I’m continually gearing myself for the purchase of a new laptop. Claiming that when I do, my current G5 setup is going to become an actual “office” setup for me so I can have a workspace in the house that will be designated only for work.
Until recently I used Intuit’s QuickBooks for invoicing and a PDA alongside Apple’s iCal for scheduling. Both of these things teather me to my computer for writing invoices and setting up my schedule. That changed when I realized that I was continually falling behind on both. I couldn’t schedule on the fly if I had forgotten my PDA and I was on location and if I didn’t have my PDA with me, I didn’t generally keep the best notes on what the hell I was billing someone for.
I lost my Quickbooks info thanks to an oversight on my part while re-installing my system and was left without any invoicing software. Whoops. I couldn’t find the install for the life of me so rather than continually fighting to find it, I moved forward and thanks to some searching on TechCrunch I found BlinkSale for invoicing and had been using Planzo for scheduling for a little while. Along with GMail, I’m able to be on the go and still have access to my “office.”
So I went from being tied to a machine to being able to schedule and invoice on the go anywhere I have access to the internet. Pretty soon I’m pretty sure I’m going to wind up getting a smartphone where I’ll be able to access these web applications anytime I have an EVDO cellphone signal (which is very often).
At this rate I’ll be able to use my G5 for ONLY audio needs and not have any need to use my office for office functions, but only for studio use.
Woo hoo!
So I bought the Fiona Apple record “Extrodinary Machine” recently and amid all the other bunk it says “DVD SIDE - Entire Album in Enhanced Stereo”.
So being an audio engineer, I’m naturally curious about what this means. Does it mean bit depth (which loosely translates into depth volume)? Does it mean sample rate (again, loosely means higher frequencies can be heard)? How “enhanced” is this audio?
A little web searching finds me the AVS Forums and a link to a Sound and Vision Magazine article on the topic (link).
enhanced stereo is 48-kHz/16-bit linear PCM. Which, of course, is just a shade above the CD spec of 44.1/16.
Meaning: WORTHLESS. In order to marry audio with video it NEEDS to be at this sample rate. ALL DVD audio is at this sample rate. I call shenanigans on Sony on this one.
I doubt they ven bounced a seperate 48kHz mix for the DVD, I bet the just upconverted the 44.1kHz mixes rendering these COMPLETELY useless.
Let’s not get into why the CD says “The audio side of this disc does not conform to CD specifications and therefore will not play on some CD and DVD players.” It makes me too upset.
As an aside - the record is great. I like the quirkyness of the previous mixes that I managed to get my hands on, but these serve the purpose as well. I miss the strings on “Not About Love” but oh well.
The “he” referred to is Mike Shaw, ABC’s President of Advertising Sales.
“He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping–and consumers might warm to the idea that anytime viewing brings with it a tradeoff in the form of unavoidable commercial viewing.”
Let me tell you something Mike Shaw. You are very wrong. Amber and I use our DVR as an ad-zapping device. Once again, you’re out of the loop about the American public. Actually, I don’t know anyone that DOESN’T use their DVR’s as ad-zapping devices.
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