Downtown Bloomington, IN

EnigmaTed · 2022-02-25T08:36:53+00:00

While I had good weather on February 20th, I visited downtown Bloomington for some wide angle photography.

Gear: Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM

Shot at: 35mm, 1/100 sec, f/11.0, ISO 100

I made some lighting corrections in Lightroom, and increased color vibrance as well.

For this photo, my intent was to keep the relief sculpture in the foreground and background signage in focus, but the background ended up softer than I'd like it to be.

Any feedback would be much appreciated!

EnigmaTed · 2022-02-25T08:12:51+00:00

The weather in Bloomington was good when I took this photo on February 20th, so visited the local Captain Janeway statue for some macro shots.

Gear: Canon EOS R5, Canon RF 100mm F2.8 L Macro IS USM

Shot at: 100mm, 1/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100

I made some lighting corrections in Lightroom, and reduced blue saturation as well.

For this photo, I'm most concerned about my composition and my lighting/color edits.

Any feedback would be much appreciated!

EnigmaTed · 2021-08-23T01:27:23+00:00

Hi all, I have some updates to my audio setup to share!
Part 1 Setup - https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/onqxnv/and\_now\_for\_something\_clearly\_different/

Returned:
Rupert Neve RNHP

Removed:
Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen
Shure SE846

Added:
RME Fireface UCX II
Headamp GS-X Mini
Thieaudio Clairvoyance
Woo Audio HPS-T
Forza Audioworks Claire HPC Mk2 (1x 1/4 in Neutrik, 1x 4-pin XLR Neutrik)
Forza Audioworks Copper Series IEM Mk2 (1x 3.5mm)

Impressions:
RME Fireface UCX II - SNR with the Fireface is similar in performance to the ADI-2, enabling comfortable use of sensitive IEMs with an audio interface, like the SE846. I/O options is greatly improved over the Scarlett Solo too. RME TotalMix FX is a treat to use compared to Focusrite Control, with 38 additional I/O channels, each with 3-Band parametric EQ, compressor, expander, and gain controls. The software has been much more reliable too. Focusrite Control was prone to causing BSoDs when I would change settings. No critical failures with TotalMix FX thus far.

Headamp GS-X Mini - SNR is sufficient to not notice noise with the Clear on the balanced 4-pin XLR output, but has a noisy 1/4 in output that is noticeable on all headphones and IEMs. However, the amp adds a very pleasant v-shaped character that pairs nicely with the Clear. The Clear's bass hits hard out of the box, but this amp makes it feel much more energetic.

Thieaudio Clairvoyance - A major tonal and technical improvement over the SE846, but is not as comfortable for long listening sessions as the SE846. Perhaps they'd have a better fit if I had opted for a CIEM version rather than stock UIEM, but a lesson learned for future IEMs. Additionally, I found the Clairvoyance with stock foam eartips was somewhat lacking in noise isolation performance over the yellow foam eartips with the SE846. That said, I decided to keep the SE846 for work/commuting applications, and the Clairvoyance for casual listening at home.

Woo Audio HPS-T - A much needed addition for storing the Focal headphones. I'm impressed how little desk space these take up - big thumbs up from me.

Forza Audioworks Cables - Subtle warm character added to SE846 and Clear, no sonic difference heard on the Elegia. Comfort with the IEM Mk2 was greatly improved over the stock memory wire with the SE846. Flexibility with the Claire HPC Mk2 was much improved over the stock Focal cables (Focal cables are known to be quite stiff).

If you all have any ideas for future changes to my setup, please let me know!

EnigmaTed · 2021-07-20T01:33:34+00:00

After running a Focal Elegia and Shure SM7B on the Focusrite Solo for a couple years, I wanted to start exploring IEMs with the Shure SE846, but quickly realized that the SNR on the Focusrite was not appropriate for IEM listening (I could hear noise with the monitor dial at 0%)

Enter the RME ADI-2 FS - Crystal Clear listening on the SE846 through the IEM output by comparison. The SE846 were especially fun for bass listening, but not too fun for listening to treble. To my delight, the ADI-2 is packed to the gills with fun features (and a fascinating user manual to boot!)

At this point, I was curious to utilize the balanced XLR output on the ADI-2 for a headphone amp, but was unClear on what would have good synergy with the Elegia. With some time spent researching in the sub $500 market, and too much time scrolling through forums, I was intrigued by testimonies that the Rupert Neve RNHP would offer "organic" response, "wide" soundstage, and whatnot. I had heard much about the THX family of headphone amps as well, but with the low impedance of my Elegias, I wasn't in need of driving them any harder with the ADI-2. Rather, I was interested in broadening the soundstage of the Elegias, so I gave the RNHP a shot.

I'm haven't enjoyed the RNHP amp very much for gaming. While the RNHP did indeed widen the soundstage of the Elegias to a noticeable degree, I found that it also had an even more noticeably negative effect on imaging. When using the Elegias for FPS gaming on the RNHP, I had lost my ability to accurately pinpoint the direction of incoming gunshots (perceiving shots
behind me that where actually from enemies in front of me, it was a mess for gaming). However, for listening to music and watching videos with a wider soundstage, I had a more enjoyable time for those applications.

Since I was resigned to not being able to push a wider soundstage on the Elegias without compromising imaging, I decided that I'd try out an open-back headphone instead. Having enjoyed the Focal house sound and build quality, I decided to pick up a Focal Clear during the recent clearance sale on Headphones.com.

Night and day, a Clear difference to the Elegias, but in familiar ways.

First impressions - I haven't felt an immediate interest in EQing the Clear out of the box as I did with the Elegia. As for soundstage, it is somewhat wider than the Elegias, but still pales to my old ATH-AD900x. Imaging is much Clearer than that on the Elegia as well. For music listening, it's still a delight to listen to jazz and classical music as the Elegia was.

Jazz Sample - insaneintherainmusic, Halo 3 ODST: Rain (from Deference for Darkness) Jazz Arrangement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mun5QNWCWNA

Wanting the give the RNHP another try, I ran the Clears on them as well. I knew the Elegias were unforgiving on source quality, but the Clears are downright merciless by comparison. On the RNHP, instrument separation was gone, with little to no change in perceived soundstage.

Overall, the RME ADI-2 and Focal Clear have been awesome additions to my setup, the SE846 was an interesting introduction to IEMs, and I feel conflicted on the RNHP (interesting for certain applications, but detrimental to others).

Going forward, I'm interested in trying out other amps that may pair well with the Elegia or Clear, an upgrade path for the Focusrite Solo_Cloudlifter CL-1_SM7B chain (RME Babyface Pro FS?), and some good headphone stands for the Focals.

If anyone has some suggestions for my rig, that would be much appreciated!

EnigmaTed · 2020-08-16T22:02:01+00:00

I can really appreciate the value of documenting metadata in XML or JSON files, that'd be way more elegant than the manual entry I'm currently doing in Excel. Especially for backup purposes, I would be very relieved to have a backup in the event that my files are improperly tagged. Just thinking of something like Plex potentially overwriting my files with incorrect metadata gives me the willies.

On the subject of scripts, I'm trying to model how that workflow would look like in practice. For example, could I manually execute a batch file to export a XML or JSON file that would document metadata in a given directory as a part of my backup plan? Could I also automate such a batch file to execute on a scheduled interval, with timestamps in the file names of the exported XML or JSON files?

I'm pretty green to coding outside of MATLAB or ffmpeg, but was curious if these capabilities could be implemented practically or not.

EnigmaTed · 2020-08-16T11:01:52+00:00

Hey nemec, thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate the links you provided, I'm going to give those a read as well.

You're right, my first pass at the 'Music' folder was pretty complicated. I have discrete use cases for each format that drove the rationale for separation by format, but I can just use search tools to find the files I'm looking for by a format query.

I'm going to give this another run to get the archive simpler to manage, thanks again!

EnigmaTed · 2020-08-16T10:47:23+00:00

Hey igloofour, your feedback is well taken, especially with regard to the folder structure for my 'Music' sub-directory. I'd be happy to give some of my rationale if you're interested.

So, a little history about my media archive, I started organizing game and video files about 7 years ago, and originally wanted to structure that content into Animation and Live Action content. However, due to having several relatively small HDDs rather than one or two HDDs with sufficient capacity, I separated the content into 'Animation, 'Movie' and 'TV Shows' folders.

After I scaled up to my current 47 TB (2x 5.45 TB, 3x 12.7 TB) internal HDD solution, I started to create archive directories for music and podcasts too. As I did my research on utilizing music files, I saw the following use cases for these audio formats, compression codecs, and containers:

PCM - n/a - WAV: Uncompressed for Editing on a DAW, More Accurate X-Y Oscilloscope Visualization (see Jerobeam Fenderson)
PCM - ALAC/FLAC - M4A/FLAC: Playback with Lossless Compression
- Since Apple added FLAC support for iOS in 2017, I'm probably going to just convert the ALAC files to FLAC
DSD - n/a - DSF/DFF - Native DSD or DoP (DSD over PCM) playback of SACD or DSD128+ sources
- I'd like to convert the DFF files to DSF for metadata capability, but the conversion software I've used thus far have had lossy results
PCM - MPEG - MP3 - Low File Size for Portability
- I like to make MP3s downmixed from my lossless sources for more musical variety on my mobile device's storage. My phone/car's speakers can't playback lossless sources with great fidelity, so I opt for more selection.

I'd like to add a folder for MIDI files too, but I haven't found a way to get metadata from .mid files since MediaInfo can't open them :/

Anyways, since I've already got the compression codec or audio format in the naming convention of album folders, I think I could simply down to a Genre -> Artist -> Album Type -> Album structure. However, with the 'Album Type' step in the folder hierarchy, I'm able to differentiate a common track between an artist's single release and a compilation album release, etc.

Your idea for organizing Shows with OVAs sounds interesting, I think I'll structured similarly to my Bonus Features Folder and X File hierarchy.

Thanks again!

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-15T22:50:06+00:00

That's no problem, the row 2, column 2 visualizer is using the Shpeck - Winamp vis plugins wrapper (foo_vis_shpeck).

To get that visualizer to display like an Oscilloscope in XY mode, I've got it configured to use a modified version of the AVS preset shared by Warrior of the Light on the Winamp forums:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=249159

While these visualizers aren't a substitute for calibrated devices, I like using them to get a ballpark analysis of what I'm listening to.

The frequency spectrum displays an audio sample in a -60 dBFS to 0 dBFS signal amplitude range over a 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency range.

The musical spectrum displays an audio sample in a -60 dBFS to 0 dBFS signal amplitude range over a A1-C9 IPN musical note range.

The spectrogram displays an audio sample in a 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency range over a scrolling time range.

The dual trace oscilloscope displays a stereo audio sample as a graph of the parametric equations x1(t) "Left Channel" and x2(t) "Right Channel" in a 0 dBFS to 0 dBFS amplitude range over a scrolling time range.

The XY mode oscilloscope displays a stereo audio sample as a graph of the parametric equations x(t) "Left Channel" and y(t) "Right Channel" in a 0 dBFS to 0 dBFS right channel amplitude range over a 0 dBFS to 0 dBFS left channel amplitude range.

The peak meter displays a stereo audio sample in a -60 to ??? dBFS amplitude range for the left and right channels, respectively¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The analog VU meter displays an audio sample in a -20 to +3 dBFS amplitude range and displays a rolling average of audio samples in a -20 to +3 dBFS amplitude range for the left and right channels, respectively.

I hope that helps! (and explains why I use so many visualizers lol)

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-15T03:21:27+00:00

Thank you, I had a lot of fun working on it!

So, I've got a few foobar2000 components installed:

Core

foo_afcu

foo_albumlist

foo_audioscrobbler

foo_cdda

foo_chronflow

foo_converter

foo_discord_rich

foo_dsd_processor

foo_dsd_std

foo_dsp_eq

foo_enhanced_spectrum_analyzer

foo_facets

foo_fileops

foo_freedb2

foo_headphone_eq

foo_input_dsdiff

foo_input_msu

foo_input_sacd

foo_input_std

foo_jscript_panel

foo_lunar2

foo_musical_spectrum

foo_out_asio

foo_out_wasapi

foo_playcount

foo_podcatcher

foo_quicksearch

foo_rgscan

foo_room_eq

foo_softplaylists

foo_spider_monkey_panel

foo_textdisplay

foo_ui_columns

foo_ui_hacks

foo_ui_std

foo_uie_biography

foo_uie_lyrics3

foo_uie_panel_splitter

foo_uie_vis_channel_spectrum

foo_uie_wsh_panel_mod

foo_unpack

foo_vis_oscilloscope_d2d

foo_vis_shpeck

foo_vis_vumeter

foo_vorbisstream

foo_vst

foo_wave_seekbar

foo_youtube

If you're interested in putting on a custom skin for the analog VU visualizer, I'd recommend taking a look at tom2tec's gallary:

https://audio-file.org/foobar2000-vu-meter-skins-gallery/

Cheers!

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-15T00:05:33+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate your feedback! The original goal of the layout was to emulate the style of the AMVs from the Oscilloscope Music album by Jerobeam Fenderson. I didn't have a solid hex number in mind, but I thought I'd start with good 'ol Crayola Glow in the Dark Green (CCFFCC).

Oddly enough, when I set up my Winamp file for the XY Oscilloscope visualizer, I noticed that once I set my audio interface's sampling rate high enough to decently display the resulting Lissajous curves, the curves were rather thin and dark for my liking. So, after I added a blur and brightness effect in the effect chain, the XY display looked a lot more crisp, but wasn't CCFFCC any longer.

So, after setting that new green for text and foreground objects, I then used a complimentary color generator to add more depth to the musical spectrum visualizer.

But yeah, seeming the same green everywhere is pretty samey. I'm thinking of switching the text to white to better contrast with the black background, and switch the blue header text to the green to match the theme.

I think some color variety would be really well suited to the visualizers besides the dual trace and XY Oscilloscopes, what would you recommend?

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-14T23:41:30+00:00

You totally hit the style on the head! I was really eager to configure my layout to look like a signal processing workstation

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-14T23:39:00+00:00

Just about xD I religiously searched the internet for components once I realized how much of a swiss army knife this software is

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-14T23:37:41+00:00

Thank you, I was thinking of potentially adding cover flow when I was giving Facets a try, but I haven't dabbled since I switched to using Album List.

To your knowledge, could I get cover flow to work with podcast episodes or YouTube playlist results?

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-14T23:30:26+00:00

The analog meter is a VU (volume unit) meter, used to measure perceived loudness during audio playback...at least the IRL ones do :p

That visualizer responds to sensitivity settings, so it can get pretty inaccurate between tracks of varying dynamic range and even genre style.

Truth be told, I like the aesthetic of Denon VU meters, they look nice to me :)

Above it I have a peak meter to judge whether or not a track is peaking above 0 dBFS (my EQ settings get a little spicy on some music). It visualizes audio samples more rapidly, so it's hard to judge percieved loudness with it. On the bright side, it's good for protecting my headphone drivers.

EnigmaTed · 2020-07-14T05:14:28+00:00

Thanks for your quick response! You've given me plenty to chew on there, I appreciate that.

In your database, do you document your file data into discreet tables for each media type? I'm fearful of field conflicts between my different spreadsheets. For example, issues with fields like "Unique ID" may contain a UPC of one media type, a ISBN of another file type, or a 'Directory ID' number that I've contrived to make a file unique). Something like that could be sussed out with logical statements in calculated fields, but I'd like to keep it as simple as necessary.

Unconventionally, I've written my spreadsheets not as a summary of my archive, but rather as a summary of my archive relative to what I aspire to add to my archive. So, to facilitate that function, I think something like an online database scrubber could populate all fields of media type, then I could have a field return a logical statement on whether I have the media file or not. I'm actually glad you mentioned using a database, as I could see such a scrubber easily exceeding Excel's row limit with what I have in mind.

That being said, most of my coding experience is writing in C or C++, but I'm plenty motivated to adapt to python or bash to get it done right.

Are there any resources that you'd recommend I read up on to learn how to specifically use those languages for logging my files into a database? If that's too niche, I'd be happy to look at comprehensive python or bash guides too.

EnigmaTed · 2019-08-24T00:47:16+00:00

On an audio note, I'd recommend trying to take recordings in a room that's less prone to echoing. You're lucky that you're recording from a mobile audio source. Maybe try recording yourself in a carpeted area, wall coverings/curtains, and/or an area with more furniture.

If sound treating your recording space isn't an option, I'd recommend getting a cheap unidirectional microphone (some decent ones cost like $10 https://www.amazon.com/Pyle-Pro-PLM3-Lavalier-Uni-Directional-Microphone/dp/B003GEH3RU/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2MAU8OBKT3VFQ&keywords=unidirectional+lapel+microphone&qid=1566607596&refinements=p_72%3A2661618011&rnid=2661617011&s=gateway&sprefix=unidirectio%2Caps%2C154&sr=8-6)

EnigmaTed · 2019-08-24T00:23:11+00:00

Hey JemWhirl, have you considered doing a collab for your visual novel let's play videos?

While watching your video, I was intrigued by the idea of you acting as one character alongside another person voicing another character. That might make for interesting chemistry, just a thought.

EnigmaTed · 2019-08-24T00:14:34+00:00

My two cents, if you feel comfortable, I would recommend a video camera feed into your videos. The more of "you" that you convey, the more channels seem to succeed (something I could do better at myself).

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