People that I confront with this issue are quite shocked when they hear it for the first time (listening in a fully treated room).  This is something important to know for audio producers but also audio listeners should be more aware of this issue. Your listening experience will improve significantly if you improve your room with acoustic treatments. If you want to really dig into this topic I can suggest this giant wall of text as start: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

In order to improve the room sound there are basically two options (that can be combined). 1. Room treatment with special material, such as absorbers, to improve the acoustics of the room itself. 2. Equalizers that respond to the room problems and act accordingly, i.e. they raise the frequencies that the room attenuates and vica versa.

Option 1. is the one that enthusiasts and professionals have to look into first but I want to actually make a few notes about room Equalizers or more precisely: The IK Multimedia ARC System and a certain problem with it.

The IK Multimedia Room Correction System ARC is a VST Plugin, that audio producers can plug into their digital work stations, to even out the  problems of their room. (Hopefully in addition to acoustic room-treatment). However, in order to get used to the new sound, there is something quite important missing: The easy ability to listen to other (reference) productions in the same circumstances as when working on own productions. An audio workstation does not really suit as comfortable media-player and I know that a bunch of people are looking for a solution.

So, to finally come to the actual point that I wanted to write about: With Foobar 2000 and the George Yohng’s VST wrapper I finally found a stable solution. Now I can listen to music on a PC with the Room Correction Plugin. There is also a VST Plugin for Winamp but it was made in 2005 and never received an update and works unstable for me. Most importantly it does crash sometimes plus it throws the plugin out each time I load a new track.

So, just grab the freeware Foobar 2000 multimedia-player ( which is a general recommendation, as it is a slick and great player in itself)  http://www.foobar2000.org/ plus http://www.yohng.com/foobarvst.zip and there you go. If you do not know IK Multimedia ARC and want to find out more go to ikmultimedia.com. Please note that IK ARC is not freeware.

UPDATE:

An even better Plugin for Foobar 2000 is the VST Adapter 2.4 by Yegor Petrov. You can plug in many Vst plugins at the same time. Check it out here.

Cheers

Colorsync

What I find interesting is the direction of communication. Where as in the past people expressed something, hippies in fact even a sociopolitical attitude, the hands in the bottom row do not. The hands of Row 1 – 3 send out a message, the hands of the last row only receive.

Picture stolen without permission from my favourite blog over at kulturtechno

So long

Colorsync

Check out my little post about the “Never ending C64 Love” here if you like.

All the best

Colorsync

The Commodore C64 was the most popular home-computer ever made. Introduced in 1982 and with a production cease in 1994, which is an amazing long lifespan, sales are estimated to be near 30 million unites.  Some sources say 17 million but that would be still impressive.

Picture by Bill Bertram.

The C64 was considered to be a top computer until the late 80′s by many people. It’s graphic capabilities and it’s famous 3-voice synthesizer chip (SID – Sound Interface Device) were loved by many users, especially gamers.

The C64 Today

But I do not want to talk about the past, I want to talk about the present! But, well, today, many lovely C64s are old and yellowed.

But since the C64 is a never ending love-story many enthusiasts care a lot about their computers and that might look like this: Some crazy (in the best possible way) guys developed retr0bite, a tool that turns even the baddest looking C64 into a fresh looking unit.

Although the introduction of the C64 is now almost 3 decades behind us, the C64 is still alive. You might even hear the C64 SID sound-chip live in action when you walk the streets of Berlin nowadays.

Actually, music takes a huge role in keeping the C64 alive in our hearts (was that to pathetic?). There are some synthesizer projects out there that incorporate the C64 SID Chip. The Sid Chip features 3 oscillators and one analog filter with a bunch of special options. Two SID 8580 spare chips, proudly owned by Polignostix and carefully protected in an anti-static “jewelry box”, can be seen in the picture below 

Hardsid4You. This synthesizer can actually house 4 SID Chips, features a VST editor, can be connected to your modern USB port. [Link]

Then there is the DUY project: Midibox SID. An incredible synthesizer that can drive up to 8 SID chips and offers to many features to name here.

There are different iterations of the basic hardware layout. If you are skilled you can make your own. This one is the MB-6582 made by Midibox member Wilba.

And I can tell you that the hardworking Polignostix gnomes build two tiny SammichSIDS.

The SammichSID (smallest box in the video below) is another derivative of the Midibox SID, here presented by Midibox father Thorsten Klose:

And as you can hear in those examples, this synthesizer is a serious one. There are actually more hardware versions and also some software SID emulations.

Speaking of emulations, there are actually emulations that emulate the complete C64, allowing you to play classic C64 games. A prominent example is the VICE Emulator.

Commodore is actually alive again and they even reanimated the C64. But it’s just the casing that has something to do with the old C64. Most notably it has no SID Chip, the chip that has not been emulated perfectly yet (and probably never will). Instead the new C64 is full of average modern hardware and I doubt that it will sell well. I would prefer an IPAD or something like that any day.

Last but not least I want to provide some useful links. They can be found on a website, that, guess what, is hosted on a Commodore C64   [Link]

Cheers

Colorsync

The sound of the movie was chopped up into little pieces and rearanged by the order of loudness.

So, the louder the sound, the angrier Adolf Hitler, which fits pretty well.

Made by Johannes Kreider on Kulturtechno.de (Google English). Please let it evolve!

Bye

Colorsync

Originally posted by Johannes Kreidler (one of the makers of this play) on one of my favourite blogs: Kulturtechno

Thanks for reading (And watching)

Colorsync

The suspense curve is a bit to long for my liking, but a cool movie nonetheless.

Have a nice day

Colorsync

The court said, that students and scientists are not allowed to digitally copy or print out parts of the digital media library of the university Darmstadt.

Photographer: Michelle Meiklejohn - FreeDigitalPhotos.net

However, students and scientists, that need to quote from those digital books for their work, are  allowed to write off parts with pen and paper. Ding! Ding!

Photographer: Simon Howden - freedigitalphotos.net

The initiator of all this is the  German Publishers and Booksellers Association.

Have a nice day

Colorsync

Thought both spirals have different colors? Nope, they both have the same color. RGB 0,255,150 Check out more color illusions here if you want.

See you guys,

Colorsync (Polignostix)

And by the way. I wonder what that deal, to make Fallout 3 auto install and being dependent on G4WL  looks like. How much money flew or how high the shares are. Lame.

Anyways, here is the tool: Microsoft Windows Live Disabler Download Homepage

Thank you for reading

Colorsync

This article is about the atmosphere of the Fallen Earth MMO but a few short notes about other aspects of the game have to be made:

Fallen Earth Overview

- Fallen Earth is a Sci Fi MMORPG computer game
- Fallen Earth features a combat system which incorporates FPS style combat. You  have to aim to hit. There is no target-lock like in Tabula Rasa or Neocron.
- You can switch into first person or third person modes.
- Fallen Earth is a MMO with a quite complex crafting system. You can build kinda everything.
- It does not feature giant raiding like World of Warcraft.
- It is quite slow paced and smooth. It is not a game to log on for 20 minutes and roxxor.
- It does remind me of Anarchy Online in terms of game pace and depth.
- It does, as of today, not have a complex PVP system. This is planed tho afaik.
- The zones are really huge.
- You can distribute AP’s and build your character/avatar like you want.
- You can gimp your character by spending your AP’s wrongly.
- The game features shotguns, rifles etc. but also something like magic which is called mutations.

Fallen Earth And Fallout Online

First off, when speaking of Fallen Earth, I often hear the term Fallout Online. This is valid because those two games share a post apocalyptic setting. Modern societies that were thrown back in evolution, due to catastrophes caused by humanity (and not by evil gods or monsters (yawn)).

However, the background scenario of Fallen Earth is quite different if you look closer. The Fallout pre-war society  was a  fictional atom happy society (everything is fused with atom power even radios and cars) with a 50′s touch. It was  a naive, happy living society that was bombed into the apocalypse. Regarding the mind setting of the pre- war societ in Fallout, it is quite realistic compared to the real 50′s mainstream society. The cultural but especially the technological evolution was quite different in Fallout than in reality. Basically it was more advanced and outdated at the same time. They got advanced floating robots and computers like C64 at the same time.

The Fallen Earth background is a more realistic and modern one. You see laptops and modern (but broken and rusty) cars as remains of the pre-catastrophe society. It looks more like the late 90′s society that was lead into the apocalypse. Fallen Earth looks more realistic and looks more like if our real world was affected by an apocalypse.

However, it looks more unspectacular to me because being more realistic means being more common and normal. And common and normal may not be as interesting as a stylised fictional and very emotional society, which invites me to look closer and discover things of the past (i.e. architecture, items, books, speech, attitude, mood, emotions).

The vibe of the setting of Fallout and it’s society was more emotional and touched me more than the somewhat sober vibe of Fallen Earth. But this is of course subjective.  And:  Fallen Earth has a lot of fictional elements as well and it does invite the player to slip into a world that wants to be explored, too, no doubt.

Fallen Earth Atmosphere (World Design, Graphics & Sounds)

In general Fallen Earth is moody. It delivers a post apocalyptic feeling quite well. You can almost feel the heat of the dry wastelands coming into your computer room because of the world design, the graphics, the atmosphere sounds and the music.

You can even apply a special filter to the graphics that makes the world look even more wasted, dry and hot. Basically it colors the world into more brownish tones and takes a bit saturation away. It is not every one’s taste but it is optional, so it is good.

The graphic engine features shadows that move along with the sun, which is very moody. It also features a long view distance, which also helps to bring up that “omg I am a poor fella in a huge post apocalyptic world ” feeling.

The graphic performance is mediocre. It has been improved a lot but there are some areas – towns mainly – that should perform better. But the developers are on it. Generally, I want to say about the graphics, that if you take your time to configure the graphics, the game looks really good. Far better than the general saying of people.

There are wide dried out areas, the classical wasteland, areas with green nature, abandoned areas, dead areas, alive areas. You will see an abandoned and rotten theme park and huge satellites inside craters who fell from the sky and people collecting scrap from it. Tho variety is there, the post apocalyptic feeling is present kinda everywhere, compared to the MMO Earthrise, which also features areas that do not have post apocalyptic elements at all.

The world and society design has a lot of depth and variation. You meet a lot of different npcs and factions with different points of views about things. Points of views which are present and important (more than ever) in our real life society as well. You got turbo capitalists, destructive anarchists ( tho it is a bit cliche, that they are so unproductive and destructive), people caring for others, people not caring for others, geeks, people focusing on nature and they all argue about how humanity should move on. It’s good, it’s deep, it’s exactly what I expect good games to be. Entertaining but with depth and topics connected to real life.

The atmo sounds (i.e. wind) are good and deep. They are however not very detailed and as good as of the Fallout titles. There should be more variations and the sounds could be more emotional and powerful.

Music wise it is also good. It features smooth and deep music. Thank god, no orchestral mainstream hollywoodish crap. But again, the music can not touch the music of Fallout (1 + 2). It is not produced with so much focus on details and optimization of it’s elements.

Conclusion

There could and should be written much more about this deep and impressing game. But for now, that’s it. I hope I could provide a few impressions that may help you in deciding if you want to spend time to try the game out or not. All in all, I can recommend checking out Fallen Earth regarding the atmosphere but also regarding all the other game elements. If you are tired of superficial games with no depth like Runes of Magic and like science fiction, then go for it!

www.fallenearth.com

Thank you for reading

Colorsync