In ripping some of my classical music, I’ve re-discovered a simple principle of sound recording: if you want the quiet bits to sound quiet, make ’em LOUDER.

This is exemplified in a comparison of my two “O Fortuna” recordings. The one I first purchased back in 1994 is a standard classical recording in which the engineers try to faithfully capture the exact sounds of the orchestra and chorus. It’s disappointing because after the powerful opening chorus the levels drop to where you have to turn the volume up to hear what comes next. Then you blow out your speakers when the punchy bits come back.

The second is one I bought on iTunes, and it’s the “OperaBabes” recording. It’s classical music with Pop/Rock production sense applied. The opening is like a thunderclap, but when the ladies and chorus back off to hushed tones, you as the listener get yanked all the way onto the stage so you can hear them. In short, while the overal levels, as measured in decibels, stay within a much smaller range than they do in the first recording (up towards the TOP of the 90dB range of a CD), it SOUNDS like there’s more dynamic range. This is because you can HEAR the whispers.

There are obviously multiple schools of thought on audio engineering. Some audiophiles will tell you that the first method (leave the levels alone, and use the ENTIRE 90dB range of the CD format if the music has that kind of range in it) is better, because it’s somehow “purer.” Me, I’m about accessibility. Audio recordings are an illusion to begin with. A good audio engineer is a master illusionist, and will convince me, when I close my eyes, that I’m right there.

–Howard

This afternoon I spent some quiet time picking through my CDs and marking the ones I’ve ripped to iTunes. There were over 200 of them. There’s another 127 here to be ripped, plus an uncounted stack (maybe 100, perhaps 150) in the basement, some of which are duplicates, and most of which have never been opened.

I’ve mentioned that I was a record producer for a while. As part of that job, I was a member of the FCMA (Faith-Centered Music Association), which had voting and awards and all that back-patting stuff. I was there when the FCMA was first chartered. My friend Bob Ahlander was one of the founders, and in his own words, the Association existed to “raise the bar” for music released in the LDS market.

The other thing it existed for was to mail Howard 30 or 40 CDs a year, which he was supposed to listen to and vote on. Obviously I wanted to vote only for my own stuff, and equally obviously, that’s no way to run a “raise the bar” association. Voting became a chore, and when I stopped being a record producer, I stopped paying my dues, and the CDs stopped showing up in the mail.

Some of those CDs are quite good. A rare few suck so hard you’d think we were below sea-level. Most of them are “nice,” or so I suppose, since I haven’t opened them, but they’ve been nominated for awards here and there.

Well, my Pop music collection (the stuff I paid for) has mostly been ripped. Only a few of these religious discs have been. Today I was mulling over the fact that I don’t have much “Sunday-flavored” music on my iPod, and it occurred to me that the time had come to finally organize things so that I could fill up my hard-drive and de-clutter the CD-shelf. And so the project began. It’s a nice Sunday activity, turning the marketing loss-leaders of my former competitors into captive ones-and-zeroes so I can enjoy their work with random, shuffling anonymity up in the kitchen.

As of this writing my iTunes Music Library has 9.31 GB of data in it (I’m not asking for bragging rights – I’ve SEEN what a properly huge iTunes library looks like). I’ll have exceeded the storage on my 15 GB iPod before this project is complete, methinks. That’ll be nice. That’ll force me to CHOOSE what I download to the iPod, which will have me happily unearthing things I didn’t know I had, and listening to new-to-me music without spending money.

–Howard

Just a quick update. Friday morning’s soft-boiled eggs were even MORE perfect than the batch from Thursday, but that’s because I screwed up the first time. See, I was trying to get a little more runny yolk without leaving lots of gooey white, so I was experimenting with the timer.

It turns out that 3 minutes of boiling is not enough. I cut into the first egg, and it gooey-gushed all over my hand.

Remember my comment about “throwing them against the wall to see if they’re done?” Well, I couldn’t resist dropping them into the sink to see how they splattered. It turns out that an under-cooked soft-boiled egg splatters pretty well, AND yields a satisfactory “SPLUTCH” noise as it does so. And the sink is easier to clean AND easier to explain than the walls would have been.

4 minutes of boiling, that’s the ticket.

This morning, while spooning gooey, soft-boiled egg-guts into my maw, Patches (the 22-month-old) began begging for “nummy egg.” I gave him a bite or two, but this three-egg breakfast was MINE, and he’d already been fed, so I didn’t give him nearly as much as he wanted.

I drop my shells into a bowl as a finish scooping them out. There’s a good 2/3 of the eggshell still intact when I do. So picture those shells.

I finish my last egg, push the bowl away, and begin working on a little bit of sausage. I look up to see Patches desperately licking out the inside of one of the shells, and making slurping noises while he was doing it.

What can I say? My barbarism has been outdone by the animal instincts of my toddler son.