Compact disks, the mystical mysterious reflective plastic frisbees.

     I love CDs. I really do. Have about 200 of them, maybe more.

     And yet, sometimes I don't get them. Sometime, they mystify me.

     You probably heard of the "CD rot", have you? It's when water, air, or that dreaded UV light gets inside the CD, and damages the precious information layer beyond repair. That shit is scary, and you do NOT want that to happen to your precious music. So, when you see that there is something VISIBLY wrong with your CD, you imagine the WORST. And yet,........... everything's..... fine?????

     I have about 40 musical disk thingies (an over-estimation) that have holes in them. When you examine them close to a strong light source, you see teeny-tiny holes in the aluminum(?) layer, light shines through them. Clearly, something got to the information layer, and ate it up, like a moth through a sweater. My precious, beloved CDs, damaged beyond repair! All the lovely music, gone forever!


     . . . . . . . . . .


     . . . . . . only the information is still all there???


     Yes, exactly as you read. Despite the visible holes in the metallic information layer(?), all the bits are still there, the laser can read the data NO PROBLEM, and if I rip one of the """rotten""" CDs to a hard drive, the program detects 0 errors. ZERO ERRORS. Even though some of the information is supposed to be gone forever, "damaged" sectors forever unreadable. And yet, the ripped files play perfectly, with no clicks, no static, no nothing.

     What the HELL is going on?!?

     Well, I certainly do not know. What are those holes, anyway? What made them? Were the disks (mis)printed that way? Are these holes in the actual metallic layer, or the outermost top surface of the plastic coating? Is the metallic layer in CDs actually mostly see-through? I once accidentally (lightly) scratched the red printed label on a CD with a fingernail, and a tiny speck of red paint came off. In that place, there is now one of those "see-through" holes. The information is there, the laser can see it, and if I try to rip, report gives no reading errors.

     Is this "disk rot"? Certainly not, since the information is still there, and readable. What is it then? What to call it? I don't FUCKING know! All I know is those holes are found almost exclusively on older CDs (printed in the 80s and early 90s). But a lot of older CDs also do NOT have any holes in them, so age cannot be the only factor. The only newer CDs in my massive collection to have that is the (fantastic) 2001 remaster of Benefit by Jethro Tull. However, the 3 tiny holes are not exactly on the information layer, but in the center, the part with the numbers and the bar code.

     To finish off this strange post, I am stumped. I do not know what the heck is happening, I do not know why some of my CDs have visible holes in them. I do not know why the information there is still readable with no errors. I do not know what causes this, how it is possible, and what to call it. I love you, CDs, but you are fucking weird.

The Dark Side of Remastering, Part 1.

     Hello, underlings! The time has come to discuss the Dark Side of...what the title said.

     "Remastered" has become a buzzword in the music industry, and casuals (aka people who don't know shit about music) have been misusing it for years now. Fortunately, some people have been wising up to the whole thing, and becoming informed. And right now, YOU TOO can become informed! I will explain the basics and bullshits of remastering, in less than 9,000 words! So, gentlemen and gentleladies, THIS IS WHAT REMASTERING IS ALL ABOUT!

     And before you walk away from this frightening wall of text, let me remind you that you do have time to read all this. All those cat videos on YouTube can wait.


                                                                        Ahem......

     First of all, let's get back to basics. Let's go back in time. A long, long time ago, there were no computers, and no hard drives. All audio was stored on magnetic tapes (archival) and vinyl records (personal use). The former decays over time unless treated chemically, and the latter lasts for many decades (plastic decays real slow). Magnetic tapes sound freaking amazing (providing music was recorded with GOOD microphones and cables). And don't let the slight hiss distract you from what's important: professional magnetic tapes can store sound in theoretically infinite resolution. Before the invention of digital storage, tapes were the shit. Vinyl records are limited by time (only about 25 minutes on each side) and have a hard time holding overly compressed (all loud and zero quiet) sound, but sound about as good as the tapes, proving your player isn't shit and the speakers are not too shabby. Sure, vinyl degrades slightly with repeated use, but you have to pay some price for quality.

     Now, let's get to the meat of the businesses. In the olden days of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, high quality music was first always recorded on tapes, and then transferred to vinyl through a process called mastering. Basically, in the best case, you recorded the instruments and vocals on separate tapes, and then record those tapes on a single and final one. That final tape, be it mono or stereo, was called the master tape. Why? Because it was the final finished version, and from it, all the copies would be made. Think of the master tape as a painting: after you put all the colours together, you are DONE done. No retouching. No going back. Finished. And that finished version of yours could be copied for different museums.

     Let's take a half step back, and explain the mastering some more. Once you record your instruments on multiple tapes, making one tape of them all is not an automated process. You need to decide which instruments are louder, which are quieter, which should sound smoother, which ones harsher. The act of putting the separate tapes into one requires skill and lots of professional machinery, and making the result not sound like shit is called mixing. Ever heard of the word? Well, now you know what it means. The mixer can mix the tapes in a gazillion different ways, and therefore must make the tough decisions. Mixing audio can be quite stressful because of that.

     After the mixing has been finished, and you got your final master tape, you transfer the audio to a metal disk. That disk will be used to physically press the individual copies of vinyl albums.


So, let's look at the complete picture. This is how the sound traveled in the good old days, from the musicians, all the way into your ears:

Instruments & vocals
   v
Microphones
   v
Cables
   v
Recording equipment
   v
Individual tapes
   v
One tape/master tape
   v
Metallic master disk
   v
Vinyl record(s)


     One last thing for this chapter. This is important! >:( The quality of the musicians' performance, quality of the instruments, quality of microphones, quality of cables, quality of recording equipment, and quality of the tape stuff is recording to: it ALL is CRUCIAL. The better each component of this sound chain is, the better sounding recordings you will get. And once the recording is done, the tapes are your ONLY copies that you end up with. The musicians performed in the past, everything but the tapes exist in the past. Everything is gone, forever. Except the tapes, which you must guard like the most precious treasure. For they are the best sounding copies that exist for now, and ever.

     More in Part 2, coming soon!

It's Hi-Fi, dammit!

     HD radio you say? HD headphones? Well I say bullshit.

     Allow me to explain using as few words as possible.

     There are certain terms that describe quality of sound and moving picture. Distortion, aspect ratio, signal-to-noise ratio, etc. Smart individuals know them, and use them properly in the right situations. Dumb fucks who cannot count to 50, on the other hand, don’t know shit.

     A brief overview of two technical terms important for this reading: high fidelity and high definition.


     High Fidelity, or Hi-Fi
     This terms addresses quality of audio equipment: microphones, speakers, cables, players. Fidelity deals with the frequency range of sound (lowest possible to highest possible), distortion os sound (accuracy of its recording/reproduction) and bit and sample rate of digital audio. Fidelity also refers to other sound-related things, but those are not important here.


     High Definition, or HD

     Definition, whether high or low, refers to the amount of pixels used to make an frame of a digital video file. There are several industry standards of definition:
240
360
480
540
576
are considered low to standard definition.

720+
is considered high definition.


     If you can comprehend English, and do not need glasses (or have them on), by now you should understand and fidelity deals with SOUND, while definition with VIDEO.

     If so, then why the FUCK are people using HD to describe audio? HD radio?? HD Headphones??? What is this bullshit?!

     The reasons for this trend is either because the world’s population is getting dumber, or idiots being granted a voice. No one who knows about audio and video will use the term “high definition” everywhere it does not belong. And yet a lot of people do. Because a lot of people are fucking stupid.

     And the worst thing? The industry EMBRACED this stupidity, and started to cater to idiots, because those idiots are not a large portion of the consumer base. That is why we have HD radios, HD headphones, and HD audio in general.  THE TERM IS HI-FI! THE WORD IS HIGH FIDELITY!! FUCKING DUMB FUCKS!!! GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




     So, yes. Stop being retarded, and use proper terms.

     What’s that? I cannot tell you what to do? I am not your dad?

     Well, that’s just another place where you’re wrong. I do, in fact have a time machine. I went into the past, and fucked your mom. So yes, I AM your dad. Not stop being such an uneducated retard!