourself the effort.

Apple's New iPods: Yes, We Do Need 40,000 Songs

Ed Yourdon recently posted his take on yesterday's new iPod announcements from Apple. Oddly, he spends most of the article complaining that an iPod that can store 40,000 songs holds enough music to listen for eight hours a day for a year without repeating anything. Yet, he goes on to talk about how he has six different "exercise" playlists to suit his energy level and seems to not connect the dots.

Most folks don't listen to music collections sequentially, they listen to music that enhances their mood at that moment. Moods change throughout the day, so access to a wide variety of music makes the listening experience much more enjoyable. If you can only fit a few songs per "mood," then the device provides limited satisfaction, and similarly, if you can only fit a good selection of music to fit one mood then the device provides no satisfaction for other moods. So, give folks with large music collections an easy way to carry it all with them all the time, allowing the iPod to satisfy in all circumstances.

Two other points: This large storage capacity also allows folks to move up the fidelity scale, from 128kbps encodings to 256kbps (or even lossless). It also is probably the tail end of the storage expansion. We've gone from 5 GB of the original iPod to 160 GB in the new "classic," but Apple's introduction of WiFi is a step towards making the iPod a universal access device. Sure, it can store a lot of music when you aren't connected, but when you are connected you'll be able to reach out to either the iTunes store or (eventually, probably) your own music collection and pull down whatever you want. That, to me, seems like the next real innovation in how people access their music.

(Note that slacker.com and the satellite radio services (c.f. Sirius Stiletto) are converging on this model as well.)

How iTunes Could Save Music Quality

The issue of popular music's "loudness war" flared up again today as Slashdot covered an article in the IEEE's Spectrum magazine on the topic. The war, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is between the record companies for whose songs stand out the most when playing on the radio. People naturally pay more attention to a louder song than a quieter one, so record companies have had the recording engineers pump up the average volume to the point where there's very little difference between the loud parts and the quiet parts—it's all just loud.

While this may grab your attention a bit more as you listen to the radio, the drawback is that it sounds like junk when compared with a normally-equalized recording. There's an excellent short video on YouTube demonstrating how pumping up the loudness destroys the quality, making for distorted audio and a fatiguing listening experience. The problem is so bad that many music enthusiasts stick with records instead of CDs because the relatively limited signal-to-noise ratio of records doesn't let recording engineers pump up the loudness as much as they can with CDs.

This isn't to say that amped up music mixes aren't useful. Many folks listen to music on the go—in the car, while running, etc. In these environments the high ambient noise easily drowns out the quieter passages, and you either have to continuously twiddle the volume control up and down, or just imagine the quiet portions you can't hear.

So, what could iTunes do about the loudness problem? While it would need help from the recording companies (yeah, I know, fat chance), let's dream:

Assuming that we could get the record companies to sell music that isn't amped up, iTunes (and iPods/iPhones, for that matter) could pretty easily re-equalize on the fly to pump up the overall volume. This would be handy for listening while in noisy environments, and while the programmatic loudness might not be what a human engineer would do in every case, it'd be good enough. (Remember, it still sounds bad.) However, once you get to a quiet place where you can really listen with quality speakers or headphones you could turn off the loudness and enjoy the full dynamic range and quality.

(iTunes already has a crude implementation of this with Sound Check. Unfortunately, though, Sound Check only measures the peak amplitude and then adjusts the overall volume based on that value. This causes mostly quiet songs that may have a single loud note to end up much quieter than a song that's more even in amplitude throughout. iVolume and AACGain are a couple of third-party options that use a more sophisticated approach and show that automated processing is feasible.)

The record companies could still send amped-up versions of the songs to radio stations in an attempt to grab ears, and consumers could have multiple equalizations of the song as appropriate for the listening environment. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

slacker.com

Check it out--a new rival to satellite radio. They're just getting launched, so right now they're streaming everything over the web for free. Sounds better than most web radio, but I can't find the bitrate they're using. The service lets you say whether you like each song, or not, and it tailors each channel's playlist to your personal preferences. So far this sounds like Pandora, so what makes Slacker different?

This summer they promise to have a portable player about the size of an iPod that'll cache your personalized stations, so you can take your personalized stations with you while you're on the go. There's also talk that the player will be WiFi enabled, so that it can continue to update while you're out and about.

Then, in the second half of this year Slacker's going to have a satellite car kit that'll let you plug your portable player into your car stereo and receive station updates via satellite. Again, everything's cached on the player, so even if you're stuck in a tunnel during a traffic jam you won't lose your tunes.

There will be two service tiers: a free tier that is ad supported and that limits how often you can skip a song (right now they're talking about six skips an hour per channel), and an ad-free tier for $8/mo. with unlimited skips and probably some unannounced perks as well.

The crafty part is that they're leasing unused satellite bandwidth so that they don't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars launching an orbital infrastructure. They are also relying on WiFi for ground repeaters, as opposed to the dedicated repeaters like Sirius and XM have installed in most of the major metro areas.

This is a pretty interesting mashup of internet radio, satellite radio, WiFi radio, and portable player tech that just might become greater than the sum of its parts.

yourmusic.com

Having had a few weeks of being confined to a recliner with a laptop for company, I ran across several folks at the AVS Forum discussing their positive experiences with yourmusic.com. As I couldn't do much other than surf and listen to music, I decided to sign up and see what all the hoopla was about.

The service is reminiscent of the old Columbia Music House or BMG Music record/cassette/CD-of-the-month clubs in that yourmusic.com ships you a CD every month. However, they also take a page from Netflix and have you build a queue of CDs that you'd like. So, instead of having to fill-out a postcard every month (or getting the lame default selection), you get the top selection from your queue. If you let your queue empty and your shipping date arrives they'll still charge you $6 and you don't get a disc. This is the largest risk of this service, but they're very up-front about this and it's trivial to avoid for all but the most forgetful.

The pricing for the discs is fantastic, at only $6 each with no shipping and handling charges. (It looks like residents of some states could get charged sales tax, but so far California isn't one of them.) You also have the option of purchasing as many discs as you'd like at the $6 price, so you aren't limited to just one a month. There are a few discs that are more expensive, but they're almost always double-disc sets.

One especially attractive fact is that they have a small number of SACDs and DVD-As, all priced at $6. These normally run close to $20 each. I was able to order nine classical Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence SACDs, including one double-disc set, all for $65 delivered. (Both labels were originally recorded in three-channel sound, but until the SACD format they were downmixed to two channels; now they're available as three-channel SACDs that build a wonderful front stage and presence.) This has helped me start building my classical collection.

They also have discs from the pop, rap, country, etc., genres. Selection isn't as broad as a typical music store's, but it's pretty easy to find a dozen discs you'd be interested in owning—especially at the $6 price point. Since you can quit at any time without penalty, you might even just join up, order all the discs you're interested in and cancel the service, treating it as a half-off sale.

The largest drawback of the service I've found is that their shipping is slow and they don't provide good feedback on your order status. For example, I placed three separate orders on October 3. I received the last order on October 11 (the others haven't arrived yet), but my account shows that all three orders still haven't shipped. So, if you're into instant gratification you'll probably be frustrated, but as far as I'm concerned I'm happy to wait a while in limbo to take advantage of the low price.

(Now, why can't all CDs be priced this reasonably?)

SACD and DVD-A: What's Goin' On?

The audio CD as we know it has been around for almost 25 years now. Initially promising perfect sound and durability far beyond records or cassette tapes, it was quickly regarded as a great leap forward in sound fidelity and convenience by most consumers. Coupled with the major labels' decision to limit production of records and cassettes, the audio CD took off. The labels made money hand over fist as people bought CDs to both replace their existing records and to acquire new music.

Over the past 25 years, however, there's been a small minority that has constantly maintained that recordings simply sounded better on vinyl records than they did on CDs. As more researchers and manufacturers considered the arguments put forth by the vinyl crowd they found that their arguments had some merit. Recording an analog phenomenon (music) with an analog recorder (vinyl record) and reproducing it with an analog player (turntable) manages to capture some subtle nuances that digital audio CD technology misses. This doesn't imply that it is impossible for digital technologies to capture these nuances, merely that the current audio CD standard (commonly called the "Red Book" standard) doesn't do so.

Recognizing that audio CDs could be improved upon, the organization that controls the DVD standards (DVD-Forum) solicited proposals from manufacturers for an improved format. Sony and Phillips, the original creators of the audio CD, proposed an entirely new way of recording data called Direct Stream Digital (DSD). Toshiba proposed using DVD media to store a higher resolution version of audio CD's Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) data. The two formats are incompatible, but both manage to capture the subtle nuances lost by regular audio CDs. Both could also play multi-channel sound—a 5.1 soundtrack just like a movie on DVD (stereo front speakers, a center front speaker, stereo rear speakers, and a subwoofer)—in addition to plain old stereo. DSD would require entirely new recording and playback hardware, while Toshiba's DVD/PCM could be played in any DVD player (albeit with slightly degraded fidelity). When the dust cleared in 1999 the DVD-Forum selected Toshiba's proposal to be the new DVD-Audio (DVD-A) format.

Sony and Philips, not content to see their ideas shelved, then announced a new format called Super Audio CD (SACD) to compete with DVD-A. SACD is simply the DSD-based format snubbed by the DVD-Forum. Round two of the battle was on, with labels choosing to release only in DVD-A or SACD. Player manufacturers were only allowed to license one playback technology or the other, so they ended up choosing sides as well. To top it off, the record labels priced the new formats at nearly twice the price of a conventional audio CD, hoping to cash in even bigger than the last time formats changed. Retailers weren't happy with either new format since CDs were rapidly becoming "loss leaders"—items sold for little to no profit just to generate store traffic in the hopes that folks will buy something else with a nice profit margin. Both new formats were also priced at nearly double the wholesale cost, so retailers wouldn't be making any more money on the new formats than they would with the old format. The more space retailers have to devote to new formats, the less room they have to display profitable goods.

Even audiophiles, those vinyl-loving folks who've been grousing since 1982 about standard audio CDs, were turned off from both new formats because of the onerous copy protection the music labels insisted on including. Unless you're willing to pay a $500 premium on both the player and the pre-amp, the only surround sound output you'll get from your SACD or DVD-A player is analog. Yep, all that work that the recording engineers go through to produce a quality digital product is converted into a sloppy analog signal prone to interference and distortion before it can leave the player and head to the pre-amp. (Even normal audio CD players can send a digital data stream from the player to the pre-amp via optical cables.) To top it off, you'll need six cables to carry the analog information from the player to the pre-amp, driving up the cost and creating a rat's nest of wiring.

The predictable result was that neither format has been a success over the last seven years. In fact, if you walk into your average Best Buy today and ask where the SACD's or DVD-A's are you'll typically be greeted with a "Huh?" The hubris of the format inventors, the greed of the music labels, and the reluctance of the retailers all combined to result in a pretty big belly flop into the pool of the consumer marketplace for both new formats.

So, can you comfortably continue to ignore these new formats? Maybe, but in my next post I'll tell you why the situation isn't quite a bleak as I've described to this point and why things may be looking up.

Denon AVR-2807 Radio Reception

Just a quick note to point out that the Denon AVR-2807's FM reception is amazing! Using the simple string antenna that was bundled with the unit, I'm able to pull in radio stations that I didn't even know were broadcasting. In most cases the signal is clear and clean, too, with good stereo separation. I don't listen to much FM outside of my truck because the commercials drive me nuts, but the AVR-2807 will at least let me explore and see if there are any hidden gems around me.

AM reception, however, is disappointing even when using the included loop antenna. I can't receive stations broadcasting just 45 miles away. (If you're an AM fan and can't listen to Internet streams of your favorite shows, pick up the GE Super Radio. It's relatively inexpensive and has one of the best AM circuits in current production.)

Denon AVR-2807 + DVD-1920 First Impressions

For the past six years I've been using a Sony DAV-S300 home theater system. At the time I bought it I needed a TV, too, so the system was affordable and it seemed reasonably priced for what I got (amp, DVD player, and a 5.1 speaker setup). The system also stood out from the crowd at the time by offering DTS decoding. For apartment living it had plenty of power—enough to make a hyper-sensitive past neighbor quite upset—and the sound was acceptable. I mainly used it to watch movies, as my music is stored on my computer which has a separate set of speakers.

Over the past six months or so the DVD player has become increasingly finicky, frequently erring out and refusing to play Netflix DVDs. Recalibrating the lens and cleaning it with a lens cleaning brush helped a little, but eventually it refused to play anything but the most pristine DVDs. This was quite frustrating, as it left me with the option of either watching movies on my laptop, or plugging my laptop into my TV for a little bigger picture. Neither option would let me use the 5.1 speaker setup on the S300, and watching movies at home really lacks a lot without the 5.1.

So, this past weekend I'd finally had enough frustration and decided it was time to fix the issue. I would have preferred to just get an inexpensive DVD player, but there weren't enough Toslink inputs on the Sony to allow for both my DIRECTV receiver and another DVD player to be connected at the same time. It looked like I'd need to completely replace the S300 with an A/V receiver and a separate DVD player.

I did a lot of research on mid-line A/V receivers, looking closely at the Yamaha RX-V1600, the Onkyo TX-SR803, and the Denon AVR-2807. (I also had a quick peek at the Harmon Kardon AVR-645.) Yamaha doesn't seem to have good retail distribution of its RX line, and Onkyo's website has a paucity of information (you can't even download the owner's manual yet). The Harmon Kardon looks nice, but it was just released and I haven't heard enough reviews to know if they got everything implemented correctly or not.

Compared with the rest, Denon's website has plenty of information (including downloadable owners manuals), the unit is available at my local home theater chain (Magnolia), and enough folks have been using them long enough to have discovered all the quirks. Additionally, Denon's DVD-1920 DVD/SACD player has been well received and with its support for HDMI output (just like the receiver) it'll grow with me once I'm compelled to upgrade to HD.

After a trip up to San Francisco to the closest store with both units in stock, a stop by the Palo Alto store to get the cables I needed that weren't in stock in San Francisco, and then a separate trip to the San Jose store to exchange them for longer cables (sigh!), I was all set to go. I re-used the speakers from the Sony setup, which meant I had to cut off the Sony proprietary speaker wire connectors to get the bare leads, and I labeled them for polarity and location.

Problem #1: The Sony subwoofer is an unpowered design, but the receiver assumes that the sub is powered and provides only a line level output for it. I decided to hook it up to the center channel and force the center channel to play at all times. This gives me a little bass, but it's pretty weak. I don't want to hook the sub up to just the left or right front channel as it won't get all the bass signal in stereo situations. I don't think I can hook the sub up to both L and R channels simultaneously, either, without bad things happening to the speaker and/or amp. I think I can adjust the equalization curve for individual speakers, plus I know I can adjust the cutoff frequency, so I'll dork with those settings for a while and see what kind of improvements I can get.

Problem #2: The owner's manual is atrocious! Of course, I knew that in advance since Denon has them as PDFs for downloading from their website, but goodness! I think I was better off ignoring the manual and doing things by trial and error. I think I've got all the settings where I want them now, but I'll probably continue to tweak and try things for a few weeks to come.

Once all the cable connections were done I used the included microphone to run through the audio setup program. Denon incorporated the Audyssey MultiEQ XT capability that listens to a series of test patterns from each speaker from six different locations throughout the room. From these measurements it develops an acoustical model and an equalization curve that corrects for both time and frequency response problems. This is pretty slick functionality that really helps to compensate for odd room acoustics.

Now for the good news: The system looks wonderful! I'm using component connections between the DVD, the receiver, and the TV. This is in contrast to the s-video connections I used with the previous system. Whether it is just the connections, the quality of the DVD processing, or (most likely) both, the picture is sharper, clearer, more saturated and more detailed than ever. Even the DIRECTV output (which is still s-video) seems sharper.

The audio while watching video, even with the minimal bass, is pretty good. It is a definite improvement when watching DTS-encoded DVDs—I was able to hear details in The Fellowship of the Ring that I wasn't able to hear with the previous system, and the dialog seems clearer as well. Music, because of the poor bass from the Sony speakers, is pretty mediocre. I'll have to continue to rely on my computer's speaker system until I get a proper sub.

In all, it was a lot of money to spend just to watch DVDs—and it looks like I'll need to buy a real sub sometime in the future to get the most out of the system. That disappointment aside, however, it looks like I have a good system that should last longer than the Sony one.

My Thanksgiving Vacation

I got home to my parents' house for Thanksgiving and learned that their old, faithful Proton receiver was on the fritz. It would drop channels at random and they had to wedge a toothpick into the "Listen" dial to keep the dial in just the right position to listen to the tape deck. The unit is about 15 years old, and Proton isn't around anymore, so I told my folks that they'd likely have to buy a new unit. I also agreed to try and fix it for them, but I made it clear that I was just as likely to completely break the receiver as I was to fix it.

Before tearing into the guts of the receiver I wanted to make sure I had identified a suitable replacement. (Yes, I didn't have much confidence in my ability to rescue the old unit.) It turns out that many modern receivers, including most available at places like Best Buy, don't have phono inputs any more. Of course, even though my parents have a CD player they have a tremendous record collection that they still enjoy listening to. So, the Internet hunt was on to find a new receiver that would fit in the cabinet and that, ideally, had phono inputs as well.

While doing the research I found that there are some decent quality phono pre-amps available that will boost a phono signal to standard line levels. This freed me from having to find a receiver that had phono inputs, but it also meant yet another box and a few more wires to try and squeeze in an already over-crowded stereo cabinet.

Yet another problem was that no Internet dealers could get the equipment delivered by Monday; Tuesday was the best they could do, and I'm leaving that day. My folks are great, but they aren't savvy enough to hook everything back up correctly.

So, with some trepidation I dug into the old receiver to try and clean up the insides. I removed a couple dozen screws and connectors to get at the rotory switches, bathed them in electronic contact cleaner, and left it all to dry for a few hours while I went to a movie and dinner. (See the picture above.) After I returned I put it back together and tested it out. Success! (Plus a few extra screws left over...)

I'm glad I could stave off replacing that receiver for a few more years.