For a few years now I have noticed that older albums sounded better than modern ones. Sometimes current music actually hurts my ears. Some people thought I was imagining it, but I'm not.

The basic premise is this: The louder a song is the more it stands out, and the more likely people are to buy it. The problem with this idea is that CDs can only be made so loud, because they have a fixed dynamic range of 96dB.

If you want to make them sound louder, the only way is to bump up the quiet bits. If 96dB is the max, and 0dB is silence (actually that’s backwards, but it’s easier to understand), most of the sound on a properly mastered album would only go as loud as 30 or 50dB. The drum beats, and other instrument kicks would hit the 96dB peek only very briefly. But today’s music takes those quieter parts and moves them from 30-50dB all the way up to 90-95dB. Now the whole song sound really loud. And the parts that should really be that loud, usually get cropped off.

The end result of this dynamic range compression is that modern music tends to have a constant buzzing quality. That’s what makes my ears hurt after a couple of minutes. Here is a quick video perfectly showing this effect.

All is not lost however. There is a new group with a way to help change the trend. Turn Me Up! is working on a measurable standard of dynamic range to hold albums to. Once in place, artists will have a way to confidently tell their audience a album is held to a different standard, and will sound better if you simply Turn It Up!

I encourage everyone to join, like signing a petition requesting better sounding music. Hopefully in the near future they will start to change things.

Today was HD DVD day. Our HD-A30 arrived. I had everything plugged in and set up, in about 20 minutes (took 10min to find a 20ft network cable). All I can really say is that it is fantastic. The picture is far superior to standard DVD’s.

I have recently read that HD DVD and Blu-ray are the one of the 7 things people try to forget this year. Not because a format war just pisses everyone off. But instead because they doubted that a new format was needed. Well anybody with a HD television can see in 4 seconds why a new format is needed. And HD DVD I believe, is that format.

Tomorow I'm going to play around with some of the more advanced features. The Borne Identity and 300 come included in the box. They appear to be example disks, showing off what HD DVD format can do.

Alright so Fox is probably one of my least favorite television networks on the planet. They are just a slightly more Orwellian than the rest. Just like the rest they fight tooth and nail to clamp down on any copying of their content for any reason. Suing for thousands of dollars per infringement. Well How much money do you think this lady will get for Fox’s alteration and use of a photo she took of her dog. I’m betting way less than Fox tries to get from people, but at the same time far more than they want to give.

My single hope is that she sues for not only a little pocket money, and legal fees, but also a 5 minuet story that airs on Fox news every hour during prime time for a week. That would be what I would want to settle out of court.

Well just fooling around on the net and I found a video of a Super Mario knockoff. But his one is crazy hard. It’s filled with invisible dangers and traps. And you never know when they will pop up. Anyone who is familiar with the original Super Mario will totally enjoy this.

Hey all of you with tech savvy children. Don't forget NORAD tracks Santa as he rounds the globe. And he already took off several hours ago.