Sabotaged by Technical Brilliance
354509
Mr. Newman is an admirable technician whose manual and pedal virtuosity are truly extraordinary. Unfortunately, his dexterity gets in the way of the music. At these hyperkenetic speeds the effect is the aural equivalent of disco-era strobe lighting. Thank you, but I don't like it at all. I don't like dutiful plodding in Bach's organ works either, but the music needs a little breathing space for the granduer to make its effect. The chorale based preludes aren't badly done at all. It's a shame that some of the reflection exhibited in the chorale works didn't filter into the free compositions. Yes, the notes are all there, but the polyphony doesn't have time to register at these speeds. While I appreciate ornamentation in this music, it should add expression not the here-it-comes-again predictability we get in these run throughs. Mr. Newman also has a preference for garish, reedy registrations. All in all, the race to the finish line and the monotonous,blaring screech of the organ make for some unpleasant listening.
1123680
The explanations and guidance in this book are excellent -- clear and logical, with a very nice flow from one skill set to the next.

However, the number of incorrect diagrams -- and consequently incorrect proofs -- in this book is truly shocking. For example, practice problem #3 in Chapter 10 (p. 113, with solution starting on p. 340) is COMPLETELY wrong.

The question asks you to prove that exterior angles on the SAME side of the transversal through parallel lines are supplementary.

Meanwhile, the "solution" proof itself actually proves that the ALTERNATE angles (i.e., angles on the OPPOSITE side of the transversal) aare supplementary.

On page 95, the measure of angle CBD is given as being GREATER than 90 degrees (step 4), and consequently angle CBD is proudly declared to be acute.

By looking at the diagram, one can easily tell that angle CBD is acute, but the fact that the "greater than" sign is used instead of the correct "less than" sign in step 4 of the proof itself is bound to be confusing.

All I can say is, Huh...?

Up to this point, I was willing to accept that these were just sloppy typos, but in my opinion, these blunders mar a potentially excellent guide book.

This book needs to be thoroughly re-edited to correct the many, many sloppy mistakes in labeling and proving in order to achieve its potential.
1837946
Both of these albums are good.  Stick It is the superior album of the two, but both have worthy songs and excellent performances from a great Big Band.

What really irks me is the audio glitch in the mastering on A Different Drummer.  The CD sounds OK, except for a noticeable mastering flaw at the end of, "Paul's Tune."  At 6:02 the left channel loses all frequency dynamics and suddenly sounds like it's being played over a phone line.  It's muffled and muddy for about 5 or 6 seconds.  That may not sound like much, but when you're listening to a well recorded Jazz album muffled and muddy (and very midrangey) sound at the end of a song is distracting and jarring.  It's unacceptable, and BGO should be embarrassed about such a flaw.

Now that's the only audio flaw I've heard so far, but, still - it's not cool.  Basically what that says is that Andrew Thompson, who mastered the album, never listened to it all the way through.  He wasn't paying attention and must not have really cared, otherwise he would have at least given the album ONE listen all the way through.

That's a shame, because A Different Drummer is only available otherwise on an out of print (and very expensive) Japanese release.
4351647
As is usually the case, I find myself in general agreement with Madamemusico.  I am a little more favorably impressed with this recording's Robert Merrill and the Robert Shaw Chorale than she is--a relatively small variance.

Nevertheless, I give this set a miserly one star to her five.  The reason is quite simple: this is, in my opinion, a botched remastering and, alas, one all-too characteristic of today's EMI.  Perhaps the company's recording engineers are deaf, indifferent, incompetent, morbidly fond of consonants, or some weird combination of these things.  The result is a marked deterioration in sound quality in this "Pagliacci" from the old Lp issues.

Poor Bjorling is the worst victim.  On my first (and only!) playing of this set, I was brought up short again and again by ghastly wheezes or exaggerated consonants or apparent clicks of teeth.  I was repeatedly forced to declare to myself that Jussi just did not sound like that.  So much of my attention was forced, willy-nilly, upon mere sounds that, for all intents and purposes, the performance was lost.

The upshot was that I finally admitted to myself that I had purchased a lemon.  I have ejected this wretched thing from my collection, casting it out into uttermost darkness.  I replaced it with the excellent Naxos remastering (based on old Lp versions), available here in Canada, at least.  That version is fully worthy of Madamemusico's five stars.
3009609
I started with two new CR2032 batteries. I checked the batteries with a multi-meter.

The instructions are not just confusing, but down right misleading. They seem to have been written by a Chinese person who studied English as a Second Language, and English was not her most brilliant subject, but a distant third after Social Studies and Remedial Math.

The first part of Step 2 is:  Press any button on the locator to program the item number.

Step 3 is:  Program your second locator, using Steps 1 and 2. Be sure to use a different item number.

What? So these two gadgets are supposed to talk to each other by selecting two random numbers? Its not having to put up with techno-nonsense like this that gives Amish people a reason to feel content with their lives.

Imagine Nigel Studworthy standing outside his sleek, royal blue Aston Martin while Penelope Lovelace, his sweetheart and heiress to Britains largest publishing empire, shivers in the darkening evening, as the wind picks up and the temperature drops. His keys are ... somewhere amongst all the camping gear in their tent, the very tent they just spent the last hour pitching, or his keys might be somewhere in the Aston Martin.

With exasperation in his voice, Nigel fretted, I don't understand how this key finder could fail me! I bought it at Radio Shack!

Penelope looked wistfully into the trees and said, If only wed bought some piece of kit that was made in China. The Chinese seem to be making half of everything these days.

To quote Eminem, Snap back to reality. I tried all manner of re-inserting batteries to restart the sender and receiver, plus various combinations of buttons. The red light on each piece light up, they each made beeping sounds, but they never talked to each other. This thing is useless.

I recycle everything that can be recycled. After I post this review, Im removing the batteries and putting the sender and receiver into my box of electronics recycling ... right next to my 8 Track Tape Player and my Captain and Tenille tapes.

Im kidding about the last part, but as far as 1970s music goes, Queen totally rocks!

Looking at the other key finders on offer, the one by Emerson is also a piece of junk. For now, I tied two feet of blue rope to my keys, which has helped me locate them on several occasions. And every night, I make the effort to put my keys, telephone, wallet and glasses in the same place. Have a place for everything and make decluttering a regular habit.

Of course, its best to be mindful of where you put things in the first place, but if you do misplace your keys, take a hint from Michael Jordan and keep looking!

I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
  -- Michael Jordan
1249905
This headset could have quite possibly been one of the best that I had ever used, if it weren't for a few of the overwhelming flaws of this headset. What sold me on the Elite 800s to begin with was it's bluetooth functionality. It's surprising that so many of the competitors have not implemented this technology in their headsets, it boosts the value of the set so much to be able to seamlessly transition between your PS4, PC, and Phone with the push of a button. Some of the EQ presets sound amazing, The Advanced Warfare Multiplayer preset was perfect for Call of Duty, and the Super Human Hearing was a nice touch as well. Sadly, that's about where the pros end, and the list of cons SEVERELY outweigh the pros.
CON 1) The headset looks and feel very sturdy and well built at first glance, but unfortunately that's not the case. After about 3 days of use, the plastic in the headset began to creak and crack with every subtle movement. Not only that, but if I applied slightly more force than required to change the EQ preset, the audio would begin to distort and decay, almost as if the slight pressure were warping and bending the soldering within the ear cups.

CON 2) As mentioned before, a handful of the presets are extremely useful, but sadly most of them are a jumbled mess of muddy bass, and underwhelming mids. The Destiny preset was sub par at best, while the Footstep preset made absolutely EVERYTHING inaudible with the exception of footsteps. It's great to hear someone sneak up behind you, but horrible to be unable to tell from which direction that Exo Boost just went off.

CON 3) The mic was trash. After speaking to a few friends online, we came to the conclusion that the mic was unrelentingly gargled and distorted, causing me to have to repeat everything I said 2-3 times.

CON 4) The headset was extremely uncomfortable to me. The clamping force alone is enough to cause a migraine, despite the liberal use of memory foam. It's extremely heavy and feels as if you have a cinder block on top of your head.

I really wanted to like this set, I wanted to give Turtle Beach the benefit of the doubt after previous let downs by other "flagship" models they manufacture. I returned these in less than a week, I was willing to overlook most of the flaws until I realized the cheap craftsmanship- A premium headset such as this one should not suffer from poor internal components. If you are trying to decide between these, and the Astro A40/ A50, let me give you a bit of advice- Pass on those as well. I have owned 2 sets of A40s, this TB Elite 800s, and after returning these I picked up a set of A50s, giving Astro one more chance. Well, 3 times is enough to prove to me that these companies aren't here to provide quality audio products, they are here to make the largest profit margin possible. Please take my advice, buy a nice pair of high-fidelity headphones (Audio Technica, Beyerdynamic, Sennheiser, etc), a clip-on mic (Modmic, etc) and a Y-Splitter and plug them into your PS4 controller. You can get the same audio/mic quality of this headset for literally half the price, or for the price you pay for this set, you can get a GREAT pair of headphones and a quality mic. Don't buy into the competitive gaming marketing.
3934390
Miraculous improvement to getting down to business of making music versus getting prepared to make music.  Technological improvement bar none!
717516
I saw this product on Indigogo as well as on YouTube - The idea is brilliant - A door bell with a camera that lets you interact with the person at your door, and have a one-way video conference over a plethora of devices that begin with the letter 'i' or run that robot operating system with some devices named after celestial objects.  Again, brilliant.

Brilliant in idea.  Not in execution.

Here are the product's failings:
- The instructions are inconsistent.  They state to hold down the main button for 20 seconds to enter setup mode.  My unit blinked red for 2 hours before finally going solid red, which is what's required before the 20-second push.

- There are no settings in the unit to configure at this point besides silent ring.  The photo you can assign the door bell is cute but worthless.  That's dev time that could've been spent elsewhere.

- The camera is NOT wide angle by any stretch of the imagination.  Its adjustability will render it mostly useless in all but the highest of door bells.  In my home, I get a nice view of  half of someone's chest and stomach along with one of the front posts of my home.  I cannot fix this.  I have to tell whomever is at the door to crouch down and look directly into the camera.  This is inexcusable given the fact that wide angle lenses are cheap and readily available, and a product like this will not have a uniform location on every home.  A wide angle lens would mitigate this significantly.  The few millimeters that the camera can be adjusted are trivial and ultimately useless.

- The audio that comes out of the unit (using an iPhone 5s) is low bitrate and played back at a slower pace.  Imagine playing a tape at slow speed, or slowing down an MP3 for you newfangled kids reading these reviews (shakes his cane atcha) - It makes you sound like you're heavily intoxicated while talking to half of whomever's chest is at your door.

- There is often a lengthy delay in getting a ring notification, if you get one at all.  Sometimes, I can hear the door bell but get nothing on my phone.  Sometimes, it just takes 20-30 seconds.  And I'm on LTE on my phone with 50Mbits down/10Mbits up on a business class line in my home, with new 802.11 AC Airport Extremes - I get 4 bars at my front door for both LTE and 802.11n.

- The retention mechanism to keep the doorbell on its plastic mount is laughable.  It's the tiniest, cutest little screw with the tiniest, cutest, most bendable allen wrench ever.  You have to unscrew this little screw out into a little hole in the outer shell to lock it on.  It's like SkyBell included the most unfun minigame ever as an added anti-bonus.

-Support isn't replying to forum responses or youtube videos showing failures.  Guys, user experience is key. When techies are having difficulty with these, once your initial batches are sold, do you think these technical thought leaders will get their mothers one for Christmas?  Certainly, if they hate their mothers.

Ultimately, the SkyBell's raison d'etre is to serve as proof that a product cannot be successful based on marketing and development requirements alone.  Technical quality assurance processes must to be put in place to ensure the product delivers on its promises in a way that enables the technology to get out of a user's way and enhance their lives, not needlessly complicate it with mediocre documentation, poor camera choices, bare-bones software design, and Smurf-sized allen keys.

I have two NEST thermostats as well as a zWave network in my home.  Not to mention 3 Litter Robots.  I love when technology serves me and enhances my life.  This is technology that makes me sad both because of what it promised, and how it ultimately fails to deliver on those promises.

I will likely be returning my unit soon.  If I can find another tiniest little allen key ever, since mine was bent during installation.
1943548
I'm a fool to myself ...

Having read The Da Vinci Code a couple of weeks ago, I should really have known better than to start on another Dan Brown novel - but I picked up a copy of Digital Fortress to pass a few hours ... Turned out to be minutes ...

I was struck, in The Da Vinci Code, by Brown's incomprehensible propensity to use the idiomatic phrase "in hopes of" where most would use "in the hope of" - the term was used by ALL characters AND the narrator, thereby failing to take an opportunity to differentiate characters, and revealing too much of the author himself. Well, proof positive that Brown is not a good writer (I'm distinguishing the writing from the stories here) is shown in the occurrence of the phrase several times in Digital Fortress too.

In addition, he takes great pains to describe his heroine as the stereotypical brace-toothed ugly duckling turned beautiful swan, with an IQ of 170, and who is considered to be one of the brightest people ever to walk the earth. He then uses her to ask simple and straightforward questions of her boss for the sake of narrative exposition - nothing wrong with that per se, but it totally undermines his narrative description of her abilities!

Similarly, the start of chapter 7: "Susan's mind was racing - Ensei Tankudo wrote a program that creates unbreakable codes! She could barely grasp the thought ... " - Even I could "grasp" that idea - what's the excuse of a 170 IQ, brilliant mathematician ... ?

If that's how intellectual "brightness" is defined these days, it's surely no surprise that this year's A-Level results (in Britain) show a 97% pass rate.

Oh yes - and he also says that Julius Caesar "was the first code-writer in history" ...

Not true - off the top of my head, Herodotus (484 to 425 BC) says the Spartans had several clever code systems. One involved writing messages on, say, the inside of a leather belt that had been wrapped around a hexagonal (or octagonal) stick (the skytal), with the individual consecutive letters of words appearing on different 'winds' of the belt (or strip of material); when the belt was unwound from the skytal the lettering was unintelligible. The messenger would then wear the belt as normal, and would deliver it to the recipient, who would also have a skytal of the same size, wrap the belt/strip around it and read off the message.

So, yet again, Brown's research is found wanting.

Needless to say, the book is now on its way to a landfill site somewhere.
4199891
I hate leaving reviews claiming something's "broken", but in this case there were some serious problems. So my problems:

1. The device does not handle run-on MIDI commands properly. I doubt that many modern MIDI devices use run-on commands, as they were a somewhat confusing bit-saving mechanism from the 20th century. The keyboard I used was a Kurzweil SP-88. I suspect this is a design-defect in the product. More on this below.

2. The device would not enumerate on my main PC. That box is a custom-built machine using a P5B Deluxe motherboard which has never had any problems with any other USB devices. I even tried clocking the box down to normal speeds; Vista gives me a vague error about the device malfunctioning, and Ubuntu gives me a read error during enumeration in dmesg (which, to be fair, wasn't any more useful in this context.)

3. For all the reviewers who said the cable was labeled backwards: MIDI cables are always connected so that the "OUT" of one device goes to the "IN" of another device. MIDI supports a ring-shaped daisy-chain of devices that way. This cable was not labeled backwards.

Elaborating on point 1:

On the wrong equipment, when you do this:
1. Press-and-hold key1.
2. Press-and-hold key2.
3. Release key1.
4. Release key2.

You get this:
1. Press-and-hold key1.
2. Press-and-hold key2.
3. Release key1.
4. Press-and-hold key2 again.

For those technically inclined, here's the data stream from my SP-88 using the old serial cable I was replacing (I had to resurrect a dead machine to get this; I'm forging note velocities for easier comparison):
90 40 45 3c 48 80 40 62 3c 61

Here's what this product read:
90 40 45 90 3c 48 80 40 62 90 3c 61

Here's the nearest valid sequence it could have provided:
90 40 45 90 3c 48 80 40 62 80 3c 61

Note the 80 instead of 90 in the third-to-last byte - "80" means "note off", "90" means "note on". This was a deal-killer for me; your mileage may vary.

I replaced the cable with an M-Audio cable from a local shop for 3x the price; that cable also reprocesses run-on commands, but does it appropriately (the third sequence above is what I would get.)

The seller was courteous and provided a full refund, including shipping, so all I lost to them was time. I'd buy from these guys again, just not this product.
2911577
I tried, I really tried.  I took him to work with me.  I listened to him as I drove through the mountains.  I gave him my undivided attention on the headphones in the living room.  But, try as I might, there's not much good  I can say about "Pieces in a Modern Style."
Purists will be  aghast at the electronic reworking of compositions by Ravel, Beethoven,  Handel and others; the ambient crowd will yawn with boredom at the  undoubtedly high-tech production that goes out of its way to sound  low-tech.
The result:  Unless you really want to see what pouty,  posturing synth artists (lose the cover art already!) do when they decide  it's time to make Serious Music, stay away.  You can find better electronic  music; you can find better classical music.  Taken together, neither side  wins here.
4420284
The performances are very good -- propulsive and exciting.

The sound is excellent, albeit slightly sterile, sounding almost as if it were recorded in a studio.

The video is poor, the worst I've encountered in a symphonic performance Blu-ray. A diffusion filter appears to have been used, and it softens the image, reduces detail and adds an unfortunate bloom to the whites.

Worse yet, the direction, camerawork and editing are awful. There are a lot of frequent cuts and overlapping images. At times, a freeze frame is used -- a very gimmicky effect that pulls you right out of the moment and makes you aware of the director. It made me appreciate even more the crystal-clear, well-directed EuroArts Blu-rays, which successfully convey a "you are there" quality that adds greatly to the excitement.

This was a lost opportunity.
2637152
I am a big fan of Wilbur smith.  He is a master of the historical novel.
The audio cassette editions of his books, manufactured by Billiance audito, however are so poor in their quality as to be unusable and annoying to the listener.
Brilliance audio's technical reproduction of books is the poorest quality of any that I have purchased- I'm an avid user of books on tape.
I purchased this book to listen to on a cross country drive.  The uneven audio necessitated a constant adjustment of the volume level.  At moments the audio was so low that it was virtually unintelligible.  If you increase the volume another portion would be so loud as to be painful (usually spoken segments by characters).  This requisite constant adjustments in volume made this excellent story a real pain to listen to.
I thought that this might just have been an anomaly with this one particular tape.  I purchased another unabridged novel "Warlock" also by Wilbur Smith and manufactured by brilliance audio - it was the same.
I was so angry after investing a significant sum to purchase these tapes that I called the manufacturer, Brilliance audio's national customer service manager.  She apologized and shipped me a replacement book on tape  that she assured me had good production quality.  I was shocked to find it the same as the previous books.  My car stereo is manufactured by Bose and is high end.
The same problem exists when attempting to play these tapes on a sony walkman cassette player.  My conclusion is that Brilliance audio has no quality control or is using a cheaper tape or reproduction method than all of the other audio tape manufacurers.
I wish Wilbur Smith had hired Jim Dale the reader of the Harry Potter books and had his novels recorded at another studio because those books are performed and reproduced magnificently.
The audio renditions of both Warlock and River God, however, are simply poor quality and not worth their cost and unless you don't mind adjusting the volume continuously as you listen - don't buy them.
4586342
I have been eagerly awaiting this re-release since it first appeared on CD as part of Sony's "Royal Collection". Reviewers will recall that there was a channel bleed problem on the tracks that Bernstein narrates "How A Great Symphony Was Written".  There were four narration tracks: English, German. French, and Italian. The problem was that Sony, in their infinite stupidity, over dubbed two languages on seperate channels on each track, left and right. The listener had to  manually turn down the volume input on the left or right channel of their receiver to eliminate the unwanted duplicate narration...a technical mess! Well folks, Sony has NOT corrected this problem on this Great Performances re-release, as I evidenced while sampling the CD at a Border's Books Listening Station. I cannot recommend this CD soley for this reason, and thus my 1 star rating. It's a real shame, because Bernstein's narration of "How A Great Symphony Was Written" is otherwise outstanding. I hope somebody at Sony is paying attention, but why should I expect that? Sony obviously didn't think enough to correct this travesty after it's initial CD release. If any other customers have purchased this CD and have not found the problem that I have described, please let me know about it. However, that is highly unlikely.
508346
"Digital Fortress" should more properly have been named "Implausible Sandcastle."  In skimming over the more recent Amazon reviews, it became clear that many people are buying into some of the underlying factoids in this book.  Coleridge wrote of "a willing suspension of disbelief."  Well, I am certainly willing to suspend my disbelief for the sake of an amusing thriller, but I am not willing to suspend it as much as this book requires.

At the heart of the story is a handy-dandy superdupercomputer.  Dan Brown, in a single brief passage, casually explains why this computer is so special.  Special?  Why, it is the Holy Grail of computer breakthroughs.  If such a computer existed, breaking codes would be one of its most trivial functions, about on a par with addressing envelopes with a current top-of-the-line supercomputer.  If such a machine existed, the world would be changing in as radical a way as the change from isolated mainframes to ubiquitous PCs.  Codebreaking?  Who cares?  Important things would be happening!

Even more implausible is the book's administrative and bureaucratic environment.  I flat out do not believe that a code breaking establishment with a $2 billion tinkertoy at the heart of the intelligence apparatus of the nation would, for all intents and purposes, routinely shut down and be left unmanned (or unpersoned, if you will) for the weekend.

Then there is the gentle art of code breaking and decipherment.  It is clear (from his erroneous description of Julius Caesar's ciphering techniques, from the peculiar notion that four-letter code groups specifically relate to Enigma machines, from the emphasis on brute force methods) that Dan doesn't know Jack about it.

Wrap all this in a plot in which every character consistently acts more idiotically than the next at every possible opportunity, and a killer who is so deadly that he might be taken for the second cousin of a upas tree except when he tries to bump off the hero (again and again and again)--and one might almost conclude that the author had intentionally written a shaggy dog story.

Dan Brown?  With a sense of humor?

Nah!
2859820
The materials are fantastic. The fit and finish is impeccable. What do these things matter if the product is simply unusable? Using OneNote produces utter garbage with shaky lines (when lines are drawn at all) and a startling lack of reliability.  The pen works a little better in other programs but I'm just  not able to use this. An utter disappointment.
3696322
It is easy to go wrong when you have the two best names in the trade write & review a technical book. This is as technical as technical gets for color manipulation. Think how incoherent geeks could be. Yet, this is easy reading. Color lab could be a place, with test tubes... but right out of the gate we are told it isn't "lab" it's "el  ay bee" the L is for luminance and the A & B are just two arbitrary names for two strange interactions that our eyes do to see color.

This is about neurology. We don't see color as wavelength. Many interactions in our heads go into color perception - and - those interactions can be manipulated  by linking color pairs as opposite ends of two sticks (two sticks, four colors).

So you learn to see images - no - you learn to re-see images as having qualities wherein the one stick is leaning too far and the other is too vertical. Huh?  Lots of pictures and in no time at all you see it. Actually, it gets pretty obvious right away. Words like too thin, or flat looking, and where's the life? have you grabbing for those sticks so that you can turn them and fix the image.

This is the image handling equivalent of driving a stick shift. A little work, quickly intuitive and great control.

So, where do you go to buy these sticks? They are already in Photoshop (gathering dust).

Curvemeister is a commercial product to stand alone or be used as a hand holding plug-in with photoshop which uses L_a-b color manipulation.

So it is, what? Quicker once you learn it? Yeah. It's that.

Great for impressing people? No. Hard to explain. They'll think you are babbling.

Then what?

It can do things to images that the other methods just cannot do. They challanged and I tried. Certain types of color manipulation are just not possible working with the standard RGB switches. But it is easy for L_a-b (and it turns out for images of nature really important and commonplace).

If you are the type who really does not want to fool around with Photoshop manipulating RGB sliders or CMYK... then you'll hate L_a-b color and the book will not sit well with you.

But if you have Photoshop and are concerned about getting images their absolute best - especially >> FOR PRINT <<, then just do it. Get the book. Get off your big bottom and learn. I can hear them clapping for you already. Nice pictures!