A Thread to Continue discussing Tim Gillett's Recollection of Another Discussion

[Tim Gillett]

Just a clarification re Ghost's post.

In the purely analog days, I guess artists and producers would sit down and listen to a mix, and say, hey, that guitar could do with a bit of tape warmth, or maybe the drums or the bass, or whatever.

But notice how they expressed it. They didnt say, hey that guitar as recorded by the tape is "too accurate for its own good" they just thought tape warmth would make it artistically better. And they were probably right. And so they added the tape warmth. And so the record sounded better.

Both analog tape and digital can record without tape warmth. Analog has it as an option, which is great. But it's only of use when you use it!
Often, using either analog or digital recorder, you dont!

It's an effect and a very good one. But that's all. No serious producer runs the whole 2 track mix through analog tape warmth indiscriminately, regardless of whether they're tracking to analog or to digital. To do that would be to misunderstand its function.

Tim G

 

[Beck]

Just a clarification re Ghost's post.

In the purely analog days, I guess artists and producers would sit down and listen to a mix, and say, hey, that guitar could do with a bit of tape warmth, or maybe the drums or the bass, or whatever.

But notice how they expressed it. They didnt say, hey that guitar as recorded by the tape is "too accurate for its own good" they just thought tape warmth would make it artistically better. And they were probably right. And so they added the tape warmth. And so the record sounded better.

The above scenario just didn't happen in the 25 years I've been having those conversations. We didn't talk about tape warmth like that until digital had become commonplace enough for comparison. We talked in terms of pinning the meters or hitting the tape harder, as well as tweaking cetain variables until the sound appeared. Thin and Bright, or warm and full were more about tone shaping through mic placement and EQ.

Both analog tape and digital can record without tape warmth. Analog has it as an option, which is great. But it's only of use when you use it!
Often, using either analog or digital recorder, you dont!

It's an effect and a very good one. But that's all. No serious producer runs the whole 2 track mix through analog tape warmth indiscriminately, regardless of whether they're tracking to analog or to digital. To do that would be to misunderstand its function

Don't forget that myself and others don't equate an analog clean sound with a digital clean sound. They aren't the same. Analog is warm in comparison to digital, even when analog is as clean as can be. We're definitely going around in circles on this point. It's a bit like trying to describe a color to someone that has only known black and white.

Also, maybe best to look at tape characteristics on a continuum... a relatively clean, bright character on one extreme and about 3% harmonic distortion on the other. Everything in between those two extremes is used where appropriate.

 

[Dr ZEE]

To do this selective quoting is my obligation (not to pretend that I'm a master of doing that) ...

"analog tape also has stereo phase errors -always. It's the degree that matters."

"Error" is not something that just occurs. "Error" is a term that we apply on occurence when the occurence is in canceling conflict with the predication (expectation).
There's no such thing as analog error. However, there is a such thing as analog device that is capable of indroducing an occurence that may happen to be in canceling conflict with a predication (expectation). The name of that device is "switch".

Now, degree this:

 

[evm1024]

Hi my name is TIM G and I am a DIGITAL MISSIONARY

Hi Tim G,

I see from your last few posts that you are indeed a digital missionary. WE have indeed gone in a circle. I don't see the point in your posts. Perhaps yu could state your goal?

-E

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Good observation. Perhaps part of the fatigue with digital is trying to decide what to listen to rather than having it naturally chosen for you in a blend. And digital and smearing just don't go together. Too much isolation and yet everything still wears that shiney coat.

What also needs to be mentioned in all of this is that the use of dynamics and differing levels of instruments in a song is something that we have gotten away from since digital has come to the forefront over the past 10 to 15 years. Everything is pushed up to its maximum level before clipping and as a result, every part is fighting for our ear's attention to listen to "me" except our brain has a natural defense mechanism that wants to shut the whole thing off because it can't concentrate...kind of like when several people are all trying to talk to you at the same time, all of them projecting their words at you at the same level and clarity which makes you ask, "one at a time, people, please!"

For some strange reason, we naturally seemed to know this and mix accordingly to make certain parts of a song the artistic focus at differing parts of the song. Now, for some unexplainable reason, we seem to want to have everything shouting at us at the same time...perhaps this is so because digital gives us this false sense that because everything can now be equally clear that we must exploit this ability and use it to demonstrate our new found power that we truly haven't harnessed yet as engineers.

Watch a skilled conductor regulate his players, he'll pay very close attention to the levels and dynamic to make sure that the composition speaks as a whole message. He'll not tolerate every player blasting their own parts out in an effort to be noticed and when that team discipline is executed properly, we then marvel not at the skill of each player, but on the composition as a whole.

As modern day sound engineers we need to make a very concerted effort to bring that artistic balance back into our works and stop shouting at each other for the sake of shouting.

Cheers!

 

[Tim Gillett]

What also needs to be mentioned in all of this is that the use of dynamics and differing levels of instruments in a song is something that we have gotten away from since digital has come to the forefront over the past 10 to 15 years. Everything is pushed up to its maximum level before clipping and as a result, every part is fighting for our ear's attention to listen to "me" except our brain has a natural defense mechanism that wants to shut the whole thing off because it can't concentrate...kind of like when several people are all trying to talk to you at the same time, all of them projecting their words at you at the same level and clarity which makes you ask, "one at a time, people, please!"

For some strange reason, we naturally seemed to know this and mix accordingly to make certain parts of a song the artistic focus at differing parts of the song. Now, for some unexplainable reason, we seem to want to have everything shouting at us at the same time...perhaps this is so because digital gives us this false sense that because everything can now be equally clear that we must exploit this ability and use it to demonstrate our new found power that we truly haven't harnessed yet as engineers.

Watch a skilled conductor regulate his players, he'll pay very close attention to the levels and dynamic to make sure that the composition speaks as a whole message. He'll not tolerate every player blasting their own parts out in an effort to be noticed and when that team discipline is executed properly, we then marvel not at the skill of each player, but on the composition as a whole.

As modern day sound engineers we need to make a very concerted effort to bring that artistic balance back into our works and stop shouting at each other for the sake of shouting.

Cheers!

Totally agree, but I feel that's production choices and has little if anything to do with digital or analog recording as such.
The "loudness war" that is currently going on in mastering has really been going on well back into the analog days when record makers tried to make their records "louder than the competitors' so they would "grab" the listener's attention on the radio. Same with TV commercials which to this day are heavily compressed. That too was going on long before digital came along.

But remember driving analog tape into compression, IS COMPRESSION, the excessive use of which, you seem to be complaining about! And I agree with you.

But again, production choices.
In the days of pure analog, people also had the power to produce badly, including overly compressing tracks and instruments. If they produced badly less often, perhaps that's because they were better informed, both technically and artistically. I dont know. That would be an interesting discussion.
Over compressing as well as undercompressing can be tiring and frustrating to the listener. There has to be artistic judgement in its use. Balancing of instruments in a mix is a delicate and skilled operation. There is no machine that can do that for you, not even an analog tape recorder.

Cheers Tim G

 

[Tim Gillett]

The above scenario just didn't happen in the 25 years I've been having those conversations. We didn't talk about tape warmth like that until digital had become commonplace enough for comparison. We talked in terms of pinning the meters or hitting the tape harder, as well as tweaking cetain variables until the sound appeared. Thin and Bright, or warm and full were more about tone shaping through mic placement and EQ.



Don't forget that myself and others don't equate an analog clean sound with a digital clean sound. They aren't the same. Analog is warm in comparison to digital, even when analog is as clean as can be. We're definitely going around in circles on this point. It's a bit like trying to describe a color to someone that has only known black and white.

Also, maybe best to look at tape characteristics on a continuum... a relatively clean, bright character on one extreme and about 3% harmonic distortion on the other. Everything in between those two extremes is used where appropriate.

Beck, whichever terms were or are used, the fact is the majority of the warmth came from deliberately pushing the tape beyond its nominal limits. It was still tape distortion, not "non digital" distortion. We might only call it "non digital' because digital doesnt introduce it. Neither does the mixing desk. Neither do the tape recorder's own amps. A good engineer/producer knew damn well it was the tape doing it.

Sure, there is some "warmth" even when analog is "clean as can be", when the signal is no where near overdrive. Agree totally. AND you said it. And of course it's a continuum, although the distortion takes a distinct rise as the tape starts to saturate. Now...

Is this "warmth" (at whatever level) always good? That is the question. I guess someone like yourself might say, "yes, yes, in every case."

OK. But if so you are making a decision, a value judgement, an artistic judgement in the end, that the program material, be it a choir, a symphony concert or what, always needs this effect added to make it more pleasing. Then the next question is "how much" because as you say, it's quite variable.
In that sense I have nothing to say, except as a fellow artist with my own artistic opinion, and everyone else has a right in the same way. It's a matter of taste.
But that matter of taste involves modifying the signal.

To say analog tape is more "faithful" to the source material because it changes it is to twist the plain meaning of words.

To say you prefer that effect is quite a different thing, and does not carry the same dogmatism. So here we are. Is there a right and a wrong answer to that question. I dont think there is. What do you think, Beck, and everybody?

Tim G

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Totally agree, but I feel that's production choices and has little if anything to do with digital or analog recording as such.
The "loudness war" that is currently going on in mastering has really been going on well back into the analog days when record makers tried to make their records "louder than the competitors' so they would "grab" the listener's attention on the radio. Same with TV commercials which to this day are heavily compressed. That too was going on long before digital came along.

But remember driving analog tape into compression, IS COMPRESSION, the excessive use of which, you seem to be complaining about! And I agree with you.

But again, production choices.
In the days of pure analog, people also had the power to produce badly, including overly compressing tracks and instruments. If they produced badly less often, perhaps that's because they were better informed, both technically and artistically. I dont know. That would be an interesting discussion.
Over compressing as well as undercompressing can be tiring and frustrating to the listener. There has to be artistic judgement in its use. Balancing of instruments in a mix is a delicate and skilled operation. There is no machine that can do that for you, not even an analog tape recorder.

Cheers Tim G

You seem to be stating that the use of over compression has always been with us, even going back to the days of when analog was all there was. That may have been true for very limited avenues in the market, namely TV commercials being about the only example of this obnoxious behavior and I don't think that's an accurate portrayal of how our past music reality was when it came to mixing songs for albums and other theatrical works in movies and television programing.

That phenomenon is, I think, more accurately born out of our current digital recording revolution. It probably started with the introduction of the drum machine into commercially released music which saw us being presented with static beats that rarely if ever changed in dynamics or variance in timber because of the limitations of the samples these machines worked with. I'll postulate that once you have a drum machine pumping out its monotonous, steady, unchanging pattern, we're almost forced to make everything else fall into lock step with it which means that bass parts now too have to maintain a similar degree of rigidity or it'll be lost in the mix and the same follows suit for the rest of the parts.

How I tie this into digital in a very specific way is in the fact that when we had only real drummers on our recordings, we did enjoy recordings that truly breathed dynamically and even though we could over drive the tape for certain distortion and compressive effect, we generally never did anything about the other end of the dynamic scale, the quiet end. There was a decided doctrine to allow for dynamics as it was considered as fundamental to a good recording as a part being played correctly with life and emotion.

Digital recording technology may one day prove to be a very artistic tool but so far, very few of us out there seem to know how to work it.

Cheers!

 

[Tim Gillett]

My name is Tim Gillett, same as my username.

Hi Tim G,

I see from your last few posts that you are indeed a digital missionary. WE have indeed gone in a circle. I don't see the point in your posts. Perhaps yu could state your goal?

-E

EVM,
I'm not much of a detective but your continuing reticence to comment on post #25, especially given your obvious knowledge of psychoacoustics (far greater than mine, I gather) is baffling and well before today, I felt something was not quite right...

WHY NOT SHOOT ME DOWN IN FLAMES! It only begs that question.

You dont have to explain your reasons to me or anyone else, but if you say nothing, you leave every reader of this thread free to draw their own conclusions.
There may be a perfectly natural explanation for your strange behaviour and I hope there is. Are you able to share it with us?

My goal? At present to find out what is going on here. That, far beyond any audio related issue is what has me stumped. Can you help me out here?

evm 1024, whatever the result, I wish you peace.

Tim G.

 

[Tim Gillett]

You seem to be stating that the use of over compression has always been with us, even going back to the days of when analog was all there was. That may have been true for very limited avenues in the market, namely TV commercials being about the only example of this obnoxious behavior and I don't think that's an accurate portrayal of how our past music reality was when it came to mixing songs for albums and other theatrical works in movies and television programing.

That phenomenon is, I think, more accurately born out of our current digital recording revolution. It probably started with the introduction of the drum machine into commercially released music which saw us being presented with static beats that rarely if ever changed in dynamics or variance in timber because of the limitations of the samples these machines worked with. I'll postulate that once you have a drum machine pumping out its monotonous, steady, unchanging pattern, we're almost forced to make everything else fall into lock step with it which means that bass parts now too have to maintain a similar degree of rigidity or it'll be lost in the mix and the same follows suit for the rest of the parts.

How I tie this into digital in a very specific way is in the fact that when we had only real drummers on our recordings, we did enjoy recordings that truly breathed dynamically and even though we could over drive the tape for certain distortion and compressive effect, we generally never did anything about the other end of the dynamic scale, the quiet end. There was a decided doctrine to allow for dynamics as it was considered as fundamental to a good recording as a part being played correctly with life and emotion.

Digital recording technology may one day prove to be a very artistic tool but so far, very few of us out there seem to know how to work it.

Cheers!

Sure, I guess the most common use of heavy compression was in commercials etc. I was just making the point that it was available then to anyone who chose to use it that way. It's not a new option. And sure, albums, movies, TV would have generally been much less so than the commercials, (unless it was a specific track in a mix such as a Hendrix type overdriven guitar sound) as I think we can all hear that (wider dynamics) on the programs themselves.
Drum tracks, ugh! I played in a studio to an early synthesised drum track and it wasnt pretty. Yes, it's sooo inflexible. Music making in a group has a subtle consensus going on all the time. That little bit of give and take, the meeting of eyes, the necessary body language at critical points in the song so as to get emphases and timing right and together. One of the best parts of the thing in my opinion. I have a thing about musos who only play alone and not with others.There are a whole lot of new skills you develop just by playing well with others, however valid is the solo performer.
Sure, be a solo performer but at least learn the skills of playing ensemble. I love to see school aged kids learning it fairly early on.
And playing along with a drum track though is probably harder for a solo practiser though because they are not used to adapting to ANYONE, let alone a dictatorial drum track.
Yeah, dynamics in the track - but not too much either. It's a balance, and a variety, like light and shade in tonal colours, using different instruments and timbres, single voices, harmonies etc etc. Leaving breathing spaces in the music too. Having the musical backing and style reflect and complement the words, lyrics and emotions conveyed.
Maybe the conjunction of PC's and music recording, and the relative cheapness of it all means a lot of people who normally wouldnt have got into it are now in it, and the results speak for themselves. But for my money (at least I hope) there will always be quality artists and productions, regardless of the technology. The technology is just a tool. The music, the art, the joy of it all, that's worth keeping.
Good to discuss with you.
Tim G

 

[Dr ZEE]

In the days of pure analog... ...they produced badly less often, perhaps that's because they were better informed, both technically and artistically.

Some producers were more informed technically, some were not. Nobody was more informed artistically, because there is no such thing as artistic knowledge.

They produced badly less becuse the music production was a process of making the best out of material that was actually recorded (read, actually performed, or say - actually OCCURED!) while determining the the best based exclusively on audition, as opposite to a process of exercising capability of a producer armed with array of equipment that provide array of capabilities, while determing nothing.

/later

 

[evm1024]

EVM,
I'm not much of a detective but your continuing reticence to comment on post #25, especially given your obvious knowledge of psychoacoustics (far greater than mine, I gather) is baffling and well before today, I felt something was not quite right...

WHY NOT SHOOT ME DOWN IN FLAMES! It only begs that question.

You dont have to explain your reasons to me or anyone else, but if you say nothing, you leave every reader of this thread free to draw their own conclusions.
There may be a perfectly natural explanation for your strange behaviour and I hope there is. Are you able to share it with us?

My goal? At present to find out what is going on here. That, far beyond any audio related issue is what has me stumped. Can you help me out here?

evm 1024, whatever the result, I wish you peace.

Tim G.

Tim,

I see no need to respond to your bait. You are just one of the players on this stage and do not control the stage.

You have been given a fairly large number of things to think about that tend to discredit the things that you hold as TRUTH and yet even when you agree you fall back to the misunderstandings that you base your audio world view on. Your view is skewed and does not represent reality as truthfully as you project.

You are a troll. You are looking for fights and you are not interested in gathering information that can add to your understanding. You are looking to prove something and if others cannot shoot you down then they are wrong. That makes youa brawler as well as a troll.

Perhaps you would care to tell us which assumption, attitude or belief about audio you have changed because of this thread?

And do me the favor of joining the ranks of the folks that post to this forum without a confrontational attitude. You would be welcomed rather than tolerated.

-E

 

[Dr ZEE]

To say analog tape is more "faithful" to the source material because it changes it is to twist the plain meaning of words.

Nop. Saying so would not be a twist of the plain meaning of words, It would be a contradiction. So, why saying so? And who is saying so? What am I missing here?
*****
Analog is more "faithful" to the source (more than digital, that is) not because it changes it, but because it changes it faithfully.
*****
Analog - tasteful makeup.
Digital - disastrous plastic surgery.
(p.s.
I know that makeup can be horrendously ugly, and I know that plastic surgery is capable of making one "be" who he/she is not. I also know that people can and do use both, making the best out of "both worlds" I suppose )

 

[Beck]

To say analog tape is more "faithful" to the source material because it changes it is to twist the plain meaning of words.

To say you prefer that effect is quite a different thing, and does not carry the same dogmatism. So here we are. Is there a right and a wrong answer to that question. I dont think there is. What do you think, Beck, and everybody?

Tim G

Probably no right or wrong answers... just right or wrong motivations.

This reply will be short (comparatively speaking) and have a minimal amount of long meandering sentences with comments in parentheses (except for this one and the one before) because I want to state one thing that seems to be getting lost in my long-winded posts.

I DON'T SAY THAT ANALOG IS NESSESARILY MORE FAITHFUL, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY I DON'T BELIEVE DIGTIAL SEEMS HARSH BECAUSE IT IS FAITHFUL. A LOT OF PEOPLE THINK MAYBE THAT'S WHY THEY HEAR SOMETHING HARSH IN DIGITAL RECORDING. THAT'S FINE, AND THEY MAKE A GOOD CASE... BUT I SAY IT ADDS ITS OWN ARTIFACTS THAT HURT MY EARS. NOPE, I CAN'T SHOW IT TO YOU ON A SCOPE. NOR CAN I TRANSLATE IT INTO BRAILLE.

Scopes and meters hear things differently than humans. Our ears actually do change the sound compared to how a machine detects it. That’s why we have A-weighted measurements in spec sheets. Music is made for human consumption, not for machines.

By the way, I think EVM is one of the more calm and reasonable people on the forum… much more patient than I am for sure.

One more thing… not everyone here shares the same canned, “Analog view.” There is no such animal. It seems as though you would like us to agree on a manifesto and assign an ambassador to continue the discussion. That won’t happen.

 

[The Ghost of FM]

Sure, I guess the most common use of heavy compression was in commercials etc. I was just making the point that it was available then to anyone who chose to use it that way.

And while I agree that the option to make a poor recording always existed in all technologies, I also see and hear those poor choices all the more so in recent years with digital recording ensnaring more and more musicians and engineers to jump into the flaming pit of dynamically dead recordings.

Anyway, I've had enough of this thread and this general theme of discussion.

I'll be here to help out those that I can and the rest, I'll wish them good night and good luck.

Cheers!

 

[evm1024]

someone has done it for me.....

I was loading some sample sine waves into matlab to create a few plots to show what cd "quality" sampiling does to 2 waveforms. I came across this link:

http://www.skreddypedals.com/digital_sucks/index.htm

Where they have done an approxamation of the waveforms for me and written a nice analysis.

Of course that is with sine waves or near sine waves and not at all like real music. I play the flute and organ and I have been able to produce triangular waves on my flute. On the organ the flute pipes are basically sine waves and the real organ sound diapasions are more like sine waves put through a leaky diode. The various other ranks have their own distinctive sounds and can become quite complex in a rank of reeds.

As is pointed out in this link, real world music does not look even close to sine waves.

This is all very basic ( the digitizing of 2 sine waves and the resulting artifacts upon recreation of audio). What is interesting is that if you take that recreated waveform and redigitize it at a high sample rate and do an FFT on it to convert from the time to frequency domains you will see that the 2 fundamential frequencies will be frequency modulated in proportion to the quanitization error and the jitter rate. Plus you will be seeing a number of other artifacts. They show up as brief bursts of sounds that are not related to the fundamentials.

We compound this further by realizing that the above discription is per channel. The left channel has its own frequency modulation of the fundamentials. The right has its own as well. This frequency modulation is typically not perceived as a frequency change and it does average out to 0 delta compaired to the fundamential. Think of the doppler shift of a train. The pitch is higher as it comes at you and lower as it goes away but when you sum coming and going it equals the standing still pitch. (we use this in astronomy as well for rotating stars...)

However, when you compair the left to right signals you will see that the frequency modulation of each is in effect a phase shift. When the pitch is modulated higher is forms a positive phase shift reaching your ears sooner and when modulated lower forms a negative phase shift.

The phase shift per channel is random and produces 5 results:

no modulation in either channel ---------------- "normal" sound
positive modulation on left --------------------- sound shifts left
positive modulation on right -------------------- sound shifts right
positive modulation on both -------------------- sound shifts closer
negative modulation on both ------------------- sound shifts away

In thinking about the artifacts that digital playback generates it would be important to remember that a basic premis of the Fourier Series is that any specific waveform can be represented by the superposition of harmonically related sine and cosine waves. It has been suggested by a number of researchers that the brain is effect doing FFTs on the the sounds that it hears. This is one way to explain how it is possable for some people to hear (detect sounds better to me here) pitches above their upper hearing limit.

So when digital playback presents to your ears the various artifacts your brain needs to (so think some researchers) create a fourier series that approxamates the waveform. This series includes components well above human hearing. The artifacts present a significant number of series components that are transient, random and not coincident (left ear to right ear).

It is not really clear what is happening. It is suspected that the brain being a pattern matching, predictive type of machine has problems when things are not as it expects in processing these anomolies.

Now this is all very interesting and nice but it is of course just speculation of what is going on inside your head. It does tend to explain some of the observations of human hearing.

And all this from just 2 tones.

If you have hung in there and followed this then I'm impressed. I don't write code to detect submarines anymore and I was never good at implementing FFT and other DSP routines. That is what libraries are for.

The end result is that digital has a way to go yet and that cd "quality" will never be more than lo-fi. That some day digital will be able to overcome its limitations (32 bits, 512 kHz?). And I will still like to drive my 1975 Fiat Spider and spool up some tape.

Sorry about being so brief

 

[Tim Gillett]

Beware, post #25 is a trap!

Tim,

I see no need to respond to your bait. You are just one of the players on this stage and do not control the stage.

You have been given a fairly large number of things to think about that tend to discredit the things that you hold as TRUTH and yet even when you agree you fall back to the misunderstandings that you base your audio world view on. Your view is skewed and does not represent reality as truthfully as you project.

You are a troll. You are looking for fights and you are not interested in gathering information that can add to your understanding. You are looking to prove something and if others cannot shoot you down then they are wrong. That makes youa brawler as well as a troll.

Perhaps you would care to tell us which assumption, attitude or belief about audio you have changed because of this thread?

And do me the favor of joining the ranks of the folks that post to this forum without a confrontational attitude. You would be welcomed rather than tolerated.

-E

evm,
What is so terrifyingly dangerous about post #25 (not my post but Beck's of Tom Scholz. hardly digital missionaries either of them!!!!!)?
Commenting on a fellow traveller's post is dangerous? A bait? But you respond to MY posts and I'm "the enemy"! Why not respond to the words of apparently "your own", in particular one of the apparently senior members, not to mention Tom Scholz.
By refusing to so comment you only draw attention to the post and the quote within it. If I WAS a "digital missionary" as you claim, then your silence would be a "free kick" to me, whom you say you oppose.

On the one hand you hurl more and more insults at me. On the other hand you make every person reading this post wonder what the hell is going on, including me.
They will be reading post # 25 and its quote like it was the hottest thing on the site.They may not understand the implications but they might suspect somewhere in the meaning of those words, is dynamite.

No, I dont rule this forum, never did and have no intention of doing so. Why raise the question of the "leadership" of this forum? Are you implying there IS a leader of the forum whose word MUST NOT BE CHALLENGED?

evm you seem to be only digging yourself in deeper and deeper. The obvious way to diffuse this situation is openness and transparency -no audio pun implied.

Is it just possible that if you put on record your true response to post #25, then you too would be treated by certain people on this site as the lowest form of life on earth too, namely a "digital missionary"?

Best wishes.
Tim G

 

[evm1024]

Tim, tim, tim.....

HI tim G,

I guess that you missed my last post #116. I think that it answers your question RE #25. What is your take on it anyway? I would really like you to take a look at what I wrote and give us your thougnts and the wisdom of you experience. People will be waiting for you.

So why is it so important that I give you my thoughts on #25? Not my statement to start with. SO why has pinning me down on that become your crusade? I'm a bit at a loss as to your need to force a response from me? Perhaps you should come clean and become transparient.

Really, you do appear to be a bit of a, well, should we say not so nice person, when you badger folks. I'm having a hard time understanding your motivations. They cannot be aboveboard. So why not come clean?

I recall asking you a question in post #78. When will you answer that question. It really is a simple question and does not take much thinking. Just a simple yes or no would work for me.

 

[Tim Gillett]

Tom Scholz is an undercover digital missionary

HI tim G,

I guess that you missed my last post #116. I think that it answers your question RE #25. What is your take on it anyway? I would really like you to take a look at what I wrote and give us your thougnts and the wisdom of you experience. People will be waiting for you.

So why is it so important that I give you my thoughts on #25? Not my statement to start with. SO why has pinning me down on that become your crusade? I'm a bit at a loss as to your need to force a response from me? Perhaps you should come clean and become transparient.

Really, you do appear to be a bit of a, well, should we say not so nice person, when you badger folks. I'm having a hard time understanding your motivations. They cannot be aboveboard. So why not come clean?


I recall asking you a question in post #78. When will you answer that question. It really is a simple question and does not take much thinking. Just a simple yes or no would work for me.

evm
Right, I missed #116 as it appeared on my screen after I posted #117. Give me some time to digest what seems a fairly techincal post. I'll check out the link as well.

Your #78 came at a time after I had written a long and I think fair and friendly post to yourself, I think about how I could never decide whether the artist or the engineer was the more dominant part of my makeup. Then Beck chimed in, acting as if I had changed in some way. All I did was tell a bit more about myself! It was he who had changed for he had learned a bit more about me. So the irony of that was not lost on me. Do you understand what I am saying? Beck seemed to see my post in purely political and tactical terms,(surprise, surprise) missing its main point which was a sharing of more of my background, attitudes and experience, admittedly with a point of trying to correct misconceptions and false assumptions too.

Then immediately after Beck's post, came the predictable "amen chorus" from the usual suspects. As usual, if numbers, or amount of words and pictures was a measure of "who won the fight", assuming there was one, then, I'm the loser every time, not least here.
THEN your post, with a slightly more conciliatory tone. Shades almost of "good guy-bad guy", I felt at that moment. I was not in the mood to reply. Simple as that. Suffice to say, I have NOT changed, as far as I'm aware. Beck just learned more about me. That's a huge difference.

evm, there has been so much stuff going on in this thread and previous threads it's hard for anyone to keep up with it all.
I have been trying to respond not to one person but many, who have been hitting me pretty hard. I dont complain about that. I'm here voluntarily. But it means quite a workload, one which I have to fit in with every other thing happening in my life.
Nothing "happenned' just before your post #78. I addressed a strong post to Beck, not to you. Unless I'm mistaken, you and Beck are two separate individuals, not one troll, masking as different usernames. I thought that was what I was supposed to be. It would be quite wrong and discourteous for me to treat all posters who disagreed with me as one amorphous mass, however at times they act like it.

I'll read your #116 in detail when I have a moment but not now. Life must go on. I have someone coming over for a meal and then have to do some work to pay the bills.

regards, Tim

 

[cjacek]

Indeed ....

What the flip have I stumbled into here?

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."