Mixed signals



  • I'm all for never using Safari, but this is just confusing.

    Link



  • You mean the part where you only get one option for what to think or the part where The safari logo gets a big red cross?



  • It doesn't show what you have to use, but what you used to view the page. So the icons are a bit confusing, but correct. The hint is in the alt text of the icons.

    Blame the webdesigner.



  • @Daid said:

    It doesn't show what you have to use, but what you used to view the page. So the icons are a bit confusing, but correct. The hint is in the alt text of the icons.

    Blame the webdesigner.

    If that's the case, it mis-detects Chrome as Safari. I have no idea if Chrome supports color profiles or not. (It's probably just looking for WebKit.)

    Edit: In this case, I'm going to say the real WTF is the W3C for not having a way for a page to detect whether the browser supports color profiles or not.


  • 🚽 Regular

    I don't think any browser detection is going on at all. I see the same exact thing in Firefox.



  • Quite useless message. 

    I would think that anyone who has taken the time to calibrate his/hers display would know if there browser supports color profiles. And anyone using uncalibrated display doesn't gain anything with color profiles and the messaga just misleads them to think that they would.



  • And then there's the issue of "Was this image useful for you?" having the answers 'no response' and 'Yes'.
    What if you were unable to find the file? Then what you do you answer?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I have no idea if Chrome supports color profiles or not. (It's probably just looking for WebKit.)

    If it does, its definition of sRGB differs from that of every other ICC-aware application on my system.

    TRWTF is that color management isn't ubiquitous. This is 2011, dammit!



  • TRWTF is them caring about color profiles when probably everyone watches the pictures on a TFT that can't really get the colors right anyway. Unless this is meant exclusively for people who spend $1000+ on their monitors.

    Except for some silly conversion error which bad implementations take ofcourse, but you'd think most browsers can do that somewhat decently (not like Typo3 which would horrbily torture any image that had Adobe RGB as a embedded color profile)


  • 🚽 Regular

     

    @dtech said:

    TRWTF is them caring about color profiles when probably everyone watches the pictures on a TFT that can't really get the colors right anyway. Unless this is meant exclusively for people who spend $1000+ on their monitors.
     

    Print artists use very carefully coordinated monitors to best match colors that will be printed. This site seems to cater to those professional print artists, so I could definitely see how some are sensitive to that.

    Of course, as someone already said, those who are that picky about color matching likely already knows about the limitations of Safari.



  • Ah, colour management... I remember days at College where Adobe's dodgy colour management implementation on OS X 10.5 would make it impossible to pick any colour with a lightness under 25% for some reason and then when you did print it all yellow would come out brown. Although any other program printed as expected.

    Given that the moment you walk under a different light the colours change, I've never quite understood the obsession personally



  • @nexekho said:

    Given that the moment you walk under a different light the colours change, I've never quite understood the obsession personally

    Well, I definitely get that you don't want the model's skin to look orange, but yeah, some of these guys go way overboard with no thought about how the media will actually be viewed. (You're mailing it out to some guy's doorstop lit by a tiny porchlamp if he's lucky, nothing if he's not, and his recycle bin is right there. It doesn't matter if your colors are spot-on, it's getting fucking shredded.)

    But it could be worse. They could be wine tasters or audiophiles. At least the color guys have an actual theoretical basis for how it works, and can objectively measure it.



  • @RHuckster said:

    This site seems to cater to those professional print artists


    You really think so? Gee, I thought it was just some site that posts illegal* copies of CD/album cover art so that people can downlaod it and (presumably) display it in their media player. Am I wrong?


    • I bet they haven't cleared the online repro. rights with the owners of the cover art.


  • @blakeyrat said:

    They could be wine tasters or audiophiles.
     

    Wine tasters can actually taste wine.

    Audiophiles, however...



  • What're you talking about? If I lick my cables just right, I can taste audio too…



  • @Enterprise Architect said:

    If I lick my cables just right, I can taste audio too…
     

    Are you... ...Terezi?


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Enterprise Architect said:

    What're you talking about? If I lick my cables just right, I can taste audio too…
     

    Yeah but Monster Cables taste so much better. I don't understand why someone would not pay the $150 for 5 tasty feet of good quality cable.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @RHuckster said:

    Yeah but Monster Cables taste so much better. I don't understand why someone
    would not pay the $150 for 5 tasty feet of good quality cable.

    Have you tried Denon yet?



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    They could be wine tasters or audiophiles.
     

    Wine tasters can actually taste wine.

    Audiophiles, however...

    Well, of course they can taste wine. They can then go on to make ridiculous claims, like saying they can tell which fertilizer was used to grow the grapes after tasting the wine. Audiophiles can hear music, too. That's not really the problem. When they start demagnetizing CDs, then you have a problem.



  • @PJH said:

    Have you tried Denon yet?
    These days, I'm working on power. I prefer the Valhalla myself… (possibly NFSW, if your work sucks)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Well, of course they can taste wine. They can then go on to make ridiculous claims, like saying they can tell which fertilizer was used to grow the grapes after tasting the wine. Audiophiles can hear music, too. That's not really the problem. When they start demagnetizing CDs, then you have a problem.
     

    Wine tasters are usually certified, and have real abilities to determine flavours, gained by training. Not all of them; of course there are raving lunatics, but on the whole, wine tasting is an actual thing.

    Contrast audiophiles, which are all bullshit all the time. I'm not sure they can hear music.



  • ICC color profiles?

    Professor Putricide yells: Good news, everyone!  The color profiles work in Safari now!



  • @dhromed said:

    Wine tasters are usually certified,

    Well, hell, I can get "certified" as a astrology expert, a reiki practitioner or a homeopathic druggist. That don't mean shit.

    @dhromed said:

    and have real abilities to determine flavours, gained by training.

    Of course. They also tend to have bullshit abilities.

    @dhromed said:

    Not all of them; of course there are raving lunatics, but on the whole, wine tasting is an actual thing.

    True. I'm not saying wine tasters are as bad as audiophiles. I'm just automatically suspicious of any enterprise so based primarily on unverifiable crap.

    On the other hand, I definitely understand how the good practitioners can get their reputation tarnished by the bad ones. I have a friend who's a (legit, natch) Chiropractor, so I understand that completely. So I guess my wine taster thing makes me a hypocrite, but, eh, this isn't the first time I've been a hypocrite.



  • @Enterprise Architect said:

    These days, I'm working on power. I prefer the Valhalla myself… (possibly NFSW, if your work sucks)
    Just admit it, you can't afford Odin.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    Wine tasters are usually certified, and have real abilities to determine flavours, gained by training. Not all of them; of course there are raving lunatics
    We have one over here: Jilly Goodlen - wittering on about cork.



  • @PJH said:

    @dhromed said:
    Wine tasters are usually certified, and have real abilities to determine flavours, gained by training. Not all of them; of course there are raving lunatics
    We have one over here: Jilly Goodlen - wittering on about cork.

    Hey!  She's a Wine...  Person.



  • @dhromed said:

    Contrast audiophiles, which are all bullshit all the time. I'm not sure they can hear music.

    I worked for a bit in a Hifi shop; I came in thinking that it would all be bullshit but I soon learned that there is a huge difference between different amps, speakers and CD players, and well, almost anything. The first day my colleague put in in front of the best setup in the shop which just blew me away. In seconds I went from thinking "you can't convince me" to "holy crap wanna wanna wanna". 

    An interesting moment was when I brought home a CD player to test; I hooked it up next to my crappy Sony "the cheapest will do" player and left home. I came back to find my wife in the middle of stacks of CD's; she just wanted to hear every CD on that CD player and told me "I don't care what is costs but we need to have that".

    (she reconsidered when she heard the price though)

    I draw the line personally at interlinks and cables; I still consider the "demagnetising CDs" and stuff BS but I've accepted that there's a lot more to audio than I thought at first. In the end when I left, I got the best set I could afford (at a nice discount too).



  • @b-redeker said:

    I draw the line personally at interlinks and cables; I still consider the "demagnetising CDs" and stuff BS but I've accepted that there's a lot more to audio than I thought at first. In the end when I left, I got the best set I could afford (at a nice discount too).

      You reminded me to go check on my favourite online purveyors of audio bafflegab: Machina Dynamica (warning: site contains 100% pure bullshit and snakeoil.).  I was delighted to discover they've expanded their range since I was last there: now they're selling magic stickers for your walls!

    <font color="black" face="verdana" size="3"><font color="black" face="verdana" size="3">Machina Dynamica's latest product, Codename Blue Meanies, is a set of 4 adhesive-backed 3/4" blue dots that are attached to the walls of the listening room, one dot per wall. If there are only three walls in the room, two blue dots should be placed on one of the walls. Codename Green Meanies are now available for the ceiling of the listening room, one or more per ceiling.

    The Blue Meanie is neither a damper nor a resonator so it's location on the wall, unlike dampers and resonators, is not critical whatsoever. A Blue Meanie can be placed anywhere on the wall; it can even be hidden behind a picture or bookcase. Four white 3/4" removeable paper stickers are provided to cover the blue dots if desired, making them less conspicuous. Codename Blue Meanies operates via mind matter-interaction. The subconscious mind interacts with room boundaries, i.e., closed-in spaces, producing a claustrophobic reaction that interferes with and degrades the listener's sensory perception. Price $99 for set of 4 Blue Meanies.

    Additional benefits can be obtained by placing more than one Blue Meanie per wall and by placing one or more Blue Meanie on walls of other rooms in the house. Likewise, one or more Green Meanie can be used for the listening room ceiling and for ceilings of other rooms in the house.  </font></font>

    Haha, that site never fails to deliver the lulz.  I like the way that "operates via mind matter-interaction" (what a sweet ass-phrase!) could be used as a get-out to say they know they're selling placebo all along...

     

     



  • @b-redeker said:

    I worked for a bit in a Hifi shop; I came in thinking that it would all be bullshit but I soon learned that there is a huge difference between different amps, speakers and CD players, and well, almost anything.
    Speakers are a matter of taste anyway. Even if we had absolutely perfect speakers (as far as I know, we don't), that's not what everyone wants.



  • @b-redeker said:

    here is a huge difference between different amps, speakers and CD players, and well, almost anything.
     

    Speakers - yes.

    Everything else - not so much.



  • @dhromed said:

    @b-redeker said:

    here is a huge difference between different amps, speakers and CD players, and well, almost anything.
     

    Speakers - yes.

    Everything else - not so much.

    Ah, cool, thanks for setting me straight. Of course, I bow to the knowledge and experience of the master here.

    @Enterprise Architect said:

    Speakers are a matter of taste anyway.

    There is such a difference between 150 euro speakers (amps, CD players) and say a 1500 euro speaker in pure sound quality, that before you talk about taste, you really want to figure out what kind of money you can spend. Then, to power that better speaker, that 1500 euro amp (or better, separate pre-amp and power-amp) is really going to be such a huge difference; and when you have those 2 set up, you won't believe the difference you'll hear when you hook up a 1500 euro CD player.

    Then when you have that multi-thousand euro system set up and you think you have something cool, go listen to a really high end system.

    Of course, you don't have to take my word here (you shouldn't). But if you're curious whether I'm talking crap and you really like music, take a couple of your favorite CDs into a good HiFi store (the kind where they have a separate listening room) and ask for a demo.

    Oh, and in the set I ended up with after months of listening and tinkering and testing (and counting my money), the most expensive part was... the CD-player.



  • @b-redeker said:

    Then when you have that multi-thousand euro system set up and you think you have something cool,

    Why don't you first do a double-blind test and see if the money you've already spent is worth it?

    Because, psychologically, you're *always* going to believe the more expensive system is better. It's called "The Placebo Effect," and it's what audiophiles thrive on. Without a controlled test, you're just going by gut instinct, like an animal.

    @b-redeker said:

    But if you're curious whether I'm talking crap and you really like music, take a couple of your favorite CDs into a good HiFi store (the kind where they have a separate listening room) and ask for a demo.

    Without doing a controlled test, you can't determine which system is better. Period. The salesman is obviously always going to tell you the system that gives him the highest commission is the best, and the listening room will always be set up to demonstrate that.

    When I was in college, I did a "Physics of Sound" course. The project I did was to determine frequency-response of various speakers using a tone generator and an oscilloscope... you fucking take a tone generator and an oscilloscope to that music store, and then maybe you'll know something..

    @b-redeker said:

    the most expensive part was... the CD-player.

    Then you wasted your money, because a $80 CD player (or the cheapest one with a digital output, whatever that costs) does the same job as a $1500 one. The. Exact. Same. Job.

    @b-redeker said:

    Filed under: only do that if you like music, I don't give a crap about audiophiles

    I was giving you the benefit of the doubt before, but man. Listen to you. You are an audiophile.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Without doing a controlled test, you can't determine which system is better. Period.

    I think I was suggesting a fairly controlled test. I've done many of those, with many sceptical customers. I sold some of my most expensive systems to those.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Then you wasted your money, because a $80 CD player (or the cheapest one with a digital output, whatever that costs) does the same job as a $1500 one. The. Exact. Same. Job.

    Wrong.



  • @b-redeker said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Without doing a controlled test, you can't determine which system is better. Period.

    I think I was suggesting a fairly controlled test. I've done many of those, with many sceptical customers.

    To quote Yoda: Controlled or controlled-not, there is no "fairly".

    @b-redeker said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Then you wasted your money, because a $80 CD player (or the cheapest one with a digital output, whatever that costs) does the same job as a $1500 one. The. Exact. Same. Job.

    Wrong.

    Wow, and such convincing evidence you've presented!

    Look, back in 1985 I'd agree with you 100%. Now, even the dirt cheapest CD players spin fast enough to give you 100% ECC goodness. (Unless the disk itself is damaged.) And if the CD player has a digital output, the bits coming out of the $80 box are identical to the bits coming out of the $1500 box. (Again, assuming the disk isn't damaged.) It's not like CDs have multiple levels of ECC and the expensive CD player is capable of using a higher level-- it doesn't work that way. It's digital. Your player either is spitting out the correct bits, or it's not.

    The only difference between the two is in user-facing features-- the more expensive one probably has a disk changer or caddy, it might have more randomization options, it might have a nice LCD display. Technically, there's no difference.

    If you can show me wrong, please do so.



  • @b-redeker said:

    There is such a difference between 150 euro speakers (amps, CD players) and say a 1500 euro speaker in pure sound quality, that before you talk about taste, you really want to figure out what kind of money you can spend. Then, to power that better speaker, that 1500 euro amp (or better, separate pre-amp and power-amp) is really going to be such a huge difference; and when you have those 2 set up, you won't believe the difference you'll hear when you hook up a 1500 euro CD player.

    I can definitely appreciate that spending money does give you a better system. The audiophile market is also (obviously) flooded with snake oil though, so it's hard to tell whether you're talking about well-engineered components or something like this.

    For the record, I have a cheap and mostly unused speaker setup. It's passable, but I use headphones most of the time. They don't image like speakers do, but I can crank them at 3am without a visit from the police.

    It seems like a good system is wasted on modern music though, unless I want to listen to the "inner detail" of the bass line ramming into a hard limiter.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    If you can show me wrong, please do so.

    First of all let me admit that my knowledge is about 15 years old. I haven't even been in a HiFi shop since; I have my set which is starting to get a old but I'm still happy with it. I had it stored for a couple years; when I got it back, it blew me away again like it did the first time. I'm sure that today you can get a set with the same quality as that one for maybe a fifth of the money - of course technology has progressed, but it has done so not only at the low end, but also at the high end.

    Secondly, a digital output is not going to help you if what you want into your ears is analog music. At some point, digital information has to be translated into waves. This is bloody hard. Cheap CD players have a cheap DAC which is simply not as good as a good one (duh). Similarly with amps, look up how hard it is to amplify an analogue signal. Again here, better components will give you better results, but sadly they usually cost more money. Insert your own car analogy here (pistons, ball bearings, oil, whatever).

    Last but not least, you mentioned the test with an oscilloscope. Once you get into the territory that you can only tell the difference with that kind of instruments I'll grant you everything you want to say about audiophiles, but you don't need expensive apparatus to tell the difference between a Ferrari and a Chevy Nova, do you? Your ears are the only instruments that count. If you can't hear it, don't spend the money. Why am I so convinced that you CAN hear the difference? Because I had so many sceptical customers in that shop. They came in sceptics, and became customers. Like I did.

    Without much exaggerating: the difference between an ok Sony $500 set and a really good set is the difference between canned tuna and fresh tuna, or pineapple, or pasta. You don't like music? Great, you saved yourself a lot of money. You tried it and didn't hear it/like it? Even better. But don't tell me you can't hear it without even trying because that's just silly. I was just as sceptical as you are, but at least I was willing to believe my own ears.



  • (or the cheapest one with a digital output, whatever that costs)
    Wrong.
    If you can show me wrong, please do so.
    At some point, digital information has to be translated into waves. This is bloody hard. Cheap CD players have a cheap DAC

    (at least this is how it reads)

    A CD player with a digital output has no DAC. A CD player with a digital output should not be doing anything other than outputting exactly what's on the disc as a stream.



  • @b-redeker said:

    Secondly, a digital output is not going to help you if what you want into your ears is analog music.
    I've got a Yamaha amp here - it's got several digital an optical inputs (in addition to analog inputs), and I'd imagine any modern setup would use something similar (except for the really high-end setups, which'll probably have a stand-alone DAC).



  • @Enterprise Architect said:

    It seems like a good system is wasted on modern music though, unless I want to listen to the "inner detail" of the bass line ramming into a hard limiter.

    Another frequent question of people who came in: "but you can only hear it with classical music, right?" I always told them: bring the 3 CDs you love most and let's listen to those. You can hear it with any kind of music (with the possible exception of Sieneke or Greek bouzoukia).

    And again, the "hard to tell" area is for audiophiles. They go to extremes and so they sometimes go overboard. But way before that, there's a huge area that will simply make listening to music so much more fun.



  • @nexekho said:

    A CD player with a digital output should not be doing anything other than outputting exactly what's on the disc as a stream.

    Obviously, but that only means you're transferring the problem to the next component. The challenge still exists.



  • @b-redeker said:

    First of all let me admit that my knowledge is about 15 years old.

    Shocker.

    @b-redeker said:

    Secondly, a digital output is not going to help you if what you want into your ears is analog music. At some point, digital information has to be translated into waves.

    Yeah, but that's the D/A converter's job, not the CD player.

    @b-redeker said:

    Cheap CD players have a cheap DAC which is simply not as good as a good one (duh).

    Ugh. If you want to talk about DACs, then yes, I entirely agree with you that there's a huge difference in quality. But I thought we were talking about CD players. You can't change the subject, then hit me with "so I was right all along!"

    @b-redeker said:

    Similarly with amps, look up how hard it is to amplify an analogue signal.

    Not very?

    @b-redeker said:

    but you don't need expensive apparatus to tell the difference between a Ferrari and a Chevy Nova, do you?

    You do if you want to be intellectually honest and not a hack. (Well, it doesn't have to be expensive-- a stopwatch will do-- but you get the point.)

    @b-redeker said:

    Why am I so convinced that you CAN hear the difference? Because I had so many sceptical customers in that shop. They came in sceptics, and became customers. Like I did.

    Ok, so a lot of people deluded themselves. That doesn't make self-delusion right.

    @b-redeker said:

    I was just as sceptical as you are,

    I doubt it.

    @b-redeker said:

    but at least I was willing to believe my own ears.

    My own ears, like all of my senses, are a fucking liar.

    Look, if you're happy with your system and you don't really care about the money spent, then good on you, la-tee-dah, all that stuff. That's fine. All I'm asking is you don't tell me something's better unless it's measurably better. Especially for something so easy to measure. (That music store has everything you need to set up a double-blind test. Well, except the salespeople will never tolerate it.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    All I'm asking is you don't tell me something's better unless it's measurably better.

    Would you concede the possibilty that something is both measurably and audibly better? Let's say in theory?

    And in practice, which of those two would make you get out your wallet?



  • @b-redeker said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    All I'm asking is you don't tell me something's better unless it's measurably better.

    Would you concede the possibilty that something is both measurably and audibly better? Let's say in theory?

    Of course! Do you honestly think I'm arguing that a headphone-jack powered iPod speaker is on-par with a high-end shelf system?

    Let's say, in theory, you treat me like a reasonably intelligent human being and not a retarded puppy? Would you concede to that?

    @b-redeker said:

    And in practice, which of those two would make you get out your wallet?

    Neither. I'm not a huge music fan.

    But I do know that there's zero difference in sound quality between the low-end CD player with a digital output and the high-end CD player with the digital output. Not measurably, not "audibly" (which is apparently something different?), and not even theoretically!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    But I do know that there's zero difference in sound quality between the low-end CD player with a digital output and the high-end CD player with the digital output. Not measurably, not "audibly" (which is apparently something different?), and not even theoretically!

    This is jitter discussion bait…

    In short, no clock is perfect. Timing on bits matters, at least in theory.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Let's say, in theory, you treat me like a reasonably intelligent human being and not a retarded puppy?

    I usually do; between the trolling and the swearing I actually like your posts, as they're often informative and to the point. Sometimes though, not so much. In this case, I read your posts as "my opinion is always better than your experience, no matter what you say", which went somewhat into woof territory.



  • I always thought that Red Book Audio CDs used 2352 bytes of each sector instead of 2048 bytes, using the space meant for ECC to store more data bits... and well, in this case different drives may do better or worse job at retrieving the original stuff.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    All I'm asking is you don't tell me something's better unless it's measurably better

    @b-redeker said:

    Something's better.
       |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
       0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9
    There. It's measurably better by about one over 6.9 billion.
    Also, that Machina Dynamica stuff probably does wonders for the target demographic. Like Jesus on toast.


  • @b-redeker said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Let's say, in theory, you treat me like a reasonably intelligent human being and not a retarded puppy?

    I usually do; between the trolling and the swearing I actually like your posts, as they're often informative and to the point. Sometimes though, not so much. In this case, I read your posts as "my opinion is always better than your experience, no matter what you say", which went somewhat into woof territory.

    I just think the world would be a significantly better place when people finally figure out that maybe, just maybe, making decisions based on "gut instinct" instead of actual evidence is a bad idea.

    You've seen me flog this idea a dozen times, from measuring advertising performance, to usability, to this thread... so it shouldn't come as a surprise at all.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    making decisions based on "gut instinct" instead of actual evidence is a bad idea.

    The funny thing is that I was trying to get you to understand that exact point.

    To me your opinion appears to be "gut instinct" while mine is evidence based (having worked with the stuff for a year and a half). Apparently you think it's exactly the opposite, so I'm really curious how you see that.



  • @b-redeker said:

    To me your opinion appears to be "gut instinct" while mine is evidence based (having worked with the stuff for a year and a half). Apparently you think it's exactly the opposite, so I'm really curious how you see that.

    Well, you are the one who got it the wrong way around. He's suggesting using a scientific method for determining actual differences in audio quality, and the only way to to that would be a true double blinded listening test. For as long as you're doing the listening while you know what you're listening to, you're open to all the suggestions that sales people try to implant into your brain about how those $1000 power cables are supposed to make the sound better - or even any suggestions that you might have made up for yourself subconsciously. And you can believe me, anyone who hasn't really done such a test has a hard time imagining just how powerful such suggestions can be. We, as humans, are constantly lying to ourselves - or being lied to by our senses, or, to use that word, our guts - without noticing.

    Doing a double-blind test like blakeyrat suggested is exactly the way to try to find an objective criterion which is free from external or internal suggestive influences for determining what is actually (as opposed to just "feeling") better.


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