lebrickster - Tumblr blog

lebrickster · 9 months

Text

You know? That's entirely fair! Admittedly, I can be a bit of a sucker for something like cassette surface noise myself, personally, and know of a few songs that if they heard from a pure digital source, they wouldn't quite have the same feel. While most modern made stuff I'd still rather listen to in it's purest form, I can certainly see in some cases where the imperfections may make listening to those songs and albums more enjoyable. Thanks for your perspective on the matter!

Vinyl: A format that baffles me

Within modern times, an old format called Vinyl has been making a comeback. Back then, this format was the best easy to use home music format, since the pressed records were usually higher quality and more accurate to the original source material, than that of compact cassette tapes, and 8 track tapes. This all made sense in an era that was ruled by masters being stored on analog formats, like reel to reel tape. However, music at one point shifted to being made digitally, which means how it sounds, is how it sounds. Because of this, modern produced Vinyl has none of the gains that older discs had, so I have to ask: why would someone spend so much on the format?

The only thing I can see modern vinyl as good for is as a display piece. Much like Laserdiscs, releases on vinyl tend to have nice big artwork that looks nice to display. This is the only part of modern produced Vinyl that I think I can see the appeal of, as, aside from that, and possibly tracks exclusive to a modern vinyl release, you aren't gaining any sound quality from using this format. Speaking of...

The negatives! The main negative is the cost of getting a "good player", and setup. While this all matters if you want to record and preserve older vinyl releases in good quality, some people will spend thousands of dollars on expensive players... Only to ever play modern releases that come from digital masters, and it just baffles me to no end. Why not just listen to the digital version where you don't need to spend nearly as much to have an enjoyable clean listening experience?

The other main negative is just the principal of it all. Vinyl was great at reproducing a lot of frequencies from high quality analog masters. This is why it was desired back then, and is still good for some older music. But as most everything is made digitally or is sourced from a digital recording of an analog master, the benefits vinyl can provide seem to be lost. Why would I want something like Freddi Fish on Vinyl, when I could just listen to the music, direct from the digital masters, without crackling, and without needing to spend so much for it to sound so good?

At the end of the day, folk should feel free to collect and invest in what they want to. This post isn't intended to shame anyone who's already into this all (trust me, I'm into my fair share of big expensive things, with the huge one being something I'll talk about in a few weeks), but to provide my perspective of why I'd never get into collecting modern vinyl, since it has little to no advantage.

10 notes · View notes

lebrickster · 9 months

Text

Vinyl: A format that baffles me

#vinyl records #vinyl #audiophile

10 notes · View notes

lebrickster · 10 months

Text

Emulating an old Phone System is Hard

For a moment in time there, I really wanted to get into emulating an old Phone system. Why? Because I wanted to, and I thought it was cool. Being able to use a vintage phone, and use dial up over a serial modem? Sounds awesome! But it's sadly not so simple. My god is it not...

So, I started off with what phone did I want? It was pretty quick to decide for me, as I wanted a phone with ringing bells, that classic look, and a touch tone pad. I went with a Black Model 2500, refurbished, from OldPhoneWorks. This ended up being expensive, but I wanted to sure it was in good shape. I don't regret this purchase, and think it looks great on my desk!

Well, with the phone situation settled, it was time for the modem. I decided to go for a new in the box U.S. Robotics, to ensure I had working drivers and the correct Power Adapter. It does it's job, and is the sort of look I know Modems for. Though the construction isn't great, since I can lift the top back part of it easily, since it doesn't seem to be held down by snaps, or screws.

I then wanted to get something else to go alongside all of this! If you know anything about the history of Club Penguin, you'll know some of it's earliest music came from an Indie band, known as TAS 1000, named after an answering machine they sampled messages from, and made music around. I got a lucky break and managed to find a unit on eBay, which I was so excited about. Keyword being was, but I'll go into that, later. (Too lazy to get it out of the closet for a fresh pic. Cry about it)

To make this all work I needed a way to connect all of it. No service in my area offers standard POTS Copper lines anymore, so I had to look into a VoIP ATA. After talking with someone in a Preservation Discord, they said they had good experience with a Cisco SPA112 VoIP ATA, saying it worked good for faxing, which is similar to internet via a modem. I bought one brand new, to ensure it was unlocked

With the hardware in-place, it was time to select a VoIP service provider. The best one hands down, price and feature wise, is VoIP_MS. They even have a super helpful Wiki with specific instructions on how to setup the SPA112 I chose, which I found super useful!

It was time to assemble it all, and in theory, all was good! But wait! No it wasn't my first snag with with the damn Modem. It would just not install for some reason, and that was down to me being stupid. I had bought this Serial cable because it was cheap. But I failed to notice the part that says Null Modem. This allows computers to talk to each other, but cannot be used to have a computer talk to a serial modem. D'oh.

OK, no problem, buy a new cable, and all is well! And, it was! ...Until it wasn't. I quickly learned that the SPA112 was not at all good for Dial Up, being super unstable. I was kinda warned of this before I had it in, too, but I bought the SPA112 AFTER that was all sent. So, that was one part of the package I wasted my time on, which bummed me out greatly. Sadly, the problems don't end here. The next problem was that the phone would not ring. It can receive calls and make calls fine, but it just won't ring. It turns out those bells demand a ton of power to work right, and the SPA112 just doesn't send enough juice. To fix this problem, I need a Ring Voltage Booster II, which sadly costs 125$, which is super expensive. I will get one eventually, but the cost of this component, and failures outlined so far has driven me to put this on hold for a long time.

And finally, there was the Answering Machine, the part I was most excited about. It was listed as used but working on the listing, which is partially right, but not entirely. You're supposed to be able to record an outgoing message, but do you see how this button is caved in? Sure, I can press it, but it doesn't do anything, strongly indicating it's broken. I can playback tapes, but what use is that if it can't record the outgoing message?

All of these failures broke me, and just made me depressed, tbh. As a result, this setup has gone more or less unused, with the TAS 1000 going into the closest, and me sometimes only calling my mobile phone with the Model 2500 phone, out of boredom. The modem has gone unused, since I don't trust the flaky connection the SPA112 has with it. What am I going to do from here? Well, down the line, I want to replace the SPA112 with a Obihai OBI302. I've been told this unit is a lot more stable for Fax, so it might be what I need to get for a stable modem experience.

I already mentioned the Ring Voltage booster of course, but in terms of the TAS 1000, if I can find another one, I'll jump on it, but chances are, I'll probably jump on a TAS 3000, since those units seem to be a bit more common, and not as much of a pain to find.

Well, that's about all I have to say here. I will revisit this one day, since I don't want it all to entirely go to waste, but the whole situation did frankly break my heart with how it headed, for now.

#dial up #modem #oldphoneworks #old phones #model 2500 #voip #voip ata #retro computing

12 notes · View notes

lebrickster · 1 year

Text

In regard to my Online name

From here on, I will be making a move to try and make all of my online names go under one name: Infomaniac95.

The Brickster and Mr. Skeltal come from when I was younger, and undeceive. Having my names be fragmented is confusing, so I'm stopping that, now.

I've debated on doing/not doing this for a while, but I feel like I should do it now, rather than later, as I'm tired of having to list all of the names I've previously gone by, throughout the years. I've forgotten several of them, and would rather be known only by one.

For the sake of links, handles on Twitter, Wetdry World, and other places, will remain the same, at least for now. But the display name will be changed.

I hope no one is bothered or offended by this change.

8 notes · View notes

lebrickster · 1 year

Text

i'm still so obsessed with the art greta @loveycloud did of val in the official kirby lingerie they're soooooo pretty............

21 notes · View notes

lebrickster · 1 year

Text

Is Lossless Music Really Worth It?

DISCLAIMER: The following is a repost of the one and only thing I posted about on my shortlived Blogspot page. I never really had the motivation to use the page at the time, and considering how I am using Tumblr now, I have even less reason to use it again. Never the less, I think this writeup may interest some of the folk who know me, and follow me. - Lossless music is something that many folk (including myself) cherish, and seek out, whenever they can, but is it really something to recommend to just about anyone?

Before the advent of compression algorithms, like MP3, Vorbis, Opus, and all those other ones, all you would do is put a CD into your CD Player, and just listen to the songs on the Disc, without much thought. But then, there eventually came a desire to have those songs as digital files on folk's own computers. However, due to the nature of CD Audio, the files ended up being huge, meaning if you wanted to digitize your CD collection in full quality, it would take up a decent chunk of hard drive space that, for most folk, was just considered too dang much. Enter compression tech like MP3, which was able to take those massive WAV files, and compress them to a much smaller size, that made keeping the songs on your hard drive, much more reasonable. For many folk, back then, and even now, they either couldn't notice the difference, or found it not to be a big deal, so many folk started ripping their music to these compressed formats, and even saving their original works in compressed formats, since the space saved was just too appealing to pass up on.

Overtime, however, folk slowly began to realize just how poor MP3 could sound, especially on lower compression settings. With bigger hard drives becoming cheaper with time, demand then began to rise for having music in it's original quality, without the audio quality being severely affected, as codecs like MP3 could do. This demand gave birth to codes like FLAC and APE, which could compress those large WAV files, while still keeping all of the relevant data intact, with no quality loss, unlike MP3. FLAC in particular continues to be a popular choice for ripping and distributing songs, since the space saved is undeniable, and there's little to no loss in audio quality, using it. (why else would it be called a Free LOSSLESS Audio Codec?)

With the background set, we now get back to the original question I asked, which is, can I really recommend Lossless music to just about anyone? This was something I was unsure of myself for a while, in truth. While I had long since been into Lossless music, and strongly urged all of my friends to also jump the same ship, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that may not be the best move for folk. Sure, someone like me can hear the difference between compressed audio, and a Lossless source, but will most other folk know the difference? Most folk usually cannot tell the difference between a compressed and Lossless source, either due to not having the ear to hear that kind of thing, their audio equipment not really making the difference apparent, or just simply not caring, if they can hear the difference. As a result, no, I can't really recommend Lossless audio to just anyone.

Unless you can hear beyond the general frequencies that compressed codecs are at, or can hear things like how compressed codecs can mess up how drums sound, recommending Lossless music to just about anyone is not something I suggest. Even with innovations like the FLAC format, Lossless music still takes up more space than compressed formats, which can be hard to justify, especially if for some of those songs, you only listen to them, once in a blue moon. To hear the full spectrum that Lossless audio can offer, you need to be able to even hear the differences between Lossless and compressed, and have the listening equipment to do so. Getting headphones that can properly illustrate that difference is not cheap in the slightest, and unless you use headphones 24/7 (like I do), it's not exactly a purchase I could push someone to make, as what if they end up not liking the headphones, or rarely using them?

While I struggle to recommend Lossless audio to that of normal users, I can, however, still recommend it to folk who make and edit videos. One thing I HATE hearing in YouTube videos is music for a game that just sounds awful, due to a really bad compressed YouTube source being used for the music in question. Due to the nature of videos, they get compressed, including the audio, so if you use a compressed audio source in the video, it will get compressed again by your video editor, and then AGAIN when it's uploaded to YouTube, which is awful. To try and avoid that sort of quality loss, using Lossless audio sources in your project (when possible) is something I strongly recommend, so those with an ear for that kind of thing, won't be going insane when a song comes on, due to how bad the compression on it is.

That was a lot of words, perhaps too much, but in summary, no I can't exactly recommend Lossless music to just about anyone. The space it takes up can only be justified if you can actually hear the difference, as if you can't, you're wasting precious hard disk space that could be used for other things. Though if you can hear the difference, and have the money to splurge on good headphones, go for it.

#flac #music #editing #lossless #mp3 #writeup

4 notes · View notes

lebrickster · 1 year

Text

Twitter keeps falling apart, day by day, to the point where it's not a matter of if it will become unusable, but rather, when. While Twitter will probably continue to remain where I look at art and other content, it will probably move away from being my main platform to just... talk on, I guess? Due to certain rules in place on Tumblr's end, I don't want to ditch Twitter entirely yet (especially since not all of the folk that I know on Twitter, have Tumblr accounts), but it's looking like this will probably be the platform I switch to, when things finally become too cancerous, because Tumblr has a similar sort of energy to Twitter in my mind, except for the fact it's more blog based. In addition to the changes getting worse and worse, I'm frankly tired of seeing creators who get harassed over nothing. Bad folk are bad, and should be called out, yes. But folk who have private interests, and are being themselves, with nothing objectionably bad about them? No fucking need to harass them. One specific user has been suffering this badly for a long time now, and it just sucks to see. Granted, no platform is immune to mob mentality bullshit for stupid reasons, but I hope with Twitter kinda falling, that will in turn make some of that unjust harassment, die down, to an extent.

#twitter

10 notes · View notes

lebrickster · 1 year

Text

2022 Year-in review but 6 days early

2022… that was certainly a year.

Truthfully, life has been a blur for me for a good while, so specific memories of 2022 are scattered and distant for me. Regardless, I wanted to go ahead and write up this post, about what I recall doing this year, and what I'm "proud" of. I have nothing better to do this day, and wanted to do something, so why not this?

The start of 2022 is not one I remember too well, but I do recall around early in the year, we finally started working on getting me my State ID, and Debit Card. Without these, I was more or less stuck at home, not able to get a job, or do online purchases without Gift Cards. Now that I had these, I was able to go job hunting, and in early August of the year, I landed a job, which I still maintain, now. The job has been filled with a lot of ups and downs, but overall, I'm grateful to have what I do as my first job, and not another job which would probably be rougher, and pay less. The freedom to finally buy things for myself, and to be able to help the family out with rent, has been nice, as I feel less like a useless nobody who does nothing but waste space, and bother people.

On the note of rent, after a long time of talking and planning, my brother's friend has finally moved into our house, taking the room my sister once had as her own. This friend didn't have the best of lives growing up, and long since wanted to get away from his miserable living conditions. Truthfully, I'm not sure if we're better or worse than his previous living arrangements, since he minds his own business, and doesn't talk to us much, aside from my brother, or asking one of us questions, but still, I hope he's at least a bit happier here, than where he was at, before. Hopefully he'll soon have a job and be able to help with paying the rent, too, but, only time shall tell when exactly what happens, I suppose.

One of the sad things that I learned of this year, is my father finally going to the doctors, only to find out he has some kind of gunk in his lungs. We believe it's to be asbestos, from his time at the Navy, which was recently further evidenced by this briefcase he's kept, where letters from his time during the Navy, warned of asbestos being in stuff like the water. Appointments will be coming soon to properly confirm what is going on. It's rather unfortunate, since I had been well aware of my father not doing as well, coughing a lot more, and having to leave work only. But one bright side to this is if it's found that being in the Navy is responsible for his current well-being, he can get disability funds, and retire from work, meaning he can rest easy during his final days, get medication to make himself to a better spot, and possibly even give us more money than we're currently making. I'm hoping that is able to go through in the end, but if it's not able to, I'll still be there for my Dad, and support him, regardless.

To go back to myself, well… I have a Yamaha PSR-E403, now, I guess? This musical keyboard is the same model that Club Penguin composer, Chris Hendricks, used in his earlier original compositions. It has a sound set that I am fond of, and wanted to own for myself. Above all else, I'm hoping I can use this keyboard to finally learn music, which is something I feel somewhat obligated to learn. Due to my status as project leader for the Church of Kondo, many assumed I was already a musician, when I wasn't. I'm hoping with this keyboard, I'll finally be able to learn music, and live up to some of what folk seem to expect out of me. Not that my friends have any issue with me not being a musician, but still…

Though on the note of that, to talk about something, I'd say my general confidence, and self view of myself has elevated, for the most part. There are still some doubts on my end, but overall, I feel less bad for being who I am. There's nothing wrong with having what may seem like unimpressive interests, or stuff like that, and to put myself down for not living up to high standards that none of my friends expect me to live up to, is just stupid. My friends have assured me time and time again that they're fine with me for who I am, and that I'm not a burden. It's helped me a lot, especially for feeling more comfortable with an interest of mine that I was afraid of for a long while, but have grown to accept it, since I have friends who are fine with it, and don't see me as weird for it.

What else is there… Well, I finally got a Fat PS2. Modded with a SATA adapter, and Noctua fan mod. Though in the process, the Disc drive seems to no longer work… I reckon a ribbon got disconnected, or torn, but I've been too afraid to open up the console again to check, since I did both mods kinda blind, which resulted in a lot of frustration, and confusion. I really should have just waited on my brother…

Though on a less frustrating note is my Windows 98 machine and N64! For the Windows 98 machine, I've been able to get a Sound Blaster AWE32 (CT3980) to replace the old Sound Blaster 16, and a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI to replace the old Voodoo 2/ATI Mach 64 combo I was using, which has boosted the sound capabilities of the machine, and got rid of the crashing issues I was having with the Voodoo 2 I had. I also upgraded the hard drive to use an SD2IDE adapter, and the floppy drive to use a GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator. For the N64, I got it out of storage, and got a good condition old controller for it (Blue), an Everdrive 64 X7, expansion pack, FRAM Modded Memory Card, and No Batter Modded Rumble Pack. I haven't had too much motivation or time to play it for the time being, but I've overall enjoyed my time with it, so far. (That analog stick is weird as hell, though. Hadn't used one in years, so it's still taking some getting used to, to use the N64 stick)

I can't think of much else to type, in terms of significant events from this year. There is one more big upgrade I hope to do before year end, but I'll post about that later. For now, I guess I'll move onto what I hope to achieve in the coming year.

For the new year, I'm hoping to generally just be a less annoying person to talk with? Not in the conventional sense, since most folk generally enjoy talking with me, but more so in the sense of… I need to chill out, and stop worrying so much. After I send messages, whether it be the same day, or a few days later, I get worried often that what I said was weird, offensive, or other things like that, when it most often isn't. For this coming year, I'm going to try hard to avoid these kinds of worry messages that just clog up DMs, and perhaps come off as annoying. I can trust my friends, so there's no real need for me to continue sending such messages, when I already have been told/know they have no issue with anything I say, or talk about.

On a similar note, I'm also going to just further embrace myself for who I am, and question myself, less. Some specific friends this year have helped me come to terms with who I am with something specific, and it's made me feel a lot more comfortable in myself, making me realize there's nothing wrong with what it is I like. Plus, having friends who have the same interest also helps in making feel less alien, and weird.

The coming year, I'll probably look for another job, too. While this current one works, it would be nice to have a higher pay rate, and one that has more… stable staff, I suppose. Dealing with people quitting all of the time, or not showing up, isn't really ideal, in the slightest, and just adds on a lot of stress.

Well, I think that might actually be all I have to say here. I wrote about way more than I expected, and it's reminded me that perhaps my life isn't as dull and boring as I figured it was, especially if there's this much to cover. I look forward to 2023, and hope it to be a better year than this one. Here's to hoping it is, and that the Mario Movie is ok, at the very least!

#year in review #windows 98 #n64 #nintendo 64 #sound blaster awe32

1 note · View note