Behringer: practices, ethics, morals and legitimacy.

[kons]

Yes embodied energy assessments are done all the time. In some specific cases they can be useful for guiding policy, at other times they are not worth the paper and energy they use to produce them... (see what I did there)...

The act of listening to music as a download is an ongoing production process and it doesn't make any sense to asses from an embodied production angle. The comparison would have to be a lifetime of the consumer comparison vis a vis listening to their favorite song every day for the next 30 years either on vinyl or as a digital download. And that just can't be meaningfully done.

[kons]

and a stats approach looking for an r number... or p value is only as good as ones predetermined variables. and stamping your conclusion meaningful because you get a particular std. dev. is well.... how are you meaningfully going to make sure that you are randomly sampling the spectrum of vinyl productions or scenerios under which music is digitally distributed? and that you have thought your way to the full list of all the possible permutations...

[KSS]

Statistics don't lie. But statsiticians do. <--Whether by intent or error. Initial or derived.

[Kattefjaes]

Statistics don't lie. But statsiticians do. <--Whether by intent or error. Initial or derived.

With that crowd, deviation is standard.

[dubonaire]

Yes embodied energy assessments are done all the time. In some specific cases they can be useful for guiding policy, at other times they are not worth the paper and energy they use to produce them... (see what I did there)...

The act of listening to music as a download is an ongoing production process and it doesn't make any sense to asses from an embodied production angle. The comparison would have to be a lifetime of the consumer comparison vis a vis listening to their favorite song every day for the next 30 years either on vinyl or as a digital download. And that just can't be meaningfully done.

I don’t think it’s a production process, it’s consumption. Anyway I hope to see the reference I asked for.

[Muzone]

...... Anyway I hope to see the reference I asked for.

....much of the recent discussion has been in the 'serious press' or books, and that's nearly as unreliable a source of information as here, the only unblocked half decent link I can find is http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/183249/

Oh, you might find this online or in a library somewhere, I seem to remember it has some good references: Decomposed, The Political Ecology of Music
By Kyle Devine - The MIT Press

[dubonaire]

...... Anyway I hope to see the reference I asked for.

....much of the recent discussion has been in the 'serious press' or books, and that's nearly as unreliable a source of information as here, the only unblocked half decent link I can find is http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/183249/

Oh, you might find this online or in a library somewhere, I seem to remember it has some good references: Decomposed, The Political Ecology of Music
By Kyle Devine - The MIT Press

That's just data but very interesting nonetheless! I was specifically talking about the reference that demonstrates the difference between vinyl and digital. I'm really interested because the idea that vinyl is environmentally worse than digital has become a factoid, and I'd really like to see if there is any proper research that backs that claim. LCA is a pretty treacherous area of science.

[Muzone]

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... 086CF094CC
I think that's a subscription journal but there's a preprint here that should be open access
https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/203637/13/203637.pdf

[Blairio]

The act of listening to music as a download is an ongoing production process and it doesn't make any sense to asses from an embodied production angle. The comparison would have to be a lifetime of the consumer comparison vis a vis listening to their favorite song every day for the next 30 years either on vinyl or as a digital download. And that just can't be meaningfully done.

I find audio quality of downloads (flac aside) as pretty challenging. That's why I buy CDs. In audio terms, listening to music through a decent playback system (and not earbud headphones) exposes lossy compression quite cruelly.

That is a separate debate from the vinyl vs digital argument. In the early days of CD, most CD's were pretty challenging to listen to - overbright, harsh. It is no wonder (quite apart from the marketing benefits) that there are so many remastered CDs now.

The current crop of midrange CD players playing a reasonably well digitally mastered recording will give a good account of themselves. 'Better' than vinyl? Hard to tell. It is very much down to personal preference. You would have to ask a selection of folk from the generation raised on 128kb MP3s that question.

I am currently looking at 2 brand new recently released boxed sets of vinyl recordings from bands I was in, and really wishing I still had my record deck. A boxed set of CDs just doesn't get the pulse going in the same way. And don't get me started on the royalty structure for downloads....>

<Blair - edited to correct lamentable grammar & syntax>

[galanter2]

Statistics don't lie. But statsiticians do. <--Whether by intent or error. Initial or derived.

An error alone is not a lie. A lie requires intent to tell a falsehood as a truth.

[Red Electric Rainbow]

ive heard the 2600 is starting to ship

[bitflip]

^ word

[KSS]

Statistics don't lie. But statsiticians do. <--Whether by intent or error. Initial or derived.

An error alone is not a lie. A lie requires intent to tell a falsehood as a truth.

It's fairly easy to create a poll that elicits the desired answers. Craft the questions -and their order- correctly and expected responses are nearly assured.

It's equally well-known that experiments can be set up to provide the desired answer. In fact, working against this tendency is a basic tenet of honest research.

So what is it when this is done unintentionally? Still error for sure. But is it a lie when the presenter is unknowing of the inherent bias of their work?

That's why my last three words were added. Because 'derived' results from one or more primary sources deemed unbiased by the person or entity who used them and derived follow-on erroneous results are often seen -and presented- as having truth when it fact, they're built on a shaky foundation. Known or not.

A person or entity believing their lie -and therefore having no intent to mislead- doesn't make the lie itself go away.

[Koekepan]

Who needs politics to polarize and damage a community.

This whole discussion effectively is about politics. Regulation of businesses (current, future or hypothetical) is a political topic, and if you read closely you'll see that many are applying their own moral codes to their analyses - again, a typical feature of politics.

"THEY need to run by MY preferred rules. There oughta be a law!"

Classic politics.

That's just a ridiculously long bow. Almost every activity is regulated in some manner so by your logic we can't talk about anything, be it poor customer service, what people wear, or what makes a power supply labelled safe in a certain jurisdiction.

And no one is saying they need to do anything. People are saying they don't like how a particularly company behaves, they are not complaining to a politician. Don't make this political because it simply is not. Classic calling posts you don't like politics.

I think that you missed my point.

I'm not suggesting that politics shouldn't be discussed. I'm not suggesting that it shouldn't be discussed here on Muff's, on Gearslutz, or in the evening news. In point of fact, I'm rather in favour of open discussion and a carefully reasoned development (ideally) of scholarly understanding of difficult topics - and politics is definitely influenced by, while being one of many very difficult topics.

What I am pointing out is that when people attempt to craft mandates out of their moral positions, that is a political discussion. Feel free to read this thread, if you need to refresh your memory, but there is an ample selection of people expressing their distaste with Behringer's activities on many levels - employment conditions, international trade, treatment of intellectual property and more. If they just privately resolved never to buy a Behringer product, it would, for them, be a strictly private matter, but when they embark upon a public discussion, espousing those ideas, it becomes, by its nature, a political discussion.

And I think that this is a good thing. Whether they're right or wrong.

Clearer, I hope?

[Blairio]

Politics: "the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status."

I don't think this thread has had even a nodding acquaintance with political discussion in a long, long time. Moral, perhaps, ethical , certainly, but political? No.

[Hyberus]

In the early days of CD, most CD's were pretty challenging to listen to - overbright, harsh. It is no wonder (quite apart from the marketing benefits) that there are so many remastered CDs now.

There is a reason for this. In the days of vinyl mastering houses applied the RIAA EQ curve to the master tape that was used for cutting, to prevent issues with low bass. The phono preamp in your hifi amp reversed this, and put the bass back. Early CDs were manufactured using these tapes, so sounded tinny because the CD input did not reverse the curve. When they started going back to the source tapes and mastering for CD without the curve, but (initially at least*) a peak level of -6db then CDs started sounding better.

(* when some bright spark started mastering hotter it worsened the 'loudness wars'. If you want to know more about this I suggest reading Greg Milner's "Perfecting Sound Forever", which has a whole chapter on the subject)

[dubonaire]

Who needs politics to polarize and damage a community.

This whole discussion effectively is about politics. Regulation of businesses (current, future or hypothetical) is a political topic, and if you read closely you'll see that many are applying their own moral codes to their analyses - again, a typical feature of politics.

"THEY need to run by MY preferred rules. There oughta be a law!"

Classic politics.

That's just a ridiculously long bow. Almost every activity is regulated in some manner so by your logic we can't talk about anything, be it poor customer service, what people wear, or what makes a power supply labelled safe in a certain jurisdiction.

And no one is saying they need to do anything. People are saying they don't like how a particularly company behaves, they are not complaining to a politician. Don't make this political because it simply is not. Classic calling posts you don't like politics.

I think that you missed my point.

I'm not suggesting that politics shouldn't be discussed. I'm not suggesting that it shouldn't be discussed here on Muff's, on Gearslutz, or in the evening news. In point of fact, I'm rather in favour of open discussion and a carefully reasoned development (ideally) of scholarly understanding of difficult topics - and politics is definitely influenced by, while being one of many very difficult topics.

What I am pointing out is that when people attempt to craft mandates out of their moral positions, that is a political discussion. Feel free to read this thread, if you need to refresh your memory, but there is an ample selection of people expressing their distaste with Behringer's activities on many levels - employment conditions, international trade, treatment of intellectual property and more. If they just privately resolved never to buy a Behringer product, it would, for them, be a strictly private matter, but when they embark upon a public discussion, espousing those ideas, it becomes, by its nature, a political discussion.

And I think that this is a good thing. Whether they're right or wrong.

Clearer, I hope?

Your position was always clear to me I just completely disagree. Business ethics is taught at universities. It's not taught in political science faculties, it's taught in business schools, including Harvard Business School for example. It has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. it has everything to do with what constitutes good business practice in the 21st century and it is taught for business survival as much as anything else. I disagree that people are "crafting mandates out of their moral positions" they are not even crafting mandates for a start. Nothing about this discussion has to do with a mandate. There are a bunch of business principles that are essentially universally agreed on, such as don't rip off your customer. That's not a relativist moral position for most people on the planet. it might be for the people that end up being the subject matter of the dubious transactions thread. Governments may legislate certain ethical principles, but that does not make ethical principles political, I think that is a fundamental error of logic. By that notion, it would mean every decision I make based on ethics is a political act. And that leads on to mean I mainly make political acts, because there is almost always an ethical element to decision making. And that means we can't talk about anything on this forum, because almost everything is a political act.

To me, labelling criticism of a company as politics is the political act. On this forum it's an attempt at censorship.

[galanter2]

Statistics don't lie. But statsiticians do. <--Whether by intent or error. Initial or derived.

An error alone is not a lie. A lie requires intent to tell a falsehood as a truth.

It's fairly easy to create a poll that elicits the desired answers.

…

So what is it when this is done unintentionally? Still error for sure. But is it a lie when the presenter is unknowing of the inherent bias of their work?

It's still not a lie. The proposition they are stating may be true or false, but that's not what makes it a lie or not. It is the intent to deceive that makes it a lie. I'm sure you can imagine a situation where someone could say a true proposition, but because *they* thought it was false, they were lying. (And knew it. Knowing you are lying is contained in the very notion of lying.)

But even though it's not a lie per se, bad research practice may be a moral failing. For example, one might argue that researchers enter into a social contract to exercise due diligence in research and communication of results. Not exercising due diligence is sloppy, lazy, uncalled for, and generally a moral failing.

(One of the important jobs of professional organizations is to define what due diligence specifically means in their practice.)

[dubonaire]

Statistics don't lie. But statsiticians do. <--Whether by intent or error. Initial or derived.

An error alone is not a lie. A lie requires intent to tell a falsehood as a truth.

It's fairly easy to create a poll that elicits the desired answers.

…

So what is it when this is done unintentionally? Still error for sure. But is it a lie when the presenter is unknowing of the inherent bias of their work?

It's still not a lie. The proposition they are stating may be true or false, but that's not what makes it a lie or not. It is the intent to deceive that makes it a lie. I'm sure you can imagine a situation where someone could say a true proposition, but because *they* thought it was false, they were lying. (And knew it. Knowing you are lying is contained in the very notion of lying.)

But even though it's not a lie per se, bad research practice may be a moral failing. For example, one might argue that researchers enter into a social contract to exercise due diligence in research and communication of results. Not exercising due diligence is sloppy, lazy, uncalled for, and generally a moral failing.

(One of the important jobs of professional organizations is to define what due diligence specifically means in their practice.)

[Voltcontrol]

I Like Cheap Synths And I Can Not Lie


Ps; He can lie obviously, but isn't deceitful in his intent. On the contrary, intent is made blatantly obvious.

[Orange]

There is a very, very thin line between politics and ethics. Fact is, scientist mainly disagree on the definition of politics.
But there is agreement that politics is also about settling moral differences of opinion that are serious enough to cause social conflict. A commonly agreed arbitration process will reduce the likelihood of violence - an important goal in any civilization.
Politics can also be considered as "ethics in the public“: public interest groups can agree or disagree with each other, have discussion, and take action to obtain a desired outcome.

[Blairio]

In the early days of CD, most CD's were pretty challenging to listen to - overbright, harsh. It is no wonder (quite apart from the marketing benefits) that there are so many remastered CDs now.

There is a reason for this. In the days of vinyl mastering houses applied the RIAA EQ curve to the master tape that was used for cutting, to prevent issues with low bass. The phono preamp in your hifi amp reversed this, and put the bass back. Early CDs were manufactured using these tapes, so sounded tinny because the CD input did not reverse the curve. When they started going back to the source tapes and mastering for CD without the curve, but (initially at least*) a peak level of -6db then CDs started sounding better.

(* when some bright spark started mastering hotter it worsened the 'loudness wars'. If you want to know more about this I suggest reading Greg Milner's "Perfecting Sound Forever", which has a whole chapter on the subject)

Good points. I guess the steady evolution of converters also helped. I still have an early Philips cd player from 1985, and the converters on that are brutal. By contrast the converters on my mid-range NAD cd player sound so much better.

[dubonaire]

There is a very, very thin line between politics and ethics.

No there is not. Who told you that?

I mean just do a little bit of reading. Please???!!!

[Orange]

There is a very, very thin line between politics and ethics.

No there is not. Who told you that?

I mean just do a little bit of reading. Please???!!!

My uncle
Thanks for your advice btw. I do read from time to time, but I prefer a good conversation.
.....With people that are open to other opinions.

[kons]

I propose a pendant to 'Godwin's Law':
That as the number of posts in a Beh thread approaches 30 the chance of discussion devolving into a pseudo-intellectual linguistic semantic one, approaches 100%...