The music industry is stupid

The title of this post is not inherently true, but the evidence keeps mounting.

Many people don't have to listen to music on the radio anymore, and most that don't have to will actively avoid it. Talk radio, satellite radio, ipods that hold lifetimes worth of ripped music, and now streaming radio over mobile phones are all dominating the music listening scene that was once the sole territory of over the air broadcast radio and purchased cassettes/CDs.

For years now, musicians and fans alike have lamented the collapse of good music in the musical mainstream. Artists that don't focus group well are not signed, and consequently lots and lots of good music goes underrepresented and unpromoted in the national consciousness.

Further, the labels do a horrible job of promoting their back catalogue, since so much money is spent promoting the next annointed artist. They sit on mountains of musical gold, and falsely assume that the people that would like it both already know about it and have already purchased it.

Enter Pandora.



The Pandora project is one of the most comprehensive, well-executed, and well-implemented musical and social cataloguing and streaming programs created to date. It has become one of the most widely utilized forms of streaming internet radio, and is consistently one of the top applications in the iphone app store. It allows users to custom-taylor music according to their own tastes, while at the same time introducing viable new music from legitimate artists in the same vein. It allows for instant user feedback as to whether you like the song you're listening to or not, one-click purchasing from the itunes music store, provides cover art and musical history of the artist and the specific album, and has addressed the loudness wars by proactively setting levels for each individual song as it is encoded for streaming. It delivers via a simple and good looking interface both on the computer and on mobile devices.

The quality of content is through the roof.

Oh and it makes money hand-over-fist for the record labels, paying out a projected $17.5 million in royalty fees this year alone, according to a recent Washingto Post article.


And the labels are killing it.

Pandora is venture capital funded, and won't become profitable until next year. It pays royalties on a per song/listener basis through SoundExchange, which sets its rates based on a federally mandated system - which doubled prices this year as a result of lobbying by the record lables.

That's why the labels are stupid. They have spent millions lobbying congress for a system that pits the companies that are the most successful at selling thier music against those companies own success. Because it pays per play, the more popular Pandora becomes the less financially viable it becomes - and the venture capital money is about to pull the plug.

Pandora's music database alone should be worth millions to the industry, and it's done the heavy lifting on it's own dime. Its software and intuitive user interface that allows for instant purchasing should be worth even more, and yet it teeters on the verge of bankruptcy because of short-sighted and selfish stances taken by the labels that need to get back into the business of developing and selling music.

Worse, this is a problem that congress has to solve. Well, it doesn't have to - the labels could come to an agreement on the side with Pandora the way that they did with Apple when the itunes store launched - but they're very unlikely to do so. The labels consistently over-value the music recordings and undervalue the distribution and song-selection mechanisms, and this is unlikely to change.

You can shear a sheep as many times as you want. You can only skin it once.

full review: Zoom H4 (with audio samples!)

Well I got a new toy a week or so ago, and I'm here with the full review of the Zoom H4 handheld portable recorder.

First off, I'll spell out a little of what I was looking for in a recorder so that you can see my perspective as the review unfolds a bit.

The main use I'll have for this recorder is to get sounds from out in the field both on-the-fly and in planned scenarios for use in sound design for television, film, and interactive media. I already have a good supply of gear available to my through my company for major projects, but I wanted some personal gear that I could always have on me for when the moment struck me. I also plan on getting some contact mics for specific recordings of things like guy wires and other stuff that would sound better with mics acutally attached. As such, the primary elements that went into my purchasing decision were:

-usable onboard mics
-XLR inputs
-moderate price
-common solid state recording medium
-96k 24 bit capability

Here's an excellent review with other audio samples that delves into some things that I won't cover like the 4 track and audio effect functions.

So of the good news and bad news, we'll lead with the bad here.

--------------------------------------------------------------
These are the things that I don't like about the Zoom H4:

-Plasticky construction-

Now I know that any piece of gear that I get at this price point is going to make certain compromises, and that they all are going to be made of plastic in this range, but I was honestly surprised at how plasticky the controls felt. My old cell phone felt more reassuring to the touch.

Again, I'm not speaking as much to the chassis here as I am to the buttons and particularly the joystick and the little scroll wheel on the side that any H4 user will become very very familiar with. They feel like a bad bump could snap either one clean off, and they don't exactly inspire the feel of roadworthiness. Thankfully, both are fairly well recessed into the chassis.

-susceptibility to wind noise-

Again - I realize that this can be a function of the price point, but when one considers that this particular box is being marketed as a location recording device with built in mics, the fact that the mics overload when I think about wind makes them a little annoying. The unit does come with a workable windscreen that fits well on the device, but the sheer necessity of the windscreen in most situations revokes a lot of the "it fits in your pocket" usability part of the unit in on-the-fly ambiance and sfx gathering applications.

-menu interface-

This is decidedly not a price point related gripe. Zoom really could have thought out the interface better - if only through programming alone. The interface has you using the scroll wheel on the side in conjunction with the joystick in some confusing and counterintuitve ways.

I think this is a function of the fact that the box tries in some respects to be all things to all people, and as such the architecture is a little schizophrenic.

-preamp control-

This is somewhat related to the menu control gripe, but it has a couple of specifics to go along with it.

First off the preamp control is buried in a menu that requires 3 clicks to access, so God help you if you've got it set in a bad place for the sound you're trying to catch and you need to adjust it quickly.

Secondly, once you do access it via the menu and start to adjust it, the movement is s l o w man. It can take upwards of 10 seconds to do a full 10 db move if you include the time it takes to access the input level via menu. Oh, and the input level is marked in 127 steps as opposed to anything useful like dB or VU.

Third, the preamp doesn't exactly put out a lot of juice. Many of my recordings had the preamp wide open - both with the internal and with external mics. This is fine when using good quality condensers, but I imagine it'd pose a problem with something like an sm-57 (though I haven't tested that specific setup yet.)


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really that's it, and while some of those things can be pretty annoying, none really adds up to be a deal breaker by any means.

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So here are the things that I like about the H4:

-price point-

The price point is right in my wheelhouse. $250ish including shipping brand new off of ebay is a hell of a deal for any piece of quality, usable gear - but especially for one that includes the rest of the positives that I'm about to list off.

-portability-

windscreen necessity aside, this is a pretty darn portable piece of gear. It does actually fit in your pocket, and even when toting the windscreen it's not a cumbersome arrangement. It helps if one has a bag to carry the recorder/windscreen/mic stand setup, but there's really no excuse to hear something you like and then not be prepared to record it once you own this thing. The quality won't be what you'll get with a pricier setup, but it won't be so far off that you won't use it either.

-preamp and mic quality-

In my own tests, the preamp and mic quality both belie the clunky exterior on this thing. While I'd personally much prefer an MS configuration than an XY config, nothing on the market seems to have that going for it. The stereo image is a little narrow for my tastes, but I suppose I'm glad that they erred on that side of it than on the too wide side.

That aside, I found the built in electrets to be of high enough quality that I'll use them and be unashamed of the results as they come out of it. They catch the whole frequency range well, and while they're not remarkably linear they're not unpleasant with thier character either.

The preamps are quiet enough to work for grabbing ambiences and the like, though I'll mostly anticipate grabbing loud things, and this box excels at that particular task. There's plenty of headroom in both the mics and the preamp to catch things like motorcycles and construction witn no overload.

You'll be able to judge for yourself with the samples and tests that make up the third part of this review.

-usb computer interface-

This could be worth the price of admission by itself for podcasters and other desktop recordists. The unit can be buss powered via usb, and immediately turns into a cool sounding mic/headphone setup for use in podcasts, skypes, etc. quick, easy, clean, useful.

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Ok, enough words - time to listen!

When I unpacked it, I just about immediately grabbed my camera and headed outside to our condo's swimming pool, which happens to have a series of small waterfalls feeding it. I also went to my motorcycle and our communal industrial strength water cooled air conditioner.

Following are the recordings I made along with documentation of the mic position of each. Also note that for each of these (except the motorcycle) the preamp was cranked wide open. Aside from editing, these files are unaltered from the disk - including any gain changes. All photos are of actual mic positions and were actually taken during the recordings.

[click on the photos to hear the recordings]




So that's the representation of what those internal mics and preamps can do. Overall I'd personally label that better than merely acceptable, and I'm very happy with the usability of the files in post situations.

Now onto the shootout!

For the shootout I was hoping to do a couple of things that didn't end up working out, but I think I got a good picture of the relative quality of the mics and preamps in a more critical situation nonetheless.

The first thing that I was hoping to do was to run the internal and external mics on the H4 simultaneously. Unfortunately, the menu options only allows one mode at a time so I had to do a second pass of all of the recording tests with the internals .

The second thing I was hoping to do was to run an iPhone recording at the same time so that I could get a good approximation of how near/far the Zoom would end up to a really crappy recorder as well as the nice one that I was setting up along side it. Unfortunately, the recording software that was available only ended up recording at 16-bit 8k, so once I downloaded the files I realized that they were just too artificially crappy to give me a good comparison.

With that out of the way, here's what is included in the test:

-Simultaneous setup of the Zoom H4 and the Sound Devices 744T
-recording 24 bit 48k
-each recording device powering a Schoeps CMC6 with hypercardiod capsule
-Zoom H4 input set to 127 (wide open)
-Sound Devices 744T input set to 2 o'clock
-a separate pass of the same tests with the Zoom H4 internal mics at the same settings

The Sound Devices/Shoeps setup is a version of the industry standard for high-end film recording, and the price of entry for that particular combination runs around $4,000 for the Sound Devices and $1700 for the mic/capsule combo. Of course you get much more functionality out of that setup than you'll ever get out of the H4, but you're also paying for the quality of the preamps/clock/converters as well.

This also means that I'm plugging a mic into the H4 that's around 7 times it's price. :)

Here's a pic of the setup:

And here are the results:

744T-with shoeps-glass-ping.wav
744T-with shoeps-paper.wav
744T-with shoeps-pretzels-glass.wav
744T-with shoeps-pretzels.wav
744T-with shoeps-voice.wav
744T-with shoeps-water.wav

Zoom H4-built in mics-glass-ping.wav
Zoom H4-built in mics-paper.wav
Zoom H4-built in mics-pretzels-glass.wav
Zoom H4-built in mics-pretzels.wav
Zoom H4-built in mics-voice.wav
Zoom H4-built in mics-water.wav

Zoom H4-with shoeps-glass-ping.wav
Zoom H4-with shoeps-paper.wav
Zoom H4-with shoeps-pretzels-glass.wav
Zoom H4-with shoeps-pretzels.wav
Zoom H4-with shoeps-voice.wav
Zoom H4-with shoeps-water.wav


So what's my take on the results?

Well the 744T is clearly quieter than the Zoom H4, but that's to be expected. With that said, I was very impressed with how close the H4 preamps ran to the 744T, particularly with regards to dynamic range and frequency responses. And while you can't really do foley work with those preamps, that's about the only thing you can't do with them (and who does foley with a portable recorder anyway?)

I was also happy with how the internal mics held up - especially given the price differential. They're certainly not capable of anything near what the Schoeps can do - especially on the voice - but they were true enough to make me a believer on the pretzel and paper tests. The susceptibility to wind noise will always be problematic, but the recordings will be worthy of the things that I throw at them.

There you have it. Not scientific, but certainly more comprehensive than most of what you'll find out there. Thanks for sticking with this super long post!

Garfield minus Garfield

this comes courtesy of Derek at meanwhile back at the ranch, but it's just pure pure pure solid gold.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

Easily the best thing I've come across on the internet in a good little while.

Dark Knight dominance

This film is going to blow the doors off of the record books.

Its already setting preview and other records, and at least locally its selling out or nearly selling out every showing (including IMAX - no tix left the entire weekend) until Monday.

All of this is with good reason. I remember watching Batman Begins, and immediately thinking to myself "this is one of the best films I've ever seen." Well The Dark Knight is better, and by a lot.

As we made our way into the packed theater I was very concerned that the film, and Heath Ledger's Joker in particular, would not be capable of living up to the considerable hype that preceded them. Boy was I wrong.

This is a flat-out spectacular work of art across so many disciplines:

-first of its a near-flawless script. On a fundamental level, nobody says or does anything that doesn't make any sense in the context of the story, which is a big enough challenge in itself most of the time. The pacing is excellent (I did not expect the film to be as long as it was, and only after it was over did I realize that the run time approached 3 hours), and the content is top-notch. Most films don't challenge vigilante heros to justify their lawlessness outside of the context of "the govt is ineffective so I'll do this myself," but boy this one does and it does it in a way that is neither distracting to the rest of the film nor cheezy or pandering to the viewer. In fact, Batman's struggles with the legitimacy of his actions evolve into the primary sub-plot of the film - as opposed to the typical female love-interest sub plot. That falls to third. And of course we grow to care about all of the characters (including the villains) and to believe that everything that we're seeing could actually happen. Nothing was shoehorned in here. Everything had its place and served a purpose. Also, I love love love the fact that they never bothered to discuss the origins or true motivations of the Joker. Its the repeated and firm resistance to such non-useful story elements that allowed the writers and producers to pack this film with interesting and relevant stuff from top to bottom.

-Visually the film was spectacular. There are some shots of things blowing up and burning down that I have no idea how they accomplished them, because they don't look like CGI. The stuff that obviously is CGI is only identifiable as such because you know that it's the only way they could pull something like that off, not because it draws attention to itself visually. (with the exception of one minor traumatic spoiler effect that caught my eye as it was happening). I still love the fact that they shot Gotham in Chicago instead of NY, and watching the evolution of the
Batsuit was cool. Also there is a spectacular car chase scene.

-Casting and acting. Casting Heath Ledger as the Joker was probably intially seen as a bold stroke despite his post Brokeback Mountain star status, but we all know the story of both his acting in this film and what the role must have done to him as a person. Aaron Eckhart is an excellent Harvey Dent - so pretty that its all the more disturbing when he's not anymore. Of course, it helps the acting when you have a script of this caliber with which to work (I can imagine if Ledger and Nicholson were to switch Jokers that Nicholson would be getting the all of the glory out of the transaction), but this is one of those films in which the actors lived up to the characters they played, just about universally. With that said, Heath Ledger's Joker is bound to go down as one of the best villains in cinematic history - both because of the deranged and anarchistic acts that he was allowed to perform, and because of the wildness and intensity that he brought to the character. His passing at this point in both his career and this franchise is a devastating blow to the art of cinema, and it will be felt for a long while after the third Batman is released.

-Mix, sound design, and score. Here's where I geek out, and I love it. First off, here's an excellent article with the sound designers from Mix Magazine. They spent a month recording sound effects before production even started, and got to do cool things like mic up a Tesla car to use as an element for the bat-pod. All of the sound design was very gritty and real, which added remarkably to the overall believability of the film. The interaction between the sound design and music was obviously collaborated, and was done very well. The mix was constantly weaving between strong score, no score, heavy sound effects, no sound effects, and clear, intellible dialogue. I didnt notice any ADR, which is a good thing. There were also some very cool moments where the mix got very very stripped down during some climactic moments, and only the central sound design element was heard - like in the 18-wheeler flip. Its aggressive decision-making, and I loved it.

So go see this movie. I'm seeing it again as soon as I can get an IMAX ticket.

come on in, the iWater's fine!

so we've finally been assimilated and I'm telling you its great.

after standing in line for a few hours on wednesday and getting cut off, and then having the lovely and talented Mrs stood in line from 7:15 am till around 10:30 to get our two new sparkling shiny happy ...


iPhone 3Gs!!



















I'm flat out in heaven. This is just the biggest personal technology upgrade that I think i've every encountered (including the acquisitions of my first several computers).

much ink has already been spilled about this, and I can only really echo what the common knowledge is of the device so far.

-typing is tricky and slow
-the maps freaking rock
-the internet rocks
-the iphone apps are spectacular
-itunes is taking over my computer (and i'm a little miffed about that)
-watching tv on the iphone is kewl
-call quality and coverage has been good

other things that i've noticed are

-i have to keep it in my pocket while driving or I'll get in a damn wreck
-i have to figure out how to make it sync my photos without duplicating them on my HD
-i'll never be lost again, and for the most part I'll never need a local guide to help me find things like BOA atms or food in any stateside municipality again
-the pandora app makes kittens laugh and play with string

aftermath:blowing stuff up on the 4th

Went to Lubbock with the wifey over the holiday weekend to catch up with some friends and fire off some fireworks. (really, I just like getting in the car and traveling with her)

It was a pretty short, yet eventful trip. We showed up on the 4th and immediately got to drinking and lighting fireworks. As I listened to the barely legal mortars going off I realized that now more than ever do I regret not owning a solid portable recorder, but I'll get one soon enough.

All in all it was a good time, and it was good to see everyone again. I'm lucky to have the caliber of friends that I do.

The next day was more eventful though. While the lovely and talented Mrs Coronado was off at the lake with some of her friends, I ended up prepping to go to the gunshop to buy ammo with mine. Now, I've never shot a gun (my parents never even let us have bb guns when we were kids) but I've also never really found that to be something that's lacking in my life either.

In my opinion guns aren't good for much in everyday life, but hey I'm a guy and firing weapons at little paper targets at a range was bound to be a good time.

When I first bore witness to the arsenal that my long-time friends had collected I was pretty amazed. Shotguns, rifles, handguns, and of course semi-automatic weapons. Now I had always known that my friends were kind of West-Texasy southern Republican types, but I really hadn't mentally come to grips with exactly how how deep that particular vein ran. When I informed them that I'd never shot a gun in my life, everyones eyes got wide, fingertips came together, and big smiles started showing up. They were loving the idea of popping my weapon cherry.

So we loaded up on ammo (which is pretty expensive) and headed out to the firing range.

This is the first gun I've ever shot.
.
Its a Bushmaster M4, and it is a beast. Its a semiautomatic, though I was only shooting one round at a time. I expected it to have a lot of kick, but due to the compression chamber over the barrel there it was remarkably forgiving.

Here's me getting ready to shoot for the first time -




And here's my shocked expression after letting the first round go.


Dude, that think went BANG!

We also shot a few other rifles and some handguns that day. I was actually pretty ok with the handguns - hitting a bullseye at 25 yards and otherwise marking up the target pretty well. A lot of firing weapons seems to be about being able to breathe, so between that and Red Steel on the Wii I kind of had a head start.

The guys were kind enough to teach me how to set up, load and fire everything and I'm pretty grateful for that.

At the top of my mind now is a return trip with a good recording rig so that we can do it again and this time document it correctly.

Of course we got into a political discussion on the way back, but that was to be expected. I still love them despite their political views, and I'm sure the feeling is mutual.

review:Wall-E

man what a great flick.

It's true what you're hearing - it is a little preachy. But that's ok, because its a flat out masterpiece.

This film is a culmination of the collaboration of the best of the best in the story, animation, and sound design fields. As an audio guy, I think that this has to be the most interesting sounding films I've heard in a long time, and I loved every little sonic nuance about it.

so, I'm going to geek out for a bit now.

First things first, here are some short features with Ben Burtt - who was credited with sound design/character voice design, and the voice of Wall-E - and has been getting a fair amount of traditional media press since the release of the movie.

The La Times

In the end, Burtt used his own heavily tweaked voice for Wall-E's rudimentary speech. "I was experimenting with processing human voice input," he says, "and it was like Dr. Jekyll in his lab: 'Well, there's nobody else around -- I guess I'll drink the potion.'

Info and a cool behind the scenes movie courtesy of FilmSoundDaily

the Ben Burtt interviews on FilmSoundDaily (All kinds of gold in there. Check them out)

a thread on the Gearslutz forum about the film. This is a forum where pro audio guys hang out, and the response is universally positive to the film.

the Kyma, Burtt's most likely weapon of choice when designing the voices in Wall-E. (you can see him working his wacom tablet around on it in one of the filmsounddaily vids)

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I think the film is another in a string of superior efforts out of Pixar. The story always comes first, and in this film almost everything except for the story has been stripped away. Wall-E is an emotional flick, but it is one in a very universal and authentic way. With the language mostly stripped away, the robots of the film are essentially very intricate puppets that are masterfully coaxed around a series of spectacularly detailed sets. And they're not just dancing, they're genuinely connecting with their lives, thier work, and each other in a way that the humans in the film are not.

(I'll note that our lack of ability to connect is a very prominent recurring theme in lots of the films I've seen recently - There Will be Blood, Sweeney Todd, Corpse Bride, even back to The Matrix and V for Vendetta. Maybe that speaks more to my taste in film than to the state of filmmaking, but hey whatever.)

The point is that the story is told to a large degree in pantomime, and it's done brilliantly. It so flat out refreshing to not have plot hammered down my neck. The subtlety of all of it - story, imagery, and sounds - survives, and the film is all the better for it.

Go see it. I've run out of words and i have not done it justice.