thanks, sony, for making the volume wars even worse

[charger]

http://www.harmony-central.com/Newp/...-Inflator.html

"No matter how limited, compressed and crushed your program may already be the Inflator will provide even more loudness, it will even add volume to a full-scale white noise signal or add musicality to previously clipped signals."

[Blue Bear Sound]

"...add musicality to previously clipped signals...."

What? They've figured out how to store a whack of session players on a goddamn chip????

I wonder what they mean by "musicality" exactly...!?!?

[TexRoadkill]

It looks like they took all the big marketing buzz words and designed a plug in around them.

"Increases the loudness of almost any program material.
Creates warmth, character and dynamic excitement, similar to that of analog systems.
Provides virtual headroom above digital maximum to allow percussive peaks to pass without causing signal overload.
Creates artistic effects ranging from subtle tube-like harmonic characteristics for warmth, presence and 'in your face' fatness, to outright saturation distortion modelling. "

[chessrock]

Is this a joke? Seriously, I was fully expecting this to be sort of like a Focusrite Red 0 or something, but I guess it's real. Please tell me someone is f-ing with us here.

[knownuttin]

Oh, come on, Bear. You know "musicality"! It's the essence of "Musicalism", fer krissakes!
-kent

[charger]

Yeah, the first thing I did was check the date. But it was Nov 11, not April 1st.

If this can really do everything they say, maybe it's worth having, to fix all the way-too-loud modern CDs in my collection with.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by charger
If this can really do everything they say, maybe it's worth having, to fix all the way-too-loud modern CDs in my collection with.

Yeah.... and make them louder!

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by knownuttin
Oh, come on, Bear. You know "musicality"! It's the essence of "Musicalism", fer krissakes!
-kent

Silly me....

[shadowfax]

presumably it'd be able to do the converse, no?

[charger]

At least they know what's going on... This is from the Sony site:

"The Inflator was developed in response to requests from mixing and mastering engineers who are required to compete on the basis of the overall apparent loudness of their final results."

[Teacher]

i wouldn't frown on it too bad sony makes good digital products

sony Oxford

the Sony EQ plug-in
and recently the sony compressor plug-in

these are supposedly the best plug-ins in their respective fields

so i wouldn't mind givin it a whirl

[shadowfax]

you're missing the point...

[KingstonRock]

they've managed to provide virtual headroom above a virtual zero

[dobro]

But the resulting loudness won't be virtual, it'll be real.

And when I put a sony-enhanced CD into my player and push play, I'll then have to turn around, go back to the player, and turn the thing down a notch or two, thereby irritating me and defeating the original purpose of the plug.

What I want is a CD player or DVD player that has the ability to read the average loudness of a track before it actually plays it and which then makes an appropriate adjustment, so that if I've got my volume control at '3', I don't get any nasty surprises - I get music which I've come to associate with a loudness of '3'.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Perceived loudness is a human ear response parameter and is fairly subjective... no DSP can make an accurate determination of subjective loudness - if it WERE possible, you would no longer need your ears to balance levels with!

[knownuttin]

There was a hilarious thread on another site about this where someone described a revolutionary new loudness device consisting of a "round knob" which the consumer can rotate to adjust the "volume level".

They also spoke of a new communication device which may replace email. With it people would be able to press a coded series of characters and speak directly with another individual in real time.
-kent

[dobro]

I understand the difference between subjective experience and objective voltage, for example. What I want is a disk player that'll respond to changes in voltage and adjust accordingly. Why wouldn't that work?

I don't want a stereo that'll read my mind. That would just be annoying.

'dobro, are you *sure* you wanna hear John Zorn right now? I don't think you've had enough to drink yet...'

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by dobro
I understand the difference between subjective experience and objective voltage, for example. What I want is a disk player that'll respond to changes in voltage and adjust accordingly. Why wouldn't that work?

For the same reason you can't blend levels or adjust apparent volume levels from song to song (during mastering) using only your meters. The meters are only responding to voltage levels -- the problem is the voltage level the ear is senstive is frequency dependent, and the dependent frequencies are unique to each individual!