Music is the most fun when stored via...

[tye ]

Neurons

 70/17%

Sheet music

 18/4%

Piano roll

 12/3%

Music box

 0/0%

Wax cylinders

 16/4%

Reel-to-reel

 10/2%

8-track

 5/1%

Cassette

 2/0%

Vinyl

 31/8%

DAT

 2/0%

CD

 24/6%

CDROM (MP3)

 30/7%

DVD

 4/1%

Holographic cube

 29/7%

Harddisk

 46/11%

Network

 28/7%

RAM (iPod)

 23/6%

DNA

 44/11%

MIDI

 9/2%

403 total votes

[Coruscate]

Option 17 (indexing starts at 0): "DNA"

I prefer to store my music in strands of DNA within my own body. This is a recent breakthrough in DNA/music technology. It has been found that each strand of DNA (aka deoxyribonucleic acid) has a sole empty cell, capable of storing 2 Megabytes of digital data. Four years of secret study by the U.S. government has created this new method of storing data. A device is currently being designed that will allow any individual to manipulate the data stored within any single DNA strand in the human body, while being able to coordinate multiple DNA strands to work together (to store data larger than 2 Megabytes in size). This new advancement is still in the workings, so there is currently no way in which to access the data once it has been stored. In the near future, the technology for transmitting data directly from a strand of DNA to the brain will be implemented. Let's keep our fingers crossed ;)

---

If the above content is missing any vital points or you feel that any of the information is misleading, incorrect or irrelevant, please feel free to downvote the post. At the same time, please reply to this node or /msg me to inform me as to what is wrong with the post, so that I may update the node to the best of my ability.

[greywolf]

This would be all good for listening to your own music. What if you wanted your friend in the other seat to hear the music also?

I suggest a DNA to DNA transfer involving physical contact. I think licking you finger and sticking it in their ear would be the best. Maybe not very effecient but extremely fun!

mr greywolf

[katgirl]

You'd get a larger DNA transfer through sex, which is even more fun, unless having a finger stuck in your ear is your version of kinky sex ;)

[nimdokk]

There's just something aesthetically pleasing about vinyl. That and you get some awesome cover art that you can actually see.

/me looks at cover of The Pagans' Pink Album.

"Ex libris un peut de tout"

[hardburn]

MIDI might sound primitive, but you can often find decent fan-created tracks of your favorite old video games in MIDI if you dig enough.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

[Mr. Muskrat]

Not to mention that it is very easy to create MIDI music with Perl!

[jonadab]

MIDI is only primitive if your soundcard is a piece of trash. MIDI is like sheet music: sheet music is as good as your orchestra/voice/whatever, and MIDI is as good as your soundcard/synthesizer/whatever.

And there's no denying, you can store a whole lot of music on a hard-drive full of MIDI files.

The only music I don't like MIDI for is music that really has to have the lyrics, such as Weird Al's stuff, or a capella music. For that, there's WAV format. I have about 6 Gigs of WAV on my hard drive, consisting of the songs I like from various albums. I have way more music in MIDI format, but it takes up a lot less space and sounds just as good.

The formats I *don't* like are the lossy formats, such as MP3. I like my music to sound good, and lossy formats don't deliver.

Of course, there's always that .pl format... mutters something incoherent about polyphonic fractals

---

{my$c;$ x=sub{++$c}}map{$ \.=$_->()}map{my$a=$_->[1];
sub{$a++ }}sort{_($a->[0 ])<=>_( $b->[0])}map{my@x=(&
$x( ),$ _) ;\ @x} split //, "rPcr t lhuJnhea eretk.as
o";print;sub _{ord(shift)*($=-++$^H)%(42-ord("\r"))};

[tune]

I thought iPod is using harddisk.

Anyway vinyl is the hottest thing ever. Call me old-fashioned, if you ever had the chance to mimick a DJ you will agree with me.

--
tune

[tye]

I think I can weasel out of this one. If you've been working with computers as long as I have, then you've probably heard a disk drive (not called a "hard disk" because there were no floppies back then) referred to as a "memory device". If you aren't horribly young, then you've probably heard a hard disk referred to as a "random-access device"¹. So, in a situation like this (where we are discussing such old technology), it isn't inappropriate to refer to a hard disk as a "random-access memory" device.

So, for the purposes of this poll, just think of "RAM" as "data storage I can carry around in my pocket" and "harddisk" as "persistant storage inside my PC". I usually like to keep the poll choices short so they fit in the nodelet better.

And I didn't mean "Digital Network Architecture" for "DNA". I meant "deoxyribonucleic acid". Each poll needs at least one or two "creative" choices. I doubt anyone here has music stored in a holographic cube either. "DNA" was the second-to-last choice I came up with. I wondered if it would cause confusion and considered spelling it out or using "RNA" instead. A little confusion never killed anyone.² By the popularity of that choice, I suspect most understood what I meant. (:

¹ Well, a hard disk drive isn't really a random-access device. It isn't a sequential-access device like a 1-track tape. An 8-track tape is mostly a sequential-access device except that it has, well, 8 tracks, that you can switch between (gee, you've probably never seen an 8-track player much less used one; just trust me) without having to seek the tape. A hard disk is an awful lot like a random-access device because you can switch heads almost instantly and the time to seek the heads to a different cylinder and the time to wait for the platter to spin over the desired sector are not huge orders of magnitude longer than the time it takes to actually read/write the data.

² I'm pretty certain that statement is false. Tough beans.

                - tye

[tune]

The techno project called The Shamen produced a song which is translated from a kind of DNA chain. It is called "S2 Translation" and can be found on their LP titled "Axis Mutatis". Good stuff.

Quote: "S2 Translation" is probably the most interesting piece on the album because of the way it was constructed. The MIDI sequence was created by the use of data from "the amino acid characteristics and the DNA coding for protein S2, a receptor for serotonin and other tryptamines." This incredible feat was accomplished through the use of a computer program devised by Colin. Edit: I have found a snippet from the song. Enjoy!

--
tune

[Mr_Person]

Yep, according to the specs page it comes with either a "10GB, 15GB or 30GB hard disk drive."

[dextius]

It copies the music from the disk drive, into 32 megabytes of RAM, and plays it out of there, allowing the disk to spin down between songs. Battery life is better, since the amount of moving parts is significantly decreased.

[thelenm]

I picked "hard disk" since it only takes a single step to get music stored on my hard drive into just about any of the other formats (except I need to upgrade my outdated wax cylinder driver).

-- Mike

--
just,my${.02}

[crenz]

Wow, now this is an interesting poll...

I voted neurons -- I associate that with knowing by heart and improvisation. And performing in a group is my favourite form of music :). I also tend to think about tunes when on the train, sometimes even moving just like someone listening to a walkman/CD player/iPod. Gets me some stares from time to time...

[WhiteBird]

Neurons for me as well. I play the piano for my own amusement and the best music I play is the music that comes from my memory. There's no struggle to read the music, and no time lag between the brain and the fingers. Memorized music starts in the neurons, but is intimately connected with some sort of physical memory in my hands as well. It just flows out across the keyboard. If I have to write the music down, I can't. I can only play it out. It amazes me the way the brain works, providing me with endless hours of amusement.

I work on the computer the same way. If someone asks me to tell them how I do something on the computer I have to show them, because the words aren't always there either. Straight from brain to keyboard, by-passing the verbal translation center. (Puts me at a slight disadvantage in answering questions here in the monastery.)

[larsen]

I voted for "sheet music": reading and playing music can be really funny, specially with other people. On the other hand, I think musical notation is one of the most fascinating and beautiful writing systems.

[BrowserUk]

Grrr. What about my Ink Spot's shellac 78s? :)

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller

[arthas]

I picked neurons: sometimes you record it not so good, but sometimes the recording is even better than the real thing...

[rozallin]

Now this is sneaky, because some people have misinterpreted the question to be "music is most fun when played back via..."

I like my music stored on hard disk, because it's easy to arrange and find and back up, and I can transfer it to CD or MiniDisc and make my own compilations. However, I have something of a fetish for late 70s and 80s vinyl. I think the crackling gives the music character and the art covers and art work is unsurpassed as well, plus it's fun trying to uncover albums in charity shops (thrift stores).

--
rozallin j. thompson
The Webmistress who doesn't hesitate to use strict;

[Nkuvu]

Wax cylinders. Tucson. Current temperature: 91°F / 33°C. Need I say more?

[fredopalus]

What about storage via Radio Station?

[Nkuvu]

Nah, that's where I store all of my commercials and inane chatter. ;)

[xtype]

Because this is the way we roll.


However, I did vote for DVD as I feel that DVD-A and SACD does sound the most "fun" in my HT. Although not quite as pretty as the vinyls.

-xtype

[benn]

I went for neurons too, as (a) when it's all there, it's the most 'perfect' version - no scratches, jumps, compression, frequency-loss etc, but more importantly (and contradictory in a perverse way), (b) because it's the only storage medium that allows music to *change* and grow.

It's a bit like the question "the best foo algorithm is..." - I'd want an option of "the next one I write", and would hope that it'd be the most popular choice - once something is stored in your head (rather than in a book or a library routine), you get the chance to play around with it and evolve it.

The most fun music can be, IMHO, is when it involves multi-organism neural synchronisation. When you're improvising with somebody 'on your wavelength', it can be better than *anything* (and believe me, I've tried many of the things with a similarily-embued reputation {g}). Some of the best musical experiences I've had have been jams with somebody I've never met before, but who happened to be in the same musical head-space at the same time - so good, it can make you cry.

On a completely different note (ouch - sorry), it's always amazed me *how much* music can be stored in the neurons. I tried to work out once how many pieces of music I *knew* (to the point of being able to reproduce the 'melody' and be aware of the harmonic context). Virtually impossible, but I reckoned something between 5K and 10K (after 35 years of life), representing however-many millions of notes.

*Every* adult, musician or not, must be carrying at least 1,000 or so tunes around in their heads - pop songs, adverts, nursery rhymes, 'elevator music' etc. I've always wished I could find some way of tying in my 'musical memory' with the rest of my brain - a little like the mnemonic stuff used by the memory experts. Creating a good tune out of a card-deck arrangement would be a good trick, methinks. Maybe I'll try to work out an orchestral arrangement of PI...:)

Ta-ta-ta-Taaahhh
Ben.

[Aristotle]

I missed Ogg Vorbis on that list. :(

Makeshifts last the longest.

[mrpilot]

SID. Oh yeah. :-)

[benn]

/me grins...I would sooooo like to agree with you (and many others do - I still get mails fom people who are listening to our old SID stuff) for loyalties sake alone, but I think the furthest I can go is to say that "music was most fun when *conceived* for the SID chip" :)

Yes, I loved it too - it was my living for many a year - but 3 voices can get a bit tiresome after 300 tunes - believe me :) The C64 remix movement on the other hand is great! Quite bizarre hearing something that was written for a rock goup *in my head*, realised via 3 voices (dum dum *cha* dum dum dum *cha* dum) and then played by a live group 20 years later. (That's them in the background of my home-node picture, BTW). Not to mention my 5c-per-copy royalties :)

Cheers
Ben(n)

[gmpassos]

Hey, How about MD (MiniDisc)?

You have Discs of 70min & 80min, and with newer Players you use something like MP3 to encode the music. So, you now have 140min and 160min. It has a new format too, MDLP, that enable 5h of music in one single disk!

I think that MiniDic is much better than MP3 players. 1st, the MiniDic is recordable (something about 1 million times). 2nd, you don't need anti-shock (but it has). 3d, the player battery works for 9h (or more in newer players).

Now I'm waiting the new resource (NetMD), where you can drag and drop your MP3 to the MiniDic directly. Thank good, I have waiting this for 5 years. ;-P

Graciliano M. P.
"The creativity is the expression of the liberty".

[Nkuvu]

Still struggling to see the advantage of carrying around a bunch of disks as opposed to just taking a large capacity MP3 player. The iPod, for example, can hold up to 30GB. I have a little less than 10GB of MP3s on my computer (all legal, thank you) which would play straight for something like 5 days. So extrapolating this, I could hold about 15 days worth of music on a 30GB iPod (most of my library is encoded at 192KBps, YMMV). Obviously the battery wouldn't last that long, but it is rated for 8 hours or so.

And how do you not need anti-shock for MD? Maybe I'm just not familiar with the technology -- but it's still reading the disk by spinning like any other optical disk, right? So if hit hard enough, that tracking mechanism would skip.

[Popcorn Dave]

I have to go with MP3 because I've got a portable MP3 player that lives with me in my car because I can't stand most of the radio in the Bay Area anymore, and it's nice to have your own music when you go out of your local area instead of having to channel surf constantly.

Currently my Rio Volt has about 1200 songs on it. I think I can probably drive from San Francisco to LA and back without hearing the same song twice - well if their ranomization algorithm is good enough. :)

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

[Ming]

I picked vinyl not in some sort of "vinyl sounds better than cds!" way, but because of the joy that live techno, gabber and hip-hop dj'ing bring to me. - Alan.

[tbone1]

I voted iPod (and I would imagine everyone else who owns one would as well). However, *the* most fun storage is keeping The Eroica Trio in the spare room. *rowr*

--
tbone1
Ain't enough 'O's in 'stoopid' to describe that guy.
- Dave "the King" Wilson

[DrHyde]

Give me mercury delay lines or give me death!

[Beatnik]

No CowboyNeal?? :P

Anyway, I picked DNA since it was the closed there was to 'Mind'. I really like it how music sounds like in my head... and all those voices in there sing along with it.

Greetz
Beatnik
... I'm belgian but I don't play one on TV.

[fraktalisman]

So many poll options, but not one saying 'Minidisc'. More interesting question: what is the least fun storage medium? Cassette?

[tbone1]

How about WMP/WMA? I know that the AACs I buy from the iTunes music store have a very, very light form of DRM (like being able to burn a playlist ten times before having to make some sort of change to it), but it is very light indeed. In fact, I can't imagine why an honest person would really want/need to do the (very few) things it blocks. WMP/WMA, on the other hand, are not to be trusted, if only for the company behind them. Call that an MS flame if you will; I just say that there is such a thing as empirical evidence.

--
tbone1
Ain't enough 'O's in 'stoopid' to describe that guy.
- Dave "the King" Wilson

[belg4mit]

Erm, where do you keep your neurons?

--
I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.

[Beatnik]

Well, I have about 100 billion ones in my brain :p I suspect you have too

Greetz
Beatnik
... I'm belgian but I don't play one on TV.

[Drgan]

I say harddrive because I'm more of an OGG Vorbis person myself. :) Go OGG!

---

"I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." - Psalms 82:6