On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 05:18:05AM +0000, Charles M. Hannum wrote:
> On Thursday 25 November 2004 00:55, Richard Rauch wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Almost any loudspeakers are going to sound quite different from cheap 
> headphones -- especially the bass.  I suspect at least part of the problem 
> here is that your music is loud in the bass, and the headphones are just not 
> delivering that correctly, so the midrange (where voice mostly is) sounds 
> louder in comparison.
 [...]
> > Presumably the MonopolySoft user always used his computer speakers when
> > editing, and hears the show on a regular FM radio of unspecified quality.
> 
> Are these laptop speakers or external speakers?  Laptop speakers are... 
> well... let's just say no audiophile would use them.

I don't think that he owns a laptop.  (^&

I don't do any editing on my laptop, though I have used it for some
recording and to cart studio-recorded files home from the studio
at the radio station.


> FM radio throws another loop in: it cuts off everything about 15KHz.  If you 
> have a lot of audible sound at the high end, the result is going to be 
> *quite* different.  If I were to assume headphones in the one case and 
> speakers in the other, this wouldn't explain the problem, though -- except 
> for sibilants, voice is well below 15KHz, so chopping off the highs should 
> only make it clearer.
> 
> You could also check whether they're using equalizer functions in either case.  
> For example, they may have turned up treble response on the computer to make 

I can check with one of the station engineers the next time I'm in
there.  But that wouldn't explain the variation that I observed on
my own system.  I don't have an equalizer.  (Tangential: There's
an equalizer plugin for XMMS if anyone is interested.  I expected
it to show up in pkgsrc, but it never materialized...it is pretty
straightforward to build, though I recall having to make a tweak
to it at the time.  The equalizer built into XMMS only works with
MP3s, but the plugin works with any sound that XMMS will pipe
through plugins.)

I'm not sure how much the station drives the radio signal with a
general purpose computer.  I'm not sure that they ever do it at
all.


> something else sound better -- but that will also have the effect of making a 
> voice clearer if there is a lot of thumping percussion in the background.
> 
> There are, unfortunately, many variables.

I guess that I should have expected this.  (^&


> > 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.
> 
> You can make it work, but you have to be careful.  :-)

Heh.  (^&

Then again, I could just record a feedback squeel at high volume
to eliminate the pesky listeners...  Sometimes you just have to
be practical.


Thanks for your input.  I'm going to check a couple more emails, then
look forwards to a turkey dinner later today...  Gobble, gobble.

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