Lately I have been reading articles and posts by people who say they love vinyl records better than CDs or downloads. Usually they say that is because they prefer analog to digital. In this post I will first talk about the differences in the ways analog and digital sound information is stored, then I will…
STREAM ON
This post is the result of a statistic I read recently on the internet. It noted that last year the number of sales of vinyl records equaled the number of CDs sold that year. The context was the supposed “comeback” of the vinyl record. Vinyl records do have appeal to some people, such as those…
PBS, NPR, BBC: WHICH MODEL IS BEST?
Usually my posts on TheAudioPenguin.com are related to technical issues about sound equipment and production techniques, but in this post I want to deviate and talk about the differences in the structure of public radio and public television in the United States with some references also to the British services offered by the BBC. I…
DISTORTION
The word “distortion” is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as “the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural, or original state.” In this post I want to discuss distortion in the context of audio. It is sometimes a bad thing and sometimes can be used creatively. Passing an audio signal…
SOUND AS BRAND IDENTIFICATION
I recently came across a book called Audio Branding by Laurence Minsky and Colleen Fahey. [232 pages. Publisher: Kogan Page, March 2017]. This post is NOT a review of that book, though I do highly recommend it to anyone working in corporate or product branding these days. What it did was get me to thinking…
AUDIO LevELs
This post discusses sound levels (loudness) in public places and on the radio. It is partly a rant based on what I take to be carelessness in setting or maintaining levels, but is also a discussion about aspects of sound levels that I think are important for anyone working in sound to know, including how…
PAPERS-4: Abstract Sound Objects to Expand the Vocabulary of Sound Design for Visual and Theatrical Media
As I looked through older published papers of mine I realized that several went into depth on topics that I have only touched upon, if at all, in my recent blog posts. Most of these were done for scholarly conferences (and reflect a scholarly writing style required of this kind of work). This paper was…