A four-year old responds to Bush's State Of The Union speech.

Awesome.

As long as I'm talking about CDs and compression...

I remember the first CD I ever heard: Robert Plant's "Now And Zen". This was back in '88, when CD players were still pretty exotic, but, a friend's dad had one (a portable 'boombox' one, IIRC), and we all ooh-ed and ahhh-ed over it, the magical little silver discs it played, the little whirring noise it made, the little laser sitting there, daring us to touch it - and most of all, of course, the sound. Just like all those angry sound engineers said, you could really hear the difference in the dynamic range, compared to vinyl or cassette, without even knowing anything about "dynamic range" or "compression". The songs on that album have a lot of nearly-empty space where you can hear all these faint little chimes and tinkly things, in wide open spaces, making you listen very closely. And they sounded realistic - as if that little bell, or whatever, really was recorded from far away; even if you've got it cranked, and you know the loud parts are going to be reeeealy loud when they kick in, those faint sounds still sound faint. And maybe even more important at the time, you couldn't hear any cassette hiss or record pops in the background! Music got bigger, shinier, clearer. I remember thinking that they must've recorded it in partnership with CD player manufacturers in mind, since it really showed off what CD players could do.

It's been a long time since I've heard a record with that kind of clarity and crafty little sonic details. I wonder if that's because I'm not paying attention, or if people aren't making them anymore...

I also wonder if I'd like that record even a tiny little bit, these days. Probably not.

Get out your air guitar, and go watch the 20 Greatest Guitar Solos Ever.

I've been working on some new songs, with my shiny new digital 8-track. I have a dozen or so that are probably 95% finished - I just need to give them a good mix-down - take those 8 tracks and blend them into a single stereo mix, maybe with a little creative editing of the levels of individual tracks, to fix mistakes. So, I've been doing rough mixes to my PC, converting to MP3 and dropping them on my iPod, so I can listen to them at work, where I listen to everything else - a little bit of Boris, a little bit of myself, a little bit of the J Geils Band (their "I Do" is playing on the iPod right now), a little of me. I'm getting sick of the songs, which usually means I'm close to done mixing.

But one thing I've noticed is that, compared to most everything else on my iPod, my songs are all quiet. I literally leave my iPod's volume control at the point just above total silence, because I can't take it any louder - sensitive little ears, I guess. And some songs, those from the White Stripes, for one example, are too loud even at that level, which is a drag - more on that later. But my songs require me to crank the volume up to 1/4 or 1/3, before they match the loudness level of even tolerable professionally-recorded songs. So that's annoying. And this problem isn't happening because I need to turn the levels of the instruments louder during mix-down; I do all the mixing with the overall level running right up against the point where it'll start to distort the inputs on my sound card. Any louder there and the songs will be full of horrific digital snaps, crackles and pops. So, what's the trick?

One big trick is to decrease the dynamic range of the entire track: make everything louder, except the parts that are already the loudest - those, you reduce a little, and that gives you more room to make everything else louder still...a.k.a. "compression". I've tried using various compression tools on my stuff to pump up the 'loudness' (perceived volume, rather than actual volume), but never got exactly the right effect. I've tried my little NanoComp box, I've tried mastering to tape, which provides natural compression, I've tried software compressors, but I've never got it just right. So, I did a little Googlin about compressin, to see if there are any tricks I'm missing out on.

Well, I haven't yet learned anything to help me get that in-your-face White Stripes loudness. But I have learned that professional sound engineers and musicians are bummed out over compression, especially recently. I even found a neat little video clip that does a great job of illustrating exactly what compression does, and why all those engineers are upset.

So, who do I side with: the engineers, or my lust for loudness?

Hey bud, you know any programmers willing to write an entire operating system (like Windows, but better), for $1000 ?

Here it is, The Truth.