[ Hypnos Forum ]

Yet, I'm concerned this looks something like a more intelligently rendered take on Transformers...

Darren, you may not believe this, but I almost added exactly this comment to my post.

I actually think a "big robot" story with more heart and intelligence than Transformers could be a really great thing, though you seem to intend the comment as a slight.

This new Man of Steel trailer makes me a little more optimistic.

Man of Steel - Official Trailer #2 [HD]

Nobody should blame an artist for a limited edition selling out if it was the label's decision to release a quantity too small to satisfy immediate demand.

Also, listeners/customers should realize that it's much easier for artists like Steve Roach and Robert Rich to keep everything in print, because they sell a lot more copies, thus a repressing of 500 or 1,000 CDs is much easier decision to make.

I think the best thing for the artist, the label and the customer is when editions are made available that "fit" with the artist and label's ability to sell a given quantity over a reasonable period of time. Most people understand that sometimes there isn't sufficient demand to justify a re-pressing of something that's out of print... at least not immediately.

The problem comes up when labels make the decision to press a too-small quantity in order to generate a frenzy of short-term buying, and everyone who missed out on that initial window of availability is screwed. This harms the artist too, because there are people who want to hear the music and can't, and I would argue it even harms the label itself --  because if they had planned better, they could have sold more copies and made more money. Clearly it hurts the listener, unless they're poised to buy the moment the release comes out.

I think the upgrade deals offered by Sony are pretty cheap but I can't name a single compelling reason why you need to upgrade to the latest. The features I find compelling in Sound Forge have been present for many, many years. I'd say if you have a copy of 7.0 and it's working for you, skip the upgrade and spend the money on plugins or something.

Pete, if you're using Windows, I wholeheartedly endorse Sound Forge for Windows. I've been using it since the first days of recording my album Sudden Dark in 1995-96. It's the only Windows software I've continued to still use at home in the past decade or so, and I recommend it over any other two-track audio editor on any platform.

I've tinkered a bit with the Mac version, though still not as much as I intended to. It has quite a different feel from the Windows version... a few things have a similar feel, though other things are located in different places. I need to dig out some files in need of editing, restoration and mastering, and force myself to go through all the steps using this Mac version. It would be nice to have no need at all for a Windows PC in the studio, and Sound Forge was the one thing holding me back.

While I was in college, I was obsessive about music but only had enough money to buy a few CDs per month. I listened to these obsessively, studied the liner notes, and at the UO library read all the music magazines I could get my hands on.

My crazy collector days probably started after I got out of college in 1989. I started to get carried away with the mindset others have mentioned here, collecting for the sake of completion, the goal being the elimination of gaps in the collection. Once I decided I loved Japan or New Order or Kraftwerk, I had to have everything. It wasn't enough to have the domestic albums CD singles. I had to have the import variations, especially if even a single track was different.

When my interests drifted more and more toward ambient music and electronica, I had a lot of catching up to do. It's hard to fill out a collection in a hurry. It takes time! For several years I pursued that, but before long I started Hypnos, and that changed my mentality about CD collecting. I became much more focused on the music the label was releasing, and began receiving much more music intended as demos for the Hypnos label or promos for the Hypnos store that I kind of lost the habit of going to CD stores.

I do miss those days, though, browsing through Tower or some of the local indie shops in Portland and Eugene and Seattle .

The events of Prometheus were decades before Alien... 30 years I think.

Prometheus is one of those movies that generates such widely divergent opinions. I think it depends on what people were hoping for going in. People who wanted a Cameron-like big-budget Hollywood spectacle were disappointed. People who wanted a prequel exploring how the aliens came about seemed to like it a lot.

Likewise, not sure what to say. Namlook is one of the few figures of the ambient music world I've never met or talked to or at least emailed, yet I don't underestimate his impact and influence, which were matched by few.

We need to start a "bring back all the Joes" movement.

I stand by my assertion that an SSD drive is the most significant upgrade you can make to your computer to the price -- it will make a bigger difference in performance than a similar expenditure in expanded RAM or faster CPU.

I'm not advocating a 128GB SSD as the sole storage device in a person's computer. I'm talking about relinquishing the Windows-centric view that a person's entire storage structure should be encompassed in a single device, that system files and program files and data files are all equivalent. They're not equivalent.

My statement that shutdown/restart is much faster wasn't meant to say that this will make a big difference for most users, but meant to demonstrate that in an operation where many small files are read or written in rapid succession, the SSD will really shine. The most obvious example of this performance gain will be in the shutdown/restart, which might take 30 seconds instead of 90 seconds, but you will also notice a snappier response in things like program startup, install/uninstall.

Tomas, I don't know what SSDs cost where you live, but here I can purchase a 128GB SSD for about $80, which is a trivial amount of money to upgrade a computer compared to adding RAM or upgrading CPU or graphics card. The is absolutely no way you can achieve equivalent "bang for the buck" with any other $80 computer upgrade, unless your machine is totally starved for RAM (for example, if you have less than 1GB of RAM, yes, you should upgrade RAM before doing the SSD upgrade). And I'll say again, the point is not that the 128GB become your only storage drive -- just that you use it for your Windows, Mac OS or Linux system install. The assertion that the SSD won't help if you have a "messy" system doesn't make sense. Do a clean system install on the SSD and it's not messy any more. I've tried SSDs on Windows, Mac and Linux installs and the result is the same.

I have yet to talk to anyone who has tried the SSD upgrade who has not ended up completely happy with the result, and convinced that it was the best possible option. I just try to make sure people don't misunderstand, and try to change ALL their storage to SSD. That misses the point, and ends up wasting a lot of money.