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I've been using the free version of Spotify since last week.
Never really got into it, but now I'm loving it 
So anyway, I just noticed uBlock blocked 500 requests, or 58% of the total.
Does that mean Spotify is actually more advertisement than anything else? 
*Just noticed the number went up, it's 60% now.
I guess I'm effectively listening to Spotify Premium at no charge
Not sure if I should whitelist them... Ad-less music vs. honest earnings for a good service at the listening expense...
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The kids bought the wife a subscription to the premium edition of Spotify a couple of months ago. She loves it. When I finally upgraded her machine to Win 10, the only thing she told me was: "You mess up my Spotify and you're dead!"  I must confess my hands trembled a bit when I installed Spotify on 10, but fortunately it worked without problems. 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Sander Rossel wrote: Does that mean Spotify is actually more advertisement than anything else?
Yes! This comes as a surprise to you? After all that bitching by Sailor Twit about the paltry amount of money they were intending to give her?
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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9082365 wrote: Yes! This comes as a surprise to you?
It would if this was the case on first load of the site 
It doesn't when the number adds up after every song.
9082365 wrote: all that bitching by Sailor Twit
Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate
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Quote: I guess I'm effectively listening to Spotify Premium at no charge
Not quite. As I understand it, you get better sound quality with a premium subscription.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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You get more bits per second at least..
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Quote: You get more bits per second at least
Which equates to faster digitizing and hence better quality - right?
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Lower quantization, so lower distortion. But who can tell? The minimum bits/s to get "transparent" Ogg Vorbis encoded audio depends on which study you read and what sound you're encoding (transients are annoying and can cause pre-echo in essentially every frequency-domain codec, vorbis does a pretty good job though), but some sources put it at q5 (which corresponds to 160kbps, which you get in Spotify Free), some at q6, but 320kbps is all the way up to q9, nearly the max and uselessly high. They could probably go down to q4 (128kbps) and almost no one would notice.
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Many many years ago, at the Cebit fair, I talked to a Herr Doktor Doktor can't remember the name from the Fraunhofer Institut. Yes, the ones that invented mp3.
He claimed that in their extensive blind tests, only very few special people could hear any difference in the sound of mp3s above 128kb.
And that those who could were usually special in more than one way.
I certainly do claim that I can hear the difference between 128kb and 192kb, but I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean he was wrong.
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All this talk about the effects of bitrate is very interesting. Thanks!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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I can only notice higher quality sound with expensive headphones. If you are listening with earbuds, increased audio fidelity is pointless.
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
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If you are listening with earbuds the whole thing is pointless!
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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So if someone is giving you paid content for free, but with the understanding that you'll accept a few ads in return (so they can, in turn, pay the artists who make the music), and then you break that agreement with them by blocking ads, is that stealing? Or merely cheating them?
I'm not being facetious here: the only way many services can be provided for free is to have someone, somewhere, pay for them for you - and that's often through advertising.
You have your own moral compass to guide you, but please at least think about what ad blocking means. It usually means someone, somewhere, has just paid for you out of their own pocket.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I know.
I got an ad blocker when YouTube introduced their ads. Some ads were longer than the video you tried to watch! It really took the joy out of YouTube and I've never actually seen something like YouTube Premium!
I've also lived in a place with really slow internet for a while. An ad blocker was the difference between reasonable internet and really very slow internet. There was actually this YouTube-esque website that wouldn't show any videos at all while your ad blocker was active, but disabling it showed you a 30 second ad that lasted well over a minute because of buffering! The actual video played fine though...
But I'm especially annoyed by the little movie commercials with sound (not on YouTube, just in a side bar or something).
All in all I think advertisers have kind of ruined advertising by making it too big and invasive.
I didn't actually notice I was missing anything on Spotify until today and then I realized what I was missing (more than just a few banners and side bars).
It's off (for now) and all I got was a 30 second ad, so it's not that bad I guess.
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and this is the other side of advertising: being annoying and treating your audience like hapless sheep. It's insulting and totally unnecessary. Advertising is meant to be informative: "I have something you may be interested in". Instead it becomes a contest of who can be loudest and most intrusive. The very worst cold-calling salesperson with your mobile phone number.
I get it. Totally.
It's a downward spiral at this point. Some of us, however, are trying to keep it respectable. We'll see how it all ends up...
cheers
Chris Maunder
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But they do it because it works.
A large enough quota of the of the audience ARE hapless sheep, and if those are the aiming group the marketers don't give the slightest about the rest.
Ever wondered why all the commercials for detergents, washing liquids and other household products are made like they are?
It's not about information, it's about recognition.
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Sander Rossel wrote: I guess I'm effectively listening to Spotify Premium at no charge 
Is there not adverts between songs on the free version?
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Not with ad block installed, no
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Anybody else subscribed to CP's RSS feed? (CodeProject Latest postings for The Lounge[^]
For about a week now I longer get subject lines at all--every new entry just starts with the actual message content. Or rather, it seems like my RSS reader (Thunderbird), seeing no subject line at all, uses the message body in its place.
Other feeds, such as the Latest Articles one (CodeProject Latest Articles[^]) are ok.
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Ahhh...I was looking for that. Thanks.
[Edit] Looks like I'm not the only one to have noticed[^]
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I am looking for a website which will allow me to add sine waves.
Can someone tell me what question to ask Google ?
I know several questions that don't work.
I want to...
- Input the frequency
- Input the phase angle
- Input the amplitude (nice to have, not required)
- Click on a button
- See the resulting wave form (save as PNG or whatever would be nice)
These phrases and questions don't work...
- free online graphing tool to add two sine waves together
- online graph, adding two sine waves together
- add two sine waves together
- add two sound waves together
- Add two frequencies
- Online Tone generator
Certainly I'm not the only guy on the internet who has ever wanted this.
What question do I ask ? How do I phrase it ?
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This do it?
Wave Adder[^]
My Google query was "how to add waves graphically" and it was the 6th link.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Nice catch.
Thank you and you are voted up
My physics is messed up.
If I add two sine waves, same amplitude, same frequency, but off by 180 degrees, I'm supposed to get zero.
Wave Adder gives me a much lower amplitude, but not zero.
Am I missing something ? Maybe congress changed the laws of physics.
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maybe the Phase shift should be entered in rad and not degrees?
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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