About five minutes after....

....I blogged about the point of CDs here, when it's so much easier to download (legally) music, I finally worked out how to connect my Ipod to my not too bad hi-fi system.

Wow! I now know why I should still buy CDs. Funny how the Ipod is ok in the ear, but not when run though a quality amplifier when the sounds lose their richness. It's annoying that with the Ipod you are a bit stuck with the Itunes system, which only allows a maximum sample rate of 192 bps. My older, clunky Iriver, which did not take kindly to being taken on a run, allowed an almost double sample rate (and even complete copies, taking up huge amounts of memory space). It was also much easier to load and manage.

The problem with sound is confirmed by Robert Levine here [on the Rolling Stone website], when he says that sound quality is getting worse and worse - and in an age of Ipods no-one complains (until they do what I did...). He complains about music being made louder and louder, which can't be good for people's ears; in addition the technique results in a compression of sounds, taking out much of the excitement of music. On the other hand, listening to classical music on a European Ipod in a noisy environment, you'll miss the quiet bits. European Ipods are set not to exceed a certain sound level; hope onto an Austrian Airlines Dash 8-400 with it and all you can listen to is baroque music, which does not do dynamics that much. Schnittke/Kancheli? Forget it.

Ipods are obviously not made for classical music - not even the Ipod classic. But for those of us who travel a lot it's a godsend. As memory is reduced further in size, I hope that soon we can enjoy a higher bitrate very soon!

Why CDs?

Recently I read a great review of Masaaki Suzuki's recording of the Bach B Minor Mass. So I ordered it from Amazon at a cost of 32 Euros. It's a SACD - never quite sure what that means, but most of the time I listen on my Ipod anyway.

A couple of days later eclassical emailed me, with the very same recording for download for 5.99. Eclassical is a kosher classical music download site, so there is no question about legitimacy. Clearly their version was just normal, as opposed to SACD, but for the Ipod it was perfect (once I had sorted the little problem of the track numbers being the same on both 'CDs' and the movements being intermingled). One order cancelled at amazon.

Naxos offer all (?) their vast library of tracks for download, as do others now. I suppose if you were a hi fi freak you would want to buy CDs (or probably preferably LPs), but in any case we also don't know how long CDs live - there have already been reports of early CDs deteriorating.

Of course it's not safe storing all your music on an Ipod only which is why Itunes, for all its faults, is quite good at storing it on your computer hard disk. Which may not be so good for you either, if that crashes, but then you could use jungledisk (at a fee) or MP3tunes locker (for free) to store your music off site in that big storage space in the sky. I suppose you might worry about security and someone nicking your tracks.... then again, that could happen at home, too - no?

Is there a future for CDs? Answers on a postcard....

How is the recording? Great - have not heard all of it, though I heard the huge intake of breath at the beginning before they launched into a very slow Kyrie. He generally does not rush. Suzuki does the Mass with a small choir of 15 or so, and period instruments. You realise this when one movement in particular sounds quite flat, but it's just the different tuning. I like transparent Bach - there's a band in Edinburgh who does Bach like this in the Canongate church twice a year. Overall it's a wonderful recording, every word is pronounced extremely clearly - the Japanese can do an 'r' if it's necessary. It only misses one small thing - when I recorded the mass from the radio at the 1975 Proms, right at the end of the movement just before the 'Et resurrexit' the organist must have leaned on the keyboard and out came a squeak - I wait for it every time I now hear the music...

Technical Troubles

This week's resounding silence was due to lots of work, lots of studying and technical troubles. My computer is partitioned to take both Windows and Linux, and the Windows partition has been filling up like crazy, to a point where I have only been working with a few megabites, and I can't do anything.

I asked around and someone told me to move the pagefile.sys file to another partition, ie the D or E drive. This worked fine for a day. Then I downloaded a music writing programme (Finale Allegro, it's brilliant!), moved it around a bit and installed it on another drive, and also began to load loads of CDs onto my Ipod - no point having the complete recordings of Mozart ('s music) and not listening to it. And the available space on the computer shot down again, so again I'm getting lots of warnings, and always the request to remove programmes I don't need. Already most of my programmes are stored on another drive. But anyway, since I never use Quicktime which is something to do with watching movies, I thought I'd remove it.

Bad move - now Itunes does not work. Tried to reinstall quicktime and there ain't enough space on the C-Drive even though I'm installing it on another drive. It looks like anything that ever goes through my computer leaves a bit hanging in the C-drive. I'm waiting for inspiration.

The removal of Quicktime caused my Ipod to crash - it was connected to the computer at the time. The computer told me in a cheery message to reformat the Ipod. At that time I went for a run, and thankfully inspiration struck that I could wait for the battery to run down and see if it would sort itself. And then later I found a website which tells you how to reboot it. That's sorted.

Another problem popped up - went running, with my expensive earphones connected to my mobile phone (the emergency Ipod replacement - you need it for an hour's run), and found on my return that the right earphone did not work. Aaarggh. Only just bought them a week ago, after the same problem happened with another expensive pair. Looked up the net and there was a whole debate about whether Ipods eat right earphones. Lockily, now, a few hours later, the earphones seem to have recovered. I wonder whether it's something to do with sweat - the phones are earbuds which sit right in the ear, and slip out when you start running and sweating. But perhaps it does not do them good to get wet?

I have other earphones which sit outside the ear, but European Ipods have a limiter on their volume, so you can't have it very loud. Health and Safety and all that. It means, unfortunately, that I can't hear it in an aeroplane or over the sound of my own breathing while running - only with the loudest pieces. There's a wee programme which allows you to override that, but I cannot get it to recognize my Ipod.....

That's all my troubles for today...

RSS

My friend Helene had pointed out the benefits of RSS feeds a while ago, and I reacted in some ways as 'yeah, yeah'. It seemed a hassle, and you'd get lots of stuff in your inbox when you should be working, and it would all be very distracting....

But actually, it's great. I have linked Helene's and other blogs on my google desktop, which contains lots of other little gems, and now I can see at a glance who is very busy blogging (Operachic) and who is less - because every new entry is listed. (If Operachic, as described in the Wiener Zeitung today, really has only been in Milan for 7 months, it's simply amazing how much information she has on the operatic shenanigans there and everywhere else, it seems.)

The only problem now is that my desktop is too small to show everything at one glance - there is a way of having several tabs in my google, but I have not yet worked out how to drag things from the top tab to the others...

weird stuff

I am using a system called blogpatrol which tells me how many people, from where, and using which internet browser are reading my blog. It's quite interesting - and people get to the blog with the weirdest questions - especially after I reviewed the '*** life of my aunt'. In the last couple of days there have been many entries from a 'blocked referrer' - I wonder which system that might be?

I was also a bit surprised to find a surprising level of interest in my story of 2 December about the Sitkovetsky concert; then I tracked it down to this site, which had picked up bits of it. Interesting how things move around the internet.

Talking about music, as we were not - the German TV cop show I am watching while I write includes a policeman (or a Polis, as we say in Scotland) called 'Schikaneder'. We know whose offspring he must be - and yes, of course he is in Vienna!

Tin openers

Being blessed with left-handedness, I find most tin openers quite hard to use, especially the very basic ones where I always have visions of stabbing my hand. Though not as much as when I am in a flat somewhere and reduced to opening tins with a huge kitchen knife! That's serious, almost suicidal, stuff, especially in countries where neither kitchen knives nor medical equipment might be particularly clean.

So a couple of weeks ago in Moscow I picked up an Ikea tin opener for my travels. And a beautiful piece of kit it is, too. Called 'Charm'. A lovely shape, and not the kind that cuts up my clothes during transit. But how to use the dratted thing? I spent about 10 minutes trying to apply it to a tin of mushrooms, with little success, and getting more and more hungry. Finally an enquiry to Google provided the answer on youtube here. Thank you, internet! What did we do in the days before internet? Ask Mum?

Comments

I have finally found a way of getting comments to show up on the main page - it really makes things more interesting. The way, described on this site is not entirely easy, and requires a very cool, calm approach. It's worth saving your template after every change (to see if you put in the information correctly).

My comments are 'peek a boo', and now if you click on 'comments' where there are some they appear below the post. Below that is another line for clicking on if you wish to post the comment (and I will change the colour of that line just shortly).

Computer issues

Having had some troubles with Internet Explorer 7, I have now changed my laptop browser to Firefox, just my other computer. Firefox has done for a long time what Microsoft with its IE 7 has only just introduced. Then I spotted a little add-on called 'performancing' which gives you an instant blog editor and you don't need to laboriously log into the blog before you start writing. Great for those moments of sitting in flats with dial-up connections! Now if it only included the labels, and offered an opportunity to write several posts and post them altogether... (on the other hand, it gives you the little self-advertisement...)

powered by performancing firefox