[ Hypnos Forum ]

Interesting read. I completely agree with it.
Reminds me of those who collect tons of vintage synths, build a studio, and yet seemingly never find the time to produce any music with said gear.

I think DM has done a good job in very slowly changing their sound over the past four albums, while still remaining "Depeche Mode". Have you listened to Playing the Angel and Sounds of the Universe? I would consider this new single very similar to those albums.

I think Ultra and Exciter was the exit of the older DM that we grew up on. To my ears, nothing beats Violator. 

Do I like the new single? I wouldn't say I love it (the chord progression is pretty tired), but then it always takes time for me to warm up to new music. Ultimately, DM has never let me down (see what I did there?), so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and purchase their new CD.

Likewise from Canada! 

And although it's nice to be able to download from somewhere other than iTunes or Amazon, especially in FLAC(!), I'm going to keep buying his physical CDs as long as it makes sense for him to produce them.

Same here, but having the ability to hear a whole release before making the decision to buy is great.
For the record, I'm definitely purchasing Soul Tones.

An excellent documentary about what many of us have been talking about for years. Technology has allowed everyone to be creative, and ultimately share it with the world. Is that a good or bad thing?

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities.

But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era.

PressPausePlay on Vimeo

I have to admit, I came to Faxlabel ambient rather late. I discovered it through a Shoutcast server in '98 called J's Ambient

This is exactly how I discovered his work as well. His work was a huge inspiration and definitely part of my shift toward writing ambient music.

I had your blog in my news reader all this time, and was surprised to suddenly see new updates. Good to see you back at it! 

As we know, it's smart not to install a new OS on a mission critical computer (aka your PC/Mac you use for making music). At minimum, I'd wait a year until the kinks were worked out. However, it seems Microsoft might've done something...right? Crazy, I know, but hear me out.

Check out this in-depth article from Cakewalk about using SONAR in Win8.
http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a-benchmark-for-music-production-applications/

Here's a few snippets:

Desktop apps still have access to low level audio and can communicate with drivers at a low level to get low latency performance. There are no changes to how drivers work as far as desktop applications go, so its very likely that your Windows 7 drivers will work on Windows 8 without modification. (unless the driver installation prevents it)

The results of the benchmarks were surprisingly good! Windows 8 performed better than Windows 7 across the board in all categories, and in many cases with fairly dramatic performance gains.

Very curious given OS upgrades generally run slower on the same hardware, and in doing so, breathes new life into an aging rig. I guess they finally decided to remove some of the bloat. Haha!

Software is generally forgiving when running on a new OS, and will run without a hitch. My biggest concern is normally driver support (especially for older hardware), and how the hardware interacts with the OS. The possibility that Win7 drivers will work in Win8 is very encouraging. I know that Vista drivers sometimes worked in Win7, but it seemed a rare occurrence.

Obviously, there'll still be bugs to work out, but it seems we're so much more ahead than ever before when dealing with a new OS. I noted Mike G's message on FB that it was quite different. Personally, that doesn't scare me. A new experience can be fun, as long as the change provides improvements to the user experience.

Has anyone taken the plunge or test-driven Win8? What are you thoughts?

To clear up any confusion: While ALAC & FLAC use different algorithms, they are sonically identical to WAV (or any uncompressed format). There's zero loss in fidelity. That's why they're called lossless formats. 

And yes, I know there are people out there who insist there is a difference between lossless and WAV (or AIFF). Let's just call them crazy. 

Here's more info on all the lossless formats available out there: http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html

I think it goes without saying that you should back up/copy that disc ASAP. You're correct that the label side of the disc is very close to where the data actually resides.  The bottom side is very thick in comparison.
Given your description, I'm very surprised it reads at all. Is the artwork/silkscreen print coming off, or is there another layer on top? If the artwork is okay, that would explain why it still works.