Digital Production For Rich Media

These columns, discussing the impact of digital technology in the content creation workplace, appeared in Mix Magazine…

Columns from:

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

…discusses lossy codecs for low data rate delivery

Column #2 April 2000 - The Boob Tube Battle

…can You Say Conformance? Scrambling for a DTV Standard

Column #3 May 2000 - LANs, WANs, NASs & SANs

…or why networks are born anew. The convergence of file and data networks

Column #4 June 2000 - Something Borrowed, Something Blue

…discusses network security and KVM solutions

Column #5 July 2000 - An Ode To Engineering

…discusses the implications of word length and sample rate for DSP processes

Column #6 August 2000 - Are You On Or Off The Bus

…discusses advancements in the PCI and USB local bus technologies

Column #7 September 2000 - Infini- what ?

…discusses the nascent InfiniBand superbus standard

Column #8 October 2000 - FireWired

…the first of two parts, it discusses FireWire bus technology

Column #9 November 2000 - FireWire Part II

…the second of a two part series, it discusses some issues surrounding 1394 technology

Column #10 December 2000 - Born To Crawl

…discusses the struggling DVD-Audio format

Column #11 January 2001 - Super, man.

…discusses the compelling SACD (Super Audio CD) format

Column #12 February 2001 - A Broad & Deep Need For Speed

…discusses broadband internet access

Column #13 March 2001 - Doom, Gloom & Darkness All ‘Round

…discusses the power crisis during the Winter of 2000-2001 in the West

Column #14 April 2001 - IP, IP Everywhere

…discusses the Winter CE Show in Las Vegas

Column #15 May 2001 - Son Of Tosh

…discusses MacWorld San Francisco 2001

Column #16 June 2001 - I’m Networking, Baby

…discusses emerging WAN and LAN technologies

Column #17July 2001 - Get Up Off’A That Thang

…discusses the quagmire of file interchange

Column #18 August 2001 - Roll Tape

…discusses mid–price tape formats for data recovery

Column #19 September 2001 - Alas, Poor SCSI, I Knew Him Well

…discusses the emerging iSCSI & Serial ATA attach protocols

Column #20 October 2001 - Storage Slam

…speculates how several newly arrived storage standards may transform the marketplace

Column #21 November 2001 - The Wobblies

…the DLT1 data tape format and some of it’s fancier rivals

Column #22 December 2001 - Turn, Turn, Turn Again

…the passing of the last century and some spurious speculation…

Column #23 February 2002 - Quick, Bright Things

…discusses the latest on the FireWire front

Column #24 March 2002 - Cramped Quarters

…discusses some issue concerning data rates & storage requirements

Column #25 April 2002 - Where are the rabbits, George?

…discusses the new and improved USB 2.0 standard

Column #26 May 2002 - Cost Low Option

…discusses the low cost data tape standards, VXA-2 and Travan

Column #27 June 2002 - Cut A Check, We’ll Hook It Up!

…a piece discussing wiring for data, digital and analog audio, with a bit of high school physics thrown in

Column #28 July 2002 - Sven, Where’s My Mead

…a piece discussing wireless networks, including 802.11b and Bluetooth

Column #29 August 2002 - Cloak, No Dagger

…a piece discussing digital rights management

Column #30 September 2002 - Alright Mr. DeMille, I’m Ready For My Close-up

…a piece discussing MPEG-4

Column #31 October 2002 - The Sheep are Still Asleep

…in time for AES LA, another look at the AES-31 standard

Column #32 November 2002 - How The Leopard Got His Spots

…a look at audio technologies in Apple Computer’s new version of their operating system, OS 10.2

Column #33 December 2002 - Hey Santa, Is The Beard Real?

…a wish list for Santa, groovy things we would appreciate

Column #34 January 2003 - Toe To Toe

…a look at TCP Offload Engines, the key to iSCSI success

Column #35 Febuary 2003 - Randell, Them’s Fightin’ Words!

…a look at fixed versus floating point arithmetic in the digital signal processing world

Column #36 March 2003 - So, Are You Single?

…a look at single versus double precision arithmetic in the digital signal processing world

Column #37 April 2003 - Which Way To Moscone?

…a look at the MacWorld conference in San Francisco

Column #38 May 2003 - Hey Buddy, Can You Spare A 1/5 Of A Dime?

…a look at the troubled terrain of micropayments

Column #39 June 2003 - Widgets, Widgets Everywhere

…a visit to the toy-filled madness of the 2003 Winter Consumer Electronics Show

Column #40 July 2003 - Hit Factory Criteria

…something new in the Bitstream, a visit to the slick world of Miami’s Hit Factory Criteria to look at their tech infrastructure

Column #41 August 2003 - …Just Hum A Few Bars

…a look at the practice of heuristics and how it’s been applied to audio

Column #42 September 2003 - Man, And I Thought The Salsa Was Hot!

Part One of a two part look at the escalating CPU wars and the manufacturer’s 64 bit gambit

Column #43 October 2003 - Longer Is Better!

Part Two of a two part look at the 64 bit Intel/AMD/IBM CPU war

Column #44 November 2003 - Free Beer

Part One of a three part look at OSS, Open Source Software…

Some excepts: “…For those of us with student IDs or anyone with more time than money and an aversion to the high total cost of ownership of commercial Unix releases, not to mention the pain and suffering associated with Microsoft’s middling merchandise, there’s a particularly attractive downloadable and that’s Open Source Software or “OSS” for short…
...Notice the “Unix–like”…UNIX itself, an in–house project written to run the Bell System’s telephone service, spawned the open source movement when Bell Labs distributed the original code to several entities, including Sun Microsystems, University of California at Berkeley and Silicon Graphics…
...Although BSD and Linux run on everything from PDAs, Amigas and NeXT cubes to Sun pizza boxes, Sega Dreamcasts and Sony PlayStations, a good way to get into open source is to dig up an retired Win box or Mac clone, low level format the disk, and install a copy of open BSD or Linux…”

Column #45 December 2003 - More Free Beer

Part Two of a three part look at OSS…

Some excepts: “…Lurking underneath all modern, post–Macintosh operating systems is a purely text driven computer since a graphical user interface or GUI is for us humans and certainly not the poor microprocessor doing all the work. There are many open source GUIs out there that lay on top of raw open source operating system, including GNOME, a mature but homely choice and KDE, a particularly nice, integrated environment that’s also my fave…
… People can’t afford or don’t want to do that, and this contributes to the instabilities they face…Most audio practitioners make so little money that they can’t afford not to fully utilize a relatively large capital expense…”
… There’s a wide array of software available, including editors and players for sound files and samples, MIDI utilities, lossy and lossless codecs, IIR and FIR filter designers, synths and public domain sheet music along with helper applications such as servers and asset management for your consumption…
…Though modern distributions of open source operating systems are partly or completely wizard driven, many open source utilities and applications are installed and configured under the guidance of a CLI…

Column #46 January 2004 - The Sound of Silence

…ways to quiet down your computer, both electrically and acoustically…

Some excepts: “…an inline filter on the incoming AC goes a long way at keeping the power cord, all 3 prongs intact please, from becoming a noise–radiating antenna…
… A fourth option, which seems to have fallen somewhat out of favor due to efficiency and design limitations, not to mention reliability issues, is to use yet more electrical current to run a Peltier device, usually in conjunction with water cooling or heat pipes…
… Without getting into the gory details of power factor correction and having everyone’s eye balls roll back in your head from dweeb overload, suffice it to say that better quality power supplies incorporate additional electronics that greatly improve the efficiency of the unit…
… As an example, Apple Computer chose an inexpensive, proven forced air cooling design for their new G5 Tower, but also chose to employ nine independent, thermostatically–controlled fans in four separate chambers with perforated metal front and rear fascia to keep everything cool…”

Column #47 February 2004 - Snails & Puppy Dog’s Tails

Part Three of my three part look at Open Source Software…

Some excepts: “…We’ve been discussing Open Source Software (OSS) in general and audio in particular and, if you’re into desktop production, you’ll get a kick out of all the other things you can do with OSS and an old computer…
Not all OSS is operating systems…Starting with practical stuff, SourceForge, currently the largest repository of open source code and applications, lists several hundred results just searching for the string “MPEG.”…
Asset management increasingly is an issue for media producers, so you may want to evaluate MPEG Database, “a collection of PHP scripts and classes that allow you to catalog and search your MPEG files (MP3) and their header info.”…
For those of you with something to hide, there are many tools and applications that provide AES functionality…Not that AES, the other AES — the Advanced Encryption Standard…”
...Fans of Max, Cycling ’74’s geeky, object oriented signal processing framework, will appreciate GStreamer, a set of building blocks for the…construction of graphs of media-handling components, ranging from simple MP3 playback to complex audio (mixing) and video (nonlinear editing) processing.”

Column #48 March 2004 - Pedants In A Big Box

The first installment of an IT for Audio dictionary…

Column #49 April 2004 - Alpha Geeks & Gadget Phreaks

My annual roundup from MacWorld San Francisco & CES…

Some excepts: “…Now, with the help of Pixion’s PictureTalk, even Win users can join in. Though not anywhere near the cost of iChat, free being a good thing, PictureTalk brings welcome interoperability to the web conferencing party.
...The TOLIS Group, already having shipped the first enterprise–class backup solution for OS 10, is now providing a GUI–driven version of their BRU or Backup/Restore Utility technology....
...Collector makes a pack rat’s job a good bit easier by leveraging both the UPC bar codes on most commercial products and the huge databases of metadata on the Web.... Since Intelli also makes companion bar code products, IntelliScanner Collector looks to be an easy way to keep track of all the media that usually floats around a facility.
...Yes, Virginia, there’s even audio in them thar corn–puter hills…The Rogue Amoeba kids were singing the praises of the newest addition to their stable of audio utilities, Nicecast, the “…easiest way to broadcast music from OS X” over the ’net.
...While we’re on the subject of consumer software, I must mention good ol’ Aladdin Systems, since they're selling a bundle aimed at that same 13 year old who buys GarageBand and grows up to be either a guitarist (if she’s good), an audio engineer (if he’s middling) or a lawyer if they can’t figure out what else to do with themselves.”

Column #50 May 2004 - A Profound Loss

The 50th Anniversary column provides a look at lossless codecs…

Some excepts: “This month, I’m taking a look at an increasingly viable alternative to both bulky LPCM sound files and lossy compressed but compact audio files. That alternative is a lossless codec, which trims the fat without sacrificing aural satisfaction.
“… Suffice it to say that, now that broadband data services are available to most locations in the US, this allows audio geeks to pass sound files over public networks without too much of a transit time penalty.
“… The aforementioned Dolby controls MLP, the lossless codec mandated for use in the DVD-Audio format and their sometimes strident promotion of the format keeps licensing fees flowing in. But there are many other codecs out there, including several Open Source choices.
“… There are, however, some simple forms of lossless compression that you probably use every day to streamline your work and you may not even know it…One is the Zip file format, created by PKWARE and used everywhere to reduce file sizes for transmission over the ’net.”

Column #51 June 2004 - Pedants In A Big Box – Part Deux

The second installment of an IT for Audio dictionary…

Column #52 July 2004 - Pedants In A Big Box – Part Three

The third installment of an IT for Audio dictionary…

Column #53 August 2004 - Coming to Seneschal next month…

The fourth installment of an IT for Audio dictionary…

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