I actually got a big kick out of the characatures in “Drop Dead Gorgeous.” I think Minnesotans need to take themselves a little less seriously (which is hard when everyone thinks we’re hicks) and embrace our whackiness and unique dialect. I’m sure every part of America that is portrayed in movies is pissed about how they’re shown.

Also, at least people care enough to make movies about Minnesotans. The only movies about South Dakota was “Dances With Wolves” and “Thunderheart.”

“Was” should be “were”. Damn.

are there any advantages to listening to records?

@aliecat: And “North By Northwest.”

Records sound better.

When CDs and other digital technologies were being developed, they were not optimized for sound quality. For instance, MP3s are made to be small. To accomplish this, they remove a great deal of information. Thus, while they sound acceptable, they do not sound as good as the source. Vinyl has always been about getting an accurate reproduction of the music. It succeeds better than other formats.

Having said that, you must have decent equipment. You must take great care of your media. There are benefits, but to some they are not worth the trouble.

The only movies about South Dakota was “Dances With Wolves” and “Thunderheart.”

Isn’t that still about 1 movie for each 145 South Dakota residents? 

I enjoyed this from one of the earlier Weird Twin Cities entries:

[James J.] Hill, [is] rumored to have once said, “Give me enough snuff, whiskey, and Swedes, and I’ll build you a railroad to hell!”

I liked the Weird Twin Cities reference to the “flying car” on I-94. I had to look up the verse painted on its side, but I wonder whether it’s not a wry comment to those people stuck in rush-hour traffic: Be still and know that I am God.

An mp3 is a different beast than a CD WAV file. Unlike a compressed mp3, WAV’s are full-bandwidth. An audiophile will you, though, that a vinyl recording is “warmer” sounding than the same recording on CD. Rather than the rounded oscillation that occurs with a vinyl reproduction, WAV (and mp3) files are squared and, thus, more jagged:

How Analog and Digital Recording Works

That is my new favorite James J. Hill quote.

I recently spent several days in the company of a working record player as part of a full and well-maintained stereo system with nice loud speakers. It was a blast listening to albums. The popping, the crackling! It’s great. Plus the gravity and ritual of putting the needle to vinyl made it all the more enjoyable.

I think records are kinda fun in a retro way, but I’d bet anyone that they couldn’t tell the difference between a CD and a record, except by noting the hiss and popping on the record. It’s all in your head!

It’s true that a CD, because it’s sampled, loses some information in the strictest sense. But our brains only sample so fast anyways. It’s like comparing a developed photograph to a high-resolution digital photo. You really can’t tell (even though the digital photo has a finite number of pixels), and you actually improve matters by removing all sorts of garbage.

In fact, I’d even bet there are very few who could tell the difference between a CD and a well-made mp3. I know I can’t. This is like comparing the raw digital photo to a JPEG photo. You can only tell if it’s way too compressed.

And there is a lot of great music that will never be available on CD.

I know my digital version of a couple Beatles songs and “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys have a kind of hollow sound in spots.

It’s not worth going back to records, by any means, but I wonder if that has something to do with the digitization process.

I have ALWAYS noticed snow in movies. Unless it is actual snow, it always looks terrible. I assume only northerners can really tell??

Some films that have real snow, and to great effect:

A Simple Plan

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Fargo (for the most part)

And there is a lot of great music that will never be available on CD.

I guess I’m tempted to wonder just how few fans something has to have to not be available on CD. Are we sure this isn’t a case of it’s so obscure, it must be cool? An example would make me wrong, of course.

… I just realized it sounds like I’m channeling Rat there. But I am curious for an example.

The Coen Brothers had a hard time finding real snow that winter. They ended up in Grand Forks at one point, and shot a couple of scenes there. IIRC Rex was there and talked about seeing Mr Pink repeatedly burying a suitcase next to a fence. It was interesting to watch for that scene when I finally saw the movie.

CDs do have less information than analog media, and MP3s have even less. We’ve gotten used to it as a trade off for convenience, and I’m surprised and wowed now when the occasional record player that comes out… the sound just has a lot more presence than digital. It makes a difference on the kind of noise-saturated tracks Rat was talking about.

I imagine a lot of great old stuff never even made it from 78 to 33.

A lot of small press local music has never been rereleased — I can think of quite a bit of excellent music from when I was a teenager that is not available digitally. Try finding the Urban Guerillas or a lot of the Suicide Commandos on CD.

Similarly, Augie Garcia’s music is not available digitally for whatever reason, except in digitized versions of his old 45s. And some music just doesn’t have a large enough audience to justify releasing it digitally — regional folk music, dance bands, etc. It really is first-rate stuff, but its audience has faded and it has been forgotten.

Fair enough.

What I found funny several years were the complaints among some radio people about airing mp3 song recordings instead of dubbed-from-vinyl-to-cartridge copies. Given the amount of compression some stations use (e.g. KQRS, KDWB), between the studio and transmitter (aka Optimod), in order to make their sound “jump” from a car speaker, there was absolutely no difference in how the music was perceived by a listener. Clear Channel was notorious for running their modulation levels above 105%. The result was distortion; splattering, especially on the high end of the wavelength.

Crap in. crap out.

Nowadays, given the penetration levels of mp3s via iPods, etc., most consumers don’t really care anymore at all about hearing audiophile-quality sound. They’ve never heard audiophile-quality sound, so what is there to compare it with?

I have done the vinyl vs. CD test. Exact same equipment except for the player. I could tell. I can completely tell with MP3s vs. CD. For me, the difference from Vinyl to CD is not worth the trouble. But, MP3s, even 320 bit versions, do sound different than CDs.

The problem is what format do audiophiles listen to when the format keeps disregarding sound quality and goes strictly on convenience? SA-CDs never went anywhere. DVD audio is dead. There are cheep 5.1 capable systems, but no audio format that takes advantage of it. Alack and alas…

@DouglasG: That’s why there’s still a small market for audiophile vinyl, similar to the Original Masters series that were periodically published. Of course, if you had one of those discs back in the day you also had to have a direct-drive turntable, a $100 needle, and the obligatory Discwasher or you just weren’t considerate enough to your vinyl!

$100? That is a cheap needle! I would not settle for anything less than this.

Technology has moved beyond stereo vinyl.  I would like to know what the equivalent will be down the road.  MP3s are nice for crappy speakers you stick in your ears, but they suck trying fill a room.  I want to know what an audiophile is to do when MP3s are all that is available?

“I want to know what an audiophile is to do when MP3s are all that is available?”

My guess is they’d have to listen to MP3 or live music.

One problem with vinyl is that the audio characteristics of the recording will change (for the worse) each time you play it.

Douglas, just wait until all that’s available to watch on your 50″ (or larger)HD Plasma screen is a highly compressed MP4 stream on a congested, stalling internet connection.

While I have a projector rather than plasma, and my screen is 110″, I do not look forward to that either… However, that exemplifies the problem for the Rat. MP3s are simply not an option.

I suppose said audiophile can then rent his clothing, shave off his hair, and accompanying goatee, and wander in the wilderness until the come up with something else.

As storage costs get cheaper and cheaper, and the amount of bandwidth expands, the days of mp3s may become numbered. Someday, the Rat will be able to enjoy full-bandwidth music without the need for compression. Oh, except it’ll still be digitized and, therefore, clipped.

The Fraunhofer compression algorithm that became mp3 was from the days of limited storage capacity and the dial-up Internet. Back then, the average HD cost $1 per megabyte (1gb = $1000), and to stream a complete song WAV file over the Web would’ve taken … forever.

Ah, yes. An audiophile’s dream:

“Someday, the Rat will be able to enjoy full-bandwidth music without the need for compression.”

And I wouldn’t know the difference if it walked up and kicked me in the head

In fact, I’d even bet there are very few who could tell the difference between a CD and a well-made mp3.

I can pretty clearly. There is no such thing as a well-made mp3. OGG files are good, but I think they might be lossy as well. I remember .shn files used to sound pretty good, but they were too big for the bandwidth at the time.

Vinyl is great because not only the warm analog sound, but also because of the ritual and the friggin’ album art. Check out Zeppelin’s albums on vinyl – the art is interactive and amazing.

And those guys have “done it” more than once

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS2pBwW11Aw

While I have a projector rather than plasma, and my screen is 110",

DouglasG, how does the image quality from your (or any, for that matter) projector compare to an HDTV?  I guess I’m skeptical due to the blurry screens I have encountered at every movie theater I’ve ever been in.

Like any technology, garbage in/garbage out. The better the picture source — the better picture output. While the projector certainly supports HD at 1080p, I do not have anything that outputs at that resolution.

There are pros and cons to any video system. I wanted the movie going experience. The big screen is important. The wide screen is important. (The sound is important.) This really cannot happen on a LCD or Plasma unless it is really big. Also, my screen tucks away when not in use. Thus, I don’t need the dedicated wall space. Which is important in a smallish house.

It does need a darkish room. However, I have control over focus, so it is not really an issue. There are factors involved in whether or not the image is focusable, but I made sure of those when I purchased the projector. IE I made sure my setup was within the focal length guidelines of the purchase projector.

I think it looks great and does what I want for a lot less than a comparable LCD or Plasma.

Thanks, DouglasG…that answers a lot of my questions. For my applications, I may just stick with a large LCD, as I will be fitting it between 2 windows, which not only limit the size of the screen, but also provide plenty of light.

Next thing to consider is a home theater system, though the previous owner of our house made it easy for me by wiring for surround sound in the space. I’m no audiophile, so my choices are many.

No problem! I am not exactly and audiophile, but I like it to sound good. I’m much more of a gadget guy…

I have a 46 inch plasma with full surround audio, and blue ray DVD, and it often looks better than what you see in the theatre!

My goal was to have it look better and sound better than (former) HarMar theater #3 (One of the small theaters there). It was easily exceeded, and I think my screen is bigger than theirs was.