cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:44:14 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"Rob" wrote in message
. com
On 12/03/2010 12:17, Arny Krueger wrote:

In the evangelical church we notice that the traditional
and liturgical churches

meaningless distinction.

are generally technically challenged.


Amongst other things, yes, agreed - Billy Graham
certainly got caught out by a bit of covert recording ;-)

Billy Graham?

?????????????

I know of others that got outed by media, but not him. His son was a bit of
a wild thing when he was younger...


Have you not come across his conversations with Nixon, in which he
spouted the vilest anti-semitism? Or his conversation with a Canadian
evangelist, who told him of his sudden realization that what he was
doing was barbaric, and Graham's reply that he agreed, but it was all
business and ther was no way to back out of it.

d

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
Bottom line, though, is that there are a variety of ways to do this, so
the 'best' will be whatever suits the OPs taste, requirements, and
experience.

Absolutely.

The last thing you want when playing in SFX etc to a 'live' event is
overcomplicated hardware or software. A MiniDisc which plays the cue then
re-cues waiting for the next - so all you have to do is hit the play
button at the right time - is fine. One with a play button four times the
size of any other even better...;-)

--
*Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

In article , Arny
Krueger
wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message


One consequence of which has become the use of PPT files on the web.
(Sometimes converted crudely into PDF.) Generally meaning an
excessively large file with very little info as content presented as a
series of bloated bitmaps. Alas you often can't tell what the
contents/bloat ratio will be until after you have fetched the file and
looked at it!

That's one reason why we have high speed internet these days.

It may well be one of the reasons *you* have it. But it certainly isn't one
of mine! I have no wish to waste my time or HD space on such daft and lazy
behaviours propagated by ignorant MicroSoftHeaded users. :-)

However I'd expect it to be trivial with a Linux machine to write a
simple app (program) that plays files in a user-controlled way on
cue. I'd hope the same was true with a Windows box but can't say.
I'd also assume someone has already done this. Have they not?

Why would I care?

Go to the trouble of writing a program just to run a presentation?

???????????????

Your confusion may be because you assumed I meant writing a simple app
for a *presentation*. But my point was an app just to do what the OP
was interested in. To be able to play SFXs from a set of audio files
in a simple and convenient manner.

From a user standpoint, PPT does that job, and well.

Yes, you can indeed use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as we already
agreed.

You also may assume the OP will choose Windows.

Or Mac. There is PPT on the Mac, ya know.

Yes. But does it also run "well" on small mp3 players that might
cost rather less than the "399 USD" you mention below?... If so,
that is news to me.


However for a box to use just for playing/arranging/editing sfx files
it might make more sense for him to use something cheaper/older and
run a lighter OS that will work with lower resources, etc.

Yeah sure. We're supposed to take our $399 PCs with 100's of MIPs of
processing power, gigabytes of RAM and Terabytes of disk and worry
ourselves to death about "lower resources"?

You can of course spend your own money as you choose and do things as suit
you. I'm just pointing out that others may choose other ways which they
find more convenient, cheaper, etc, even if daring to be different to
yourself. The point being that they can choose to follow you or do
otherwise as suits them *once* they know alternatives exist. I have no
idea what would suit the OP best. But simply saying "use PPT" doesn't
strike me as what I'd call an extensive menu of options. Although I
guess it would suit MicroSoft nicely if people believed there were
no alternatives. :-)

Wake up man, lightweight OSs are even being expunged from cellphones.

What a superbly chosen technical argument. :-) Particularly when
a "lightweight OS" might have left them more memory space and CPU
power for the actual applications they wanted to run. Isn't modern
technology wonderful! :-)

But for all I know you may be right and a good alternative might be for
him to put the sound files on a modern 'cellphone'. Although I didn't
know it was now the norm for them to run PPT. From my POV it would be
particularly amusing to find ones that use ARM family CPU based hardware
and bits from the RISC OS tree now do things like that. ;-

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:22:00 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
Bottom line, though, is that there are a variety of ways to do this, so
the 'best' will be whatever suits the OPs taste, requirements, and
experience.

Absolutely.

The last thing you want when playing in SFX etc to a 'live' event is
overcomplicated hardware or software. A MiniDisc which plays the cue then
re-cues waiting for the next - so all you have to do is hit the play
button at the right time - is fine. One with a play button four times the
size of any other even better...;-)

But it must have a decent display to tell you exactly what is cued up
- nothing worse than the clips getting out of sync and no way to
recover bar playing them out until you find the right one.

d

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

In article ,
Don Pearce wrote:
The last thing you want when playing in SFX etc to a 'live' event is
overcomplicated hardware or software. A MiniDisc which plays the cue
then re-cues waiting for the next - so all you have to do is hit the
play button at the right time - is fine. One with a play button four
times the size of any other even better...;-)

But it must have a decent display to tell you exactly what is cued up
- nothing worse than the clips getting out of sync and no way to
recover bar playing them out until you find the right one.

MiniDisc allows you to name a cue. And is simple to go back or forward if
one or more gets missed. Brilliant for this sort of job - considering how
cheap they are. My 360 cost almost 2 grand. Sometimes a stack of domestic
MiniDiscs do a better job for a lot less, if you have the prep time.

--
*I have my own little world - but it's OK...they know me here*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:22:00 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article , Jim Lesurf
wrote:
Bottom line, though, is that there are a variety of ways to do this,
so the 'best' will be whatever suits the OPs taste, requirements, and
experience.

Absolutely.

The last thing you want when playing in SFX etc to a 'live' event is
overcomplicated hardware or software. A MiniDisc which plays the cue
then re-cues waiting for the next - so all you have to do is hit the
play button at the right time - is fine. One with a play button four
times the size of any other even better...;-)

Must say I've been thinking of an mp3 player with just play and skip
buttons and a display large enough to see what is selected or ready. But I
don't have such a player, so no idea how small or cheap a model would do
this task in a suitable way, or if something else would be better.

But it must have a decent display to tell you exactly what is cued up -
nothing worse than the clips getting out of sync and no way to recover
bar playing them out until you find the right one.

Agreed. But you don't need to have something like "The latest version of
Windows and PowerPoint" and a big monitor to have a useful display and
controls for a task as basic as the OP wants when playing the sfx files on
cue. And as Dave indicates, the more complex the system, the more ways it
will have to foul you up at the critical moments. So you want a system that
is just about right for the task in hand and avoids having too many other
complications.

FWIW I wish I had a pound for every lecture and event I've attended where
the 'presentation' was held up or went wrong because "Oops, sorry, this
PowerPoint presentation was OK when I tried it at home" but duly fell over
when the moment came to do the actual event. How often the fault was with
Windows, how often PowerPoint, I have no idea. It was the (lack of!)
outcome that mattered.

Indeed, in a very complex system things that are not a 'fault' can easily
catch out the unwary. Like the machine deciding to make a noise because it
has detected a wireless network, or decides now is the time to start taking
ages to check its HD, or something else the user didn't know about and lock
down... :-)

Since I've spent many many hours of my life lecturing, presenting papers,
etc, and going to conferences/meetings/etc I've see all kinds of PITA
'presentations' where the 'computer' and 'PowerPoint' fell over. So it may
suit someone else, but I'd personally be very wary of that route if a
failure or hiccup might spoil a night at the theater for all concerned.

I do think that a computer and suitable software make lots of sense for
preparing/editing/manipulating the sound files to be used. But I'd prefer
the system used for playing on cue to be as simple as will reliably do what
the user wants at that moment. As I've said, this is a matter of what suits
the individual. No reason to assume everyone else would do the same as
myself.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

In article , David Looser
scribeth thus
"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
But I also wonder why he wants to burn to CD at all. Direct playback from
a
lap-top seems to me to be far and away the easiest and most satisfactory
way
of playing out SFX during a performance. For the price he paid for his
dual
CD player he could have bought a suitable laptop.

David.


If he has a decent sound card preferably an external one to the PC...
--

We are talking about SFX for stage plays here, not listening to music in a
quiet room. The on-board audio of a laptop will be perfectly good enough for
the purpose.

David.



Well David .. Two plays I saw over the lest few months were blighted one
very badly by computer generated noises.

Both had a good dose of 'umm on as well both events used standard in the
PC soundcards.


An external preferably with balanced outputs.. a much better bet!...
--
Tony Sayer

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:01:21 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

MiniDisc allows you to name a cue. And is simple to go back or forward if
one or more gets missed. Brilliant for this sort of job - considering how
cheap they are. My 360 cost almost 2 grand. Sometimes a stack of domestic
MiniDiscs do a better job for a lot less, if you have the prep time.

PIty you can't get them any more :-(

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

"tony sayer" wrote

Well David .. Two plays I saw over the lest few months were blighted one
very badly by computer generated noises.

Both had a good dose of 'umm on as well both events used standard in the
PC soundcards.

Well Tony.. That was very unlikely to be caused by using a laptop's on-board
audio. I don't know how you know that these noises were "computer
generated", nor that they would not have been there if an external sound
card had been used. Interference with theatre audio is FAR more likely to be
due to pick-up from the stage lighting or other electrical equipment than
anything to due with using a computer's on-board audio.

An external preferably with balanced outputs.. a much better bet!...
--
Balanced outputs are better certainly, but how many external soundcards have
balanced outputs? "'Umm" is now't to do with "computer noises" and needs to
be cured by good old-fashioned analogue audio engineering.

David.

cd recordings v's minidisc recordings
 

On Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:34:58 +0000, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:01:21 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

MiniDisc allows you to name a cue. And is simple to go back or forward if
one or more gets missed. Brilliant for this sort of job - considering how
cheap they are. My 360 cost almost 2 grand. Sometimes a stack of domestic
MiniDiscs do a better job for a lot less, if you have the prep time.

PIty you can't get them any more :-(

Well, the discs themselves are still around at about a quid apiece.
I\'m guessing that from here on that will be going up rather than down.
I wonder how many recorders are still functional though - no idea how
robust the mechanisms are.

d