Purple Sunray
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Posts posted by Purple Sunray
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And here I am, asking your advice, help, recommendations. Do you think that there is a market for that? Would you contribute to the campaign? Do any current label managers, artists, graphic designers want to help/get involved or just express your opinion
My opinion: if there would be a market for that, labels would do it by themselves.
I didn’t see any reason they artists would refuse
I do. Copyrights, License Agreements, Producer Agreements, 3rd party fees (i.e. for the artwork), ...
If you wanna do that, you need to approach the labels, not the artists.
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I'm using a DNLA MediaServer (self-coded) that extracts all metadata from the tracks, stores it on a database and exposes it via a defined search query syntax (UPNP ContentDirectory).
Similar to http://mediatomb.cc
Unlike mediatomb, my server does not have a web-interface, but I run a small second app to talk with the MediaServer. It just forwards search queries I enter and then presents the tracks, with play & download button.
Just as an example - if I'm looking for some night sound I have not listened to a lot of times yet, or any Chris Rich track, I enter something like "(bpm > 150 AND bpm < 165 and playcount < 5) OR artist contains 'Chris Rich'" , hit "Submit" and then I get a list of all tracks that match the given criterias.
Yeah... very technical solution, but extremely flexible and powerful after you learned the query syntax.
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Need some quick help.
I have this 70 page pdf with annoying "this page is personalised by ... " crap in the background tilted diagonally on every fucking page. Its very annoying. Any quick ways to remove it.?
Thanks a ton in advance.
Depends what kind of watermark this is.
Think about a PDF like being a picture of the printed page.
If the watermark is a second picture that is overplayed on the page picture, you can try to search for a tool to remove pdf watermark (there are plenty of it according to google, but I have never use any of it so far).
If the watermark is painted directly into the page picture, there is no way to remove it (unless you have a LOT of time to remove it pixel-by-pixel)
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Electronic music in general is less popular in the US then it is in Europe. It is not something special to psytrance.
There is some EDM and "electro-pop" becoming popular recently, but this is still pretty new.
In europe there is a whole different history - starting with Karftwerk in the 70s, first techno coming up in the 80s, trance, house & co following.
In the US there was the "New Wave" around the same time, but it died out - not real new electronic genres developed from it.
* Psytrance isn't associated with Black culture in the way that most American music is
Debatable, but I think it's at least a factor.
I think it is a very important factor.
Music in the US is/was strongly influenced by black culture (texas-cowboy country scene aside ;D). And I'm not talking about the new-shool gangsta shit, but about their music history.
Music in Europe (and especially in Germany) had to basically re-invent itself after WW2. There was no more own culture, or better, ppl wanted to forger about their own culture.
So for EU (and especially Germany) it was about to adopt what's coming from US/UK, or try to invent something new.. and that new thing was electronic music.
Ofc US did not adapt it.. I mean, how many EU trends have every been hyped in the US?? It's vice versa usually 
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1) There is no point using firefox other than your passwords
Firefox is based the on the Chromium engine, but adds custom stuff around it (which often is buggy).I prefer to use Chromium engine without buggy custom stuff, which is Chrome.
2) I do not have any problems with malware.
I have no antivirus, just the Windows Defender thing that comes from MS, but I stick to some rules to avoid getting infected at a first place.
- Chrome is the only browser (the isolated sandbox architecture brings a huge security increase to compared to like the internet explorer). All shortcuts to IE have been deleted.
- In addition to the Chrome sandboxing, Chrome itself runs inside Sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com/). Sandboxie is a tool that creates a sandbox for an application. This means that if the application wants to change your system (like it install a virus), it doesn't actually modify it, but it modifies the sandbox. So the virus is not installed to your actually live system, but into a sandbox which can be cleaned up easily.
- I never run any downloaded software if I'm not 101% sure that it can be trust. In case of doubt, I run it inside a virtual machine (https://www.virtualbox.org/ ) so that my real system is not affected if that application does something it shouldn't do.
3) I use dropbox for all kind of files I want to upload to the internet
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Mastering is about to:
- Have a second, professional, very experienced pair of ears (ideally) - listing to your track to find problems with it.
Main reason why I would never give any track to a "I have finished my home studio and started mastering, gimme your track!!" (there is no point on doing a cross-check with someone that has less experience than I have)
- Fix any problems that are fixable on the provided source data. Here it depends if the mastering engineer has your channel stems or only the final mixdown (he can 'fix' more on the stems, but is also way more work for him).
- Polish the mix. That is about to apply saturation and EQ to make your "flat" mix sound "deep"
- Bring loudness to same level as other tracks on that genre. Artists usually do not really care a lot about how loud a track is. They care about to keep enough headroom for the mastering guy (i.e. mix at -3db peak), but RMS / perceived loudness is the domain of the mastering engineer. This is about to apply compression and limiting.
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ahahah I actually did it.. I sent them an e-mail.. xD
But I do not really expect an answer.. =)
here it is:
Hi.
I did not want to write this email at all at a first place, but a colleague convinced me to do it.
A couple of days ago I joined a discussion about CDs on a music forum (www.psynews.org).
One member was recommending to not use CDs, because they basically are the same technology as vinyl (where signal amplitude actually has a correlation to the signal frequency).
But they are not, CDs are digital.
Since that user started to seriously defend his idea of how CDs work, I was wondering from where he got that information.
He pointed me to your page.
So long story short...
if you are a business guy and just don't know about that the tech stuff on your blogs is plain wrong, remove it from your page.
Everyone that has enough technical knowlege to understand what you are writing about, will think that this business is only about to rip off peapole that do not understand what you writing about. Given that fact, I would discourage peapole to buy from you. So might be better just remove the articles and not get bad reputation...
If that was actually your hidden plan, have fun.. I do not really care about your "business" model.
Anyway, I did a "review" of one of your blogs. It was just to show to that user how much bullshit is in there.
https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/71900-why-people-buy-100-hdmi-cables/
Yes, power supply is important. But for very different reasons like described by you.
And yes, there are lot of things that can wrong during CD ripping. But this are not the things you write about.
So if you are interested to learn about that stuff and fix your blogs, I can point you to the right resources (digital technology basics, CD Audio Red-Book standard, Nyquist sampling theorem, Cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon aka CIRC - that the is stuff you need to understand to explain your ripping system).
If you are not interested .. I do know the reason for it already and do not really expect an answer on this.
peace -
You are the idiot, 1001$ cable would have also included background radiation compensation
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While I agree with you 100%, why are you posting this here instead of telling the authors?
I would actualy do that if it would be some brainstorm could-be student blog.
But this is a company that runs a buiness based on fanatisy physics.
I assume they just laugh at me if I write them (yeah yeah we know, but don't tell anyone).
So I prefer to write to the other end of the moneh train
I'm no activitst.. just tech freak xD
Feel free to post that on their facebook page, will bring some traffic to psynews page
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Agreed, started a new thread on tech corner for the ones that are intereseted on my point of view =)
https://www.psynews....100-hdmi-cables
(I do c++ coding on multimedia stuff since about 20 years and part of that was to implement such a ripping system. It was the very first prototype arround 1995, in cooperation with drive vendors, CPU manifactors & co... We did the software part. Was on that dev. team until about.. hum Nero 6/7 release? So know that stuff inside out.....)
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Bullshit, see above.This is because algorithms are basically guesswork based on math. Its like guessing all Cs on your scantron, and we all know how well that goes.
Again, see above.Look at the concept of error correction. It uses interpolation (guesswork) to input data that the algorithm thinks missing. Interpolation picks a random point between two existing points and inserts data that doesnt exist. Nuff said?
Error correction will not change the signal where there is no error.
Holy shit.. rly?Lets say we have perfect algorithms, whatever that means. These algorithms are processed by the CPU in real time. For the CPU to process data it must first be loaded into memory. Bottleneck alert! (If you havent done so yet, read our article on the RAM and CPU relationship, it will explain this bottleneck in more detail).
Your 44,1kHz 16bit stereo signal has a data rate of:
16bit = 2byte
2byte * 2 channel = 4byte
4byte * 44100 sample per second = 176400 byte per second
So you are telling me that tranferring 172kB of data per second from RAM to CPU is a bottleneck?
Ok, to be fair, let's rip 32x.
So this are 5.5MB per second.. between RAM and CPU.. bottleneck. .... seriously?
My i7 system does 62GB per second
Sorry, but I cannot shitstorm on this, because I do not understand what he is talking about.Ill simplify this down to speed of processing. When the algorithms are not processed quickly enough latency occurs and the data floats in limbo waiting to be processed. During this time the square wave picks up noise, which causes amplitude distortion. All noise carries a voltage, albeit small, that adds or subtracts from the voltage in the square wave. The resulting amplitudes are imprinted on the resulting file and the resulting distortion becomes your music. Permanently. Timing can be fixed, amplitude cannot.
What noise?
This is how ripping with humans works:
There is one guy reading data from CD, writing it to a paper and putting this paper into a box (buffer).
That box is called a FIFO (first-in-first-out) buffer. First paper put in, will be pulled out by the other guy first.
The other guy reads from the paper and writes that data to the ripped file on the disc.
If your system (one of thoses guys) is not fast enough, the box will become full and the other guy needs to wait.
In your example the data waits on the limbo (aka FIFO), so the one that reads the papers and writes to file is not fast enough.
That also means, that one that reads from the CD needs to read slower, cuz limbo aka FIFO is full.
It's that simple.
There is no noise.
This is just plain wrong...
The power supply is what creates the 0 and 3.3V peaks of the square wave that determines your sound and digital signal. The amplitude of the square wave determines the frequency and harmonic content of your music.
The amplitude of a digital signal doesn't mean anythnig.
There is low threshold and a high threshold.
If the amplitude is below the low threshold, is called a LOW level, or 0.
If the amplitude is above the high threshold, is called a HIGH level, or 1.
Do you still rember the one to rember from above?
No? WTF
Again:
A discrete (digtial) signal is a sequence of values that represent a continuous (analog) signal.
Lets start vice versa, with the analog one.
There is nice psy squelch on an analog signal, which you want to convert to digital.
To do that use a device a called Analog-to-Digital converter.
That device looks at the squelch signal at certain intervals, and stores the current ampliutde value as a digial value.
For CDs, this converter will look at the singal 44100 times per second and store the value as a 16bit number.
.. I could do an introductoin to the sampling theorem now (Nyquist) but that's not the point.. I want to shitstorm
The point is that the amplitude of the low/high pulses, that describe the digital numbers, don't have anything todo with the frequency of the psy squelch ..
...
I must say that I lost the track completly now.. I just don't understand what he is talking about, so it's hard to flame it..
Anyway.. hope you got my point... next time buy the 10$ one.
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Inspired from another thread, I would like to shitstorm an artice about CD ripping.
IMHO this is the kind of stuff vendors tell ppl to make them buy the 100$ HDMI cable instead of the 10$ one
(we all know it is because the 100$ one will make the picture look birgther, with more contrast and better colors)
http://www.coreaudiotechnology.com/ripping-a-good-one-the-technicalities-of-cd-ripping/
AgreedFor those who dont know, RIP is the term used to take data from a CD and transform it for playback on the computer as a file. These files are stored on the hard drive along with album meta data, cover art, track titles, and so on. This keeps tracks organized for easy access later on through your favorite computer-based playback software.
No, a digital signal is no square wave. Forget that shit. Now.A digital signal is a square wave. A square wave is an analog representation of a digital signal. On a CD you have an imprinted square wave. This is important to understand, because this is where your distortion manifests itself.
A digtial (also called discrete) signal is a sequence of values that represent an analog (also called continuous) signal. Rember that one.
AgreedRemember how obsessed we at Core are about power supplies? If not, now you know. So should you be. Power from the power supply is used to generate the laser that reads the square wave. This square wave contains voltage data, which is, in theory, either a 0V or 3.3V pulse.
AgreedIn a ripping system you have a piece of software that is designed to do this process for you on a particular operating system. Why do different pieces of software make a difference? Algorithms (mathematical gymnastics).
Every algorithm is different and every algorithm results in a different rip.
Not necessarily.
If there is no problem with the original CD, there is no algorithm required to process the audio data.
The format stored on CD is 44.1kHz 16bit PCM, which can be converted to .wav by wirting a couple of bytes (WAV RIFF header) before the actual audio data.
So this is a 1:1 copy, no algorithm involved.
If there is a problem with the original CD, there is audio data missing because of bad sectors (read errors).
Now the algorithms come into the game, there are 2 basic types of it:
ECC and custom algorithms.
ECC is metadata which is stored on the CD. By using this metadata, a software can prefectly reconstruct the missing data. Like a 1:1 copy.
Most Audio CDs do not have ECC.
So what most players do if they face a read error, is to mute during the missing part. The well known suttering.
Software can include algorithms to interpolate the missing piece.
There are various ways of doing such an interpolation which range from "pick the middle value" (linear interpolation) to perfect reconstruction (bandlimented sinc).
This algorithms will not degrade sound quality of data that can be correctly read from the CD.
They help you to re-construct audio data where the CD cannot be read, but they are NOT always on.
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Edit:
That CD ripping artice cross-checked against reality:
https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/71900-why-people-buy-100-hdmi-cables
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You are talking about the DAC (DigitalToAnalog converter), not the CD.
I do agree that differnt players sound differnt.
But this was not the topic, we are talking about audio quality degrade because burned to a CD
Hm?When the algorithms are not processed quickly enough latency occurs and the data “floats” in limbo waiting to be processed. During this time the square wave picks up noise, which causes amplitude distortion"
If the processing during buring is not fast enough you face a buffer underrun. Depending on the drive, the burn software migth be able to resume burning after that underrung or not (error during buring).
If the processing during playback is not fast enough, the DAC runs out of data. Again it depends on the implementation - it can mute, do a fade ramp, repeat the last buffer, or..
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On CDs you need to think digital.
0 or 1. Works or Doesn't work. Music or No Music.
There is no 0.5 on the digital domain.
Now, let assume you have a very simple kick-drum audio format, where 0 means silence and 1 means a drum hit.
Your data looks like
1000100010001000 ( a "4 to the floor" kickdrum).
If you now burn that to a CD, it will become something like:
1000100010001000[4]
The [4] is a number stored with that block of data (sector), called a checksum.
My checksum is the number of 1's on the block, which is 4 (real checksum do not simply count 1's ..
)The kickdrum audio player reads that file now and because the CD is bad, a couple of bits are wrong. Like:
1000101000110000[4]
Now the player check if the read data is actually correct. There 5 1's on the sector and but check-sum says 4 => read error.
Data on that sector cannot be trust, so the player will mute instead.
You get my point?
A digital copy will not alter the data. 010101 will still be 010101 after a digital copy.
A CD can lose data because of bad sectors, but then this data is either readable or not readable. If a sector is corrupt, it will be detect at such and the player will not play it.
That is the big advantage over analog, i.e. Vinyl.
On Vinyl your data looks like
0.01, 0.72, 0.383, 0.588, 0.454, 0.489, ...
The player will play whatever it reads. If the disc is bad it will read wrong values and play wrong music.
A CD player in the other hand, will know that data is correct (can be read), or data is not correct (cannot be read).
So I really don't get from where the audio quality degrade comes in, in your opinion.
At 90's years exist a (high-end) desktop audio-cd recorder which could made 100% SAME copy from CD.
After a half year the manufacturing has been cancelled. (At the request of music industry rights defenders and sony/phillips)This was related to copy protection based on intentionally corrupt sector on the disc, not related to quality. That tool was able to copy those corrupt sectors, which music industries did not like at all (normal CD burners do not copy, but skip corrupt sectors).
burning software ex: nero vs plextools (win) vs K3b (linux)
Nero ofc!!! (was working from them for quite some time... xD)
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- I've read somewhere
Don't let em fool you
that when the manufactured audio cd is PRESSED, the 'shape' & 'depth' & 'location' of data pits/lands are PRECISELY, because there is no rotation & dithering (as under 'cd burning')Yeah, CDs are stamped. "Pits" and "Lands" are on a stamp which stamps CDs. On CD-R/RW a laser creates those "Pits" and "Lands".
This doesn't affect sound quality though (see below)
If a (low-grade) audio CD-R is written at high speed -4x or more (24x?
-, the extreme spin & vibration can cause instable laser positioning, so, a part of pits/holes put for hardly readable 'wrong' place at spiral track of data -OR- the pits 'shape' and 'length' can be malformed. These problems cause poor "back readability" at disc and audio cd player will be forced 'error correction' or skipping. (Most hifi cd players can't do 'cache' or direct 're-read', as computer optical drives do) This may explain why some people experienced [like me:] that burning disc's can sounds a bit flat /muddy (ex: lack of high / low frequencies) or distorted compared to originals.Then you hear some other distortion. Same EQ settings? Same player? Same headphones? Same ...?
If your drive runs into a read error, it will retry to read that sector a couple of times then give up. If this is the case, a block of 2,352bytes (CD sector size) is missing for playback. This is about 75ms of audio for 44.1kHz/16bit.
So the problem the CD player has to solve, is that 75ms of audio is missing in between the file playback.
I do not know any player that solves this problem by producing 'flatness' or 'mud'. I could think of some pre-cache + timestrech approach, but this would more sound like movement of the 'keynote' or mikeymouse like if a simple re-sampling is used.
Most of the players simply mute during the gap. So you hear the very well known stuttering. Physical errors on a CD should never lead to change on the sound quality, but dropouts.
p.s: of course , listening to music on computer is a very different story..Not that different. Back at the old days CD audio player had 1x drives only, while PCs generally had fast drives.
Now.. if you read with a speed of 1x, there is not much room for any re-try if you face a read error. Such players needs to skip immediately and continue to read next sector, otherwise playback will be on pause during read tries. If you have a drive that is faster than 1x, you can buffer. i.e. you fill your buffer with double speed then consume (play) it with normal speed. So if you run into a read error, you have time for re-tries until the buffer runs empty. After playback continues, the buffer will refill, because drive reads at > 1x while you play at 1x.
But this is history, more or less. If there is any kind of anti-shock feature on that CD player, it will have a drive faster than 1x. So playback, buffering and timings will work very similar to a player running on a PC.
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I get that.. I can understand if one want to collect CDs, same like with stamps or .. your point of not buying flacs was jut a very weird one..Most of us with collections of CDs started collected when there was no digital downloads. Once it's become a collection, it's hard to change.
That's what I do.. so I think it's goodCan I ask if you have a digital collection of downloaded files on your PC, phone or DAP? What do you think of those that say you collect files and using a streaming service is the way to go?
If have about 2k flacs (still growing.. xD) stored on a HDD, attached to a raspberry pi zero (small 5$ 'PC' which runs a Linux).
There is MediaServer software running on the raspberry (a piece of software to search for tracks and stream it via http).
The raspberry pi is attached to my internet router, which is online 24/7 anyhow.
So at home I have my local flac collation on a network drive, or I can stream via the MediaServer to PC, mobile or whatever device that has a web browser
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Call me digital-genetarion-pseudo-eco.. but prefering to spend the money on a piece of plastic and to burn some oil to ship that to you, rather then giving it the artist/label is just... idiotic.
(I can understand if someone wants to collect that boxes.. but your point of buying CDs over flacs is just.. -.- )
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ahaha, that's why there is a toFlac.bat file on desktop, with:Thanks, but that doesn't satiate my need to be lazy. An extra step? Might as well just have less space
ffmpeg -i "%1" -sample_fmt s16 -ar 44100 -c:a flac "%1.flac"
in it
I'm too lazy to write that command as well.. with that bat file you can drag&drop files into to convert it xD
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Im a student and well, I live in Serbia so my financial state isnt so great and I was wondering if it would be worth it for me to start a collection? There are a few albums that I love and would like to own. Or should I just stick to promo videos on youtube?
Well.. at the end you need to decide
I maintain my (purchased) flacs collection mainly because I do want to support the artists, not really because I'm after filling my HDDs with flacs.
I know some of the artists and I also know that they are NOT like pop-starts.. they are happy for every dollar they can get because it enables them to continue making music (it's not about getting 'rich' at all
). I do want them to continue making music, so I buy their stuff on bandcamp & co instead of getting via "some other" channel 4 free... But I'm in a pretty decent financial position.. Spending money for music is no big deal for me, so at the end you need to decide.. If it is about buying food vs buying music.. there shouldn't be a question about what to buy first.. -
Does anyone know if on bandcamp, when buying a CD and downloading the Flac, it often only has a 24bit option but I only want the 16bit as my portable music player has only about 250gb of space which quickly disappears using 24bit.
Huh? Just convert it (instead of buying 'lower quality' file)
If you don't know how:
1) Get ffmpeg https://ffmpeg.org/download.html
2) run
ffmpeg -i <yourfile> -sample_fmt s16 -ar 44100 -c:a flac audio.flac
This will convert <yourfile> (can be any audio format) to signed 16bit 44.1kHz flac.
About the topic:
I personally prefer flac over CDs, because they are sooooooo much easier to handle.
All my flacs are indexed on my Media server, where I can search for tracks/artists/ect. by simply entering the name. I can sort it, rate it, mark it as "played on party y.x. already" . I can save my DJ-edits of a track right aside with the original one, I can .........
So much more possibility over having a cabinet full of CD boxes.
Also my server has automatic regular backups.. so in case by house burns down, it is not that critical at all, my music collection backup is save unless the "the cloud" burns down too
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and yeah I can see the usage for an unbalanced mono cable I guess - although it would seem better to use a balanced cable instead, for all those purposes.
and if not - ive still to know why that is.
Well - you can use stereo/balanced cables, but you don't have to.
If you put a TRS jack into a TS (mono) plug, wire connected to tip will receive signal, wires on ring and sleeve will be on ground.
So if you put a TRS jack to TS (mono) plug, it will work (1 wire has signal, 2 are on ground).
If they would design their mono devices to require 3 wires, you HAVE to use stereo/balance cables - won't work otherwise (or with half volume like if you pipe you balance signal into an unbalanced in).
If they design their mono devices to require only 2 wires, can you use mono and stereo cables (having more wires than required is no issue, but vice versa it is
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but what are the mono cables used for? the xlr trs mono cable for example.
TRS mono cable?
TRS = Tip/Ring/Sleeve. So this connector has 2 signal lines (Tip and Ring) and ground (sleeve).
I think you mean TS (Tip/Sleeve) which only has 1 signal and ground.
It is used for all kind of mono signals.
Mics, (dual-)mono amps with unbalanced in (they use cinch not TS or XLR most of the time thou), effect pedals, ect.
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@ Purple Sunray
You are wrong, I believe the majority of the regular users here really love this music. If they believe something is shitty why not say it?
A lot of good releases receive positive feedback, so the one who wanted to complain is you
> If they believe something is shitty why not say it?
hmm mk.
That was actually my point - they do complain and also say it
I left the forum because it was almost impossible to talk about a music topic w/o ppl jumping in immediately to inform you about that this style/genre/artist/synth is shit and it should be forbidden to listen to it.
> A lot of good releases receive positive feedback, so the one who wanted to complain is you
You mean that thread? Or were did I complain about music other people listening to?
This thread was not about to complain, just out of curiosity.
I'm a guy that just stops doing something if it annoys me, rather than complaining.
So no.. no complaining about this forum, I don't care enough about to complain..
Feel free to continue as usual, I'm gone again anyhow after reading responses to this thread
no need to change anything cuz of me
Making a dream come true
in General Psytrance
Posted
If this is all self-released stuff, ok.
But if it is released via a label, the label will hold the copyright for sure, not the artist.
And free != free.
Like if it is released on ektoplazm with Creative Commons License - Non-Commercial you already have an issue, because you want money and you even want send out money to the artist. So you are making it commercial, which is not allowed according to the license it was published with.
You get my point? Artists usually don't care about that stuff at all and this why I proposed to contact the label. They will know about licenses and can tell you if re-releasing it is ok, or not. Label and artist can be the same person ofc for self-released stuff