On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 08:11:25PM +0000, Charles M. Hannum wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 November 2004 19:19, Richard Rauch wrote:
> > To be sure that the picture is clear: We have a stack of .wav files
> > that get edited and mixed.  A final .wav is produced, which is then
> > supplied to cdrecord for burning a CD.  If I play the final .wav
> > via audioplay (or audacity), it is quite distinguishable from
> > playing the CD.  In spots where a music track was laid behind a
> > segment of speech, the music is louder ("ramped up") on the CD player,
> > relative to the speech.
> 
> Are you listening through the same headphones in both cases?  And what kind of 
> headphones?

All I can tell you about the headphones is that they are Yamaha-made.
I bought them a few years ago (say 2 to 3 years) when a Koss pair
broke off a piece of plastic that kept the phones attached to the
band.  The Yamaha pair are hinged and can rotate maybe 30 degrees
and are much more comfortable than the older Koss pair.  I probably
paid about $15 for them at a local store somewhere.  They're not
Bose headphones.  (^&

I have not made an effort to eliminate headphones/speakers variation.
That didn't occur to me.

Presumably the MonopolySoft user always used his computer speakers when
editing, and hears the show on a regular FM radio of unspecified quality.


 [...]
> The dynamic range of low- and mid-range headphones is very different from 
> loudspeakers, and very different from high-end headphones, especially in bass 
> response.  Also, the headphone output on a lot of stereo equipment are 
> terrible -- sometimes even worse than on computers or portable players.  And 

My only CD players are CD-ROM drives these days.  In the station,
they used dedicated stereo-system type players, but since there
were no wires going into the front panels of the players, I would
assume that no headphone jacks were used on non-CD-ROM CD players.
(I heard the CD played over the station speakers.)


> lastly, there are power delivery issues -- especially if you're using 
> high-impedance headphones, the equipment has to be able to change the power 
> output very rapidly to deliver good quality sound, and the ability to do this 
> varies widely between equipment.
> 
> In general, I suspect that this is a problem with your testing procedure 
> and/or equipment.

This sounds likely.

From the "varies widely" remark, I would then guess that I will not be
able to make any guarantees about whether the music is audible under the
speech---or if it is, I won't be able to guarantee that it won't
distract from the speech.

Still, I'll try using the headphones on the computer audio jack and
listen to it in audacity or with audioplay.

Thanks.  (^&

-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/