20260728 Mike Oldfield

 Before I have even heard of the guy, I was already liking one of his pop songs, namely the famous, 'Moonlight Shadow'. And of course, the Killing Fields. Alas, I only know of the Etude single.

 It was not until in the early 90's that I was in the Scotland that I listened to his Tubular Bells II CD loaned form the local Library. Never mind this is the guy who composed the Soundtrack for, 'The Exorcist' or even for Blue Peter

Tubular Bells II

 Born on 15th May 1953, Michael Gordon Oldfield is on of the most talented musical artist I have ever come across.  Apart from Enya, his album Tubular Bells II stayed with me for a very long time and there is no one single track that I did not like.

 

Live in Ediburgh Castle 1992

 To be honest, I did not even know about his Live Performances until decades later (Life, I suppose). After watching the Video, I left quite happy. The Concert follows most of the Tunes (except in some parts) in the Tubular Bells II CD. And if you have the copy, you would know that each track slide to the next track almost continuously. So the Live Concert was no different. And the best part, when my favourite track Sunset Door, transitioned to Tatoo at about 45:10 and then revealing the The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards minutes later. 

 

 

There are quite a lot of this Concert on YouTube but the I found on Rumble was so much better.

 

 

20260727 How to be a Pirate in under 60 minutes

 FLAC is the new MP3

 Just so that you know, I have been a fan of MP3 since the mid 90's. It was so much better than the .wav format. Playing it is like carrying a complete file package. But there was another format which sort of predates the MP3 and that is the .wav file. For me, the former is for portable songs while the latter is for a PC environment. Long ago, in the early 90's, when my Classmates were harping about their Tower which has a Soundlaster16 or something installed. The PC Fanboys were defending the quality of the sound against an Amiga user (moi) because what I heard was raspy highs and well, signs of low sampling. 

 However, by the turn of the Century, everyone was into the .wav format, from Websites to Windows. It was fun at one time but I quickly realised that the sound of a woman screaming at 3AM in the morning due to a Windows error is not a good idea. I cannot remember when I started to use MP3 for my Music but it was there. At that time, I was contend with the 192kbps sampling rate as most USB storage devices has not even heard of gigabytes. There were bunch of other formats too, like OGG, AIFF, WMA, FLAC and so on. But as time goes by the most prominent ones were MP3, WAV, and FLAC. Although beaten, the survivors left quietly but they will eventually return.

 The MP3 being my de facto music format at that time was quite significant as there were portable players and other hardware starting to enter the market. And so, I invested into a CD burner and eventually a DVD burner to cater for my Car's Audio Players which has yet to have a USB port. But after a few decades, I have started to notice some cracks. Small little ones which I initially brushed off as just the occasional errors. Thinking it was the sampling rate issue, I bumped up to 320kbps which also more than double the file size. And then the cracks got bigger...

 

But MP3 is dead. 

 April 23, 2017 was the date where the last patent expired. In other words, The Fraunhofer Institute in unable to grant new MP3 Licenses to whoever wants it. Not only that, the according to them, the format has aged. The other alternatives would be AAC, Ogg and FLAC. Still being oblivious, I migrated from ripping CDs to downloading YouTube Music. Yeah, the CD scene more or less quietly disappeared and somehow, it was obscene to pay for a CD when you can get it from the Internet.

 Oh, how wrong I was. Somehow, even with the 320kbps, the downloaded-then-converted music sounded muffled or well, something was missing. Furthermore, I do notice there is a main difference when I played the same song on two different formats; USB Thumbdrive and via Bluetooth. The former sounded crisp and clear which led me to believe my 14-year old Audio unit was the culprit. However the same cannot be said when I plugged in my Bluetooth earphones. Then I realised, it was the source. The MP3 file converted from a CD has a much better audio quality. This revelation started to make me doubt the YouTube titles such as MP3, HQ quality and so on.

 

The FLAC Format

 The tipping point came when I was playing Dire Strait's The Tunnel of Love. There is a part, at end of the verse, "Your own risk", where the word, 'isk" was very pronounced. Comparing that section between a CD rip and a YouTube source, the difference is night and day. I cannot blame the lossy format for this but more on myself on where I get the sources.

 And so, I decided to try the FLAC format since the capacity of the storage media these days are in the gigabyte to terabyte range. Listening back to the same Dire Straits song, I realised that it is much clearer and even bearable on Bluetooth. All of a sudden, even my PC speakers sounded great.

 

CD Drives are not Dead

 What is dead were their prices. I just got one around May/June 2026 for about USD10.00 or so. And so, I got to thinking, what if I ripped some of my CDs again, this time in FLAC format? And so, after a few confusing tries with EAC (Exact Audio Copy), I got what I needed, only this time, it takes about an hour. 

 

 

Although I have read the Album covers, I did not realise Noel Quinlan (Middle Kingdom) produced the two albums. His "The Shepherdess Song" in Middle Kingdom II sounded like a wounded and crying erhu while Katusha's The Shepherd Girl highlighted her beautiful voice.

 

20260718 I sense a disturbance in the Force

 Once I uttered that, my Millennial colleague reflexively look at that one Staff and laughed. We were both surprised because he totally got it. And the Staff in question does whatever I told them not to.

Here is a hint of things that can happen.
When I uttered that line, the Staff was opening a Chest Freezer. Normally, it would be followed by the sound of crinkling plastic. Not things being knocked about. Strongly.

And for yesterday's story?

It started when the Staff walked to the Technical area, which raised my suspicion. After what was an eternity (OK, about 20 seconds) I realised what is happening. Let's call these items A. My Boss and I have been working on recording and auditing items A for all four sites. And I have sent the final presentation plus the calculations to him. The topic on A was not to be moved forward without his decision.

 However, after some discussion, my Boss then sent the Staff a copy of my Presentation. Thing started to go South when the said Staff, without reading it or remembered my Boss's instruction, just forwarded to the Big Boss despite (I am very sure) my Boss telling the Staff not to.

20260717 The Evolution of the Mentally Challenged

  Just today, I realised that some Dumb people can actually be Stupid.

 A staff came to me, in a panic, because she failed to find a specific product. She kept pointing to the shelves where she thinks they ought to be. After I left her ramble on for a minute or so, I wordlessly pointed to the other shelves which was just 6 feet away. Her eyes widened and followed my finger.

 OK, so, problem solved but... she rambled on again about not able to find the product in question. So, yeah, rinse and repeat, until I said, "Its just right there. In front of you. The ones with the yellow labels."

 If I wanted to be funny, I could say that I can actually her the cogs inside her hear head crunching. Yes, crunching, not turning. But no, because that would be impolite and cruel to cogs. However, I must give credit where it is due because unlike her predecessor, she was slightly quicker by about 2.5 seconds. Still, I'd give her 2 out of 5 stars as she admitted twice in the same sentence, that she did not see the other shelf even if it was right in front of her. Sadly, the same statement was repeated again when she admitted walking past it a few times.

 In my impatient experience, it is very difficult to communicate with these type of people. You can never imagine how hard it was for me to just fall down to their level of thinking. Its like walking with them and suddenly, they're ten steps behind because there were some flowers or a small dog at the roadside. You have to turn back and condescendingly explain to them those are poison ivy and that is an angry bull. Even right in front of me, they cannot even understand basic jokes which in my mind, I can clearly see it sprout wings and fly over their head. And when I repeat the joke to their blank faces moments later, it flew back and crash landed with all the poor vowels being burned alive and screaming consonants.

 At the end of the day. we're all working together and if I need to think highly of her, she might need to start wearing 5 feet shoes...

20260718 YouTube Sound Quality

 

Opening the Rabbit Hole again  

 

 After so many years, there was a suggested video from YouTube. It was Fairground Attraction's Find My  Love.

 I've been listening to this CD non-stop during my Enya phase from the end 90's to well, twenty tens. With a Sony Sub-woofer in my Bengmobile, the sound was amazing. All the percussion beats and clear guitar strings really hit it off. What's more, with Eddi Reader's voice, the album, "The First of a Million Kisses" was hauntingly perfect. 

 When I clicked to watch the Video, all the vocal magic and percussive highlights were... not there. Even my pair of headphones confirmed it. The sounds coming from the video was just that. Sounds. No great treble nor punchful bass. Even the music instruments sounded so muted.

 

The MP3 Format

 Truth to be told, most of my MP3 songs came from YouTube since there are  no places for one to buy AI Song covers or CDs. Even at 320kbps, I realised, these bloated files are acoustically crap. Just listen to their CD or even a SACD copy, suddenly you'd reaslise that, all the MP3 songs are potentially worthless.

 Of course the MP3 format is dead. It has been dying since the twenty tens but every now and then, it acted like that flogged dead horse. Although we were warned about its lossy compression we happily chose that format. Nowadays, with USB Storage formats that starts with a minimum of 32GB, FLAC suddenly became a much better compromise. However, I have yet to find a good site that offers great compression or a FLAC library within reasonable cost.

 

FLAC-ing the not dead Horse 

 I do have a CD reader now, and there is a very high chance that I can spot a winner between a converted MP3 and a YouTube version. Right now, listening to the FLAC version of the same song is really a day & night difference even for a audio philistine like me.

 Now, when I listen to my MP3 songs, my mind would wonder, "Is there a much better quality than this 12Mb 320kbps MP3?"

Is there a better Dire Strait's Romeo and Juliet?

Is there a better Yanni Live at the Acropolis?

How about Kitaro's Matsuri?