featured song of the moment... imogen heap: the walk

It's not meant to be like this.
Not what I planned at all.
I don't want to feel like this.
Yeah.
No it's not meant to be like this.
Not what I planned at all.
I don't want to feel like this.
So that makes it all your fault.


[no video, so just settle for the audio in this youtube 'thingy']

lossless songs galore

here's my special post on an introduction to lossless music...

what's lossless? and why loss less

basically, it's getting the original bitrate of whatever you get on your CDs and packaging it in a different file format (e.g.: Apple lossless, FLAC, Windows Media Lossless, just to name a few). As such, it does not need to compress at the processor, and the encoding is faster if lossless is used. A 3-minuts track which is 3MB at 128kbps MP3 can be 30MB at 1020kbps Apple Lossless. 10x the size, but the length f the song is still the same. Where's the difference? it's in the compression. With lossless, you get whatever garbage was made on the CD. If the recording company did a bad recording, your playback of the lossless songs will sound as bad. But if the CD had a good encoding, your lossless song will sound good. simple as that. no need to care about the bit rate or compression. lossless music has no compression.

overall, the sound will not show much difference to the average insensetive ears, especially not on the $5 earphones you bought at the Pasar Malams. You may hear a difference in the mid-range headphones/earphones/speakers, including the generic iPod and Creative earphones [from what i've tried.]. Apparently, mp3s and lossless was supposed to sound indistinguishable on the Bose or Shure in-ears or headphones...

the major points in differentiating mp3s from lossless by auditory means is to watch for the guitars, drums, piano, bass, acoustics. Esecially the piano. the sound of the piano string reverbing is quite noticeable in lossless, whereas the mp3s over-compress these frequencies. The bass is [needless to say] best in lossless, then AAC and finally mp3, reason being because mp3s work by squeezing out the extreme ends of the frequency ranges (i.e.: below 20Hz, beyond 20kHz).

Now comes the problem: which kind of stuff can play lossless?

iPods 3G, 4G, 5G, 5.5G, Photo, U2-4G, U2-5G
iPod mini 1G, 2G,
iPod nano 1G, 2G,
iPhone 1G,
Apple TV
iTunes 4.5 onwards
QuickTime 6.5.1 onwards

these support Apple Lossless.
But be warned: iPod video 5G [without the search function] will get only 4.5h of battery life on lossless music playback.

Windows Media Lossless Encoder is supported on Windows Media Player on Windows, QuickTime with Flip4Mac for Macs, Toshiba Gigebeat, Archos players. I suppose some of the Creative stuff and maybe the Zune supports this format as well...

The most popular amongst a significant number of audiophiles [well, apparently] is FLAC [Free Lossless Audio Encoder]. Not the easiest route. Firstly, you may need to get third-party apps for your stuff to support it [e.g.: iPods need to get the ROckBox firmware before it can support FLAC]. However, it is open-source, so there's a lot of forums around for assistance.

so, now the you got your reason to get on the lossless bandwagon, get the favourite CDs of yours and start re-ripping them in lossless!

music chart for now...

by popular demand...

1. imogen heap - the walk
[if you saw the Live Earth Concert promo ads on Channel 5, they used this song for one of their ads.]

2. imogen heap - just for now
[try streaming on las.fm or somewhere for the album version. immi's a musical genious!]

3. enrique iglesias - do you know? (the ping pong song)
[i'm sure you've heard this song before by now...]

4. fall out boys - thnks fr th mmrs
[like the song, not the title... what's with the vowel-dropping phenomenon? stop it... it's so not web2.0]

5. aly & aj - silence
[never heard of the song before... but thanks to iTunes, i think i like it..]

6. timbaland - the way i are
[catchy song... cool music video. check it out on youtube!]

7. timbaland - miscommunication
[yet another song with cool bg...]

8. maroon 5 - goodnight goodnight
[not exactly a bedtime song.. but it's really a nice moody song.]

9. fergie - glamorous
[she's glamorous... she's fergalicious, she's fergie... so watcha gonna do with her lady humps?]

10. red hot chilli peppers - snow (hey oh)
[good songs never get forgotten]

waiting, waiting, waiting...

the anthem of my state of mind for now: "wo deng zhe ni hui lai, wo deng zhe ni hui lai...."

why?

let's see...


i'm waiting for iPhone 2...

i'm waiting for iPod 6G...

i'm still waiting for my MacBook Pro...

i'm waiting for my booster immunisation shots due this saturday [thanx, HPB]


"people spend two-thirds of their life waiting." --personal inflated stats.

"suai" day week

life's unfair...

a math: 18/25
bio: 24/30
hist: 7+1 / 20

failed history [again]... i friggin studies for the hist test [something i rarely do anymore], and i did put in effort, but it's not good enuff, i guess...

a math: slightly unexpected to get so low... i guess my formula wasn't so clear...

as for bio, 24 / 30 wasn't so bad... until some guy sitting near me kept bragging to me he got .5 marks higher... yeah, sure... keep telling yourself that...

i mean: it's not fair larh!!! he's always talking in class... he always copies my notes... and he beat me?! can't say he cheated... but then...

at least the other guy he talks to didn't do as well...

o well...

hcl class: the teacher seem kinda angry about me (& yi lei) missing classes...

australia math competition: no comments...

and i don't wanna talk about my hairstyle....