Location: SF or Portland
Remote: Yes (or Hybrid)
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Python (FastAPI), Typescript/Javascript (Angular, React), Postgres, Redis, AWS, Docker, Terraform, LLM, Data Pipeline/ETL
Résumé/CV: https://ndeast.com/resume.pdf
Email: hn [at] ndeast [dot] com
Hi, I am a backend-focused engineer with 5+ years building python microservices and full stack web applications at JPMorgan Chase and startups. Open to product engineering, infrastructure, and LLM integration roles. I like vintage mechanical keyboards, punk music, and natural bodybuilding.
i am surprised (am i really?) that apple never implemented a toggle to E2EE your icloud backup, just like you can backing up locally through itunes. thankfully you can just completely disable iCloud Backup.
I went through the entire process of learning Colemak-DH last year, and made sure to maintain my ability to type QWERTY. I would bring my reprogrammed HHKB to work every day, and switching between layouts at home to keep the skill. Eventually I realized that all the new layout did was add an extra layer of cognitive friction when it came to keyboard shortcuts. Now a year later I am back to just using QWERTY.
Glad I tried it, now I know I could do it all over with only a little bit of discomfort, but I never saw any of the oft lauded benefits of switching keyboard layouts. Maybe at 60-70WPM I am just not fast enough to notice improved efficiency, or my youthful joints have yet to decay enough to have pain from typing. Who knows.
I looked into the Dvorak stuff about 20 years ago and apparently there weren't any real good studies showing Dvorak was that much better.
The studies showing Dvorak superiority apparently were never compared with qwerty users going through similar training, and when they did, the advantage disappeared.
I’ve never had an issue with that. I spend more typing that thinking unlike a data entry person or someone who types all day long, my fingers get plenty of rest between using vim for everything and just being a developer.
It seems to mostly be a problem with home-row typists having to twist their wrists to hit some keys.
I'm self taught through online games like StarCraft and don't use the home row - my hands settle in a different location, I use the edges of the keyboard for positioning (mostly through peripheral vision rather than touch), and I use my elbows and shoulders in addition to my wrists to move across the keyboard. Don't have to stretch or twist my fingers and wrists into awkward positions that cause strain, never had the issues others describe, and so far no hint I'll develop them.
There was a big Libertarian propaganda effort against Dvorak around that time.
They hate it for the same reason they hate recycling and climate change. It's a very visible and popular example of markets not being perfect and needing regulation to perform better.
It's highly likely that your source was in economics rather than ergonomics.
Do you have any source or further reading on this topic? The only thing I can readily find is you making similar comments on HN for the last decade, and I’d like to learn more.
Last year during a couple month break I had between jobs I decided I would learn a new keyboard layout as it was something I always wanted to do, but never wanted to commit to the learning process while I still needed to be proficient at typing.
I chose to learn Colemak-DH [0]. Before learning I was around a 75-80 WPM Qwerty touch typist. I went all in and did a lot of heavy practice. It took me around a week to be able to touch type colemak-dh (slowly) and then a further few months to touch type at speed.
I didn't want to lose my ability to use Qwerty so after getting up to a moderate speed of ~45 WPM I exclusively brought my colemak flashed happy hacking keyboard to work, and left qwerty at home. I have now equalized at about 60 WPM on both layouts after 8 months, and can pretty easily swap between them.
Now I don't really know what to do, nor have I noticed really any perceived benefit of switching layouts. The biggest difficulty has been vim keybinds. I really don't want to have to remap all of my vim keybinds (as like the OP article states, I think of my vim commands based on their name and qwerty representation) so I have been relying on multiple keyboard layers to handle movement keys and the like. Having to use modifiers, remember the different locations between layouts, and stealing away previous CTRL+<key> modifiers from vim to accommodate this kind of sucks.
I notice no difference in wrist (dis)comfort, it's just become more mental overhead to typing, and I am kind of stuck. I guess I am waiting to have some time to think about what I want to do, but balancing two layouts doesn't seem practical, or reasonable, or efficient.
I learned colemak a long time ago, and progressed just like you, except I didn't try to retain qwerty speed. I figured I can look at the key legends anyways. I initially reached about 50-60 wpm but after that the speed still seems to progress slowly. Now after several years I can type about 100 wpm which I was never able to on qwerty, and I didn't do any significant practice on typing speed.
Your story is similar to mine. I also use Colemak-DH. However, I sort of quit Qwerty cold turkey. I also used to touch type about 80 wpm on Qwerty, and because I didn't maintain it or practice while learning Colemak, I completely overwrote my muscle memory. Overall, the layout is more comfortable for me, but hard to justify especially if you rather not tamper with default keybindings.
I'm also a vim keybinding user, but in Emacs evil-mode mostly. Vim keybindings are definitely made for qwerty, and to me not rebinding the keys just seemed insane.
I ended up spending a weekend, reviewed all the keybindings I use, and ones I should probably use more, then wrote it all out [0].
I remapped a lot of keys back to their qwerty positions, but I also took the opportunity to make some changes that I thought would be more ergonomic. I also came up with me own mnemonic system for the re-mappings.
For example:
| function | before | after | new mnemonic | Commentary |
|-------------------+--------+-------+-------------------+--------------------------------------------|
| find file at pt | g f | g s | search file at pt | need to free up `g f' |
| find file.. w/ ln | g F | g S | search file.. etc | need to free up `g F' |
| end WORD | E | F | far WORD | foot/forward are other possible mnemonics |
| end WORD | g E | g F | far WORD rev | foot/forward are other possible mnemonics |
| end word | e | f | far word | |
| end word | g e | g f | far word rev | |
| find | f | s | search | right next to till :) |
| rev find | F | S | rev search | |
| visual mode | v | r | range | see note below |
| visual lines | V | R | range lines | |
| visual block | C-v | C-r | range block | |
| visual restore | g v | g r | range restore | |
| replace | r | v | revise | convert is another possible mnemonic |
| replace mode | R | V | revise mode | |
| goto mk | ` | j | jump | easier to reach and now mnemonic |
| goto mk ln | ' | J | jump to line | same key as j now, which makes sense to me |
Here is a minimal vim config [1] that I use if I find myself wanting to use (neo)vim. My evil-mode config [2] in Emacs. Remapping `less` keys [3].
I don't rebind my keys on Colemak for vim/evil. I got used to it pretty quickly. Beyond the basic hjkl movement commands I don't think anything is really meant for qwerty specifically. Remapping also breaks the mnemonics somewhat which I think is important. Emacs users got along just fine with Ctrl-n and p, so I see no specific reason remapping should be needed.
Alan Thrall (owner of Untamed Strength in Sacramento) has discussed this a few times (most recently in this video[0]), but basically independent gyms don't really see this effect. In fact January can still be a pretty slow month for independent gyms as members over spend during the holidays (and cancel memberships) or don't want to go out in the cold weather.
Personally as a member of an independent gym for a few years now, I have also not seen an increase in activity at the beginning of the year. Most of the members tend to be pretty consistent and I've been now 5 days this new year at different peak times and seen only one new face. Good independent gyms are very expensive to run.
I go to an independent gym, it's definitely more crowded in January but pretty much back to normal by mid-late February. If history repeats, they will close to new memberships sometime in the next few weeks until the crowds abate.
A lot of new year resolvers won't be so keen on training untamed and will find their way to the nearest Planet Fitness. Squat racks can be pretty intimidating, and learning how to use them takes some guidance.
I enjoy that there is now so many options to share a beer with someone without the alcohol, but I am one and done. It’s calorically like drinking full sugar soda and most bars I’ve been to that sell cans tend to charge as much or more than a regular beer. Rather just drink water or seltzer at that point.
> most bars I’ve been to that sell cans tend to charge as much or more than a regular beer.
This drives me insane. There are no sin taxes on nonalcoholic beer yet they charge the same or more at the retail point. There’s just more profit, which is ridiculous. If they want people to switch they shouldn’t gouge them for doing so.
Soda water and bitters is a good hit too. Bit more interesting than plain water, every bar will be able to make it, seems to help with an upset stomach too.
Yes, angostura bitters are 45% ABV, though your typical soda water bitters is made with just a few shakes and could be given to a child without batting an eye.
Good shout though, not sure how widely known that is.
As others have said, running a record label (in this day and age) is a labor of love. You do it because you love the music, you love the artists and you love the scene. I am friends with a few label owners and it's an absolute treat when their release breaks even. I don't think a whole lot more needs to be said really. You are approaching this with entirely the wrong motivations here. Start with a passion in music and the desire to give your friends band a platform to try and scrape together a barely sustainable living, or even just get their songs pressed on a physical medium. At least that will be spiritually profitable.
Also: Please correct me if I’m wrong but I would guess that quite a few owners of indie labels also have other sources of income in order to make a living…? I.e. a dayjob.
The vast majority of indie label owners are toiling away by day to fund their passions. If you are a successful indie label you are likely investing a lot of your profit back in to sign and put out more bands. Some are able to run a profitable record label along side a more 'traditional' business like a record store, recording studio, or being in a fulltime touring band.
I collect a significant amount of new vinyl and listen to it relatively frequently, but digital music is so much more convenient. That can be a detriment though, I find a lot of the value I get out of listening to vinyl is the "intentional listening" experience. I think Henry Rollins called it carbohydrate listening or something to that effect, listening to things you like that you've heard a million times and isn't exactly stimulating in the same way a new album or artist would be. Music feels a whole lot more consumable and disposable when its just on constant instant playback. Forcing yourself to flip the record and drop the needle keeps you more engaged I feel.
All that to say I mostly just like collecting colored vinyl, and supporting small bands and artists you like by buying a product significantly more profitable than millions of Spotify streams is pretty cool.
Thanks for making the Henry Rollins' carbohydrate reference. It's a great way to label these two modes of listening that we all experience.
----
"I have two basic food groups of music: protein and carbohydrate.
The protein listening is new music, where it’s unfamiliar to me so I’m listening, sometimes taking notes, researching the band while the music is playing. I do quite a bit of this, usually during the week.
On the weekends, I will allow for some carbohydrate listening, which would be records I’m familiar with, that I’ve been playing for years. This music is not exactly background, but more of an environmental asset for elevation of mood."
It's exactly the same for me. Yes, vinyl is more inconvenient, expensive and may even sound "worse" unless you have an expensive audio setup.
That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.
A '63 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT is objectively worse than the latest VW Golf GTI by every measurable metric.
The driving experience, though, is completely different. There's some "grin factor" raw-ness, some analog-ness to the former that makes the latter comparatively feel like a muted couch-on-wheels.
Not really analogous. No matter how much you tune the GTI's ECU, throttle curve, ESC, etc., you won't be able to precisely replicate the handling of the classic car, though you might get close.
By contrast, one can digitally capture the output of a turntable + phono preamp and then store it, share it, and replay it with all the crackle and warmth of the original in perfect fidelity without ever having to touch the record again.
Vinyl isn't about crackle or warmth. Good vinyl rigs are usually not warm. It's about the fact that vinyl physically cannot support a super compressed mix.
Unpopular opinion: Vinyl is not really about the sound. The sound is different, Yes, but that's not it. Vinyl is about displaying the cover, pulling the disc out of it, feeling the weight of the object as you align it on the turntable, pushing the button and watch it spin up, then delicately drop the needle at the right place. Vinyl involves a _ritualistic_ consensual experience which modern medium entirely lack. You can share your appreciation of the cover art and printed lyrics with other people in the room while the music plays. There's no distraction or suggestion coming from a computer screen. When the music stops, what happens is entirely up to you. Vinyl lets you feel the void and puts you entirely in control of the listening session.
Cassette tapes have made a similar niche comeback for a very similar reason. There's the tactility in the experience of fast forwarding, rewinding, pressing play. If you're using a walkman, you can even feel the tape turning as it plays in your hand or in your pocket. The rituals involved with using a tape are so intentional in a way that it just isn't when listening to music on a streaming service.
It also is basically the epitome of DIY ethos so popular in punk and indie music, what with creating your own mix tapes, sometimes imperfectly. The relatively low fidelity of the medium also adds to the charm. "stealing" music by taping it from the radio, another cassette, or from a cd.
It just plays heavily towards nostalgia in a way that I don't think CD will ever be able to. Though I do have fond memories of burning mixed CDs, it just doesn't have the same charm as sitting at a tape deck and carefully pressing record and stop.
I got rid of all my vinyl (much of it with some water damage) years ago, but I do sort of understand the tactile appeal, the retro-ness, and the listening intentionality. In these days of lossless digital formats, CDs are mostly just a medium to buy/transfer a bunch of bits. I can't say I really understand interest in cassettes at all. Obviously it was the only way you could copy someone's album or make a mix tape at one point but that doesn't apply today.
I certainly had cassettes as a teenager and college student and made plenty of mix/party tapes using them (and copied albums my friends owned). I guess I just look back at them as a utilitarian tool to accomplish something I had no other means to accomplish.
You don't have the large format artwork and liner notes, you have objectively inferior sound quality, you don't have random access, it's just an object that you stick in a player. So, no I don't, beyond a nostalgic I used to make mix/party tapes in this format.
I grew up DJing with vinyl, it is as much about the wicky-wicky as it is the ritual of carefully and delicately placing a needle before going off to smoke your cigar.
Though for me its more about blending and beatmatching... the feeling of a perfectly timed double-drop or blend or whatever simply isn't the same with digital. And most new DJs can't even beatmatch by ear any more!
If you go to a party and the DJ is spinning wax and he's got two tracks going perfectly in-sync... due to vinyl's inherent instabilities, that takes some serious skill. On a modern setup you just drag the pitch fader til the BPMs are the same and hit play at the start of the phrase, and the worst you have to worry about is the bass knocking your cheaply-made faders around
It kind of is because you don't have an even frequency response throughout the vinyl. The closer to the center, the less high frequency response you get. Also higher frequencies in general require the cutting needle to to move faster and can introduce unpleasant distortion into the record, so you might attenuate higher frequencies on a vinyl record that you wouldn't need to for the streaming/radio/cd mix.
> It's about the fact that vinyl physically cannot support a super compressed mix.
This is false. Vinyl's physicality limits its dynamic range. If you have too high of an amplitude the cuts in the vinyl will be deeper and depending on the track could lead to the needle literally jumping off the player creating skipping. A super compressed mix doesn't create issues, a heavily limited one does. Clipping and brickwall limiting create problems for vinyls and introduce unpleasant distortion. You can still have a very compressed track on vinyl.
If a vinyl mix ends up with more dynamic range than the CD mix, it's because it was an active choice made by the mixing/mastering engineers, not because vinyl can't handle compressed mixes. In fact due to avoiding limiting as much as possible, you'll encounter plenty of cases where there is less dynamic range due to added compression to bring out the detail in quieter sections.
Forgive my ignorance: I thought it was the other way around, and you needed some relatively high amount of compression on a vinyl master, since otherwise the grooves would swing too wildly, and the needle would have a higher chance of "skipping". Is this an incorrect understanding of mine?
Digital medium has a higher dynamic range and can be used for playback of completely uncompressed orchestral performances, but in practice it also can reliably play audio that is so compressed (maximising perceived volume) that vinyl playback of the recording would be impossible.
Pop producers went off the deep end with this trick during the loudness wars, once it became possible through CDs.
I think this is mainly dealt with by the RIAA curve which is standard across all recordings. The compression being referred to is likely the per-track compression as part of the production/mastering process.
Vinyl also has no low end to speak of. Hence the RIAA curves which define how the low end is stripped out before cutting, and "restored" during playback. If you ever get a chance, listen to some vinyl on gear that can have the RIAA curves defeated/disengaged.
Do vinyl and CDs of the exact same album have different mixes? I find this very hard to believe, or the amount of human involvement must be very low -- software automation. My point: In 2023, what record label could defend the cost of expensive audio engineers to remix an album just for vinyl. The realized, absolute profits on vinyl must be tiny at this point. And when I wrote profit, I do not mean profit margin, which will be very large on small sales revenue
I'm a professional musician who makes a good portion of my "living" selling recorded music. You use the same mix for all mediums but need to master differently for vinyl. (Mix refers to levels of individual microphones, mastering is the frequency levels of the finished mix)
I'm sure some people master different for digital outlets, but we don't. Regarding profitability,it's so much easier to sell vinyl than cds it's a challenge keeping them in stock, and pretty much every vinyl plant on earth is backlogged right now. Also the return of an lp vs. spotify is orders of magnitude higher; our Spotify income is barely quantifiable. (maybe bc we didn't specially master for it ha?)
Usually, yes. Albums have the RIAA curve applied. CDs typically do not, except for many of those produced in the mid-1980's when the studios were producing CDs as fast as they could and didn't want to spend the time to remaster a recording for the flat response of the CD.
The problem in the 1980s was they were starting with master tapes that already had the RIAA equalization whereas today the masters are digital and don't. So for a modern title the RIAA curve would be added for a tape to be sent to the lathe, and probably would be done when the signal is analog.
> Amazing recording! The sonic mastering on this one is outstanding. Make sure you have your stylus and needle prepared for the canon blasts in the 1812 overture! Take a look at how wide the grooves are near the end of Side 1! I had to adjust my tone-arm weight so the needle didn't get thrown off the track or skip. This is a great listen and sounds amazing.
> Do vinyl and CDs of the exact same album have different mixes?
Certainly sometimes. In fact probably always - you can't just take analogue masters and dump them to digital - you have to do at least some mixing and filtering.
As a single datapoint, Frank Zappa's Hot Rats was remixed for CD; I hated the CD remix, which I thought was too harsh (I'm not the only person who felt that way). Also, there are differences in the actual music: the intro to Gumbo Variations, for example, is a couple of bars longer in the CD remix than the original vinyl.
I've got used to the CD remix now, and I appreciate the extended into to Gumbo Variations.
[Edit] Am I the only person that found the article impossible to read, because it was jiggling around so fast?
I think typically there's only one mix, but there will be as many masters as the mediums you're targetting: one master for CD, one for Spotify, one for vinyl, etc.
What would you do differently mastering for a CD versus Spotify?
(I'm in the middle of releasing an album, and we don't have different masters for these, but I could imagine that the situation is different for more professional groups)
Spotify compresses it anyway but for digital audio you'd want to encode in 48 kHZ/24 bit whereas CD only supports 44.1 kHZ/16 bit. Anyone who can hear the difference would be an exceptional listener with an exceptional sound system though, at least assuming the masters are generated with proper dithering.
The mixes are optimized to a different set of constraints. (Or they should be, chances are much of the collectibles for modern music are just bad vinyl pressings of the mix for digital.) It's not "more careful mixes", the digital one will likely have seen just as much care or more, but the analog one can strike compromises between dynamics and minor distortion that the digital simply can't. Because all digital distortion is major distortion and avoided at all costs. That's why the mix for digital usually throws far more dynamics under the bus to achieve loudness than the mix for analog.
A CD version of the vinyl mix would sound great, but you'd be surprised how silent it is if you leave your amp at the usual setting.
> The mixes are optimized to a different set of constraints.
From what I heard, a lot of vinyls are just recorded from CD. No source, just a YouTube video a long time ago so take it with a grain of salt.
> Because all digital distortion is major distortion and avoided at all costs.
Not a signal processing expert but from what I read, all the quantization noise is pushed into the >20kHz frequencies where it can't be heard via dithering/noise shaping.
Loudness/compression is a deliberate choice and has nothing to do with noise.
What i meant with digital distortion is what happens when your levels leave the good regions: on vinyl, the resulting distortion will gently ramp in. The medium keeps representing those higher levels, just not very well. A good vinyl mix will consider allowing some of that the lesser evil over achieving the same amount of general loudness with more dynamics compression.
The clipping you'd get in the digital realm however isn't gentle or subtle at all and the levels beyond the good range simply don't exist. That's a hard no-go.
Quantization noise is an entirely different non-beast. Loudness/compression has everything to do with it. Yes, sometimes ccompression is also employed as an intentional creative element, but that's not even the tip of the ice berg.
I do agree with the suspicion that many vinyl pressings these days are just pressings of the CD mix. But this has everything to do with business and nothing with technology. It's a shame that back when the industry went through that phase of experimenting with formats beyond 2x16@44.1, they did not do a multichannel format with one stereo pair holding the loudness-optimized mix for radio, driving and the like, and another pair shifted 48dB lower to add more headroom. (or 24dB, to allow half of the additional bits of a 16 -> 24 expansion to go to where people usually expect it)
As mentioned I’m not an expert but what kind of distortions can there be in properly mastered 16 bit 44.1kHz PCM? I know there is distortion from quantisation but that’s a solved problem with dithering and noise shaping, no?
Clipping is just bad mastering, no?
I also find it hard to believe that vinyl will have less distortion as it’s analog where physical imperfections in the medium will affect the sound far more than in the case of digital mediums like CDs - with the latter it’s either a 1 or a 0; as long as wear and tear / damage doesn’t flip a 1 to a 0 or vice versa, you are good (and even if you do get a flip, ECC will normally fix it).
Vinyl also has it own set of restrictions with the frequencies it can reproduce and dynamic range since it’s all encode physically as tiny groves with bumps on the vinyl.
Yeah, clipping is bad mastering. But you'd be surprised what happens when you simply reduce levels to the point where the odd freak wave outlier does not clip. People mock the loudness wars, but the amount of effective volume you'd get after naive "just make it not clip" mastering would be too low for even the loudest loudness decriers.
Levels on vinyl don't have a clear maximum beyond which the levels are cleanly clipped: they keep going, just not as good. It's more like the red zone on an engine's rpm, you wouldn't want to operate up there for prolonged periods, but a race driverwho never ever dipped the needle in there for even the shortest time wouldn't be good at their job. A good CD mix will achieve target loudness exclusively by dynamics compression, a good vinyl mix can achieve the same with a mix of noticeably less compression and the occasional flirt with the red zone.
Personally I would file the loudness wars under bad mastering too.
Properly mastered CD audio is the near the best audio you can get as a consumer - you have 24 bit 96kHz audio but that's really overkill as the noise floor with 16 bits is already very very low even without noise shaping dither.
Vinyl as an audio storage medium I honestly don't see the appeal. Noisy, lower dynamic range than CD, low durability and longevity, ... etc.
> Loudness/compression is a deliberate choice and has nothing to do with noise.
Agree. Personally I find the amount of compression used in many of today's releases highly objectionable. I'm a big Duran Duran fan, and was really looking forward to listening to "Future Past" in 2021 after pre-ordering it. But within a minute into it I thought there was something wrong with my headphones. Turns out they compressed the hell out of it - the album is unlistenable, even in a car going down the road.
The large amount of compression is commonly known as the Loudness War:
> Well, the objective sounds quality is always _worse_ than eg CDs.
Not necessarily true. If you have a good pair of speakers, a good amplifier, but a bad DAC[1], a CD can sound worse than vinyl (whose output does not need to go through a DAC). Old CD players (like mine) have dated built-in DACs, so this is not too exceptional a situation.
The above comment holds even if the vinyl was made from a CD source, since the vinyl maker could have used a quality DAC that's better than your CD player's.
For a long time, I didn't understand why my FM radio channel (WQXR) sounded better than my CDs. Turns out my CD player's DAC was poor in comparison to what the radio station was using to play their CDs.
And if you have a shitty record player, it will sound even worse. I don't think this can count in any way, reasonable CD players are easy to obtain and in the worst case you can always pull a FLAC play through whatever high-quality DAC you have available. Vinyl on the contrary is physically constrained regarding sound quality.
Good DACs are cheap now, e.g. the Apple USB-C to 3.5mm "adapter" is actually a DAC. It sells for 9GBP on their website, and sound quality is so good that you're unlikely to be able to hear any flaws. Basically any modern DAC that was designed with quality in mind will exceed vinyl audio quality.
A fresh record on a clean needle with a good turntable will sound identical to a CD, if not slightly better, because the physical grooves will not have the same quantization as digital
Nyquist’s sampling theorem tells us that sound sampled at 44kHz will reproduce all frequencies in the range of human hearing. There is no “quantization”.
Further the act of mastering and creating the record, and playback using a needle, will inevitably affect the sound somewhat. In the scenario you describe the music is likely to sound very good, but it will never be identical to a CD.
There is too quantization, you cant get to any bitness without quantizing the raw waveform at some level.
A signal that exceeds the maximum amplitude allowed by the media will behave dramatically different as digital bits vs an analog groove. There are also very subtle transformations that occur as a byproduct of the needle physically moving around and through the groove, in addition to any properties imparted on the sound by cabling, connectivity, or the preamp's response curve.
Nyquist theorem simply says we can reproduce the original waveform with enough bandwidth. But it does not take into account other properties of the medium.
Subjectively I find the bass on vinyl to be smoother and more buttery given the same recording available digitally. Maybe its the mastering. Maybe its because the music isn't clipping. But for bass music it is definitely a bit of a je ne sais quoi, its definitely there with a good needle, preamp, pressing, and speaker.
It might also sound much worse for a number of reasons that would prevent the proper cutting of the laquer master. I have my studio next door to a vinyl mastering studio and it is truly a fascinating craft. The cutter might have to narrow the stereo image to prevent the needle from jumping out of the groove. Often this is done by mono'ing the low end. The tool he uses will gradually mono the low end on a slope from i.e 150hz and down. This can lead to less low end especially if there are phasing issues that will cancel out signal when collapsing to mono. They will also high pass from 20-30hz and low pass (can't remember how low he went), and sometimes even de-ess the entire mix!
Also if the sides of the vinyl are too long, the sound quality will suffer badly.
And if they screw up the cut, it's a lot of $$$ for each laquer master and the diamond needle for cutting doesn't last many records either.
> That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.
This is what we did with cassettes and then CDs. I had dates where we sat on the floor and just thumbed through our CD catalogs and played music for hours. Even today, I still prefer to listen to whole albums.
Me too to all. Listening to full albums and not using infinite playlist is why, for me, Spotify is not really any different than the older tech and I don’t feel the need to jump on the vinyl train. I’m not a collector/hoarder of physical objects, I know I’d actually listen less if I had to search the shelf and drop a needle. Maybe because I developed these habits earlier in life, well before streaming or even Napster. It is interesting to see how the younger digital natives are interested in analog music now.
“Supporting the artist” is a commonly cited reason. In the part, we bought posters, shirts and concert tickets to to accomplish this.
> That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.
Just imagine if you could do that with a CD or even an album of MP3s! But that's just not possible, it can only be done with vinyl records.
You're right, it's not vinyl that makes it possible, so I believe there's more to this than my original comment implies.
I think it's the physical aspect of the vinyl compared to streaming services. Some people do that with CDs, but I like vinyls more since they feel more "analog" to me. Also I like the warmth of their sound. Also GP has a point about the turntable engaging you more.
> Forcing yourself to flip the record and drop the needle keeps you more engaged I feel.
It's a physical process/ritual that a number of people still do and reinforce among each other. It's fine to call it what it is, and it's fine that it makes you feel more connected to the music. But it ain't the music.
A nice vinyl album with artwork shows a lot of care has gone into making it, where as an album in Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself.
A vinyl without sleeve and artwork and a carefully curated Spotify playlist sit somewhere inbetween.
"Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself."
There is at least the cover picture left, but yes, I would not recommend Spotify for mindful listening. It is designed for "engagement", I still have not found out, how to tell it to stop, after that one song I want to hear.
It insists on playing something else. Very rarely something interesting shows up, but usually I just get annoyed for it playing radio, when I wanted ONE song, nothing more.
So I love my own digital music collection and player that remains under my control.
I have a shuffle there as well, but conscious listening remains possible, even though surely the experience would be more powerful, combined with the ritual of going through the physical records, holding the artwork in my hands and putting the one record in. But for convinience, I stick to my digital collection. (I don't think all my music is on vinyl and I would need extra rooms then)
"How to get Spotify to stop playing music: Take headphones off."
And when the sound comes from the boxes? Then yes, I have to hurry back to the laptop to stop the not fitting next song (e.g. something fast, after I choose something chill). This is ridiculous.
The feature "stop after song" is avaiable in every serious music player I used (and also the one I programmed myself). But it is not in Spotify, even though it is trivial.. This is what I call "designed for engagement". I have to click more and find new things etc.
"I dont think I've ever listened to a song I didn't want to listen to on Spotify. "
So how do you achieve that? Do you only use custom playlists, or do just mostly don't care so much?
Because if I have one song in my head, then sometimes I just want this exact song and if I tell spotify to play this song - then afterwards it plays something totally different, even though it tries to fit the same genre, but this works badly. And even if it would be the same genre, some songs are just deep. And you want silence afterwards to process them - if you are consciously listenting in the first place. For some background noise spotify works great, no doubt about that.
I wonder why nobody thought about recreating album sleeves with the original artwork and no vinyl inside, just the housing capable of carrying one or more CDs, that is, giving a CD owner the ability to put their discs into a old-style sleeve. I'm all for digital music, but totally miss the old sleeves and prints. Would it be economically viable for a business to acquire only the rights for the prints, possibly plus lyrics, but not the music, so that they could sell the prints alone?
This is exactly why I have a turntable, too. Just buying the records of my most loved albums, setting aside some time to listen them intently and enjoy the process.
It’s not like meditation. It is meditation. As a meditation teacher, I can definitely say that.
Sometimes I prefer the original vinyl sound compared to the digitally remixed version of the old songs.
But most of my vinyl is of old albums that nobody bothered to re-release on CD. It's fun to buy them cheap at the thrift store, wash them, and see what's on them.
Good points. Just to expand, I find with instant on digital music I never really listen to it with as much attention as vinyl.
In fact I love everything about vinyl except the sort durarion of each side, but even that makes me focus more closely on the experience. I know I'll have to turn it over shortly...
Vinyl is a completly different experience: the smell, the look(!), the age(!), the masting and care for the production, the cover(!)- these things matter.
Yes. People think vinyl is for snobs (especially the silicon valley type) but they don’t seem to realize a) music went digial before the iphone (CDs) and b) most of them don‘t even know much music.
Really? You can appreciate playing, touching, looking at vinyl or watching vinyl beeing played out without beeing a collector or owning some. But it is hard for me to imagine somebody not appreciating vinyl and all the things attached beeing a true pop music lover. With classical music it may be a completely different story.
Dedicating time to listen to a specific album. My kids may never understand it. An album is an interesting art form, it captures a few pieces of time: when it was made and then then it was consumed. The cover art and liner art. The order of the songs. All assembled with intention. There are albums I’ve heard hundreds of time and I will still hear little new bits I never quite noticed before.
I do love digital music and having it everywhere, but it is special to just listen and take it I’m.
Why would your kids not understand it? My son certainly has no problem exploring album art and reading liner notes while he enjoys one of his favorites.
It seems like a fairly universal human quality to want to intentionally listen to music.
Because the comment makes the assumption that it'll conflict with their apparent low attention spans from years of skipping through songs on their music streaming platforms of choice, rendering them unable to sit down to consume an entire album.
I think both if you are reading too much into his comment and seeing things that aren't there. I don't think it was a jab at younger generations inability to appreciate things due to short attention spans, but more expressing sadness that streaming has killed the traditional experience/concept of an album and that it's probably never coming back.
It might not have been intended as a jab, but journalists frequently repeat that x songs on Spotify are skipped after y time, and the conclusion the journalists arrive at is that between this example, and the likes of TikTok and Snapchat, the younger generations have short attention spans.
Cool story, not my point. I'm not questioning the validity of what you're saying or the existence that people think what you're saying, but how you jumped straight to ascribing those views to the original commenter. You can make your own point without the accusations, is my point.
Digital music resparked my interest in vinyl. With streaming you have a great tool to figure out what you really love and need to have on vinyl. Less is more.
My default assumption is that if a product is using targeted (or really any digital ads) that it is garbage. I don't think I have ever seen a product advertised on social media that wasn't a drop shipped Chinese rebrand or just a straight up scam.
For a while now when ever a thing in my daily life needs replacement (or I have a need for a new thing) I spend a good amount of time researching those products to find the
often hidden gem buy it for life alternative. Wirecutter, Consumer reports, sometimes delving deep into hobbyist territory to find out what the true eccentrics are using and valuing. I'll do this with everything from new sponges, pots and pans, gym bags, audio equipment, umbrellas, luggage, boots, whatever. Although often times yes these options have a higher upfront cost, sometimes the better product costs the same or only marginally more, its just not as well advertised..
I think its probably some sick consumerist enjoyment, but I really do love investing in BIFL products. You have to replace them far less frequently, the experience of using a well made product is often far superior, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of taking care of and maintaining things rather than treating everything as disposable. Especially the seemingly menial things you use and interact with on a daily basis I love the feeling of upgrading my "kit".
I'm not saying that an $80 indestructible stainless steel dish rack changed my life, but after a long day - cleaning up after dinner, being able to fit my entire kitchen into a super sturdy rack that doesn't topple over, and is banked to drain into my sink instead of spilling onto my counter top and then onto the floor every single night really makes a difference.
I’ve found this one to be incredibly hit or miss in the last several years. I completely ignore their recommendations now and only find value in reading the “how we picked” part.
Yeah completely agree. It's been a downward trend since the New York Times acquisition I feel. I still get a lot of value from them like you said, but I really can't blindly trust their "top picks" like I used to.
OXO makes a ton of fantastic kitchen and household products that I use. Dish Brushes, Cutting boards, toilet scrub brush, measuring cups, ice trays, vacuum sealed containers etc.)
I'd recommend r/buyitforlife. I'm not a big spender but the few products I have gotten after reading recommendations from there, I've been quite happy with.
