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Old Sep 6, 2012, 07:41 AM
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quintin3265 quintin3265 is offline
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Default New features to implement next

In order to encourage more people to visit Game Remixes, I've been resolving bugs and adding new music. I also want to add new features that will be useful to artists and encourage them to use the site as a collaboration tool. After all, a remix site is no good without songs.

Here are some suggestions that I was hoping people might offer their opinions on:
  • Albums
  • Multiple song ownership, to allow collaboration on a mix
  • "Characteristics" of remixes for better searching, such as genre, instruments, key signature, and tempo
  • Improve compos (specific suggestions needed)
  • Improved VGMdb integration (specific suggestions needed)

Please add your own suggestions of things that you might find useful or which would encourage others to visit the site more often. If you have a particular complaint that you think is turning people away, I'm very interested to hear it. There's no problem with search rankings or people coming to the site, but the average number of pages per visitor is very low, at 1.5 pages per visit, which means people aren't finding what they're looking for.
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Last edited by quintin3265; Sep 6, 2012 at 07:44 AM.
  #2  
Old Sep 8, 2012, 01:19 AM
DjtheSdotcom DjtheSdotcom is offline
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I wonder what exactly do you mean with "Albums"? It does sound interesting (for I made one recently), so I wonder how it would work.

Adding some characteristics sounds like a good idea, especially "genre", even if that's sometimes hard to specify. Instead of key signature and tempo, I'd rather add something like "song feel", because people can work with that easier I think. "I'd like to find a sad remix of King Dedede's theme or an upbeat remix of Gangplank Galleon", something like that.
  #3  
Old Sep 8, 2012, 01:21 PM
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Originally Posted by DjtheSdotcom View Post
I wonder what exactly do you mean with "Albums"? It does sound interesting (for I made one recently), so I wonder how it would work.

Adding some characteristics sounds like a good idea, especially "genre", even if that's sometimes hard to specify. Instead of key signature and tempo, I'd rather add something like "song feel", because people can work with that easier I think. "I'd like to find a sad remix of King Dedede's theme or an upbeat remix of Gangplank Galleon", something like that.
I already implemented a lot in regards to albums, but never published it as compos were deemed to be a higher priority at the time. The testing was never completed enough to say it was bug-free.

An album would be just as you think about it: a collection of songs, in a certain order, with artwork and the usual things that come with albums. They use the existing playlists functionality to allow people to play entire albums.

I don't know of many sites that allow grouping by album, so that might be a good feature to implement first.

By the way, the great thing about "characteristics," whether they be major vs. minor or sad vs. happy, are that you can automatically build a graph of "you might like this remix" listings.
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Last edited by quintin3265; Sep 8, 2012 at 01:29 PM.
  #4  
Old Sep 9, 2012, 03:25 PM
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Today, I added a new feature: detection of lossless and 24-bit "high-definition" files. If you upload one of these, you'll see an "HD" or a CD icon next to your song. You also get massive experience points for uploading a 24-bit track.

It's amazing how far remixes have come. I have remixes on my computer with 8-bit samples from 2000. DjTheS has a lot of 24-bit remixes, and when you listen to them on a good stereo, the quality is excellent.

FYI, I also fixed a problem with experience promotion calculations, so that DJTheS's promotions are now running successfully.
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Last edited by quintin3265; Sep 9, 2012 at 04:01 PM.
  #5  
Old Sep 10, 2012, 01:12 AM
DjtheSdotcom DjtheSdotcom is offline
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I greatly approve the new feature, and also thanks a bunch for fixing the problem!
  #6  
Old Sep 10, 2012, 02:14 PM
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New feature added today: "like" buttons for several social networks. I had wanted to get these in earlier, as they provide a way for artists to drive traffic to their songs.

You might want to "like" your own songs to draw attention to them. One of the issues I noticed with this implementation is that the VGMdb contains many "special" characters in album titles like "<" and ">." These are output correctly to the page, but facebook recognizes them as &quot; and similar. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to correct the issue without exposing the site to a malicious user entering <script> tags in the VGMdb database.
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Old Sep 10, 2012, 04:19 PM
LiquidAcid LiquidAcid is offline
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TDjTheS has a lot of 24-bit remixes, and when you listen to them on a good stereo, the quality is excellent.
24/192 Music Downloads... and why they make no sense
  #8  
Old Sep 10, 2012, 06:32 PM
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I agree that 192Khz music doesn't make much difference over 96Khz. The Library of Congress agrees on that one, as it archives music at 96. But the difference between 16/44 and 24/96 is very plain and despite the math, can't be explained away with graphs and figures.

I read the article, but it seems to focus far too much on test tones and noise as opposed to real music. It may be true that test tones show little difference, but if you compare the DVD-audio version of Santana's "Shaman" with the CD version, even if you listen to lossless files of both, there is no comparison. Even if I turn the speaker system to "pure direct," and turn it down low, you can still hear the difference.

One reason I believe I hear this is that I have a TX-NR1009 connected to Polk TSI-400 towers - with a signal to noise ratio of 110dB. The signal-to-noise ratio in most motherboard integrated audio is usually in the 85-90dB range, or 100 times less. 89dB is also the limit of 16-bit resolution, coincidentally, so people who pipe 24-bit audio into cheap earbuds using a standard soundcard will be disappointed.

I also wonder when these listening tests are performed if the people listening know what to listen for. People who don't know how audio compression works are less likely to be bothered by compression artifacts. Similarly, people who spent years working in loud factories are included in these "random" samples. I would like someone to commission a study of people who take a hearing test first, and then eliminate people from the study who have tinnitus or hearing loss. This group would be much more likely to show a correlation than the random group that includes hearing issues.

But finally, I think that most magazines that study this issue miss the idea that the Nyquest theory applies to conscious hearing. It is true that most people can't hear sounds that are above 20Khz or so - but that doesn't mean that they cannot perceive them in some other way the scientists are not measuring. Retaining these overtones in the recording may cause people to feel "better" while listening without being able to say why or how - or 16-bit music might make them feel subconsciously as if something is "wrong." Studies that ask people to identify sampling frequency wouldn't be able to pick that up because they only ask people if they "hear" anything differently.

This is an interesting issue that there seems to be a lot of debate over - but I still think that once Apple starts offering 24-bit music, there will be a switchover.
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  #9  
Old Sep 11, 2012, 01:57 AM
LiquidAcid LiquidAcid is offline
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But the difference between 16/44 and 24/96 is very plain and despite the math, can't be explained away with graphs and figures.
Of course it can be explained that way. The point however is, if you can ABX between those two. Which you can't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
It may be true that test tones show little difference, but if you compare the DVD-audio version of Santana's "Shaman" with the CD version, even if you listen to lossless files of both, there is no comparison. Even if I turn the speaker system to "pure direct," and turn it down low, you can still hear the difference.
Common misconception when doing comparison: You don't compare the same sources. The DVDA is mastered differently than the CD version. You can't compare these two. Period.

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Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
One reason I believe I hear this is that I have a TX-NR1009 connected to Polk TSI-400 towers - with a signal to noise ratio of 110dB.
You're mixing up SNR and dynamic range. See SNR and DR.

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Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
I also wonder when these listening tests are performed if the people listening know what to listen for.
That's not how ABX works. You want to know if the test subject is actually (removing expectation bias) able to hear a difference. Nobody says that you can't train yourself to detect certain artifacts.

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Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
But finally, I think that most magazines that study this issue miss the idea that the Nyquest theory applies to conscious hearing.
You misunderstood Nyquist. This is about signal processing/reconstruction. Nyquist-Shannon would still be valid if there were no human beings (or beings with human ears) on this planet.

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Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
It is true that most people can't hear sounds that are above 20Khz or so - but that doesn't mean that they cannot perceive them in some other way the scientists are not measuring.
So what do you suggest as organ perceiving these frequences? Because something connected to our brain has to perceive the information, otherwise we're talking about metaphysics here.
I know what there are some studies about "ultrasonic hearing", but these just suggest that the higher frequences are modulated by bone and body tissue to lower frequences, which are then again perceived by the inner ear. So this is just adding noise to our "reference signal".

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Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
Studies that ask people to identify sampling frequency wouldn't be able to pick that up because they only ask people if they "hear" anything differently.
Wrong. You can let them ABX between a reference signal and the ref signal + ultrasonic component. The playback system of course has to be able to reproduce the frequencies (without distortion and intermodulation artifacts).

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Originally Posted by quintin3265 View Post
This is an interesting issue that there seems to be a lot of debate over - but I still think that once Apple starts offering 24-bit music, there will be a switchover.
Yes, but only because most people just blindly accept what Apple "offers" them. Not because it would any sense.

Instead of this mania for even more bits, more kilohertz, more channels, etc. I'd rather like to see more careful mastering, less loudness war and a move towards the DVDA. Not because the DVDA is better in terms of sound quality, but because it fixes a lot of flaws of the CDDA: More durable (protection layer!), better support for metadata, no "offset issue", more ECC/EDC data, etc.

Last edited by LiquidAcid; Sep 19, 2012 at 01:36 PM.
  #10  
Old Sep 11, 2012, 04:38 AM
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Wow, such a wordy article and still missing the point. Nobody with a little knowledge is seriously going to argue that frequencies higher than 22kHz are inaudible to humans, thus 44.1kHz being sufficient for that purpose. What the author completely misses is that the available frequency rate is also important for how finely grained the stereo scape is represented as the frequency rate directly represents the accuracy of the timing of sounds. With monaural sound more rough time resolutions are fine, but as soon as one has multiple sounds and multiple outputs the time resolution affects the positioning of any sound in space, as that is felt through the tiniest of delay between different output sources.
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Old Sep 11, 2012, 08:25 AM
LiquidAcid LiquidAcid is offline
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Can you give a source about this influence of phase lag on the stereo image? Because I'm very doubtful that a phase lag of around 0.02267ms can be heard. My guess would be that DAC circuitry, amp, cabling, etc. have more influence on this lag.
  #12  
Old Sep 11, 2012, 08:46 AM
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Can you give a source about this influence of phase lag on the stereo image? Because I'm very doubtful that a phase lag of around 0.02267ms can be heard. My guess would be that DAC circuitry, amp, cabling, etc. have more influence on this lag.
I'm also interested in hearing a source if one is available, but I also don't think it could be explained away by circuitry. Digital circuitry does have a big problem with lag. For example, the Pro Logic IIz algorithm for expanding to 9.1 has a lag of around 100ms, which is nearly three frames in a 24p movie. If you don't adjust for that, the lips are out of sync with the sound.

But in the absence of video, in a properly set up stereo system the two speakers should be equally far away from the user. If any lag was introduced by the receiver, then one would expect the same amount of lag to occur in both speakers. Even in the case that one speaker was further away than the other, the speed of light is much higher than the sampling frequencies we're talking about.

I think that one of the keys of this debate is that nothing in the audio chain is perfect. The idea is to eliminate as many errors as possible, because they compound each other. If you play a 44.1Khz CD, you already start with twice as many errors as an 88.2Khz FLAC file has.
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