jameswharris

Amazon Music HD

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, February 1, 2020

Amazon Music HD promises to fulfill nearly all my current wishes for a streaming music service. The main ones are:

Provide sound quality equal to CDs
Provide every song ever recorded, or let me upload music into its system
Let me try super-high-resolution music
Have playlists that work across all music services

Streaming music has always been more convenient than listening to CDs or LPs, but audiophiles have bitterly complained that its sound quality was a compromise. With Amazon Music HD it’s now possible to stream music in CD quality. Audiophiles need to stop sneering at streaming music. This also means I can forget about physical media (if streaming always offered what I want to hear). And for years I’ve been chasing the idea of high-resolution music. I’m not sure I’m capable of hearing it, but so many audiophiles claim the difference is night and day and I’d hate to miss out.

To play Amazon Music HD or Ultra-HD tracks requires having the right equipment. My iPhone, Denon, and Yamaha systems can all handle the HD setting of CD-quality of 16-bit 44.1kHz. My iPhone and computer can play 24-bit 48 kHz songs, which is the low end of Ultra HD. So Amazon HD music lets me check off one of my streaming music wishes.

Another great aspect of Amazon Music HD is it always tells you about the quality of the streaming file. Actually, I’ve yet to find a 192kHz file. Of course, I’m not sure I can tell the difference between 16bit 44.1kHz and 24-bit 48kHz music.

Amazon Music has always let me upload my files to their system, so I can put songs on my playlists that Amazon doesn’t offer. Spotify doesn’t let me do that. That checks off another wish. I have 1,900 CDs uploaded to Amazon Music. So my collection is with their 50 million songs.

It’s my last wish that is so frustrating. Amazon offers the super-high-resolution files that I’m anxious to try (24bit 96 or 192 kHz files). Could I really hear a difference? I don’t know, because I don’t have the equipment to play them. And I’m not sure what equipment can. I know I could add a Dragonfly Cobalt DAC to my iPhone to get up to 24-bit 96kHz files, but what about those elusive 24-bit 192kHz files? Am I chasing a non-existant Holy Grail? I keep reading articles like this one that argues selling high-resolution music is a complete con. Still, I want to try the snake oil for myself.

However, to play the 24bit 192kHz files will require having a DAC that’s Amazon Music HD aware. And what I really want, is hardware that I can remotely control. I have a Yamaha WXA-50 streaming music server amplifier. It works great with Spotify, but its MusicCast software/app is the pits for any other service. I tried it with Tidal and its built-in interface to Tidal music was atrocious. So I canceled Tidal. Theoretically, the WXA-50 could be upgraded to handle Amazon Music HD but everyone is saying Yahama is terrible about upgrades. I feel I’m getting my money’s worth out of the WXA-50 now for Spotify, but I don’t plan to buy Yamaha equipment in the future.

I’ve read the Denon HEOS will handle Amazon Music HD, but I’m afraid if I buy one of its receivers I might be disappointed like I was with Yamaha. To work properly, I need a receiver that can serve all the Amazon Music HD files, and it has to have an iPhone app that works well with Amazon Music’s catalog of songs. The reason why Spotify works so well with the Yamaha is it uses the Spotify app itself. And that’s possible because the WXA-50 has a Spotify Connect awareness. Before I buy any new hardware to listen to Amazon Music HD I’m going to wait until stereo equipment has the equivalent of Amazon Music HD Connect. This is true of Amazon’s Fire/Alexa products, but I’m not sure if any of the present hardware can handle 24-bit 192 kHz files. My current Fire TV only handles 16-bit 44.1 kHz.

Spotify Connect is truly awesome. The Spotify app on my iPhone sees my computer, the Yamaha WXA-50, Denon AVR-X1000, as well as my Roku Ultra and Amazon FireTV Gen 2. The music doesn’t stream through my phone, but my phone controls the music streaming through all these hardware devices. It’s this app/server relationship that I want for Amazon Music HD. Theoretically, the DACs in all my devices could handle high resolution if they were upgraded with the right software, but I get the feeling I need to wait for new hardware to be specifically designed to be Amazon Music HD aware. So I’m getting close to the third wish.

I’m happy enough with Amazon Music HD to keep subscribing, but I’m not ready to cancel Spotify. I love Spotify, and it has a great interface, plus it works on so many devices. If Spotify offered HD music and the Spotify Connect servers in my Yamaha and Denon machines could handle 24-bit 192 kHz files, which I think they can, I might end up sticking with Spotify.

Plus, to switch to any other service would require recreating all my Spotify playlists. That would be a huge amount of work. My last wish is for a universal playlist format that would allow all my music services to use the same playlists. I doubt this will ever happen, but I can wish.

I follow a number of YouTubers who review Audiophile equipment. Three of them have had shows about audiophile burnout. They ask, “Are you into music for the equipment or the music?” I was passionately in love with the music I listened to in 1962 on AM radio played through a single 3″ speaker. My present equipment is lightyears beyond that. I shouldn’t think about hardware at all. Spotify offers millions of songs. What I really should be doing is trying to play all of them, and not worry about how theoretically perfect they might sound. But I do.

JWH

Trying To Control My Insane Impulse to Buy the Past

by James Wallace Harris, Friday, January 24, 2020

Lately, I want to buy the past. For example, I’ve been craving old computers I couldn’t afford back in the 1980s. Or I’ve been compulsively buying old books and magazines on eBay I once own when I was a teen in the 1960s. And now I dream of buying a mid-century house and fixing it up to look like the 1950s Florida of my childhood. Maybe even get a 1957 Pontiac to match.

What explains those impulses? I used to have in-the-moment impulses like eating junk food or getting laid, but my decrepit stomach gets upset at one and my elderly dick has become erratically indifferent to the other. That makes me wonder if buying the past is a kind of compensation for two of nature’s most basic impulses. If it is, it doesn’t work because I’m still hungry and horny.

Life used to be more satisfying when I could get satisfied.

Buying old stuff does provide a fleeting moment of pleasure but as soon as the UPS delivery person delivers my goodies I pack them away and think about the next relic of the past to purchase. A carton of Ben & Jerry’s would keep me happy for two evenings, and getting lucky would alleviate horniness for a few moments to a few days depending on my age in life.

Television used to be a great balm for itchy urges, but nowadays watching Perry Mason shows remind me of 1962 or viewing YouTube inspires collecting and renovating antiques of my twenties. If I had never watched The 8-Bit Guy I don’t think I’d be craving an Apple IIGS right now. I can understand where the genetic programming for pizzas and pussy come from, but what explains the biology driving me to buy decaying runs of Galaxy Science Fiction?

Getting old is nothing like I expected. I thought I’d go bald and become wrinkled, yet essentially be my same old self. I never imagined a time when I couldn’t drink Dr. Pepper and eat German chocolate cake. I was warned that my dick would wear out, but I assumed so would the horniness. That really wasn’t fair. I feel like Henry Bemis when his glasses broke.

My retirement years are everything I never planned. Why didn’t they warn us? I have all this time to indulge my whims and have all the whims of my youth, but being young when you’re old isn’t very practical. I still have a future. Maybe even a future as long as my working years. Everyone asks you when you are a kid, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” But who asks, “What are you going to be when you get old?”

I think I need new cravings. I need new urges and ambitions that suit a decaying body. Something more fulfilling than the urge to guzzle Metamucil. When we are young we study to understand the world and prepare for our working decades. I think I need to study for becoming a successful old person. I don’t need a retro 8-bit computer, what I should crave is a 128-bit computer and an engaging task that will maximize its use.

I need to be buying the future.

JWH

Writing Lessons from Envy

by James Wallace Harris

Basically, my blog is where I write what I think. I polish my essays to be more readable, but I’m too lazy to be more ambitious. Blogging is piano practice for writing but seldom produces professional-level writing. Blogging improves writing skills, exercises the brain to think clearer, but is too casual to produce art. Lately, whenever I read an exceptional essay I feel both envy and regret. Envy for craft, and regret for laziness. It’s time to up my ante.

I recently wrote about rereading Brave New World fifty years after first reading it in high school. Then I read “BRAVE NEW WORLD Revisited Once Again” by the science fiction writer Thomas M. Disch in On SF. I was amazed by how much better Disch had done with the exact topic. He opens with:

Just fifty years ago, at the dawn of the new era that dates from the death of Henry Ford, a young, half-blind, upper-class Englishman published a novel destined to become—along with Orwell’s 1984—one of the two most enduring prophetic visions of the future ever to clatter from the typewriter of man. The novel was Brave New World, its author Aldous Huxley, and the vision was of the Jazz Age gone to heaven. Anything goes in A.F. (After Ford) 632, but what goes particularly well are those two pillars of the affluent society, sex and drugs. What has been eliminated from that society as being subversive and destabilizing is: family life, passionate love, social nobility, and any art but the “feelies, ” fashion design, and dance music. Here’s a sample of the song lyrics and the lifestyle of A.F. 632:

Orgy—porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at one with girls at peace;
Orgy—porgy gives release.

I realized this was a complete lesson in writing. Here’s my opening paragraph:

I first read Brave New World in high school back in the sixties. Rereading it again in 2020 reveals that it was entirely over my teenage head. I doubt I got even 5-10% of Aldous Huxley’s satire. Although I expect high school and college students of today have both the education and pop-culture savvy to understand it better than I did, it’s really a novel to read after acquiring a lifetime of experience. When I first read Brave New World I was already mass consuming science fiction so it was competing with shiny gosh-wow sense-of-wonder science fiction. I remember liking Brave New World in places, especially the free sex and Soma, but I thought the story somewhat boring and clunky.

My paragraph was more about me than Brave New World. I feel Disch and I are both trying to get people to reread Brave New World but his lead-in is a better salesman. His paragraph is dense with details about the book, while mine has too many details about myself. Should I even be the subject? My intent was to convince people the book deserves a second reading by my experience, but I could have done that without talking about myself.

Do visitors to this blog want to know about me or the topic of my discussion? Blogging is intended to be personal, and I have a number of followers for this blog, but the essays with the most hits are from people searching Google on a specific subject. Those readers aren’t interested in me. I could have written my first paragraph without any mention of myself and still provided the same data.

I consider this blog, Auxiliary Memory, to be my personal blog and Classics of Science Fiction to be a reference site. Maybe I should use a different style of writing for each.

Information is the key. When people read, people either want specific information or entertaining information. And web readers want quick information. I’m a wordy bastard. This essay is already longer than what the 99% want to read. But I haven’t covered my topic. I could describe a dozen insights I’ve learned from Disch’s essay and make this post 3,000 words long. Or I could put each insight into a different post.

If information is the key, then information density is the essence of great writing. I’m still impressed by how much Disch conveys about Brave New World in his first paragraph. I believe his summary says even more in fewer words.

My final quarrel with the book is one of emphasis from my first reading. I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for the world Huxley invented. I know I’m supposed to disapprove. But I would like to try soma just once, and I wouldn’t say no to a night at the Westminster Abbey Cabaret dancing to the music of Calvin Stopes and his Sixteen Sexophonists. The lyrics of the songs may be sappy, but I’ll bet they’ve got a good beat. As for the feelies, I suppose the plots are pretty simpleminded, but any more so than Raiders of the Lost Ark?

This is not to endorse all the sinister theories of Mustapha Mond, only to suggest that fun’s fun, and that some of the targets of Huxley’s satire are mean-spirited, insofar as he is making a case against pop culture, sexual candor, and the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Relax, Huxley. You worry too much. Have a gram of Tylenol. Things could be worse. This might be 1984.

Disch’s reading reaction that Huxley’s dystopia is alluring is close to mine. Disch combines story description with story reaction into the same sentence where I separated them into different paragraphs.

My envy of Disch’s writing inspires me to work harder, but it also makes me ask myself a lot of psychological questions about why I want to write. Blogging and other social media appeal to our urge to express ourselves. On many levels, I worry that’s appealing to our ego and vanity. Of course, we also call our activities on social media sharing. But what exactly are we sharing? Ourselves, information, promotion of cool things, memories, passions — the list goes on and on. When a writer produces a work to be read, they are also asking readers to use up some of their time.

The best thing I learned from my six weeks at the Clarion West writers’ workshop was “Great writing is the accumulation of significant detail.” I believe what I learned from my recursive reflection between these two pieces is: “Great writing is the accumulation of significant detail that wastes the least time for the reader.”

That’s a single lesson at one recursive turn. With another cycle, Disch’s prose sparkles for me because I just reread Brave New World and all his allusions resonated. That wouldn’t be true for people who haven’t read the book. That insight reflects back again, and I see I admire Disch’s essay because we both reread Brave New World late in life after first reading it when young. Seeing that lets me know great writing isn’t always in the prose but in the sharing. But that reveals the limits of finding the right reader.

I could keep going, but after the 1,178th word, I believe I spent enough of your time.

JWH

Sanditon on PBS Masterpiece

by James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Over the past year, I’ve lost my ability to binge-watch TV. My mind just doesn’t latch on to shows like it once did. However, Sunday night I watched three episodes of Sanditon and then last night finished up the season by watching five more episodes. Only two have been broadcast, but if you donate to PBS and sign up for your Passport account, you can stream all eight episodes now.

Sanditon is based on a Jane Austen unfinished novel. She had completed about 24,000 words when she died. If you’re really interested you should read what Wikipedia said about the unfinished novel and the new TV series. The first of the eight episodes cover what Jane Austen originally wrote, so the next seven episodes are new. The show does have the feel of Jane Austen except for two glaring issues. There are a couple of sex scenes, and some British viewers claim the ending is not what Jane Austen would have written. I was thinking the ending might be setting us up for a second season, so I was withholding judgment.

I was completely delighted with the mini-series and thought it very Jane Austen-ish for the most part. Farmgirl Charlotte Heywood gets to stay with Tom and Mary Parker, a well-to-do family who live in Sanditon, a seaside village. Tom pours his fortune and others into making Sanditon a prosperous vacation destination. That reminds me of the spa town Bath from the Austen novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Tom has a brother, Sidney who insults, ignores, and irritates Charlotte no end. We’ve seen that relationship before with Mr. Darcy. Charlotte also reminds me of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, being a naïve visitor in a grandeur society and growing up quickly. Charlotte has a lot of Emma Woodhouse in her too by her meddling. Sanditon also has a rich old woman, Lady Denham who is a lot like Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Pride and Prejudice. The only thing missing are red-coated soldiers, but this work might be set after the Napoleonic Wars, or Jane had planned to write about them in later chapters. One new character type for Jane was Miss Lambe, a black heiress, who was in the unfinished manuscript. If only Jane had finished this story. Would she have made the story almost a cliché of her earlier work? Or would it strike out to be distinctly different like all her six famous novels?

One of the intriguing aspects to the unfinished Sanditon that Wikipedia points out is the story has been finished before in various ways by a number of authors. Mary Gaither Marshall at the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) wrote an extensive essay about the completers: “Jane Austen’s Sanditon: Inspiring Continuations, Adaptions, and Spin-offs for 200 Years.” Her essay suggests most of the continuations were off the mark in terms of actually writing something that Jane Austen would have written. At first, I wanted to try some of these completions, but after reading Marshall’s essay closer, I’m not so sure. Too many of them added silly gimmicks.

After enjoying the miniseries I read the unfinished Austen novel. It’s twelve chapters barely fleshed out the first episode. The next seven episodes don’t contradict what Jane Austen had started, but there is little evidence to suggest that’s where she was going. Tom Parker’s obsession was the likely plot in my mind. Eleanor Bley Griffiths gives a few clues to the difference between what Austen wrote and what Andrew Davies adapted for the miniseries. See “How closely is Sanditon based on Jane Austen’s original unfinished novel?” and linked essays. I feel after watching the show, that it might be the best of the continuations when it comes to finishing Jane Austen’s book.

If you don’t like Jane Austen, you probably won’t like Sanditon. Regency-era England has social norms and manners that seem silly and very politically incorrect to modern minds, although the TV writers did add some modern feminist insights. There are certain complications in the miniseries that I’m not sure Jane would have approved, but then maybe she would have. If there is a heaven I picture Jane being mobbed by fans asking her about all these adaptations. We assume Jane Austen had to censor herself for her early 19th century audiences, and if she had had more freedom probably would have explored some of the issues that modern adapters have added.

JWH

Where Are You On The Handling Complexity Scale?

by James Wallace Harris, Monday, January 6, 2020

I like to think our minds are like the mixing boards you see in recording studios, with dozens of sliders, each for a different cognitive ability. Think of the autism spectrum as one slider, and artistic ability, spatial perception, and mathematics as other sliders. I’m not sure how many mental spectrums exist, but I’ve been thinking about a possible spectrum to consider – handling complexity.

It’s obvious some people handle complexity better than others. People who can’t handle complexity want everything to be black and white. To them, everything is binary – for/against, male/female, good/evil, theism/atheism, rich/poor and so on. These people seem to have made up their minds early in life and will defend their beliefs with great tenacity. It’s easier for them to build an array of defense mechanisms than it is to deal with complexity. Successful people handle complexity and thrive. However, if you can’t handle complexity can you recognize people who can?

Ever since Donald Trump was elected I’ve been trying to understand why people like him. My current theory is neither Trump nor his follows can handle complexity. Trump’s simplex approach to problems resonates with their own simplex relationship with reality, and they find that comforting.

Republicans have taken an ostrich’s head-in-the-sand, ass-in-the-air approach to complexity. Denying complexity is their great survival mechanism. However, to solve the world’s problem involves dealing with complexity. We need leaders who place high on the handling complexity scale.

Trump is low on the scale, seeing reality in terms of black and white. People like voting for candidates like themselves. We need to vote for people who are higher on the handling complexity scale than ourselves. But how do we pick people who have cognitive skills we can’t imagine? How do we pick a person whose solutions might not make sense to us?

One way is to judge how they’ve handled complexity in the past. Trump has zero political, diplomatic, or leadership skills. His businesses have very few employees. He has no handling of complexity skills at all. Millions of people voted for him because he handles complexity in the same way they do – which is at a simple gut-level.

Most people see the world with a binary vision. Most voters see the political spectrum as left and right. That’s incredibly simple-minded. Just seeing the world in a grayscale of 16 adds great complexity, but it’s still extremely low on the complexity scale. Remember when computers only had 16 colors and how bad computer games looked? At the time we thought it an amazing step up from black and white (or black and green) monitors. Then when graphic cards went to 256 colors images started to look somewhat realistic. It wasn’t until graphics cards could handle millions of colors did photographs begin to look realistic. (The above graphic is CGA, EGA, and VGA.)

People have an extremely difficult time juggling 16 variables. We embrace ideas like the Myers-Briggs scale, trying to pigeonhole people into 16 types. The Myers-Briggs scale has its appeal because it vaguely works — but does it really?

Take climate change. Its complexity is immense. Even computer models that track millions of variables can only paint a rough picture of what is happening. Simplex people prefer accepting a blowhard’s opinion on climate change who has no understanding of the complexity of climate change over scientists with supercomputers and billions of dollars worth of scientific measuring devices. Why? Because binary thinkers prefer binary solutions.

We can’t solve complex problems with binary solutions. We need an army of PhDs who have armies of supercomputers working with artificial intelligence to even begin to understand climate change. Why don’t we require such expertise from our politicians? Isn’t our country’s social/economic/political structure nearly as complex as the weather? Why don’t we expect all politicians to have PhDs in political science? Why shouldn’t the highest political jobs require the greatest political experience? Shouldn’t a president at least have the experience being a governor or senator, if not a whole lot more?

How can we possibly expect a person with no experience to succeed at a job that requires the most experience? How can we expect a person who has no ability to handle complexity to succeed in a job that requires the most understanding of complexity?

Only a simplex person would vote for another simplex person.

Think of it this way. Say you’re a betting person and want to win some money on a football game. There are two teams. One team consists of professional football players, and the other team is made up of regular guys who believe they can play football. Who’re you going to put your money on? Or imagine you need brain surgery. Who will you pick? The surgeon with the most experience, or some egotistic guy who thinks anyone can do brain surgery?

JWH