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Sunday, June 22, 2003

Random thought:

Changing my ears' point of view

I've been in, around, over, under, and through radio since sometime in 1963, so I know a little bit about audio. For radio, it's all there is. If the sound quality is bad, the program is bad. And, generally speaking, computer audio is bad.

Ahh ... "was" bad.

Because I don't like bad sound and because I use the computer to edit interviews that are used on Technology Corner, I've improved the audio a bit. Some interviews are recorded by phone. Others are done in the field on MiniDisc with a good microphone. Either way, I want to hear what's going on so I've always had a high quality Creative Labs sound card. There are better sound cards -- ones designed for use in a broadcast environment -- but they cost $500 and up. The SoundBlaster Audigy II, by comparison, costs about $200.

At home, I have a small 10-channel mixer that I used to prepare audio for the show. The output is fed into a Pioneer amp with a couple of Infinity bookshelf speakers. This isn't what you'd find in a high-end recording studio (or even in a mediocre radio station) but it's been adequate for my purposes.

At least, that's what I thought.

The system is good enough that I can tell the difference between a 64-bit MP3 and 180-bit MP3. Even with my old ears. The 180-bit MP3s sound pretty good.

Was. Could. Sounded. Make all those verbs PAST TENSE.

Tragedy struck in the form of a FedEx delivery person. She showed up at the front door carrying a large box. (The delivery person appeared to be about 5-4 and maybe 100 pounds, so I assumed the box she was carrying wasn't heavy. She handed it to me and I decided that she may be only 100 pounds, but it's all muscle. I'm a little more than 100 pounds and most of it is not muscle. But that's another story.)

I struggled out from under the box, signed the delivery form, and discovered that Klipsch had loaned me a Promedia 5.1 "Personal Audio System" consisting of 2 "front" bookshelf speakers, 2 "rear" bookshelf speakers, a "center" speaker, a sub-woofer that contains the power components, and a control box. So I cleaned off the desk, positioned the 2 front speakers on either side of the monitor and the center speaker behind the monitor. The rear speakers aren't ideally located -- the're really just off to the side because the monitor faces into a corner. And the sub-woofer is, of course, under the desk.

This set of speakers is probably the first electronic device I have ever encountered that ships with every cable you need to use it. Better yet, the cables were long enough. This probably costs Klipsch a couple of dollars extra per set of speakers -- money they could add directly to the bottom line if they shipped without cables. Somebody decided to do the right thing and this is one of the small favors that consumers will remember.

The only thing I can think of to complain about is that the speaker cables aren't labeled. The person who didn't know better would end up with 5 pairs of identical cables at the sub-woofer (which also houses the amplifier) and no idea about which wires to plug into what connectors. I'm no Greg Savoldi, but I've dealt with things like this before, so I labeled the control ends of the cable sets (LF, CF, RF, LR, RR) before installing them. When it came time to plug the cables in, there were no questions about which went where. Klipsch has even color-coded the wires that deliver audio from the sound card to the amp.

Tragedy?

I turned the computer back on and listened to the Windows XP start-up music in 5.1 surround sound. "Pretty nice," I thought. So then I fired up some MP3 files that I've made or downloaded over the past few years. Not only could I tell the difference between 64-bit and 180-bit MP3 files, but I concluded immediately that the low-bit-rate files are unlistenable.

The Klipsch Promedia 5.1 Personal Audio System highlights every fault in those low-bit files. MP3s at 180-bits or higher are OK, but now I can tell the difference between the original CD and the MP3 made from the original CD.

And to make things even worse, my computer is now a better sound system than my sound system. The computer puts out the best audio in the house. It beats by far the audio system in the family room. It beat (even further) the audio system in the computer room. Audio purists should note that this system would not beat high-end audio systems thost cost thousands of dollars.

No charts. No diagrams.

I don't run an audio testing lab. I don't have charts to show that one system is better than the other. It wouldn't matter anyway in this cramped, crowded, acoustically-challenged room. What I can tell you is that my ears are smiling.

As I write this, I'm listening to a Charlie Daniels Band CD and I can both hear and understand words that I've previously missed. The highs are crisp and clear. The lows (even with the sub-woofer backed off a bit) make me think that I'm on stage with the band.

I'm not an audio perfectionist; but I can tell when something is unlike anything I've heard at home. And this is it.

What about games?

I've admitted on the show a time or two that I love games, but that I ignore them. Games often point the way to where operating systems and applications will go. When the rest of the computing world was looking at text and the operating system was MS-DOS, game developers were working on graphical interfaces.

The graphical interfaces have been with us for more than a decade now and the current crop of games pick up hints about what to do based on mouse movements. Not "point and click" but movements -- up, down, left, right. Applications and operating systems are trying to figure out what it is we want and provide it before we ask. (This is somewhat less than pefect at the moment, but it's getting better.)

So I like to take a look at new games, but after one or two sessions I stop playing the game. As games become more "realistic", sounds becomes a more important part of the experience, though.

Just as Carole King (I've changed CDs) appears to be playing her piano right in front of me, sound localization is essential to realism in games. Events that occur on your left or right (or behind you) should sound like that's where they're happening.

With the understanding that I'm not a power gamer, also understand that the difference between games with standard powered stereo speakers and stereo run through an amplifier is sufficient that you'll never go back to standard powered speakers once you've used a stereo system.

Replace the stereo system with the Klipsch Promedia 5.1 Personal Audio System and your first comment (internal or spoken) is likely to be, "Oh, my ...... (insert intensifier or expletive of your choice here)." Go back to the old system and the sound will be flat and dead.

... or a home entertainment system?

We don't have a home theater system, but I do run the TV audio through an amplifier. This system would doubtless also add depth to those systems in the same way they add depth to the computer.

The technology involved ...

Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." He also said, "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." Klipsch, it would seem, has provided real-life examples of both quotations.

When I unpacked the speakers, I looked at the bookshelf units. They're not very tall, wide, or deep. They don't weigh a lot. I had no reason to expect that these small speakers would be able to deliver any decent amount of bass.

Granted, there's a sub-woofer under the desk, but even with that unit turned down the bass is surprisingly good. With the sub-woofer adding to the overall sound "picture" the bass is incredibly robust. If I pump up the sub-woofer, I start getting complaints from downstairs. (Fortunately, the computer room is over the dining room.)

What's "magic" here is that the bookshelf speakers are too little and too light to produce decent audio, yet they do.

Control yourself!

One of the better features of the system is the control panel. A small tower with 1 large (master) knob and 3 smaller (center, rear, and sub-woofer) knobs also included a digital LED volume level display and an on/off or headphone listening mode switch (also for quick muting of the system when someone istrying to talk to you.) The tower also has two stereo miniplug jacks, one for headphone output and one that allows you to connect any portable audio device that uses a stereo miniplug output.

For the first time ever, I have speakers that are better than headphones. And I have a control panel that's immensely better than the Windows volume control.

Oh ...

And a BIG thanks to Klipsch for loaning me this system. Now I'm sure to be disappointed by anything else that I listen to on the computer! For more information, see http://www.klipsch.com/ and follow the links to the Promedia page.

Corel and CorelWORLD:
Where do we go from here?

I've just returned from the 14th and "last" CorelWORLD. That may not be as final as it sounds, and just about everyone left the conference with more optimism than when they arrived, but nothing is certain.

Corel has managed to overcome victory and drag itself to defeat more than once. The company's first product was a utility designed to display headlines in Ventura Publisher. From that humble beginning came CorelDRAW. When I saw the first version of Draw at a conference in New York City, I ordered a copy before checking out of the hotel to go home.

Over the years, Corel has consistenly been far ahead of competing products -- even products designed for the Macintosh. Corel's products have never caught on with graphics professionals, though, and there are several reasons for this:

• Graphics professionals have historically used Macs and until version 8, Draw was not available on the Mac.
• Corel's advertising routinely looked amateurish and touted all the other "stuff that's in the box" instead of the features and benefits Draw could offer.
• The price was far too low. Graphics professionals expect to pay a lot more and to get a lot less. When a product is priced too low, the product loses "perceived value" in the buyer's mind.

It gets worse.

Corel was once a "FOM" -- friend of Microsoft. When Windows 95 started shipping, Corel Draw shipped on the same day. Microsoft highlighted Draw. Version 5 wasn't regarded as a stellar release, but it still had Microsoft's backing.

When Corel decided to chase the Linux market and offer an entire line of products to compete with Microsoft Office, the company found itself on the Microsoft enemies list. More about that in a moment.

And worse.

Corel developed a solid reputation over the years for buggy software that was released too soon. In some cases, ship dates were driven by sales and marketing or possibly by the precarious financial state of the company. Some versions were virtually unusable as shipped, and these became stable only following the installation of service release 2.

Meanwhile ... Xerox had purchased and then spun off Ventura Publisher, an application that was clearly better than Adobe Pagemaker for nearly any kind of project. Xerox's clueless advertising (and lack of advertising) combined with Adobe's heavy advertising and market position as the Postscript company led to a lopsided victory for Pagemaker.

Xerox wasn't able to find a buyer for Ventura and was about a week away from shutting down the operation when rumors started circulating in Ottawa. Corel quickly made an offer for the company, bought it at a fire-sale price, and set itself up to be the publishing professional's company.

Corel suffered from CADD, though. Corporate attention deficit disorder resulted in time-consuming and expensive forays that drained the company's cash:

• When WordPerfect became available after years of mismanagement by Novel, Corel bought it in the apparent belief that for customers would come rushing back. They didn't.
• Corel then spent a couple of years working to create a Java version of WordPerfect. The goal was to develop a cross-platform word processor to knock off Microsoft Word. The project ended when Corel realized what the rest of the world already knew: Java isn't a fast enough programming language to support large projects such as word processors.
• The next dead-end alley Corel mugged itself in is called Linux. The company developed a Linux version of WordPerfect and offered it with Linux (the "free" operating system). Linux is a wonderful operating system for Web servers, but it's not going to take over the desktop anytime soon.

With Corel hurting from years of mismanagement, the board finally forced out the president, Mike Copeland, and brought in a level-headed administrator, Derek Burney.

Even then Corel's flights of fancy hadn't been grounded. The company launched a new brand name, "Procreate", that would be used primarily for Mac products. The company was about to launch yet another brand name ("Deep White") when they realized that each new brand name required advertising, support, and other efforts that they didn't have funds to pay for. Everything is once again under the "Corel" banner.

During Burney's tenure, a new version of Ventura Publisher was released, Wordperfect became stable and usable, Corel Graphics Suite 11 has been released for both PC and Mac, and the company has been marginally profitable.

What now?

A California company, Vector Capital, has bought shares of Corel stock that were owned by Microsoft. (How Microsoft came to own a minority share of Corel is a long, convoluted story that involves the Department of Justice.) Vector's stated goal is to buy the remaining shares of stock and to take the company private. Publicly traded companies pay millions every year to be listed and Vector feels that Corel's loyal base of employees and customers, along with recent acquisitions, are the foundation for a profitable operation.

Vector could successfully manage the company as a private concern for several years and then take it public again. It's possible that parts of the company could be sold off, but those who have spoken with Vector's representatives have the impression that the goal is to keep the company whole.

The weakest link at Corel today is Ventura Publisher. Quark XPress and (increasingly) Adobe InDesign are the market leaders. Still, those of us who have used Ventura over the years and who have looked at XPress and InDesign know that Ventura offers more capability right out of the box than any competing program and that Ventura is still the only publishing program that can handle a 5000-page book with the same ease as a 1-page broadside.

Ventura is unlikely to win over the hearts and minds of InDesign or XPress users, but it could be positioned as the program for people who have outgrown Microsoft Publisher or who are frustrated with the difficulties of using WordPerfect or Word as a publishing application.

Should that happen, the irony would be that "professionals" would continue to do their jobs the hard way while the "amateurs" would find themselves with an application far more powerful than they expected.

Note: The historical information was all from memory and may be subject to "rounding errors".

Nerdly News

Albert Einstein said ...

"Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

On Wednesday, e-mails started arriving all around the country. The subject line sayd "Fraud Alert". The message claimed to be from BestBuy.com and urged recipients to go to a "special" BestBuy website to enter their credit card and Social Security numbers.

It was, of course, a fraud. Best Buy acted quickly and got the websites shut down. Customers who fell for the ruse have been advised to contact the Federal Trade Commission's Identity Theft Program. The FBI is on the case.

Subpoenas have been served to Internet service providers that appear to have been hosts of the fraudulent websites. The scheme is an old standard in the bunko game, updated a bit to work on the Internet. Instead of having to deal with one victim at a time, person to person, now the creeps can con thousands of people at a time without ever having to speak to one of them.

PeopleSoft tells Ellison to bug off

The board of PeopleSoft has voted to recommend that shareholders reject a $6.3 billion takeover bid from Oracle. Oracle increased its offer by more than $1 billion this week. PeopleSoft's board says the merger would be the subject of an antitrust investigation and that the result would be damage to PeopleSoft's business.

PeopleSoft had been planning to acquire the smaller J.D. Edwards company, also a maker of specialized business software. Oracle, the Microsoft of the business software industry, has been trying to derail PeopleSoft for years. The company filed suit to block the deal between PeopleSoft and J. D. Edwards.

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