poisednoise

I think it's been pretty clear for a while that Dorico was going to become the only game in town, at least for professionals - Musescore is surprisingly good for what it costs (nothing) and they have an excellent team, but for paid apps Sibelius has been on a downward trajectory ever since Avid fired the entire development team, and I understand that Finale also has lacked development recently.

Switching notation package is horrendous, and it takes a long time to get good at a new one, but I am pleased that Finale have at least negotiated a good cross-grade deal so that the pain is at least primarily one of time rather than financial also. The Dorico team at Steinberg are excellent, and anyone who switches to the application will find them accessible and responsive. I understand for the Finale users this is a tough pill, but at least you will find yourselves in good hands with Dorico.

To all those asking about the 3.5mm jack:
Anything aimed at the education market needs to retain the audio jack, as the alternatives are far too costly for a school.

• Lightning headphones: still so much more expensive than their 3.5mm counterparts, and students are unlikely to have their own, whereas they will have their own 3.5mm headphones. 
• Lightning adaptors: not cheap, breakable, and prone to disappear into student’s pockets. 
• Wireless headphones: again, expensive, and more prone to breaking than 3.5mm alternatives. 

radarthekat said:

First, it wasn’t until Apple showed the way.  Par for the course on that one.

Second, sound quality is subjective, but okay, Samsung makes good hardware.

Sound quality doesn’t need to be subjective, although there may be some element of that also in any review. I’m disappointed that they don’t appear to have backed up their findings with some frequency graphs. Simply talking about the bass line in “So What” is not a suitable metric.

Out of interest, I spent about 10 minutes sampling every 10th of DBK's posts as I was curious to see if you extrapolated into the future at what point DBK's posts in this thread would actually exceed the total number of posts in the thread...

I'm afraid I discovered that he's currently not really quite exceeding the 45 degree angle, but I thought it was rather fun nonetheless:

The article implies that an anechoic chamber and a soundproof room are the same thing - they're not. There's often overlap: anechoic chambers have to be soundproof, but not the other way around.

An anechoic chamber has zero reverberation - that is, any sound is absorbed completely by the walls. A soundproof room can be highly resonant, soundproof just means no sound gets out. Recording studios tend not to be anechoic (although the vocal booth frequently gets close) but they are always soundproof.

To all intents and purposes a wide open space at altitude is anechoic - the sound has nothing to bounce off, so there's no return - but it's definitely not soundproof!

An excellent explanation of the potential problems with this design here: https://youtu.be/8h5hniSM7LQ.

poisednoise said:

I'm currently booked on a return flight on a 737-8 in July, and I really hope by that point the decision's been made that they all need to be scrapped and start again.

You hope that a plane is "scrapped" rather than "fixed"?

Obviously I’d prefer it to be fixed, however I dont want to fly on a plane that is inherently unstable by design, as this one is, and requires software to ensure it remains in the air. Given the fundamental issues with the design, short of putting new smaller engines on the plane (basically turning it into one of the earliers generations of 737) I’m not sure what can be done, and even that fix might not be feasible.

MCAS is a system that’s common on fighter aircraft where unstable designs can lead to greater manoeuvrability: I believe however that it doesn’t have any place on a passenger aircraft, where safety should surely come before any other consideration. If you’re needing to design software just to keep your plane in the air, then hiding its existence from the pilots (it wasn’t mentioned in the original manual apparently) and additonally changing its specs radically after FAA approval, without telling the FAA (they approved a system which could move the tail fin by 0.6 degres maximum, whereas the system as installed can move it by 2.5 degrees) something is seriously wrong. 

ricmac said:

" paint a picture of Apple deeply in the throws of development."

THROWS of development??  My best guess is that you were trying to use the word "throes."  But even there, I'm not sure that's an appropriate use of the word.  Good lord, discover the Thesaurus!

If we’re going down this road, let’s also have a moan about “Despite Apple choosing to thus far not compete” which needs to be “Despite Apple choosing thus far not to compete”. But tbh I think we either accept the writing, offer to be editors ourselves, or just go read another site. And in any case surely it’s a dictionary they want rather than a thesaurus.

For those of you saying that the "creatives" are overeacting: as a musician I can't explain how repulsed i was by that ad - musical instruments are more than just tools, they are in many cases true works of art - good stringed instruments for instance tend to be hundreds of years old, unique, irreplaceable. When you play them they become an extension of you, something that you don't just hear, but feel with your whole body. I understand the message of course, but it's (figuratively) tone-deaf. It's as if Elmer's glue decided to advertise how great their glue was by showing us a whole lot of horses willingly walking into an abattoir. 

Am I exaggerating? Well, let me share with you an anecdote.

In the 1980s and 90s in the UK there was only ONE musical instrument insurance company: Allianz. They were superb - reliable, good value, and with an excellent reputation. Then they ran a series of adverts in concert programmes, showing destroyed instruments, purporting to show why you should make sure you had proper insurance. Professional musicians, despite the fact that Allianz were the best insurer, left them in droves, because their adverts were so distasteful.  Arguably even today they have the best insurance policies for instruments in the UK, but even 30 years later, their market share hasn't recovered. Even the UK Musicians Union does not recommend them, but partners with a competitor, of which there are now many in the UK, where there used to be none. Whether you consider that rational or reasonable, it's how it is: musicians care about their instruments more than almost anything. A professional classical musician will easily spend close to a 6-figure sum for their instrument (and some will spend well more than that), but unlike a computer they will reckon it will last them their lifetime and well more. Beyond the actual monetary value, this is something you are holding and producing music with for 8 or more hours a day, every day. It's part of who you are. Destroying one in an ad for an ephemeral and comparatively ridiculously cheap iPad, whether CGI or not, is a major faux-pas.

It should be noted that all this data is US only, which is not clear in the article, but is clearer in the original source. 

Regardless of the streaming service, be it Apple Music or Spotify, it's a terrible deal for the label and the artist, particularly for the classical artist, as the whole streaming market is predicated on repeat listenings... and you don't necessarily want to listen to Shostakovich's 8th string quartet 4 or 5 times a day. This is why a lot of the classical labels such as Hyperion and Gimmel don't allow their catalogue to be streamed. They get significantly more from a single CD sale than from hundreds of playings.