On Wed, 2014-02-05 at 11:28 -0500, Joe Hartley wrote: Correct and not only the bass has got deep frequencies and not only the Beatles mixed that hard left/right for the older stereo recordings, but when I read your first sentence, I was thinking of the Beatles too, to disagree with that claim. Btw. those old Beatles recordings aren't bad mixes, many of them are very good. Right now I'm listening to the record single Eleanor Rigby by head phones, backside of Yellow Submarine. It's even pleasant to listen to such a hard left/right mix on headphones, quite psychedelic what they did to the vocal mix by separating it. I read that all Beatles recordings were remixed by compressing them to the loudness war, if so, then for sure the balanced hard left/right stereo mix won't be balanced and psychedelic anymore, since an important part of those mixings is the dynamic range.

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 10:41:33AM +0200, Vytautas Jancauskas wrote: There is no such rule. No, it won't. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 03:54:26PM +0200, Vytautas Jancauskas wrote: A DJ talking about the type of music he works with, probably rather heavy on bass. That last sentence says it all. The only reason why bass is usually centered (both in the vinyl area and today) is that insane quest for 'loudness'. If the needle skips that means the record was cut badly, or the player has a problem, or both. Compliance of the needle + cartridge will be the same in horizontal and vertical directions, as should be the resonance frequencies. And a good player will have more damping vertically than horizontally. Ask 'everyone' if a sailboat can go faster than the wind. Nine out ten will say no. Which is wrong, it's being done all the time. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 04:15:48PM +0000, Dan S wrote: It is certainly a very strong convention. Apart from loudness there may be another reason why. In typical 'chart' music the bass is responsible for a large part of the signal level. It's easy to test this, take your favourite track and send it via a switchable highpass (200 Hz) to a meter that shows both RMS and peak (e.g. a K-meter). With the filter in place, the RMS level wil drop quite a bit (between 5 and 10 dB). The peak level will change much less. That means that when you put the bass off-center, your level meters may well show 'out of balance', in particular if they have a small range as e.g. a VU, during the entire song. Many sound engineers probably dislike that, even if it does no harm at all. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

I'm not going to pretend I understood anything of this. I gave you a link, but if you look around there are plenty of sources that claim this, for example here is what soundonsound says: "There are few 'rules' in music production, but panning bass isn't far off. It is usually a good idea to pan the bass and kick to the centre. Partly this is historical (the limitations of vinyl) but, more importantly, it shares the bass energy equally between the two stereo speakers. It is also important because the listener will not always be in the sweet spot, and given that the bass is so critical to the mix, you want them to hear it wherever they are in relation to the speakers (this applies to dance music as much as any other -- you want all the clubbers to feel the same bass groove). " http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr07/articles/betterbass.htm

On Fri, 2014-02-07 at 09:17 +0200, Vytautas Jancauskas wrote: This is written by somebody who has got absolutely no knowledge about mixing. Perhaps this person knows how to mix dance/club music, but the claim "this applies [...] as much as any other" is nonsense. I read much about sub woofers on this list. I hope people are aware that a bass has got some high frequencies too, so a bass can be located and JFTR it's also possible to listen to music by headphones. Some people like to listen to music that is drawing a room and that has got a wide dynamic range. Relation to the speakers does matter for stereo, so do they completely mix in mono for dance/club music? No, they are mixing stereo, it's just stupid music made by people who aren't musicians and the main instrument are a bass line and a kick in unison to the bass line. If such an dance/club audio engineer isn't aware hat there are thousands of different music styles and that some music styles are really composed and/or improvised and not just a bass line + a synced kick and that even for many kinds of dance music, the rhythm group often is very subdued in the background, then such a wrong claim still is a wrong claim.

On 02/06/2014 09:17 PM, Vytautas Jancauskas wrote: Or with where the instruments themselves might usually be located on stage? I always have this image of Ye Old Rock'n'Roll Band on stage, with the drummer centered in the back, bassist to one side or the other of the drums, keyboards maybe on the other side from the bassist. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Cream, Led Zeppelin. I think even Chuck Berry usually set up that way. I remember when my church band was recording with 16 tracks (before the death of Firewire on laptops), I'd center the drums and bass and pan the other instruments and singers to try to match their locations on stage. But that could just be me; I like live recordings where I can hear where each performer is. -- David W. Jones gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 11:22:29PM +0100, Tim Goetze wrote: Which leads to the question why they would care about the energy budget if the information budget is used in such a suboptimal way :-) Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

I totally agree with that. Well, i agree on this, but only for the mass music production heard on the media mainly. There are a lots of great bands with creative music. you will probably never hear about until you've found them, and obviously if you are looking for them.

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 04:15:48PM +0000, Dan S wrote: I always thought it was because a) low frequencies are hard to localise, so panning them wildly left and right won't really do much and b) most stereos are fairly light on bass so panning low frequencies to the centre ensures that both channels are drive fairly equally giving the greatest sound pressure level possible. I suspect having the bassy sounds far off-centre would be uncomfortable to listen to, because we're so used to having bass and vocals panned to the middle. Experiment, but consider that we do things a conventional way because it works - imagine reading a book where paragraphs alternated between left to right and right to left. -- Gordonjcp MM0YEQ

On Thu, 6 Feb 2014, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: Many home sound systems today simply sum the bass energy from both channels into a single subwoofer anyway. It doesn't matter where in the room the subwoofer is located, because our ears are too close together to detect a phase difference at those frequencies. I do live sound in a venue with an installed sound system. We have two large subwoofers, fed in phase from a single source. The problem is that the two boxes are hung from the ceiling 30 feet apart. Two point sources that widely spaced give us interference fringes all across the room. You can walk slowly across the room and hear the bass come in and disappear with every step. I simply turn off the amp for one of the subs, and no one is the wiser, and everyone is happier. So defy convention if you like, and mix the bass wherever you like, but please forgive those of us with real-world transducers, where more often than not it's summed to mono before presentation anyway! I had heard the story about phonograph needles jumping out of the track. It made sense to me. On a stereo phonograph record, in-phase energy (L+R) is represented as side-to-side motion of the needle, and out-of-phase energy(L-R) is up and down motion. It can also be thought of as the left channel is recorded on one side of the groove(at a 45deg angle), and the right channel on the other side. It seemed plausible that a kick drum panned all the way to one side or the other might send the needle into the adjacent groove. -- Rick Green We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. http://www.MoveToAmend.org

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 11:56:00PM -0500, Rick Green wrote: It shouldn't unless the player has a problem. The cantilever of which the needle is the end has an elastic mount in the cartridge. Together with the mass of the arm and cartridge this forms a spring + mass system, which has a resonance frequency. Above that frequency the arm will not follow the groove, the needle moves relative to the cartridge, and this produces the signal. Below the resonance frequency the whole arm will start to follow the modulation of the groove. On a well-designed system, the resonance frequency should be below the audio range, but still high enough to enable the arm to follow any warping of the disk. If the resonance frequency is in the audio range, then a strong groove modulation below or at that frequency can make the needle jump out. But this means bad design, or the wrong combination of arm and cartridge. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 03:16:38PM +0200, Vytautas Jancauskas wrote: If that matters it includes using conservative levels instead of going for maximum loudness. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 02:59:33PM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Interesting read: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/technology/personaltech/how-to-enjoy-turn… -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 03:25:00PM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: There's no guarantee that buying records from secondhand record shops are any better. Some of the old recordings were crap some were brilliant, you soon got to know who were the craftsman and who were just knob twiddlers. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On Fri, 7 Feb 2014, Fons Adriaensen wrote: Thanks again, Fons. I can always count on you for an absolutely clear explanation of a complex phenomenon. An off-center hole in the record at 45RPM would induce a .75hz noise in the signal. (I don't think any stereo recordings were made in the 78RPM format) A severely warped record might give you three or four waves per revolution, so 6hz max? If the player were designed for audible signals at 20hz and above, it would seem that would be a wide enough target for mechanical resonance of the tone arm. But engineering always demands compromise, and the need to keep the stylus pressure low, and the length of the tone arm short enough to fit in living-room consoles, may force a higher tonearm resonance. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but just from observation of instruments such as organ pipes, Marimba keys, and grand piano bass strings, I imagine achieving a resonance <20hz in a physical structure of ~30cm length would be a non-trivial exercise. -- Rick Green We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. http://www.MoveToAmend.org

On Fri, 2014-02-07 at 14:39 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: [snip] Something good, but anyway I need to role my eyes. Yes, what you want is a MK II with an Ortofon cartridge, but there are nearly equal solutions with less good record players and less good cartridges available that are much more than just good enough for listening!

On Thursday 06 February 2014 11:22:43 Vytautas Jancauskas did opine: wrote: This may be an artifact of the std vinyl playing gear at radio stations, used historically where the records were played live on the air by local dj's. The majority of the stations I'd had experience with usually were equipt with decent turntables and arms, but because it was indestructable, had the old Pickering/Stanton D500 cartridge fitted. Those were so stiff they ate records with brand new needles in them. I was the CE at a small county seat CA radio, am-fm op in NE CA for a couple years, went in just as Olivia-Newton John's "Physical" was climbing the charts. Figuring it would last several months near the top of the playlist, they ordered 10 copies because they were destroying those 45's from cue burn & skipping at about 1 a week. Checking the arms, I found them set for about 12 grams, and that the needles were a good 10,000 hours old, resembling a lathe tool under the scope. I could not see the needle move when I pulled a finger across it. I knew the Shure RE15 was a good cartridge, so I hied myself over to the local Radio Shack, who had just one (small town shack) under their own label for about $57. Cecil (owner) had a cow about it. I said listen to it. 4 days later I did the same, readjusting the arms for 1.5 grams, with his blessing to the other TT & arm. They were able to cut the number of records being burned up to zero. We had 8 copies of "Physical" that went to the morgue in the garage, never touched by a needle. Pet Clarks "Downtown" same story. Cue burns and skips simply never happened again. We had one big fellow who was doing the evening shift that had arms & hands that weren't used to handling an arm that weighed so little, he was around 6'6" & 325 lbs and he managed to destroy a needle by rotating it in the elastomer mount, I took some tweezers and twisted it back vertical. Still in service and looking good under the microscope 2 years later when I headed east. That $115 change had probably saved them 10 grand in records not bought in that 2 years. Radio stations, because of the expected high play counts, have to buy specially licensed records at 3 or 4 times what we pay at Wallies, and still have to keep play records for ACAP/BMI & pay those fees. So it can be a major ongoing expense. However with that cartridge in that old viscous damped Grey arm, could have been quite capable of playing one on Emery Cooks 78 rpm lp's of an earthquake, in real time or sped up 16x as some cuts on the record were. It also could repeatedly play the Mercury recording of the 1812 overture without damaging either the Harkness Tower bells or the cannon shots. Play that record once with a lessor cartridge and the bells turned into fingernails on a blackboard. Even if it was a mono recording, that record was and is a technological tour de force. Those cannon shots? Recorded by an Altec M21B mic, located about 6" below the muzzle of the cannon. That mic was capable of around 135 volts peak to peak output, admittedly with some 2nd harmonic distortion, but it did NOT clip. I do not think its equal has ever been made since. That cartridge tracked at 1.5 grams, .75 grams on the needle, and .75 grams on the carbon fiber brush that rode slightly inboard to clean the record before the needle got there. Does anyone sell something like that today, 35 years later? Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> NOTICE: Will pay 100 USD for an HP-4815A defective but complete probe assembly.

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 12:07:46PM +0100, Robin Gareus wrote: There is libaudio-ecasound-perl http://search.cpan.org/dist/Audio-Ecasound/ I've never used it, but does reading this: (http://search.cpan.org/src/BOWMANBS/Audio-Ecasound-1.01/README) help? -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

Just to mention: someone pointed out a glitch in my code (actually, in the underlying "audiolab" module, or so it seems) - code updated: https://gist.github.com/danstowell/8872466 Dan 2014-02-07 Dan S &lt;danstowell+lxau(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: -- http://www.mcld.co.uk