Archive for the 'Music' Category

Speaker break in: yet another audiophile myth?

Published
by
Tummblr
on January 12, 2008
in Multimedia and Music
. 0 Comments

I’ve always wondered whether speaker “break in” or “burn in” actually improves the performance of speakers and/or headphones, or whether it is just another myth perpetuated by elitist yet ignorant audiophiles and commercial entities that take advantage of such individuals.

From the little that I understand, speaker break in should not be necessary for properly designed and constructed speakers. The effects of speaker break in, if they exist at all, are often transient and will disappear within minutes or even seconds after the break in process. Nevertheless, there are supporters of speaker break in, and the speaker break in process should be completely safe.

No single instance of performance deterioration, by a correctly functioning driver, owing to break in, was found.

In other words, if you think speaker break in is a real phenomenon, go ahead and knock yourself out. :) Your speakers should not be any worse off from the break in treatment.

I found these 4 audio files (zipped for your convenience here) that supposedly help break in your speakers when played together, at a moderately loud volume level, for a day or so. Use a media player that supports multiple instances in order to play the files at the same time. Media Player Classic can be set to “Open a new player for each media file played” in Options/Player and “Repeat forever” in Options/Playback.

Download speaker break in audio files:
speaker_breakin.zip (mirror)

Read the following articles on speaker break in and pass your own judgments:
Speaker Break In: Fact or Fiction?
Speakers Burn In
Audax 3-way break-in test
Driver burn in facts
Break-in
The Break-In Process

Speaker break in should not be confused with audio cable break in, which does seem to be an industry perpetuated myth:
Audio Cable “Break In” Science or Psychological?

If you are interested in other audiophile myths, check out this article:
Flushing Out Myths In Consumer Audio

Is it just me or is “voodoo science” extremely wide-spread in the audiophile industry?

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What’s the name of that song playing on TV?

Published
by
Tummblr
on November 13, 2007
in Movies, Music and TV
. 2 Comments

Have you ever wondered about the name of a song you hear on TV? Wonder no more. Here are all the resources you’ll need to find out everything about songs you hear in TV shows, ads, and movie trailers.

As a casual music listener, hearing something new on my favorite TV show is actually a significant part of my music discovery process. In the old days, I’d scour the web, combing through forums and user comments to find out more about the song I heard. Now it takes a few seconds of research using the following websites.

Music from TV Shows

TuneFind.com is a user-maintained database of music from TV shows and movies. Users submit new data to the site, and also verify existing data by flagging entries as accurate or inaccurate. Contributors also gain or lose influence depending on the accuracy of their submissions and corrections. Very social and “web2.0″-ish. I like it. My only complaint is that the layout of the site seems buggy in Firefox.

heardontv.com is another “web 2.0″ TV music database with user-created content. However, the layout and quality of the database are both inferior to TuneFind.com.

If you can’t find what you are looking for on the above sites, you might also try TvShowSongs.com and TV Show Music. Neither of these sites have any particularly interesting features.

And just because I’m a rabid fan of House, I must include play.house, a cleanly designed House fansite which lists all the music from the show.

Music from Movie Trailers and Teasers

It’s surprising how often I stumble across great music in movie trailers. It seems to be common practice to play classics or proven pop hits or soundtrack music in trailers. For trailer music, look no further than SoundtrackNet. The site also has an interesting section, Logo Music, which lists the composers for the few seconds of (sometimes beautiful) music that accompany company logos that we see before and after movies and TV shows.

Music from TV Ads and Commercials

If you’re searching for music from a TV commercial, try What’s That Called and Adtunes.com. Neither site is a proper database as they use a blog-like format, but both sites have a search engine so you don’t have to dig through posts chronologically.