Now Playing Deeper Into Music

In Philip Gröning’s 2005 documentary Into Great Silence we spend almost three hours in the company of monks who’ve taken a lifelong oath of silence in a Swiss monastery. This lush beautiful film gives us a fleeting sense of a life of profound, ascetic quietude.

It’s a paradox, of course, for a sound medium to talk about silence. Simon and Garfunkel famously sang about silence – the poetically contradictory construct of the sounds of silence – in their 1965 hit.

The other side of this are those songs that remind us about sound, words and listening. “That’s the sound of the men, working on the chain gang…” The backbeat of the song is driven by a kind of simulated hammer and stone sound, punctuated by the narrator/singer who tells us what those men are longing for, “You can hear ‘em saying, hmmm, I’m going home…”

The Cascades’ 1962 hit “Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain” begins with the crash of a thunder clap and the rush of an ensuing storm as the backdrop to a lover’s lament. The lyrics suggest that the sound of the rain might be more important than any words the singer has to say, that maybe there’s some information in that non-verbal sound that we could all benefit from.

Context is everything. When Gladys Knight sings that she heard it through the grape vine, she’s framing that, while she does have a certain amount of information, she heard it through secondary and tertiary sources. She sings directly to her lover, needing to hear it directly from him: “How much longer will you be mine?”

In the Beatles’ “Do You Want to Know a Secret” (1963), Paul McCartney first instructs, then queries his listener: “Listen – ooh wah ooh – do you want to know a secret – ooh wah ooh – do you promise not to tell…Oh…Closer – ooh wah ooh – let me whisper in your ear…” It’s a song about longing, telling and listening, specifically whispering, and even more specifically a wish to whisper in the most anatomically auspicious site, the location where the softest whisper has the highest probability for maximum reception: the ear.

Even seemingly simple lyrical constructs remind us that someone is talking (or singing) and we’re listening, such as when Ray Charles raucously rhymes “Hey, hey,” with “that’s what I say…”

More currently, a band called Thursday has produced a lovely echo-chamber dirge called “In Silence,” which accompanies an odd, flickering, black and white animation. Neither the video, nor the tune itself, exactly points to something obvious about silence, or sound, for that matter. But on another level it is perfectly articulate about itself and is somehow broodingly true.

Q Can you tell me how the music is selected?

A I could be politically incorrect and say a 70s catch-phrase like “ancient Chinese secret”, but I won’t.  However, it is complicated.  Let’s see if I can give you some idea.

Part of time I’m sitting in front of the computer arranging music in the order that make sense to me.  Part of the time a series of complex routines helps me pick music.

Songs are assigned “weights” and “rotations” ranging from 1-100 and rare, light, medium, heavy, or power, respectively.  Heavy & medium songs play more frequently than the others and songs with weights greater than 40 play more frequently than songs with weights of a lesser amount. (There are also some songs that are available only during special shows, like the Sunday Spice Rack, etc.)

How is weight determined?  Well, I initiate the weight based on several hard-to- explain personal assumptions.  Each time a song is played its weight is reduced by 1. When a song is requested, the weight is increased either by 1 or 2, varying by frequency of request.  Votes and ratings affect song weight and rotation using a complicated formula that re-balances the weights based on several factors, including request frequency, previous weight and weight & rotation history.

Your requests and votes make a huge difference in the sound of DIM over time. Votes of 4 & 5 increase a song’s weight proportionally, votes of 3 slightly increases the rotation but decreases the weight and votes of 1 & 2 decrease a song’s weight proportionally.  A no-star “dump it” really hurts both a song’s weight and rotation setting.

Periodically, I go in to the database and re-balance all the songs by hand, resetting ones that seem to be playing too often to lower weights, etc.

Finally, all songs are put into a range of categories and songs are picked from these categories based on weight and rotation.

It works something like this in order of selection:

1. Category 2. Frequency of airplay 3. Rotation partially determined by votes 4. Weight 5. Other factors like requests

These factors are sometimes shuffled for a few days and then re-set to that order, giving a (I hope) satisfying varying mix to the sound.

Whew.  Told you it was complicated.

Q How much does it cost to keep Deeper Into Music on-the-air?

A See this blog post

Q What are the Deeper Into Music Tech Specs?

A Dude! I get asked from time to time about the technical specs about DIM and so here’s a listing of most of them. Computer:

Computer:

• AMD Opteron 144
• 1024 MB DDR-RAM
• 2x 80 GB Hard Drive Raid1
• 3000 GB Bandwidth

Software:
SAM from Spacial Audio Systems rotates & helps mix the songs (http://www.spacialaudio.com)

Audio Processing:
Breakaway Live from http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.php with following plug-in enhancements:
1. Helium Spartacus Stereo Enhancement
2. Claesson Clunk/Slam & Bass Enhancement

Encoding: Base mp3s are encoded at 320 kBs using current LAME codec set at Very High with Joint Stereo and then processed through MP3Gain to bring them to a standard 89dB reference point.

Stream Encoder: EdCast LAME streaming at 128 kBs to a standard SHOUTcast server.

Random:
Time it takes to rip ONE song, encode it, and enter it into SAM and properly tag it w/picture, etc: about 10 mins. PER SONG.

BackUp:
Daily back up of all music & SAM code and settings. Twice daily back up of mySQL database.

Q Who runs Deeper Into Music?

A. I do. By my lonesome.

Q What types of streams are offered by Deeper Into Music?
A DIM offers two basic types that can be received by various types of players.  Most users will find that they already have a player installed that will play the mp3 streams.  The AAC/AAC+ streams require specialized players and in some cases require a few steps to initialize and make them available.  However, generally speaking, the AAC/AAC+ streams have a higher sound quality than the standard mp3 stream, making the extra futzing worth your while.

Better yet, the newer versions of iTunes (version 9.0 and greater) now offer full support for AAC streams, so you can listen via iTunes and hear the extra richness in the sound.

Q How do I configure my MAC to play DIM using the AAC/AAC+ streams?
A You can use iTunes 9.0 or greater.  The new versions of iTunes come equipped with AAC support (finally!)  Otherwise it’s a bit of a hassle to get AAC/AAC+ to play on a MAC, you’ll find that it’s worth it in the long run. First, download VLC from this site. Open the .dmg file that you downloaded, then open the VLC disk image on your desktop and drag the orange traffic cone object into your applications folder.  Then right-click (or control-click if you don’t have a 2-button mouse) one of the AAC link on the Deeper Into Music Listen page, and select “Save Link as…”. Save the link to your desktop. Then right-click (or control-click) on that file (aac.pls or something similar) and choose “Get Info”. In the info window go to “Open with:” and select VLC from the list of programs. Click the “Change All” button.  Now all pls links will open in VLC rather than iTunes. You’ll find that VLC is more reliable than iTunes for playing radio streams. It’ll also play our AAC & AAC+ links (which iTunes won’t play).  The 128k AAC link gives the best sound quality of any of our streams, and our 64k AAC+ link gives quality equal to 128k MP3 at half the bandwidth.

Q What players do you recommend for listening to Deeper Into Music?
A The choice of player is a personal decision, but here’s a look at the ones that tend to give the best success to most people:

• Windows: Winamp
• MacOS iTunes or to hear the higher quality AAC/+ streams, use VLC
• Linux/Unix: XMMS or to hear the higher quality AAC/+ streams, use VLC

Thanks to Morten Udsen for these helpful notes to listen on Unix based sytems with Firefox browser:

1. Install MediaPlayerConnectivity (MPC)[more info]
2. Install VLC
3. Configure Firefox via MPC to open MS formats in VLC

Q Why does the sound keep cutting in and out?

A There can be several reasons. Sometimes the Internet gets congested and there’s nothing you can do but wait a bit.

But, in some case you may not have enough bandwidth, especially if you’re on a really slow DSL or dial-up connection. You want to try one of the 64 or 32 kBs streams listed on the Listen page.

You can also try to increase the playback buffer size of the software you’re using to listen. The method for doing this varies widely between the listening agents. You should consult your software’s help file. For your convenience, here are links to two solutions that work for some users who have periodic buffering issues:

For Winamp: go here

For iTunes: try this

Q Can I listen with my smartphone, PDA, iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc?

A Yup.  See the links on the listen page for some free players that you can install and use with various phones and devices.  At the moment DIM does not have a custom iPhone app, but we’d like to.  Know how to make one?  Get in touch!