The theme to HBO’s Game of Thrones is one of the best instrumental TV themes ever, especially when paired with the stunning interactive ever-changing map of Westeros in the beginning credits sequence. The theme was constantly going through my head last night after the season finale, making for some very weird dreams.

But my half-asleep brain got to thinking – could the theme be improved? Most classic TV themes have words. GoT might’ve been served better by a theme based on the Brady Bunch theme:

Here’s the story of a ruthless lady
Who was bringing up three very twisted kids.
All of them had hair of gold, like their uncle,
The oldest one’s a shit.

Till the one day when the lady met this fellow
And she knew that her lies would fall apart,
So this man must be declared a traitor
That’s the way they all became the Headless Starks
The Headless Starks, The Headless Starks,
That’s the way they all became the Headless Starks.

Okay, maybe one should not trust one’s sleep-brain…

Latre.

But sometimes you just can’t get it all out in 140-word bytes. So I guess this space is still useful for those times when I want to elaborate on something. Like now.

I’ve gone on and on in these pages about my CD archiving project, which involves ripping my 4000+ CD collection. The collection has not really grown these past few years, since I’ve switched to downloads for new stuff. I’ve been ripping the discs to both FLAC image files and to MP3 track files, the later of which I import into iTunes. I’ve also been doing high rez cover scans and entering copious notes on the albums in Music Collector. I stopped the project for almost a year since I got tired of it and moved on to other temporary time wasters (video games, graphic novels, Kindle), but now I’m re-energized on that project and hitting it full force again. Got myself a new 2TB drive to store the FLAC files on, and they’re backed up to an older 1.5TB drive. I started off the project going in order, beginning with artists that started with numbers and then ones that started with the letter A. Once I got around to “Be” artists, I started skipping around more and hitting artists out of order, partly out of boredom and partly because I wanted to replace my previously-ripped inferior MP3s in iTunes with newer better ones.

The last week or so, I decided to archive and re-rip my entire Bill Nelson collection. Doesn’t sound like a huge task, but seeing as how the man is incredibly prolific and I own close to 50 of his albums, not even counting his records with Be-Bop Deluxe, it’s a daunting task. Especially since I think it’s the third time I’ve done it. Heck, I think there’s still some 20 albums or so of his that I don’t own!

So, anyway, I’ve been very Bill Nelson-focused these last few days. Today, since I had the day off for MLK day, I went and saw The Green Hornet (2D version), which was more entertaining than to be expected for that sort of thing, kind of a buddy-cop movie on deadpan steroids. Nice chemistry between the leads. After the movie, I waddled over to a local watering hole and ate dinner and drank beer while reading a recent issue of Denver’s alternative weekly Westword. The cover story, which I’m sure my font and typography-obsessed friends would enjoy, was all about local (but nationally famous) typography artist Rick Griffith. Excerpt:

Soon he discovered another way to give voice to his rebellion. While working at a record store in suburban Virginia, his boss showed him the album Sound on Sound, by the new-wave band Bill Nelson’s Red Noise.

Instead of the tidy, proper letterforms Griffith was used to seeing, the words on the cover were built from pieces of electronic music equipment — speaker cords and headphones and radio antennas. “The album was a knock-out punch,” he says. “From that point on, I found myself moving towards graphic design.”

Any illicit substances he was on at the time probably didn’t hurt.

I had to read that over and over again. Wow! Just two days earlier, I had been staring at that particular album cover, marveling at that very design technique. I especially like how the coiled-up guitar chord forms the “R”. But what especially got me was that here I had been obsessing over my Bill Nelson collection and marveling how this musician with one of the most prolific bodies of work in the rock (and related) field is virtually unknown to the general public, and then one of my favorite albums of his is name-checked in a local newspaper article. A warm glow filled me, and it wasn’t just the beer. Or maybe it was.

Rick Griffith turned his Revolt Into Style. Yeah.

Latre.

Note: I have attempted to remove all double spaces between sentences in this post, but confess I might’ve missed a few.

One of the positive benefits of digitally archiving all my CDs is that I get to hear a lot of things that I haven’t heard in (literally) decades. The iPod in my car is set up with a random playlist of things added to iTunes in the last year, so it’s mostly a mix of eMusic downloads and songs from bands that start with the letter “A”. Recently, I was driving around and was taken aback when an 80s-sounding song with a different type of lyrical message played. I was doubly surprised to see that it was from the one-”hit” wonder band Art In America (from their only album 1983’s Art In America, which produced their only “hit”, the song “Art In America”). I believe they are chiefly remembered for having a harp player as a fulltime member of the band. That’s a regular big old acoustic harp, not an electric or horizontal or altered one. Must’ve been fun to take on the road. In my mind, the whole harp thing gave the band an image that was squeaky clean. Which is why this song “Won’t It Be Strange” caused me to do a double take. Here’s the lyrics (as best I can make them out, incorporating bits from another website):

*****************************************
Won’t It Be Strange
Performed by Art In America
Words and Music by Chris Flynn

I needed to see you
I needed to fall
I need to feel all of you
I can’t wait for the Masters and Johnson’s call
Do you think will hear me?
Well you just might not heel
But darling I just need to know
Is it your love that I’d feel?

Won’t it be strange,
When the world brings us bondage and pain?
And if there is someday
Some laughter for a change
Won’t it be strange- won’t it be strange?

Do you think you will hear me
When my moment has come?
Do you think you will hear me
With your face mask and blindfold on? Yeah
Do you think you will hear me
Well you just might not heel
But darling I just need to know
Is it your love that I’d feel

Won’t it be strange,
When the world brings us bondage and pain?
And if there is someday
Some laughter for a change
Won’t it be strange- won’t it be strange?

And if you’re not for certain
Don’t take the box for what’s behind the curtain
When your sealcoat’s re-haired, find out….

Won’t it be strange
When the world brings us bondage and pain?
And if there is someday
Some laughter for a change
Won’t it be strange- won’t it be strange?
*****************************************

Okay, so basically they seem to be singing about an S&M relationship. How could I not have known that at the time the album came out (1983) or when the CD was finally issued (1996)? It sure seems like something I would’ve remembered. Of course, I’m sure the whole S&M theme is just a metaphor for something else… like how hard it is to play a harp or something…

Of course, things are always more complicated than you originally think. In the course of researching this blog entry, I ran across this incredibly detailed deconstruction of the album, courtesy of a familiar pen. However, there’s not much of a comment on this song, which bums me out.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: The docking station for my laptop introduces noise into the audio channel.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “heathenism resort”.

So… where does that put me on the progress bar? That’s 158 titles out of 4128. Note I say “titles” instead of “CDs” or “albums” because some of those are actually double CDs, so in reality I’ve ripped more than 158 discs. Anyway, that’s 3.8% of my collection. In a little over three months.

(Note that my CDs are stored in plastic sleeves instead of jewel boxes, so there are many more in the picture above than it would appear.)

My original plan was to try to average around 6 discs a day, which would take me around two years to complete. My real average has been about 1.6 discs a day, but like I said, there were extenuating circumstances. I think I went probably a whole month or so without ripping a single disc. If I keep that lower rate, it will take me 7 years, and FLAC, MP3, and probably PCs, will all be obsolete by then.

Also, remember that I’m not buying any new CDs, just buying new albums in digital format only, so I don’t have to worry about never catching up with the physical collection. Once I’m done, I’m done!

One interesting statistic is that there was only one CD that I could not get a perfect copy of (Aztec Camera’s Dreamland). On every other CD that I had problems with, I was always able to switch to a different drive (I have a CD and a DVD drive on the PC) and it would work. But that one disc had issues in both drives. Nevertheless, the archive it made from the disc is perfectly listenable. It only had problems with the first track, and I can’t distinguish any actual sound problems with it using my tired old ears. So even though EAC took an incredibly long time to rip the track and kept getting read/sync errors, it was still able to error correct it enough for me to not tell the difference. Most excellent. I don’t expect that to always be the case though. I’m sure at some point I’ll run into some discs that are so degraded they won’t rip.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: The fact that downloaded digital songs are always so much louder than files made from ripped CDs. Thankfully we have ReplyGain (or iTunes Soundcheck) to even things out!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “unbearable on coke”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None.

And at the same time, I’ve had to deal with another life change. The company I work for closed the office I was working at. Since they closed the previous office in April, I had been going into the further-away office two days a week and working from home the rest of the time. Now I’m working from home 100% of the time. I don’t like it. I need the occasional social interaction, plus I like having at least a semblance of a separation between work and home. But there’s no real choice.

Those of you who work at home know how important it is to have a comfortable work environment. There’s a lot of problems with mine, but until I get a new house or get the basement finished, I have to deal with what I have.

One thing that helps me get through the day is listening to music while I work. Not only does it help to block out other sounds and distractions (the neighborhood kids can be pretty noisy), but listening to music I like just makes for a more pleasant work environment in general.

I’ve also found that I’ve been really getting into music lately, like I haven’t for a long time. I think that’s partly because there’s just so much good new music out there these days – I’ve been downloading like crazy from eMusic, AmieStreet and Amazon lately. More on that in future posts. It’s easy to do, almost too easy, when you’ve given up physical media and are going all digital – which I’ve talked about in recent entries. And the CD archiving project has renewed my interest in music I already own. It’s a kick to hear something cool I haven’t listened to in years.

I’m sure there’s a fad aspect to this. I tend to go in cycles with my interests: music, video games, comics, blogging, movies/TV, etc. At any one time, I’ll be bored with all but one those. And right now, that one thing is music.

It’s important for me to listen to the music in the best possible way. I’ve got my music library (downloads plus ripped CDs) in iTunes on the PC, and that’s my primary listening venue these days. I also still listen on my iPod nano when I work out at the gym 3-4 days a week, but I no longer have the all-important car listening experience, since I don’t have a commute any more. My iTunes library is over 23,000 songs and growing quickly. When I’m working, I alternate between playing the entire library on shuffle play and listening to whole individual albums at a time – usually ones I’ve recently downloaded or ripped.

The problem is that iTunes is on my home PC and not my work one. The two computers are at a 90 degree orientation from each other in my computer room. My home office stereo was setup to optimize the listening experience at the home computer. I tried playing around with the stereo balance when at my work computer, but the experience was just not optimal. Headphones work okay, but I can only wear them for so long, the cord gets in the way, and I’m not crazy about the sound quality with comfortable phones.

Then I had the brilliant idea to hook up another set of speakers to the stereo. Because of the work space limitations, I would need some pretty small ones. I have a couple of pairs of small computer speakers that I could’ve just hooked up to the headphone/speaker jack of the home computer, but I don’t really like the sound of any of them, and the cabling for that presented some obstacles.

So I looked around in my basement and found an old pair of Realistic (i.e. Radio Shack) speakers that I had bought a long, long time ago for some long forgotten reason. I probably used them for rear speakers or something back in the dawn of surround sound. I did however remember that I liked the sound of them, even though they were small 4-inch cubes. So I strung some speaker wire and placed a speaker on each side of the work monitor.

Wow – I was blown away. I don’t know if they’re actually good or if my hearing is just really going in my old age, but I’m extremely satisfied with the sound these tiny things pump out. Yeah, I do have to crank the bass a bit on the amplifier, but no big whoop. What really gets me is the sound field. The stereo separation is fantastic, and I feel totally enveloped in the sound. Maybe that’s just because of where the speakers are placed in relation to where I’m sitting, and I would get the same effect with any speakers that fit in the space. But I don’t know – there’s just something about the sound of these things that I really like. Perfect for digital music.

I can’t believe how much this has improved my work situation in general. I feel more energized and productive having these things surround me with my tunes all day. Thank you, Radio Shack of old!

Latre.

Note: I’ve joined last.fm and have installed their Scrobbler, so you can see what I’ve been listening to by going to my profile. The most recently listened-to tunes are also displayed on this blog over to the side.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Brokers, lawyers, accountants, and plumbers.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “why do contact lenses for distance mess up my close up vision”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

So in a semi-nutshell (emphasis on the nut), here’s what I go through to archive a CD:

1. Update the CD in my music catalog (Music Collector, $29.95 or free). This includes getting the track info, release year, and label/catalog number, scanning the cover art, and even inputting the producer and musician credits. Actually, I do some of this during the next step, since the ripping takes some time and multitasking is possible during this process. But I at least have to scan the cover before doing the ripping, because I copy the cover art file to the ripping working area directory so it can be embedded in the archive. I utilize the allmusic guide to acquire or recheck data (especially release dates and musician credits) that may not exist or may not be accurate from the sources that MuC uses for its automatic updating.
2. Rip the CD as both a single FLAC image and multiple MP3 files (one per track) using Exact Audio Copy 0.99 with REACT2 (and Akkurat’s mod). (The MP3 ripping uses the LAME encoder, included with REACT2.) I use a FLAC compression level of 5 and a LAME VBR compression setting of 1. Sometimes I will have to adjust the name of the FLAC file to match my sorting scheme. (I could write thousands of blog entries on sorting issues alone.) I usually also copy off the .jpg and .cue files to a different directory than the one where I keep the FLAC archives.
3. Re-rip the CD using my second drive if the EAC log reports errors or the AccurateRip data does not match for one or more tracks. So far, I’ve never had a case where neither drive could accurately rip a CD, though I’m sure I’ll encounter some.
4. Play parts of the FLAC file to see if it’s okay using foobar2000 player, which can also be used to play the MP3 files. This is also good for verifying that the FLAC metadata is correctly embedded (cuesheet, cover art).
5. If the CD has a long track at the end, I play the MP3 of it to see if there is a hidden song or two in the single track (i.e. the main song followed by a long silence, followed by another song). I don’t like having long tracks with lots of silence in my iTunes library – it’s wasteful and messes up playlists. If the CD has one, then I use Direct WAV MP3 Splitter ($19.95) to split the track into multiple tracks and discard the silent bits. I like this particular tool because it has a decent, simple user interface (including showing the waveform), a good silence detector, and it splits the track without recompressing it. (It’s important to me to preserve the encoding and gain applied during the original ripping process.) There are some free tools that work almost as well, but I liked the way this one worked well enough to actually pay for it.
• After splitting the MP3 track, the VBR header is destroyed. This is the bad thing about the splitter not recompressing the track. You can tell because the track duration and bit rate are listed wrong in players – usually the track time is listed as being a lot longer than the actual duration. I use the VBR Header Repair utility in foobar2000 to fix it, though there are many other free utilities that will do the same thing.
• Use Mp3tag to copy the tags from the original track to the two (or more) extracted tracks. I also use it to change the track names, track numbers, and filenames on the extracted tracks. I usually give the hidden songs titles like “[Untitled Track 14]“, though sometimes the lyrics of the song will suggest a better title. Note: Mp3tag is also very useful for viewing and changing the metadeta in the FLAC archives if necessary. Good free tool.
6. Run Mixmeister BPM Analyzer to set the Beats Per Minute on all MP3 tracks. This is necessary for making my “fast tempo” smart playlist in iTunes that I use for my workout iPod.
7. Import the MP3 files into iTunes.
8. Sometimes I will use EvilLyrics to scour the Internet for the song lyrics and embed them into the track in iTunes.
9. If I have problems with any of the above, I check out what the good folks at the HydrogenAudio Forums have to say.

That’s it! Simple, eh? As I said, I’ll be going into greater detail about the individual steps in future entries. Assuming I don’t drop off the face of the blogosphere again.

Now everyone go forth and archive! Become obsessed, like me, and then report back! Thanks!

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: A new Maxïmo Park album has been out for months and I didn’t even know about it!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “love like a battlefield stupid”.

The most accurate representation of a CD as stored on a file on the computer is traditionally the WAV format. But those take up so much space, that even with the cheapness of hard drives these days, we’re still talking a heckuva lot of moolah for a drive big enough to hold my entire collection. Plus, WAV files are so unwieldy.

I’d heard of FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) for awhile, and have even downloaded some songs in that format. Since it’s a lossless compression scheme, it preserves all the original data from the CD. MP3 is lossy compression scheme, so it’s essentially throwing away part of the data. The lower the encoding bit rate, the more it throws away, and less like the original recording it sounds. Even at higher bit rates, I can sometimes hear compression artifacts on MP3 files, like the flanging effect it adds to cymbals, which drives me crazy.

Besides the space savings (a typical FLAC file will be around 60% of the size of the corresponding WAV file), the FLAC format has other advantages over WAV as well. You can embed metadata into the FLAC file, which is kind of like tags in an MP3 file. You can identify the artist and album name, etc. I make one FLAC file for an entire album, and it has the cuesheet embedded into it. The cuesheet contains the list of songs on the album and where they start and stop. That can be used to play individual songs from the file on players that support FLAC and cuesheets (such as foobar2000), and it can also be used to split out the FLAC file into individual track FLAC or MP3 or other files, and to write the FLAC archive back to a CD-R, replicating the original CD exactly. The cover art can also be embedded into the file, as well as “ReplayGain” information, which tells ReplayGain-equipped players to play the album at a lower or higher relative volume level than it was written with. I’ve really just scratched the surface here, there’s more you can do with FLAC files.

One thing that is confusing about FLAC is that there is a compression level parameter consisting of 0-8 levels. I wondered why there are different compression levels if FLAC is a lossless compression scheme? Wouldn’t the resulting file always be the same? It turns out that the compression level affects the speed of encoding and also the resulting size of the file, but does not actually affect the sound quality. Regardless of the compression level, all of the original data is still there on decoding, and decoding speed is always fast regardless of the encoding compression level. Yeah, it doesn’t make much intuitive sense, but just go with it. So level 0 is the fastest compression with the largest file size, and 8 is the slowest compression with the smallest file size. Level 5 is the default. I’ve found that the file sizes aren’t dramatically reduced by a higher compression level, so I just stick with the default.

Keep in mind I’m not a sound engineer or compression expert, so take everything I say with a healthy dose of skepticism…

Anyway, my goal became to produce a single FLAC archive for every CD, and also MP3 files of every track that I could import into iTunes. Sounds like a hassle? Not really. Actually, it’s pretty easy.

But I’ll get to that
Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Why is it impossible to get an intact Butterfinger fun size bar and not one that’s crumbled into pieces?

In previous posts (like here and here), I’ve talked about my desire to transfer all my compact discs to the computer, by ripping them to digital files and importing them into iTunes, my media player of choice because of all the iPods I have. The reasons given back then were:

• Easy access and listening everywhere (the same reason I have for switching to digital downloads for new albums)
• Transferring to iPods
• Backup of my collection in case anything happens to the physical media
• Completion of CD cataloging (completing the disc info in Music Collector)
• Obsessive compulsiveness

Another potential reason is I was probably thinking that by transferring all my music to the computer, I could then get rid of the CD collection and free up space in the house. Of course, to remain completely legal, I guess I would have to destroy the collection rather than sell it or give it away. (Keep in mind that the discs in the collection are stored in individual plastic sleeves along with the booklet and tray card, instead of in the jewel boxes they came in. I sold the jewel boxes long ago. The collection takes up approx 1/4 to 1/5 of the space it would if I had kept the discs in the jewel boxes. But even with that much space reduction, it still takes up a helluva a lot of room, and it’s sometimes hard to find individual discs.)

When I first started ripping my CDs to the computer, I used the Apple AAC codec. But then I quickly decided that was too proprietary, or didn’t have any advantages I could distinguish vs MP3s, or I didn’t like the acronym, or whatever, and I switched to 128kbps constant bit rate MP3s. Then I decided that wasn’t good enough sound quality for permanent archival purposes, so I switched to 256kbps. And that meant starting all over again. But I was bound and determined to do it. Whenever I start over ripping the collection again, I always find there’s more information I want to add about the disc in Music Collector (cover artwork at better resolution, catalog numbers, etc). So that gives me another reason to start over and something more to obsess over.

(It occurs to me that I don’t really need Music Collector these days, since I could probably track all the same information for the discs when I rip them and import them into iTunes, most likely in the “Comments” tag. However, that would take up additional space in each track, and seems wasteful. Plus, MuC formats things much nicer and makes it easier to search for data. And it has that nifty corresponding iPhone app so I can view my collection prettily on the phone.)

Anyway, I started thinking about The Future and wondering if MP3 was really the way to go for archiving my precious CD collection. As I mentioned in the above referenced post, what if a better compression scheme came along later? Technology always marches forward. I think this worried me so much that I put the project on hold.

Then as I started researching the issue more, I came to a decision about what I wanted to do. Therein lies the roots of my current obsession.

But I’m writing this late at night and getting tired, so I’ll have to tell all about that later. I hope I don’t catch any flack for leaving anyone in suspense!

Also, I’m kind of wanting to indulge my obsession a bit before bed.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Fast food establishments that don’t have self drink fill/refill stations (I’m looking at you, Wendy’s), and then give you a Coke when you ordered a Diet Coke.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “do i have to wear my progressive reading glasses all the time”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None.

But what about listening? Isn’t it more convenient to have a CD you can play anywhere? Not really. I mostly listen to music in my car (from an iPod), on my computer (through iTunes), or when working out at the gym (a different iPod). On those rare occasions when I actually want to listen on my home theater stereo in the living room, I have a wireless dongle that will stream the tunes from iTunes on my computer to my stereo. And there’s even a remote control application on my iPhone that I can use to control iTunes from the living room. I could also probably transfer the files to my PlayStation 3, which is hooked up to my living room stereo, and listen from there.

I will still probably buy physical media if there’s a compelling reason, like the DVD/CD deal above, special packaging, a sonic upgrade, or wanting to support a favorite artist in multiple ways. I’ll still probably buy high resolution discs in DVD-Audio, SACD, Blu-Ray, and other formats as long as they make them. But those I get as much for the surround sound mixes (not typically available in digital versions) as for the better audio. The other issue is that sometimes an album just is not available for download in a digital version, though that’s pretty rare these days.

So, for the most part, I’m going all digital and not looking back. Am I wrong to do this?

Next: What to do about the existing CD collection.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: People who never update their blogs.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “what if i forget to turn off my ihome alarm before i go on vacation?”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: God of War 2 (PS2, on the PS3). I’ve been stuck on the Euryale boss fight for awhile now.