Nicholas Carr on MySpace; audiophile MIDI leads (yup)
- Pretty vacant
When I look around MySpace I don’t see much that’s “strange and wonderful” - or “deeply disturbing,” either. I wish I did. What I see is a dreary sameness, a vast assembly of interchangeable parts. Everything feels secondhand: the pimps-and-hos poses before the cameraphone, the ham-fisted, cliche-choked blog-prose. It’s sad to see so much effort put into self-expression with so little to express. Humanity in the raw? No, this is humanity boiled to blandness in the tin pot of personalization.
Another thoughtful post from Nicholas Carr (actually, he doesn’t do any other sort). Journalists have long experience that writing stuff is hard; that people find repetition easier than innovation. Why do you think cliches get such wide use? Because people don’t make up their own. As he says, what scares him about MySpace is “not how dangerous it is, but how safe”. (Seen at Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog)
- Sucking less, on a budget: Audiophile MIDI!??!?
So I went to my local music store looking for a cheap MIDI cable. At said music store, they told me they only carry the expensive cables from their supplier because the people who buy MIDI cables demand audiophile quality sound reproduction. WHAT?!?!?!?! Wait….WHAT?!?!?!?
Ok, let’s back up for a second. We’re talking about MIDI; only control signals go over the wire. There is no audio signal transmitted, period. The MIDI notes either get there, or they don’t. The punk behind the counter is just another moron, and I wasn’t about to pay $20 each for a cable.
Following Ben Goldacre’s (not completed I think) examination of “audiophile” power supplies - not signal cables, but mains cables - is there a whole category to be written about the cables sold as “audiophile” which have no useful signal to be deployed over them?
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- So many questions about Garageband, so few answers (22 May 2005; score: 76.65%)
- No, Nicholas, Google's not there to make information "free" (26 April 2006; score: 71.69%)
- Avoiding British Gas's "Homecare"; Microsoft's mad maps; Edgeio on the edge? (2 March 2006; score: 42.25%)
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March 21st, 2006 at 7:56 pm
For a moment, I thought that was a reference to Chew and Osborne, which doesn’t sell cheap _anything,_ but of course that is your local audiophile shop, not the linkee’s.
March 21st, 2006 at 8:05 pm
i totally stumbled on my test by not having (the time and) a mate with a cd player that took a kettle lead, if any of you have and want to lend it to me would be ace…
March 22nd, 2006 at 2:27 pm
There are much more interesting audio items than cables, which might conceivably have some reason for them. This looks at the phenomenon
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue21/audioramblings1.htm
Check out the incredibly expensive wooden knobs you can get for amplifiers or the bags that you put under the cables.
Here’s a list of good links to such things.
http://www.ilikejam.dsl.pipex.com/audiophile.htm
March 28th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
If you read Hi-Fi magazines (What Hi-Fi? etc) then they are always comparing digital cables and seeing or hearing differences. Really bizarre!