Will, Norm, and Jeremy are joined by Alexa to discuss CES, including their impressions of new VR demos from Oculus and Razer, flying quadcopterss in the desert, and the latest technology news. Enjoy!
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How long before Alexa runs of with Jibo?
JIBO!!!
Alexa sucks!
Toss her worthless, spying ass to the curb! 😝
Alexa sure knows her dirty jokes.
Just want to point out that while Will and Norm seem to talk about the handle/mount as there not existing another small form factor stabilisation thing like this for the Inspire Camera/Gimbal there are things like this for GoPro(or any camera you can stick in it). There’s this system out of China I believe, called the G3 (seems to be sold under different brand names, FeyuTech?) that seems to be the exact same concept DJI is now using except for the fact that it comes with it’s own motors, that are included with the Inspire whereas a GoPro obviously doesn’t have them.
you know, for all the fun you poke at those music players, i really bemoan the general state of the market. just a few years back, ~200 USD could buy you a portable device that did play music well, period. nowadays, i’d have to get a stupid smartphone which is a) an appliance i do not want to have and b) not made to play music well.
so the pretty much only option is to buy neil young’s ponoplayer for the price of a playstation 4, just to have a dedicated thing that does not sound like an ipod. the niche players still available on the market are overkill, but what else is there that is not rubbish?
Still a smartphone solution, but that’s going to be tricky to get around since most people want them. the OnePlus One has line output comparable to old Sony discmans. No oversampling, or balanced out of course, but still pretty sweet. Calling all those devices rubbish is a long stretch. Or, stick a dragonfly DAC and an OTG cable on the end of your headphones for a somewhat bulkier but probably better sound.
I still have my walkman somewherein the abyss….sadly.
side note….was joey heating up his food about 1hr45 minutes in?
thanks a lot for the tip. that’s very kind of you. 🙂
though you are right about the smartphone part irking me. i realise i am way outside current fashion on this, but i don’t even have a cell phone. the whole thing just isn’t for me. no objections when people get use or enjoyment out of them, obviously.
to elaborate on my calling pretty much everything “rubbish:” i’m using the term more as a synonym for “unfit for my purposes.” there probably are smartphones that do deliver music reasonably well, but they come as hubs for an experience i don’t want to partake in. so, smartphone-rubbish is because they are (to me) devices for rubbish. the low-end, tiny and rugged music players for strapping to your wrist while jogging are rubbish for their quality (mostly) and accessibility. the high end players are rubbish in their own way because they are so expensive.
it’s just that that seems the only viable rubbish among them all. ;( (i admit, wallowing a bit in the nostalgia about, and beauty of dedicated devices plays a part as well.)
the phantom underwater rig video will mentioned:
I was thinking it’s been a long time since there was a woman on any Tested content, but Alexa doesn’t quite make the grade. Try harder.
live near Bristol, but covered by a different fiber company, uses nearly the same pricing plans as far as i know. BTES or other side of the street BVU 100mb up is still out of range of most normal people here.
Even though I watched the Echo video, I was still expecting a fourth person around the table when firing up the video… :p
Heh! Will says he’s not a licensed ham operator, yet. Mental image of Will running amok down the street wielding a leg of pork, pursued by cops demanding that he drop the meat!
Nevermind
Jeremy isn’t allowed back until he renounces 3D, atleast 3D Televisions. He could watch his 3D movies in a GearVR, than again if Samsung was smart they would make a GearVR for 6 Plus so that he could.
You really should reassess your view on Bluetooth. None of the iOS devices support it, but the aptX codec makes a huge difference. Even just a moderately expensive headphone like the MEElectronics Air-Fi Matrix2 sounds really good connected to an aptX-capable Android device.
Man, I’m the kid that made my parents take me to the supermarket in 1986 to get the promotional anaglyph 3D glasses because — OMG — Jaws 3D was being shown on network TV. I did a magnificent 6th grade report on holograms, and flipped out when Mastercard/Visa started using them. I bought a Virtual Boy. 10 years ago I shot my own 3D photos with a point-and-shoot, Photoshopped the composite, and hung them on the wall with a stack of anaglyph glasses below them. I backed the Oculus Rift instantly.
I have a problem. And I want a 3D TV.
As a Pono owner and part time audiophile, having the warmth and space of higher resolution music in my car is worth every penny of $400. If you care the quality of the sound (and thats a big “IF” for those who call mp3 low bit res just fine) vinyl gave a much higher sound quality experience. With a move to higher resolution formats like 192kHz 24 bit we get a light year jump in digital approximation of that quality.
I’m on board.
that’s good to hear. 🙂 i don’t know if i’d be able to hear the difference between “normal” FLAC and those new resolutions, but it seems to be the only viable solution in sight anyway.
I just signed up for Spotify last month because they were running a “3 months for 99 cents” promotion. I’d imagine that has boosted their numbers significantly in the short term.
aw man, I apologize. I didn’t realize I was dissing your passion. I had assumed you were just embracing the fad. The fad being 3D televisions in particiular, not 3D in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QxAQCiF6m0
tossing a quad and having self level is very old
I totally thought that was a rude comment before I listened to the podcast Yes, alexa is an airhead.
It’s a great question. I’m certainly not getting it from Ponomusic.com. They have something like 2 million songs but the 192kHz 24bit selection is slim at best and useless at worst. I’m ripping Vinyl and scavenging for the rest of what I like from anywhere else but mainly HDtracks.com and http://www.linnrecords.com.
When I said I was a part time audiophile I meant I have some equipment only audiophiles would care about like a high end set of loudspeakers and an OK turntable. I’m in my late 40’s so I’ve been collecting vinyl since mid 1970’s.
I’m upgrading the turntable to a Rega RP3 and for the last 3 weeks I’ve been ripping vinyl using Pure Vinyl (http://www.channld.com/purevinyl) on my Retina Mac Book and using Click Repair and DeNoise to clean it up. The results so far are amazing and the 192kHz 24 bit files on my Pono are so much better than the Apple Lossless versions that I don’t really listen to much else.
It’s really going to be a curation fight to get the best quality original files from the record companies to see any effect in the downloadable 192kHz 24 bit market. I don’t see a clear path for large market until the magic Bose like simple solution drops Lady Gaga rocking back and forth on a piano bench in front of you and it sounds like you can reach out and touch her. That’s the experience audiophiles have with Vinyl and it’s still a technological jump to get there with current the current state of hardware, I hope is just getting started.
Understood. Here are few key differences to listen for if you get a chance to listen to a high resolution digital music file versus a CD or low bit 44.1kHz 16bit file:
1. Digital loudness compression degrades the dynamics of the music with 44.1kHz. This is not always true but usually is with recent CD mastering. If you listen to music that is all the same loudness, not as big an issue. If you listen to Jazz or classic music you will miss the details of quiet sections. HD format files should have plenty of digital information space to not have to do this. If the original analogue or high frequency information from the artist is carried through, and most artists are using Pro Tools like software their masters are in 192kHz 24 bit or higher, we should have much better dynamics in these files.
2. The better high resolution files (96kHz-192kHz 24bit) have better what audiophiles call “sound stage”. On a set of head phones it maybe just music in side your head but you can hear better separation in the location of the instruments and vocals. There is more space around the instruments. Sounds crazy and maybe we audiophiles are completely nuts, but I hear it and know when I’m hearing everything on top of each other.
3. Finally compare a 320 or 250 bit rate downloaded file from iTunes or Amazon with the high resolution high bit rate on a set of speakers somewhat set apart enough to discern right and left channel. When you stand in front of them and close your eyes, compare the sound of the 2 files and see if the 320 bit files sound like they are all happening in the plane like a piece of paper and the higher resolution files have the speakers somewhat disappear and have depth to them. For example, a symphony orchestra recording with percussion in the back of the room will sound like they are back in the sound stage while the violin will sound up close.
All of this is rubbish to those who are happy to consume music without all the quality particulars. There are few of us who think it’s a great time to sort out some experiences of hearing music this way. I’m certainly not an expert in any of these areas, but I’m having a great time with HD music.
Current playlist, all vinyl rips:
Peter Gabriel – Security, Chuck Mangione- Chase the Clouds Away, Chick Corea- 3 Quartets, Philip Glass- Songs from Liquid Days
thanks very much for the informative post 😀 that sure was an interesting read. as for my gear/outlook, i’d say i am sitting just outside the doorstep of the audiophile club, but within earshot. i don’t have the money to spend on getting super high end equipment, and i doubt i’d be able to discern those nuances. (curious, though!) but i do appreciate hearing some detail instead of mush and a not-deep-but-doubly-loud bass.
so i frequent enthusiast sites whenever i need new equipment and look for something at a reasonable spot on the slope of diminishing returns. when an audiophile site says “this here offers good bang for the buck” that’s about where i strike.
i guess the skullcandy tribe sneers at me for being snobby and the real audiophiles sneer because i talk about quality while still having a point of “good enough.” 😉
As someone that has gone from recording projects on 4 track to ADAT to ProTools to Logic,etc. I have been playing more of my vinyl collection when listening at home through in my studio. When I teach music students, one thing I do is show the evolution of the ways in which we consume music. Perhaps we can compare that with how practical effects industry evolved into a special effects industry. Now we see the interest of filmmakers using the old school approach just as musicians and music lovers are embracing recording in analog environments and buying LPs…If I don’t have the CD, then I will take the trouble to rip vinyl and doing some work on the recordings. Most of my LP and audio/visual restoration projects revolve around the space program as the NASA archive is huge.
Chick Corea 3 Quartets is a great record ! And any thing from Gabriel is just stunning in Hi Fidelity
I’m curious how you react to evidence suggesting 24/192 is a quality level well beyond the range of human hearing.
Such as: this
The weird thing with Skiing and Snowboarding is that the popularity between younger and older riders seems to oscillate as time goes on. Back in the 90s I remember most the adults on skis and most of the teenagers on snowboards. In the 2000s you had a lot more adults switching to snowboard and a lot of the kids trying skiing.
I actually worked on a Skiing game recently that started out as a Snowboarding game but was switched early in development because the market data showed that Skiing is currently more popular.
I have a hard time believing that Apple will give up its Magsafe Charging tech… After having a Mac for the past 8 years or so, that has become almost a staple for them… USB C does sound like a God send, but I’ll believe the apple adoption of it when I see it.
Wow, that is a great deal of information and he does go on a bit. I’m not an engineer but I took a few physics courses and understanding some of his points from that view I might question the merits of 192kHz resolution. The real problem is it’s very tough to get a good demonstration of the difference without some very particular choices. All of which may bias the results.
I will tell you one experience that threw me over the wall on the topic. I bought a TASCAM DR-07MKII Digital Audio Recorder. It had 44.1kHz/48kHz/96kHz options as well as 16/24 bit choices for recording. I took it out to a forest area and started recording birds. Choosing each file storage type as I went, I made the same type of recording and then started another and changed the file option.
The difference from the 48kHz 16 bit to the 96kHz 24 bit was jaw dropping. With the 48kHz 16 bit I felt like I was listening to a recording, with the 96kHz 24 bit It was like I was dropped in the middle of the forest at that moment in time. It was dramatic and spectacular. I get similar effect from some music files today. I could be delusional that my physiology is actually able to sort the quality jump, but if I am no one help me snap out of it.