Friday Links
For your reading pleasure.DQ reader Jason sent in these comments about the CD mastering post I made a few days ago:
There's an excellent article on Wikipedia covering the steady increase in compression of music over the last decade and a half, with charts and graphs and other such reassuringly technical things. It's at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war.
I work as a DJ myself, so I'm very used to dealing with a lot of music, and this is a fairly big issue, especially among the hardcore or more technically-oriented. Yet another reason why many DJs prefer vinyl: the mastering process won't result in digital clipping, instead keeping its warmth and dynamic range intact. Mixing together two compressed or one compressed and one non-compressed track results in really awful-sounding results. Rather than a funky, danceable beat, you end up feeling pummeled by sound, and get fatigued, which means you leave, which means I don't get paid, and starving makes me cranky. Whether or not you can actively tell the difference (and it does take a somewhat trained ear), you will definitely feel it psychologically.
Walt Kass sent in a link to a story about an amazing neurology experiment. Here's an excerpt:
...a St. Louis-area teenage boy and a computer game have gone hands-off, thanks to a unique experiment conducted by a team of neurosurgeons, neurologists, and engineers at Washington University in St. Louis.
The boy, a 14-year-old who suffers from epilepsy, is the first teenager to play a two-dimensional video game, Space Invaders, using only the signals from his brain to make movements.
Here's the link to the full story (there's also a video on the same page).
Frank Regan sent in a link to a BBC story about the discovery of an ancient civilization that's going to screw lots of things up. Here's an excerpt:
The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.
The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.
It's remarkable, with potentially enormous implications, and you can read about it here.
From Vahur Teller, a comic that might explain what Sony's been doing the last six months. It's an installment of Cnt+Alt+Del, and you can read it here.
Finally, from Sirius, a link to a new claim by scientists about what causes mamalian extinction. Here's an excerpt:
LONDON - Wobbles or variations in the Earth's orbit and tilt are associated with extinctions of rodent and mammalian species, Dutch scientists said on Wednesday.
...the researchers found two cycles corresponding to the disappearance of rodent species. One lasts 2.4 million years and is linked to variations in the Earth's orbit. The other is a 1.2 million year cycle relating to shifts in the tilt on the Earth on its axis.
Very interesting, and you can read it here.
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