elgrau

Ok (I guess); but not what you said. And just to further annoy: "Well, like all waves, you can't see them directly" You've never seen waves radiate out from a rock thrown in a lake/pond? Plus, the famous wave/particle experiment supports the assertion that the mind "creates" solid objects: in this experiment, as long as no observation, the light acts as a wave, but as soon as it is observered, it is mysteriously turned into particles ("solids")! This famous experiment in quantum mechanics has never been fully explained or understood (like most aspects of QM - but no theory has been more tested than it has been and experimentation has never failed to produce the theory's predicted result)!

?? You saying I can't "see" the sun (thru a dark filter, of course)? That light has reflected off of nothing..... And it gets even more "weird": This "picture" of the world that the brain creates from these photons/electrmagnetic waves entering our eyes don't actually "reflect" from surfaces: photons are absorbed by "matter" and this "matter" then emits a totally different photon (and this emission CAN come out at ANY angle; however, the most probable angle is equal to the angle of incidence - see Feynmien's "QED" book). But the point being that the mind interprets all of this "activity" and tells you what you "see". But what is REALLY out there?? Some say that there are REALLY no "solid" objects at all (true in the sense that everything is energy feilds in opposition, but also true in another sense as well)....only flowing energy fields that the MIND organizes and INTERPRETS as "solid" objects (in order that we may deal in an orderly fashion with these flowing energy feilds; e.g., as in "hunting" in order to survive). And until someone can explain to me how the brain actually DOES all this (regardless of whether or not there are solid objects "out there" or not!), then I'm open to any explanation! As many have said, there is a lot more to this "picture" than meets the eye! And that "lot more" is our minds...

Sounds interesting, Bill. Like light, how the brain produces "sound" is very fascinating. With light, it has always fascinated me how the brain can "generate" the minute details of what we "see" just from electromagnetic waves entering little tiny holes in your eyes and "tickling" the optic nerve that then simply sends an electrical signal to the brain! Afterall, light does not actually "shine": it's all created/constructed by your mind...there is no one inside your head looking at a movie of the "outside world". It all (minute details of EVERYTHING around you) comes from interpreting an electrical signal of various frequencies and amplitudes and phases (albeit from different locations on the retina)...how??? I tend to believe more in something called the "assemblage point" (that takes all these light rays and "assembles" them in toto into our world....that makes more sense to me then doing it via some kind of signal processing by the mind!

yep; "Like a Rolling Stone" has shown up as the #1 on many a "greatest hits of..." lists. It has the most dramatic beginning of ANY song: BANG! One grand note out of no where and it's off and running at full steam! Got to be Dylan's pinnacle creation (maybe). Great back story about the guy who got to do the organ on this song as well: he wanted to be on guitar, but was no chance of that as they had the cream of the (studio) crop for that...so he just pushed his way in by doing that "over cooked" organ (that "others" wanted to "mute", but Dylan, wisely! said no, let it be!)

Like most, got tons that I really like, but a couple that come to mind are: Pink Floyd's "Time": "....kicking around on a piece of ground, blah, blah, there's time enough today to do....and then one day you find ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun..." Timbuk3's "It's Just Another Movie": "...now my freedom's bought and paid for, it lights up my living room, there's nothing left to prove, I got no reason to move, and when I'm tired of the program, when its taken its TOLL, I can push a button and change the channel by remote control. it's just another movie, another song and dance, another poor sucker who never had a chance..." Dylan's "Positively 4th Street": "I wish that you could stand in my shoes, and that for just that one moment I could be you, then you'd know what a drag it is to see you..." I love lyrics that express that kind of pathos (?)....cynical commentary on "modern life".....

"There's a lot fewer possible listenable songs than you might first imagine" True, true....However, you still have to concede that for each and every one of these songs, you'd have them in ALL languages, backwards (just the bit stream reversed), forwards, a lot out tune, a little out of tune.....in "pig latin", with the singer having a "cold", a lisp, a hairlip, on and on and on. A SHITLOAD of songs! add: not to mention EVERY combination of part "lisp", part pig latin, part out of tune part in tune, etc., etc! 2 to the 12 billion = (if my math is right) = 10^3.6 billion! And with "only" ~10 to the 80th power ATOMS in the known universe, 10 to the 3.6 billion "song collections" is therefore enough songs for the ATOMS in 45 MILLION universes of "our" known universe's size....like I said, it a BIG number of song collections!

"Analog doesn't have infinite variation" I tend to disagree: Noise floor has nothing to do with it: Let's say that the record "groove cutter" has a "valid" (out of noise floor and below "clipping") amplitude range of +/-X inches. UNLESS the "cutter positioning" device is digital (I think not...no such animal back when records were 1st "cut"!), there is (just like in the number line) an INFINITE number of locations between -X" and +X"! If not, which position can this ANALOG positioning device not "get to" as it sweeps between these two limits? Answer: NONE. So at each and every location along the record groove you have an INFINITE number of possible amplitudes....not to mention an INFINITE number of groove locations for each of these infinite amplitude values (not just 44,000 per second of DIGITIZED music with a "measly" ~256 possible amplitudes!).

yep; by FAR most would be! And here's a question only God himself could answer: what percentage of all those songs in all those "2 to 12 billionth power" 10 hour "music collections" would actually be "valid" songs? (in any current earthly language)??

"But, you'd still have zillions of combinations that don't amount to music, text or anything else.." Yep BillD; "2 to the 12 billionth power" is a HUGE number! Just realized that ALL these songs ("missing" Beatles tunes, etc., etc.) would ALSO be there in ALL languages, backwards, forwards, sped up, slowed down, with tuned instruments, with instruments out of tune every way imaginable, etc., etc.! Yep, "2 to the 12 billion power" is a BIG number! Take that, monte3x's brain!

yes interesting (DNA "alive")...I had a post ready to go about just how many different "threads"/combinations of music there are in ~10 hours of digitized music: "2 raised to the power of 17,620,000,000" (17,620,000,000 ~=number of bits in 10 hours of music at 44k Hz samples per second and 8 bits of amplitude resolution per sample which is ~ how long the Beatles remastered set is). My calculator "overflowed" trying to calc that number! And even at one microsecond to "listen" to each of these "music collections" it would still take a very LONG time to "hear" them all and discard all the "junk"! But computer crashed, and all those "bits" were lost! add: even more "troubling" (digitized music wise) is that based on this there are "only" 2 raised to the power of 63,360,000 POSSIBLE 3 minute "pop songs"! Once you've heard these, you've heard them ALL! Which (since we know there is really an infinite number of 3 minute songs "out there") gets back to the "fidelity" issue: this infinite number of songs MUST each be "approximated" by one of those "2 raised to the power of 63,360,000" POSSIBLE digitized representations. Obviously some fidelity must be lost as each of these digitized songs must "stand in" for a whole infinity of songs that are "almost" like the one digitized song! I rest my case of digital vs analog fidelity!

yep; good analogy, Balok....order vs chaos. But hard for me to believe that "natural selection" accounts for all that order in DNA that leads to the extremely complicated "tunes" that we are. Just like how much time it would take to "list out" all the bit combinations that lead to "songs", I don't believe "natural selection" has had nearly enough time to create the proper DNA that makes living beings! Easier to believe some "Beatles" created the basic order of these "tunes" and "natural selection" ("Producer" George Martin?) fine tuned them .

Maybe too much "brain food complex" (from www.heathline.cc) coupled with too much caffiene. Whatever; just thoughts and this IS a forum afterall! Better than a steady string of "Welcome aboard, xyz!" newbie posts that some members only contribute! But that fine too! It's all good, Snow!

While enjoying my new remastered Beatles CD set, I started thinking about the fact that this total digitized collection is "just" a sequence of bits, each of which can either be (and ONLY be) one or zero. Therefore, this "collection" of music is simply one out of 2 to the Nth power music "collections", where N = the total number of bits of information in the total collection of all the songs. This means that one could generate a DIGITIZED exact copy of this ENTIRE Beatles collection of songs "simply" by generating ALL of the possible bit combinations (which would ALSO generate ALL of the "missing" Beatles songs that they never recorded ). And without knowing a THING about music, our culture, or ANYTHING! Of course you'd need probably about 10 million times the length of time that our universe has existed (and probably a lot longer of course unless you developed some sort of "pruning" technique to "prune out" the "threads" of collections that "went to garbage" after several seconds of "music" which would be like 99.99999999....out to a HUGE number of nines percent of ALL the threads!) to "sort out" all the "songs" from the "trash"! But none the less, it could be done, which leads me to my point: with ANALOG music (say the grooves of a record) you COULD NOT do this because the "heighth" of the groove at each time slice you pick has INFINITE variation. You could NEVER reproduce the entire Beatles song collection (no matter how much time you had) by randomily varying the grove's ANALOG amplitude at each time slice (and does not matter how fine or coarse you do the time slices)! This "thought experiment" tells me this: the analog version of the songs is MORE unique than the digital version and thus contains more information, and is in fact the one and ONLY "Beatles collection" in the universe and thus is of higher fidelity than ANY digitized version of the music could EVER be! In conclusion: ANALOG recordings will ALWAYS be more "true" to the original live recording than DIGITAL could EVER POSSIBLY be (no matter how "advanced" digital EVER becomes)!

"elgrau/Rich Found this: The groundbreaking Rust Never Sleeps is the half live offering, containing all previously unreleased music. Side one of the LP is all acoustic music, typically introspective, beginning with a laid back "My My, Hey ......." Hi Balok, Daughter snagged me a copy (LP!) of "Rust Never Sleeps" at a garage sale today. I have "Live Rust" and as good as that is, this is better! I'm kind of "ashamed" at just getting around to getting a copy of this NY album: have all the cuts on other of his albums of course (except perhaps the very awesome "Thrasher"), but nothing like the "original"! Luv the version of 'Pocahontas' on this album: it has some funky instrumentation that is not in the Live version....liner notes has the lyrics as well and this another example of LP vs CD and again, LP has "something" better about them then the CD versions of these great songs. She was planning on re-selling all the albums she picked up; I told her I'd give her 2x whatever was the most she got for any of the others that she sells on ebay (a P. Floyd and a Rolling Stones LP in absolutely pristine condition! You can find some great LP's out there sometimes!), Thanks for steering me "back" to this GREAT LP! - Ed

Like the "no x-over" design (and rationale). I see no prices quoted anywhere on their site...I guess if you need to ask/see, you cannot afford! Plus shipping cost from Italy; fgitaboutit! I'll stick with my sphere's and 1000's (both with no x-over's except "natural" via v-coil and one cap)... But from reading the "accoustic transmission line" dissertation and the material on Ultrasound's site, I'm beginning to better understand/appreciate why the EPI 1000's (with just four 8" woofers) are situated in a 72" x 16" x 16" box/tube!

Thanks for the great album info Rich /Balok!

From the cover it looks to be a "live" album. So is "Live Rust" the same album (by a different name) as "Rust Never Sleeps"? Please excuse my ignorance; I'm pretty sure I don't have "Rust Never Sleeps"; if it is not the same as "Live Rust", then I want to get it! I like "High Tides and Greengrass" too, B-Power! And "Animals" too, Bluesman! Maybe I need to "rescore" some of my albums!

Balok, I'm aware of "Live Rust" and "Sleeps with Angels" as NY albums (and "Live Rust" is on my list), but never heard of "Rust Never Sleeps"? Is it an album or did you mean "Live Rust" or "Sleeps with Angels"? Ed

Yep, Harry, Abby Road is a VERY good album. It (and the "White Album"!) would have made my top list as well IF I still had these CD's! (I "loaned" my entire Beatles CD collection to one of my daughter's friends years ago: I got about half of them back!). So I no have them to do a "scoring" using my system. But thanks for reminding me: probably should replace BOTH of these and get them back into the "rotation"!

This an easy "do" for me! When I "scored"* all of my songs from ALL of my albums back in early '07 (in order to determine the "top 240" to put in my Ipod "Shuffle") I then was able to "rate" each album I own by simply doing a "score" for each album based on the sum of the "scores" for each cut on the album....doubt if much has changed in my tastes and sadly in my CD collection since then (a few new additions, but none that would probably "crack" my top ~35- wrong!-.ed..). add: I added the albums added since '07 and a few did pop intp my top picks (kind of "tainted" as not the same evaluation time as the others, but whatever: e.g., "Best of Simon&Garfunkle" now my "#1": could just be because I not heard them for a while, and also because this CD has about 30 songs on it!). So here is my top 35 or so albums/CD's (I have the entire list but will just do the top 35...can chop it off at whatever "break-point" you want!): Album Name (GH=greatest hits; ST=soundtrack) Artist Rating (100=best) Raw "Score" Best of Simon&Garfunkel Simon/Garfunkel 100 41 Oh Brother Where Art Thou ST Various 95 39 Dylan's GH III B. Dylan 90 37 Self Portrait B. Dylan 85 35 Unplugged N. Young 85 35 Live Rust N. Young 83 34 The Beatles #1's (rating divided by 2 because 27 #1's) The Beatles 83 34 Roy Orbinson's GH I & II R. Orbison 76 31 Hendrix J. Hendrix 76 31 Sgt. Pepper Beatles 76 31 Star Songs W. Nelson 76 31 John Wesley Harding B. Dylan 73 30 Dark Side of the Moon P. Floyd 73 30 Very Best of Everly Brothers Everly Brothers 71 29 So Far CSN&Y 68 28 In Search of Lost Chord Moody Blues 68 28 Malt Shoppe Memories II Various oldies 68 28 Blonde on Blonde B. Dylan 66 27 Zuma N. Young 66 27 Nashville Skyline B. Dylan 63 26 Hag M. Haggard 63 26 Harvest Moon N. Young 61 25 Harvest N. Young 61 25 Patsy Cline's GH P. Cline 59 24 Legend B. Marley 59 24 1959 Various oldies 56 23 Greendale N. Young 56 23 Hell Freezes Over The Eagles 56 23 Best of Doors II The Doors 54 22 Aqualung J. Tull 54 22 Buddy Holly's GH B. Holley 54 22 The Wall I P. Floyd 54 22 Desire B. Dylan 54 22 Highway 61 Revisited B. Dylan 54 22 Freedom N. Young 54 22 Kink's GH The Kink's 51 21 *system I used was: 5 points for each "#1" song (songs you cannot live without), 4 points for a "circled" #2 song, 3 points for a dashed circled #2 song, 2 points for a "plain" #2, and 3 points for a #3 song. "Circle" thing to help make it easier to decide between 5 rating levels.

Agree, Herr Rabbit; I'm a IMDB fan from way back! For the "good stuff" , I've "heard" that www.mrskin.com is also a lot of fun!

Hear you about the "retire with dignity" thing, Bill. However, the preferred way to leave "The Borg" these days is to hang on 'till your number comes up and get the severance package (the max of 26 weeks pay for most folks close to retirement) and THEN retire. I coined a name for such folks who get their wish and get "downsized" under these circumstances: the "Grateful Dead"! Since you can take this severance pay as a lump sum if you want, it does not preclude you collecting unemployment if you take it that way as well! It's just too much of a financial incentive to just "retire" and miss out on all that "free" money! They are basically phasing out most engineering work here in Huntington Beach anyway, so it's really just a matter of time before those who do not transfer to another division are axed anyway!

No such problem where I work: most surrounding cubes are empty (co-workers "recalled" from program or sent packing!). Opposite problem: it's too quiet and "lonely". Great for getting stuff done tho! About the only conversations I have most of my workday is "over the wall" with my manager 1st thing in a.m. and maybe before leaving! Plus he is scheduled to get his 60 day notice this month! Sure glad I'm ready to get my severance package (one week of pay for every year of service up to 26 weeks pay - I have 33 years) and then retire. If I'm lucky I can stretch it out 'till I'm SS elliligble in ~ 17 months. I'm lucky to be one of the few remaining private sector employees who still gets some kind of pension of ~45-50% of current pay(although with no cola provision it will be inflated away to nothing in probably less than 10 years). And this is more than fair and adequate when coupled with 401k plan savings plus SS . But we all are required to support government employees 95% pensions with cola and retiree medical for them at ages as low as 50 (and work 'tll we are 62-65 in order to do this while they play away there days with our support)! What a neat slavery system we have!

That last one looks like the top view of a fancy crapper! :dd :dd The 2nd one like my grandmother's "iPod" :dd not a clue....carry on!

"Huh? 30khz to 15kz is both higher and lower than 20kzh to 20k Hz." Read it again Snow. 30 to 15k = 30 Hz to 15000 Hz .....OBVIOUSLY. Since when does 30 = 30k?? And exactly as they wrote it in the book: 30 to 15k Hz Not to mention: 15kz?? or 20kzh?? what the f units ARE that?? :dd