Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I was really excited about the remaster of Snoop Dogg’s Tha Last Meal, titled Tha Last Meal: USDA Edition, but listening to it, I can’t tell any difference between the two albums. They contain an identical number of tracks, with an identical length per track. Pulling up the old/new versions of Hennesey N Buddah (Feat. Kokane) (Produced By Dr. Dre & Mike Elizondo), I imported them into Audacity to look at their spectrums:

This is just the first six seconds of the stereo tracks, with old on top, and new “remaster” on the bottom. I see no difference layering them on top of each other at 50% opacity:

As far as I can tell, the newer remaster of Snoop’s classic album is a reissue, rather than any actual remaster. Perhaps you are paying an extra $5 for new album art?

I just synced an mp3 album I had downloaded and copied into iTunes on my iPhone (1st gen, not a 3G), but every song was stuttering and skipping. The files themselves are fine–they all play fine in iTunes. The file I was trying to play had the following attributes:

Bitrate: 96 kbps
Encoder: FhG
Tags: ID3 v1/v2
Sample Rate: 44.100 khz

Trolling through online forums, the following advice was offered:

• Use the “Rock EQ” preset (didn’t work for me, and I tried turning EQ Off / Soundcheck On/Off too)
• Restore the iPhone (that sounds like a pain)
• Delete the playlist and remove all the songs from the phone, then create a new playlist and resync them
• Convert the music to AAC (right-click, convert to AAC)

Since the last option is the easiest, I tried it. And it worked–smooth playback. It’s possible that there really was something horrible with the files, as they stutter in VLC too!

The Zune 2.0 is coming out, but with more of a whimper than a bang. The new features include new flash models, a black 80GB hard drive model, WiFi syncing, podcast and recorded TV support, according to An in-depth look at the new Zune lineup by Ars Technica. Additionally, these new features will be made available to Zune 1.0 users through a firmware update.

Is this a new product announcement or an apology?

The Zune 2 is basically what the Zune 1 should have been. Its online music store / syncing tool has been rewritten to be as easy to use as iTunes. Hopefully this new Zune will sell more than the paltry 1.2 million units its predecessor sold, but I’m not optimistic. Now that Apple has released their touch-based devices, Microsoft, and every other portable device maker not using touchscreens, is simply a loser. Why would I buy a device with a tiny screen to watch movies on when I can buy a device that removes all the clunky wheel controls and fills all the available space with a gorgeous widescreen?

Specification-wise, the new Zune and iPod touch are basically identical, but interface wise, its a completely different story.