Posts by Pompous Git

"Here let me google that for you:"

Here let me google that for you:

"The decibel ( dB) is used to measure sound level, but it is also widely used in electronics, signals and communication. The dB is a logarithmic way of describing a ratio. The ratio may be power, sound pressure, voltage or intensity or several other things. Later on we relate dB to the phon and the sone (related to loudness). But first, to get a taste for logarithmic expressions, let's look at some numbers."

What is a decibel?

Re: RE: Convert an MP3 to WAV, then recompress to MP3

"In theory, given a miraculously good decoder and very specific fixed rate encoding settings matching the original encoding, MP3->lossless->MP3 could actually be lossless."

The original experiment was done with Steinberg Clean (Fraunhofer codec). I have no idea where the artefacts arose, in the software or the DAC firmware, but they were definitely there. Much to the chagrin of the dude who first told me "digital processing does not degrade the signal".

Reminds me of when the Sugden A21 amplifier was theoretically inferior to its rivals because it had an order of magnitude higher (or more) total harmonic distortion. In the real world it was the best of breed.

"Given all of that, a decent bitrate MP3 sounds just fine, and is still good enough to hear the imperfections of the vinyl on the tracks I ripped from LPs."

Shush! You'll scare away all those numpties paying $AU60 for virgin vinyl pressings.

Re: RE: Convert an MP3 to WAV, then recompress to MP3

"Because my dear deluded friend, MP3 is a lossy format. It throws information away every time it encodes."

Precisely, hence my comment that digital processing does degrade the signal, contra the original comment that digital processing does not degrade the signal. It's not me that's deluded.

Also worth bearing in mind that it doesn't take more than two iterations to tell the difference, so no, MP3 is nowhere near as good as FLAC.

Re: Headphones?

"Why didn't he use a piano?"

He did. He just chose the wrong dude to tell the story :-)

"and not one word on APE files?"

Because they don't work on Linux (or didn't). Converted all of my APE files to FLAC several years ago with dBpoweramp.

"So when you get all stressy about the lack of protection from being exploited in this way, am I still to fuck off?"

Frankly I don't get all stressy when I'm being ripped off purchasing "cheap Chinese shit on ebay". I'd rather pay $AU10 for two camera batteries than $AU140 (plus a stocking fee) each from Nikon Australia. I know who I need protecting from; you obviously don't.

Never mind the wheels on my goalpost (whatever that means), how big is your ego that you know more about my needs than I do?

"People need to be protected from..."

God save me from people trying to protect me. It's my life, not yours. Just fuck off and let me live it the way I choose!

"85dB has been the maximum level allowed for headphone levels on consumer music equipment for a few years now, well within the 96db of 16bit."

Really? Relative to what may I ask? One mV input, one watt? Decibels are a ratio, not an absolute quantity.

""but signal degrades every time you do anything with it"

No it generally doesn't in the digital sampling rates you are referring to - a digital copy of a digital copy is identical...And you would normally be using digital processing on it."

Here's an experiment you can try at home. Convert an MP3 to WAV, then recompress to MP3. Rinse and repeat several times. The signal deteriorates at every step as becomes apparent the more often you rinse and repeat.

Re: MP3 is good enough for 90% of people.

"gold plating rubs off and doesn't stop the corrosion. it just looks shiny"

For the last ten years I have been getting out of bed at around 1 am and having a cup of tea. To avoid disturbing Mrs Git, I plug in my headphones and listen to some music. As it happens, the 3.5 mm jack plug is gold plated. I just inspected it with my jeweller's loupe and there is absolutely no sign of either wear, or corrosion. I suspect you are doing something wrong bombastic bob...

Re: I use Lame VBR

"Best of both worlds, and so far I've not come across a player that doesn't handle it."

Double din Kenwood in our Subaru Forester doesn't. :-(

Re: My old teacher...

"On one Stevie Wonder track, on a decent rig, one can hear a squeaking bass pedal "

The first CD I ever listened to was Ashkenazy playing a Beethoven piano concerto on a pair of Stax electrostatic headphones. I found his grunting while he played quite distracting.

"Sometimes good kit, which need not be expensive, is too good for stuff which was recorded years ago that the engineers then couldn't hear."

The engineers listened to the music at a very high volume so they could hear the quieter bits better. Naturally this fucked their hearing and led to a great deal of excessive treble in the masters they created. Now that I'm suffering high frequency hearing loss I no longer need to compensate. Probably the only positive aspect of becoming senile unfortunately ;-)

Re: No, No NO!

"Wot you need is VALVES, and OUTPUT TRANSFORMERS!

There's nothing like the non linearity of a BH loop and a tranny running out of iron to adequately compensate for the inherent non linearity of the human ear canal. "

Did you ever listen to a 1960s valve amp and compare it to a 1970s transistor amp? Valve harmonic distortion is even harmonics, while transistors generate odd harmonics that are far more noticeable and annoying.

Even today after decades of refinement amplifiers are far more variable than I thought they might be. My Rotel receiver's fancy electronic volume control decided to die after 16 years of service and it's non-replaceable. Being short of readies until the farm sells, I replaced it with a more recent 2nd hand Sony. I'm not a golden-ears by any stretch of the imagination, but it's best described as very ordinary.

As for oxygen-free copper, surely elemental copper is oxygen-free by definition. Copper combined with oxygen is copper oxide. The reason "monster" cable makes a difference is down to Ohm's Law. Bass reproduction requires high currents and the lower the resistance of the conductors, the less lossy the transmitted signal. And it is audible even when you're not a golden-ears.

Re: So you're blaming a commercial company for not patching a 13 year old OS?

"Why would anyone buy a jack of all trades system, with a life of a decade or so to run expensive equipment meant to last thirty years with a specific requirement?"

No alternative. Hospitals use hundreds of devices "monitoring equipment, alarms, compounders, radiology, things of those nature" that were designed to specifically run with XP. There are zero or close to zero that run on other OSs. You can't purchase what doesn't exist.

Re: Inevitable

"Windows XP is nearly 16 years old now..."

Almost legal then :-)

Re: I imagine if that the tobacco industry were to cease operation...

"Does your imagination extend to imagining the reduction in lung cancer and other smoking related illnesses that would accompany the tobacco companies ceasing operation?"

Does your imagination extend to a hospital system already underfunded? The anti-smoking campaign has been quite successful with the knock-on effect of reducing government income. And here's the result:

Facebook image of 95 year old woman on hospital floor in Hobart

The solution of additional taxation for non-smokers to compensate is wildly unpopular of course. The do gooderesses want to eliminate sources of government revenue and demand more government-funded services. It's a crazy world.

Re: Not sure...

"the IEA is funded by British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, and Japan Tobacco International."

Australian Labor Party Treasurer, Wayne Swan told us that each Australian smoker funds two hospital beds through the tobacco excise. I imagine if that the tobacco industry were to cease operation there would be even fewer hospital beds for the sick.

Re: Fucking stupid stuff

Hello Lars, the question is: "who determines how much is too much salt?"

"As for salt, it's certainly easier to add it to your hearts delight than trying to delete it."

Keeping salt out of your diet is easy peasy. Just eat real food instead of food-like substances.

Warning: Campbell's Pea & Ham Soup may contain traces of ham! The Pompous Git's pea and ham soup contains lotsa ham so it doesn't need added salt :-)

Low calciferol levels are a problem even here in sunny Australia. The nanny do-gooders determined that sunlight was bad for you so there was a concerted government-funded campaign to get as many people as possible wearing hats and sunscreen.

"Around one third of Tasmanian adolescents and adults are vitamin D deficient (<50 nmol/L) in summer and up to two thirds are deficient in winter and spring (van der Mei et al., 2012). "

Oddly enough, The Git is calciferol-deficient even though he's a very keen vegetable gardeners. So he supplements with 1,000 IU per day in summer and twice that in winter. The idea of adding any cod liver oil to food alarms me! Yeeeuchh!

PS. Scissors? That went right over my head I'm afraid.

PPS. Anchovies, fish sauce, oyster sauce, fermented black beans... Way to go...

Re: Fucking stupid stuff

"Too much salt is not good for you"

Another bloody salt policeman! Back in the early 1970s I swallowed the bullshit and gave up salt. Then I began suffering from dizzy spells, cramps and headaches; fortunately not seizures and coma. After a blood test, my GP recommended salt tablets because I was suffering from Hyponatremia. I still have the bottle of salt tablets. It occurred to me I was ruining the flavour of the food I cook and paying well over the odds for the salt I still needed to ingest in order to survive.

In the early noughties I was diagnosed with hypertension and the doctor advised me to eliminate salt from my diet. I asked why and he gave me the usual claptrap. I asked him if he'd looked at my blood test results and he said he had. I suggested he look again and tell me what the sodium level in my blood was. "Oh, you are on the low side of normal". Needless to say I went looking for another GP.

NB I don't do sugar unless it's fermented ;-)

Re: It's 2017 and software companies still write business software for Windows only

"the quality of most [Linux] desktop applications is far below the Windows and macOS ones."

For some unusual definition of "far", but yes, not as good as.

Example 1: The windows versions of Firefox and Chrome have the option to print in monochrome or colour in the Print dialog box. The Linux versions require you to click six times to invoke the Printer settings dialog box and click twice more to change the setting.

Example 2: On windows, Nero Vision required me to click six times to make a video DVD for a friend. The Linux equivalent took more than 60 mouse clicks, and required typing the track titles manually because, unlike Nero Vision, it didn't default to using the filenames. Then the application only created an ISO that needed to be opened in another application in order to burn the DVD. Less than five minutes versus the best part of 30.

That said, for the best part of 18 months I used Cinnamon Mint as my main OS and wishing windows was as smoo. But switching between w7 in a VM to get my work done and back to Mint for recreation eventually persuaded me back to w7.

Re: The Booby Prize Goes To

"Adobe is sun-dried mud.

The software lives up to the name as it does not hold water."

So what do you suggest publishers use instead of InDesign and Postscript?

Re: Yes, a constant stream of vulns --

"Never had a customer take the Linux option."

Probably because you didn't give them the chance to use Linux. Last dozen friends/relatives who wanted me to fix their w7 problems have been shown Cinnamon Mint using a live DVD. All have said go for it and none have come back for support.

Wish it was that easy for me [sigh]

Re: Leaving is OK if you are ascocial

"I don't feel the need to be social so not having constant contact with friends and acquaintances is not an issue for me.

However, I do recognize that I am unusual. I suspect that few others, especially those in technical jobs where solitude even in a crowded office is a daily reality, could do without the instant contact Facebook offers."

Sirius Lee, what you describe is introversion. While the media extol extroversion, I believe some 55% of the population are introverts. We are not all uncomfortable socialising, far from it, but unlike extroverts we are content with our own company. We don't need to be surrounded by hordes of fawning admirers.

Nice take on this by Jonathan Rauch: Caring for Your Introvert

Re: And some are ...

"White wine? Isn't that what you use for cleaning red wine stains off things?"

No, you use salt or baking soda. Why waste wine of any colour if it's worth drinking?

Re: Such a true reflection of a sad world

"Adverts? *looks about*... *disables ad block*...

Oh yeah, as you were."

Beat me to it you custard! Have another upvote.

Re: "t makes the mistake of considering Google less dangerous"

"There's really nothing "dangerous" in privacy ... Privacy defines us as a "person", and not just an element of a group."

And it's that which makes privacy dangerous... to the Elite that rules us.

Re: And some are ...

"Well, I prefer their dry whites "

While I very much like dry whites, especially chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, I also like the reds, especially shiraz. Unfortunately the reds don't like me very much: too much histamine.

Somewhat serendipitously, one of the sales ladies at my wine supplier just phoned. They keep a profile on my drinking habits and when they phone it's because they have something special on offer. I'd better call her back... Later...

Re: Stale

"Facebook has taught us a valuable lesson: most of the people we call "friends" are not that interesting."

Er... discovered that in the 1970s and that predate the Interwebs methinks...

Re: Dear Git

Denarius, so have I; state and federal. Not a pleasant experience for me.

Linux printing (was Windows 10 printing...)

@ Unicornpiss & Trilkhai

Print dialog box in Firefox allows choosing a printer, paper size and orientation. That's it. No duplex option even.

Chrome allows duplexing and access to a further dialog box where I can adjust the amount of cyan, magenta, yellow and black individually. But then I need to remember what the original settings were to shift back to colour printing.

On Windows 7 Chrome's print dialog has a drop-down for Print in Black & white, or Colour. Firefox's print dialog has a checkbox to print colour images and backgrounds.

Cinnamon Mint 17.3, Lexmark C543dn.

"Black hats go to the bar on Friday night too, you know."

There you go! And I thought they were called to the bar ;-)