Tweaks

"Buried in the rubble of an audio disc format war, with no winner, lie the remains of two high-resolution audio formats, SACD and DVD-Audio," says the home electronics industry Web site, Audio Video Revolution.

That's maybe an exaggeration. SACDs and DVD-As continue to be issued by a few labels, mostly oriented to classical music, in these high-resolution, surround-sound (in some cases) formats. Technically, everyone agrees, they beat the sound of conventional CDs all hollow. Commercially, though, they are hanging on by a rope that is down to its last threads. At best, even if the formats survive (and we really only need one, not two — that's part of the problem), they will be a tiny niche market.

The competing formats, invariably compared to the Beta versus VHS debacle of two decades ago, are widely blamed for the lack of public acceptance. Check. Others say that few home music listeners are willing to go to the bother and expense of buying five speakers, or five speakers and a subwoofer, plus a multi-channel receiver, plus an SACD or DVD-A player, and hooking them up. That makes no sense to me. People by the millions have installed home theaters, which generally involve the same number of speakers and multi-channel electronics for DVDs. DVD players will even play DVD audio discs, not just videos. (SACD requires a player designed for the format, but most SACD players also play DVDs.)

Much more than those factors, the main reason for the collective yawn over high-res audio is the worst invention of the new century, the Satan-inspired MP3/iPod system. It has nearly destroyed the appetite for quality. Ten out of 10 audiophiles agree that owning an iPod should be a crime. The iPod is a step backward in music reproduction, and its devotees are Cro-Magnons who should devolve as fast as possible into amoebas. MP3, in order to be transmitted and downloaded over the internet, and to enable its pitiable users to store 14 billion songs (all of which are dance traxx that sound alike) onto their primitive devices, entails severely compressing the digital encoding. The result, when played, is to music what a PowerPoint presentation is to an essay.

But although full of exit wounds, the audience for high quality music reproduction is not going to disappear, which is why I think at least one of the high-res formats will stick around. There will be enough of an audience that cares to keep a few companies in business producing the software and hardware. Even the Lost Generation of iPod listeners will get older and, in select cases, wiser. A teenager who's downloading some poison-dripping MP3 file to his iPod at this moment will, 20 or 30 years hence, be listening to Miles Davis or the late (God bless him) Pavarotti uncompressed, either on a high-res CD or downloaded via a lossless compression format. (I understand that lossless compression already exists, though as yet no commercial application has been launched.)

But there is further good news.

Even if you lack the means, space, or motivation (but why should you lack the motivation?) for adding SACD or DVD-A capability to your existing sound system, there are several relatively simple and inexpensive ways to juice up the quality of the sound reproduction of your conventional CD collection, and I'm here to testify.

"Tweak" is audiophile jargon for any gadget or treatment that will upgrade the realism of what comes out of your speakers. There are literally hundreds of different tweaks, some commercial products, others homemade. Professional audio engineers tend to fall into nearly unstoppable fits of laughter over them, and it's quite possible that some of their inventors need to get out in the sunshine more often. But I'm going to let you in on several tweaks that have worked for me, and which I've appreciated right down to the ground, because although I have an SACD player and a couple of dozen SACDs, the vast majority of my music collection is on standard ("Red Book" in audiophilespeak) compact discs.

All of the following improve the sound of ordinary CDs played on my system. I can't guarantee what they will do on your system, but if your hardware is reasonably good you will probably notice the difference.

Mikr0-Smooth, developed by a small recording company called Mapleshade, is a kind of polish that you rub on the playing surface of a CD, then wash off. The polishing makes the plastic surface smoother, so the laser beam and microchips in your player have less work compensating for irregularities. I've used Mikro-Smooth on hundreds of discs and almost never failed to notice more dimensionality and presence in the sound of voices or instruments. (I do not endorse other Mapleshade products and am quite uneasy about the over-the-top way they hype their recordings, cables and collateral equipment, but fair is fair: their Mikr0-Smooth product is an incredible bargain.)

The Auric Illuminator is, similarly, gunk that you apply to the business side of a disc, then wipe it so the surface is clear but it remains as an invisible residue. (There is also a marker pen that you use to black out the edges and transparent center of a CD; I usually don't bother because it's extra work, but it may add to the effect.) The Auric Illuminator, too, reveals details and atmosphere that you never heard before.

The Marigo CD mat comes in two versions, which ring the register at 100 bucks and 200 bucks, respectively. I bought the cheaper one and was impressed enough to pop for the high-end model. I wouldn't say the more expensive mat gives you sound twice as good (whatever that might mean) as the less expensive one, but it adds yet more subtle joy. The CD mat is the easiest of all to use: just place it atop the CD in your player. That's all there is to it. I don't fully understand how it works — at a guess, mostly it stabilizes the disc as it spins, so the player reads it more accurately and has less error correction to perform — but work it does. It takes you more "inside" the notes; with a good recording, the results can be spectacular.

Not exactly a tweak, but another way of putting new life into your old CDs, is upsampling. When the CD was developed in the late '70s, the "word length" was standardized at 16 bits, and the sampling rate at 44.1 KHz. Once CDs appeared on the market, they were a popular success but many audiophiles scorned them, and there was widespread criticism among the cognoscenti that the sampling rate had been set too low. ("Forty-four thousand times a second is not enough," as the music critic Alan Rich said.)

Upsampling circuitry, in an outboard unit or built into a CD player, raises the score to 24 bits and as much as 192 KHz. I frankly do not know how a recording made at the original specs can be improved by sampling it at the higher rates used for DVD soundtracks and high-res audio, but once again, a touch of magic is there. Upsampling looked to be the Next Big Thing a decade ago, then virtually disappeared, owing to the expense of the units and mass-market indifference. It seems to be making a comeback, though. A couple of years ago Philips came out with a DVD/SACD player that incorporated upsampling, at a very reasonable price point, and I snapped one up. The Audio Advisor catalog lists several new players with upsampling technology, and I hope enough people discover its virtues to keep it alive for at least a minority market.

You can get far better music reproduction without embezzling from your company to pay for it. And if you're still at the MP3 stage, I'll pray for your soul.

It's official: Mexico invades U.S.

"Mexico does not end at the border," he said. "Wherever there is a Mexican, Mexico will be there."

That's the president of Mexico, George W. Bush — no wait, let me check my notes — sorry, I mean Felipe Calderón, speaking to legislators in his State of the Union address in the National Palace in Mexico City. It doesn't get more official than that.

You might want to print this article and save it, to have handy next time an open-borders refugee from reality tries to con you with the line about how our rapidly increasing population of Mexican border jumpers will be assimilated like previous immigrant groups.

Can you imagine the reaction if the political leader of Germany had said, back when Germans were emigrating to America, "Germany does not end at the border. Wherever there is a German, Germany will be there."

But he fiercely criticized the United States for failing to reform its immigration system this year while simultaneously bolstering border security.

"I again express an energetic protest for the unilateral measures, taken by the Congress and the government of the United States, that exacerbate the persecution and the humiliating treatment of undocumented Mexican workers," Calderón said.

Persecution? Humiliating treatment? Because we deport maybe one-tenth of one percent of Mexican illegals, usually only after they've committed a particularly nasty crime? Calderón knows this is a crock. He knows his amigo Bush would be over the moon if he could just eliminate all this stupid business of borders and bring in half the population of Mexico as a bottomless well of low-wage labor. No, he's a tinhorn politico-of-the-moment in a thoroughly corrupt nation financed by narcotics and wages paid in the U.S. and remitted to Mexico, and he's playing to the galleries.

That doesn't mean he isn't dangerous.

Calderón also said he would depart from Mexico's longstanding policy of non-intervention, allowing the country to take a bigger role in world affairs.

"We have pushed for an active foreign policy that allows Mexico to be a protagonist and not just a mere spectator of what happens in the world," he said.

Oops, a little bit of truth slipped out there. It's hardly non-intervention when you encourage a mass invasion of your own citizens into a neighboring country and then play the drama queen when the neighbor makes a few feeble gestures toward stopping the invasion.

One thing is clear. Mexico no longer feels any need to hide its aggression against and contempt for the United States. On that, at least, he and George W. Bush are dos hermanos.

States' rights redivivus?

"Redivivus" is a Latin word meaning revived or reborn, generally used to show the writer's deep learning. I had to look it up to make sure I was spelling it right (I wasn't).

When I was a kid, with only a superficial interest in politics, I gathered that "states' rights" were something you wouldn't bring in the house, a slogan of southern rednecks who hadn't been reconciled to outlawing slavery. Nothing I read had a kind word to say for the concept.

Maybe states' rights were a Bad Thing back then, or being promoted for wrong purposes. Lately, however, I've come to see the concept in a very different light, as I've been forced to recognize the incredible wisdom of the Constitution's plain statement that all powers not specifically enumerated as belonging to the federal government belonged to the states and the people.

It's been especially obvious since the federal government, including the president, a large percentage of the Congress, and the judiciary have decided on our behalf that a mass migration of unlettered, impoverished, and non-English-speaking Third Worlders is just what the United States needs.

Having observed at close hand some of the less savory results of the invasion, and it being abundantly evident that much more of the same was in store unless countermeasures were taken, states and localities have begun to do the job that Americans in the federal government won't do. The Kansas City Star reports:

Citing an “unnatural influx” of illegal immigrants, [Missouri] Gov. Matt Blunt on Monday ordered state troopers to start checking the immigration status of every person they arrest. …

The federal government has failed to act to curtail illegal immigration, and it’s time for Missouri to do something, he said.

(Tip of the hat: Mike Tuggle at Rebellion.)

Machiavelli, I believe, said that diseases in government are like diseases in the body: hard to discover while they are still curable, and after they become evident, hard to cure. The disease that has taken hold of our federal government is by now entirely visible. I am coming more and more to think that only local governments, still relatively subject to the will of the people, offer much chance of a cure.

States' rights redivivus? Bring 'em on.

Iceland out of the northern hemisphere now!

Uncyclopedia ("the content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"), an uncouth, grotesque, ridiculous, and very funny parody of Wikipedia, can tell you more than you want to know about things you didn't even know you didn't know about.

Want to reach a new level of understanding about Hitler's Ex-Girlfriends, Failure, Licensed Spellers, Famous Druids, Apathy, US Elected State-Level Executives Who Have Not Been Human, and much, much less? This is the site for you!

Oh, yes. Iceland.

"Anti-Icelandic sentiment is opposition or hostility toward the government, culture, or people of Iceland. Anti-Islandic sentiment is found in every country including Iceland itself."

"Iceland is known for being the biggest tourist trap in the world and more boring then watching a flower die of old age."

"Anti-Icelandic sentiments are not to be confused with Anti-Islandic condiments, although the two things are related. Anti-Icelandic condiments are condiments that are called 'diametrically opposed to everything Iceland stands for' by Icelandic ultranationalists, who advice that 'true Icelanders don't eat mayonnaise or mustard'."

Now you will not be surprised if you see this …

Flag burning is a common manifestation
of anti-Icelandic sentiment.

"We are going to get hit again"

That's the headline of an interview in Newsweek with Vice Admiral (ret.) John Scott Redd, who heads the government’s National Counterterrorism Center. I must admit I can't keep straight all the various security agencies this country relies on to help us stay in the land of the living, but I presume the top banana at an organization with this title must be in the loop. Admiral Redd says:

We’ve got this intelligence threat; we’re pretty certain we know what’s going on. We don’t have all the tactical details about it, [but] in some ways it’s not unlike the U.K. aviation threat last year. So we know there is a threat out there. The question is, what do we do about it?

He then answers his question:

And the response was, we stood up an interagency task force under NCTC leadership. So you have all the players you would expect: FBI, CIA, DHS, DIA, DoD, the operators—the military side comes into that—participating in an integrated plan, but integrated in a much more granular and tactical way than we’ve ever done before.

I don't know what a granular plan is, but I know a task force when I see one. That all these alphabet agencies are trying to play from the same score is good, but is it really the most effective way to protect the country?

The interview suggests the assumptions behind the government's counterterror activities. The main assumption is that the terrorist threat comes from one gang, Al-Qaeda, and that nothing can be done to stop them coming into the United States unless there is proof that will stand up in a law court.

I will give you good odds that when we are "hit again," as Admiral Redd is convinced will happen, the participants in the plot will turn out to have no evident connection with Al-Qaeda. They will be "regular guys" like the perpetrators of 7/7 in London. They'll have baseball teams they root for, good driving records, no criminal background.

It's worth noting that the last two intended terrorist plots that were prevented (Fort Dix, JFK) were stopped because of a snitch and a tip-off, respectively. Fine. We need all the help we can get, and the police and security agencies involved are entitled to take a bow for exemplary action using the sources they had.

The fact remains that there is no way to guarantee public safety against terrorists — all you can do is improve the odds. And the odds would be significantly improved if the terrorists never got into the United States at all.

There's no way to guarantee that, either, but there's something that would be a giant step forward. I'm sure you see where this is leading. We should stop Muslim immigration. Period. And check out very thoroughly any visitor from a Muslim country or a country with a large Muslim population, or who has an Arabic name, or who for any other reason arouses suspicion. That is feasible. Infiltrating every sleeper cell isn't.

Of course, it's drastic. Of course, it will inconvenience many innocent people. But nobody has a right to immigrate here, so would-be Muslim immigrants have no legitimate complaint. And if someone doesn't want to put up with questioning about why they are visiting, for how long, where they're going, and whatever else we want to ask them, they don't have to come here.

Naturally the ACLU and its acolytes will go off their heads. Discriminatory! Well, yes. That's the point. We're not up against a gang called Al-Qaeda, as though they were the Mafia or drug smugglers. We are, as the admiral admits, in a war. One with, as he puts it delicately, "a strong ideological content." Which is as close as he can come to saying out loud that Islam is a totalitarian system with a top layer of religion, and it's coming to get us.

Most Muslims aren't terrorists, but terrorists can easily pass for "moderate" Muslims. The next "hit" is being planned at this moment, and the planners will be trying for a grand slam. It's a point of honor for these blokes to raise the score each time.

Admiral Redd says, "We have come a long way. But these guys are smart. They are determined. They are patient. So over time we are going to lose a battle or two. We are going to get hit again, you know, but you’ve got to have the stick-to-itiveness or persistence to outlast it." Sorry, sir, but that's not good enough. I don't want to outlast an enemy that would like to take the lives of thousands or tens of thousands of us. I want to make it as close to impossible for them to succeed as we can. And it will be a lot harder for them to succeed if they're not here.

Advice to Indian cattle: Smile, look natural

"Indian cattle have to show police their photo ID cards"
— Headline, Toronto Star




Hair: Brown; Eyes: Brown; Height: 6'1"
Weight: 1,377 lb.
Religion: Declines to answer
Status: Sacred (India); Non-sacred (outside India)
Member since: 2007

But what if they insist on wearing the niqab when photographed?