Dusty Chalk

I'll see what I can do, but my studio is not set up right now, so don't hold your breath, neither literally nor figuratively, and I have no idea where the tapes for the Ever Darkward sessions are, or if I even have a copy, and whether or not said TMI is on those tapes, so I'd be better off trying to recreate. Compression is weird -- the human body makes a lot of very wet noises, when you listen closely enough.

The thing that's great about the DT770's for recording is the isolation -- there are few headphones that isolate better. You can be right in front of the microphone, with the compressor set so high that you can hear eyelids blink*, and monitor fairly loudly without feedback. And yes, very comfortable. The DT880's are like the DT770's without the ...erm... hyped bass signature. I suspect rockers at Guitar Center like the DT770's because of that bass hump. EDIT: This last is from memory, and I don't know which version of both I heard. I own the 250 and 600 pre-pro/home split (which effectively makes them pro, I think) of the DT770's, but have only heard the DT880's in meet environments, but I don't remember which DT770's were at the meet. *Yes, I've done this, really -- it's a surprisingly wet and intimate sound. And a little bit TMI.

He wasn't padding -- link. Sounds like I need to invite him here...after I receive them, of course.

Quite possibly. One becomes so drunk as to be relaxed as a noodle, making it easier to absorb blows?

Drunken Noodle w/chicken.

I tried the Punto Final 2009 Malbec last night cooler -- it did, indeed, improve somewhat.

Just finished An Acoustic Night at the Theatre, about to start The Unforgiving, both by Within Temptation. Of course, now that I've said that, I won't have a chance to listen to it until tonight.

Absolutely.

Hey, guess what I just found.

It's supposed to feel good when it stops hurting, according to Allison Moorer.

Heck, there's dinosaur piss in it.

No, that was probably a cat-owner's.

Oh. Fuck. Yeah.

"correctly ignoring the extra LSB bits" -- what? You can output a 16-bit signal to a 24-bit DAC, and it should handle it correctly, but if you are putting a 16-bit signal into a 24-bit signal by padding it before sending it to the DAC, aren't you making a 24-bit signal? I don't think it's the DAC that pulls the 16-bit signal out of there, I think that's the transport's job.

's'awesome.

That is, indeed, fascinating reading. Especially the linked-to thread about the HDCD box (link, and the post two down following that one).

I'm thinking of asking him for a line-item receipt, see if he balks. I mean, I understand if he wants delivery confirmation, that's fine. And I asked for insurance. I'm just curious if he's trying to pad his paypal fees in there. And clarify if he wants dollars or euros. He specifically asked for dollars, which is also fine.

That's a good idea, but I can probably come up with comparo files myself (the executable I can download again, it's the source code that's harder to come by). What numbers were you going to run? I remember that bothering me...I think it was something like: if you ran a non-HDCD-encoded audio file through hdcd.exe, it still generated the larger file. In my head, that didn't make intuitive sense -- a 24-bit file with the bottom bits not dithered is not the same as the 16-bit file. Is it? Makes me wonder if you have the same problem with HDCD-encoded audio -- I.E. if it should only be a 20-bit file, what are you doing with the bottom 4 bits? But then again, he said he reversed it from Windows Media Player, so it's probably just what Microsoft is doing.

Tried the Punto Final 2009 malbec last night -- meh. Might try drinking it a little colder next time.

So German guy wants a second payment, says it's more than he thought. He initially charged me 15 euros, but now is saying 35 euros, and wants me to paypal him US$28 -- is that kosher? Something about a receipt.

Well, one of the things that I heard "them" say is that the code isn't just sequences of bits, it's a specially designed sequence of bits that is deliberately part of the dither, so theoretically any audible effects the sequences would otherwise have should be overshadowed by the dithering process, of which the encoding is an integral part. I don't remember if it's a one-bit dither or not. Re: software -- yeah, I have the source code somewhere (the guy who wrote it was nice enough to share it with me so that I could attempt to compile it on linux, but that was several hard drives ago, so I'd have to find it at this point), but reversing it on Windows should (if they implemented it correctly) just be a matter of accessing the API's. I've heard something before (in fact, used to even own an unmodified something -- 2000? 1500? 1600? I forget which one), but have prefered the modified ones I've heard at meets? I can pull out the MSB Tech Link DAC III (w/HDCD & upsampling upgrades) for a comparo, if you'd like.

(facepalms, rubs temples)

I wish, Ken.

But the thing is, non-HDCD-decoding players (I.E. most of them) don't know that, so they just play it. EDIT: There's a lot of misinformation about HDCD -- for example, that post on the hydrogen audio forum about it being a limiter -- that's only part of it. It's supposed to be inaudible on a redbook playback machine, but it's undone -- I.E. expanded back out -- on a HDCD playback machine. EDIT: About the suggestion to decode it in software -- I'd like to, but I don't feel comfortable that the software captures every variation of HDCD decoding that it's supposed to -- there are a lot. It's not simply a "yes/no" choice, it's a function of settings.