0dbfs.pl: Bringing a Nuke to the Loudness War

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Ever heard of the Loudness War? It’s the steady ramp-up in perceived volume that has plagued popular music for the past 30+ years. Producers have steadily chipped away at dynamic range in an effort to make a hotter track. Audio signal-to-noise ratio suffers. Nowadays the typical radio song has a 3-6 dB dynamic range (for comparison, CDs have a theoretical 96 dB range).

Well folks: I’m playing to WIN. Here is a compressor that scales ALL of your peaks to 100%: in other words, compression at a ratio of INFINITY : 1… or a dynamic range of 0. TAKE THAT, PRODUCERS.

Here’s an example in action, cutting from Clair de Lune. First, the original. Then, the RADIO-READY version.

Doesn’t this just sound so much more… hip / edgy / loud / etc?

Interestingly, I tried it on a selection of pop music. It makes for a great demonstration of “listener fatigue”.

0dbfs.zip – zip file containing Perl script, 1.7 kB

cfg_parse – Simple Config File Parser in C

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There is no standard way in C to parse config files. Several libraries have sprung up to solve the problem, but perhaps that is overkill for what should be a simple operation.

Presenting: cfg_parse – a compile-in solution for reading key-value pairs from file(s), looking up settings, and writing a config file back to disk. I could write more about it, but the included main.c shows all the functionality.

// driver test program for cfg_parse

#include "cfg_parse.h"

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
// Pointer to a cfg_struct structure
struct cfg_struct *cfg;

// Initialize config struct
cfg = cfg_init();

// Specifying some defaults
cfg_set(cfg,"KEY","VALUE");
cfg_set(cfg,"KEY_A","DEFAULT_VALUE_A");

// "Required" file
if (cfg_load(cfg,"config.ini") < 0)
{
fprintf(stderr,"Unable to load cfg.ini\n");
return -1;
}

// Several "optional" files can be added as well
//  Each subsequent call upserts values already in
//  the cfg structure.
cfg_load(cfg,"/usr/local/etc/config.ini");
cfg_load(cfg,"~/.config");

// Retrieve the value for key INFINITY, and print
printf("INFINITY = %s\n",cfg_get(cfg,"INFINITY"));

// Retrieve the value for key "KEY", and print
printf("KEY = %s\n",cfg_get(cfg,"KEY"));

// Delete the key-value pair for "DELETE_ME"
cfg_delete(cfg,"DELETE_ME");

// Dump cfg-struct to disk.
cfg_save(cfg,"config_new.ini");

// All done, clean up.
cfg_free(cfg);

return 0;
}

Download: cfg_parse.1.0.tar (version 1.0, 4kb .tar.gz)

Pano Planet

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Here’s a neat photo trick I’ve seen recently, and decided to give it a shot myself.  The general idea is to take a 360 degree panorama shot, then map it to polar coordinates.  This produces a sort of weird spherical projection that looks like a tiny planet.  Called “Pano Planets” or “Wee Planets” (or various other names), the effect is striking.  Objects on the horizon pop out into space, while things in the foreground are flattened.

The neighbors must have thought I was pretty crazy spinning a tripod around on our roof, but I made one from the view at our house.

iNES Header Fixer

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Auditing ROM collections has been made much simpler over the years thanks to concerted efforts of many cartridge purchasers, dumpers, cataloguers, and coders.  Using a combination of RomCenter (or ClrMamePro) and a No-Intro .Dat file, one can quickly fix an entire collection in one go: repairing names, verifying regions, checking for problem ROMs, producing have-lists, etc etc.

NES roms throw a particular curveball because they carry a 16-byte header with a little info about the board within the cart.  Emulators need this info, but it isn’t verified by No-Intro since it’s not part of any real dump.  As a result iNES headers remain missing, incorrect, or filled with crap data.  A new repair tool is needed.

ines-fix.py is a Python script which can repair defunct iNES headers using an external cart database.  It does this by extracting the data portion from the file, calculating a crc32, looking for the crc the xml file, and then rebuilding a header based on that info.  If the old and new headers differ, the file is overwritten with a fixed version.

Be careful with this tool: it’s sort of a blunt object, and may trash your rom collection if not used carefully.  Make backups.  In particular it writes only iNES v1 headers, expecting emulators to cope with the shortcomings of this format.

Output samples:
-> No change to existing header

CRC check: 4318A2F8
Found CRC match: Barker Bill's Trick Shooting
*** Header unchanged: not writing replacement file.
----------------------------------------------------

-> Adding a battery

CRC check: 1F6EA423
Found CRC match: Baseball Simulator 1.000
*** HEADER UPDATED ***
oldHeader: 4e45531a081010000000000000000000
newHeader: 4e45531a081012000000000000000000
All done.  Wrote new file roms/Baseball Simulator 1.000 (USA).nes

-> Correcting a mapper, vertical mirroring, and removing “DiskDude!”

CRC check: 9BDE3267
Found CRC match: Adventures of Dino Riki
*** HEADER UPDATED ***
oldHeader: 4e45531a0204004469736b4475646521
newHeader: 4e45531a020431000000000000000000
All done.  Wrote new file roms/Adventures of Dino Riki (USA).nes
----------------------------------------------------

-> Standardizing on “horizontal mirroring”

CRC check: 3ECA3DDA
Found CRC match: Bases Loaded 3, Ryne Sandberg Plays
*** HEADER UPDATED ***
oldHeader: 4e45531a101041000000000000000000
newHeader: 4e45531a101040000000000000000000
All done.  Wrote new file roms/Bases Loaded 3 (USA).nes
----------------------------------------------------

-> Adding a missing header

CRC check: 50CCC8ED
Found CRC match: Battleship
*** HEADER UPDATED ***
oldHeader:
newHeader: 4e45531a020430000000000000000000
All done.  Wrote new file roms/Battleship (USA).nes
----------------------------------------------------

Here’s the script:

Continue reading →

DIY Photographic Solar Filter

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There’s a solar eclipse coming up tomorrow night. But don’t think you can just grab your camera before the event and go: getting usable sun photos requires preparation, and most importantly a solar filter. Direct sunlight is way too bright for cameras to cope with – they simply can’t stop down far enough, nor shoot fast enough, to keep from blowing out the image and producing a huge featureless white blob.

A solar filter sits between your lens and the sun, and it knocks down the light to 1/10000 or so of its original amount – something a camera can then deal with.  If you’ve planned ahead far enough you may already have a solar filter. If not, you can improvise something like this one for $3. (If you’d rather read this as an Instructable, click here: https://www.instructables.com/3-Camera-usable-Solar-Filter/)

DO NOT LOOK THROUGH THIS FILTER AT THE SUN.  YOU COULD EASILY BLIND YOURSELF.

I can’t stress the previous lines enough.  This design is safe for cameras, not for eyes, because it blocks visible light.  That leaves the harmful UV and infra-red rays unblocked – things your camera is not sensitive to, but your retinas are!  If you want a visual (observing) filter, buy one.  No DIY solution can be tested / guaranteed as a commercial one can.

Okay, let’s get started.  Filter construction is simple: you need a filter material, and a housing to fit it onto the camera.

Parts list:

  • Empty plastic food container (with lid), larger than lens
  • Mylar sheet.  Buy an “emergency blanket” from the camping supplies section at Wal-Mart.  Total cost: $2.97
  • Razor blade
  • Black spray-paint

Step 1: Cut a hole in the narrow end of the plastic container.  This end will fit over your lens.  Aim for a snug fit, so it doesn’t fall off your camera, but don’t go too snug so you have to force it on (could damage the drive motor)

Step 2: Spray paint the cup black, inside and out.  This helps block light from leaking in through the white sides.

Step 3: Cut a large hole in the lid, leaving behind a ring.  Leave a couple millimeters on the edge so it’ll remain stable.  Then, lay the ring on the mylar sheet, and cut two or three squares of Mylar larger than the ring.

Step 4: Assemble your new filter!  (Note I painted and assembled in the wrong order) Now simply stuff it over the end, point at the sun (tripod preferred), and shoot.  Your camera might get confused about the target – set it for “spot meter” and manual focus at infinity.

Here’s a first attempt using the filter.  There’s some haze here that was added by the filter: I can’t figure out how to get rid of it.  Guess that’s just the nature of the tool.  Try varying the number of filter elements (sheets) to see if you get better results.  Make sure to get in lots of practice today and tomorrow – you don’t want to be fiddling with this during the minute or so that the eclipse is actually going on!

EDIT: 2 sheets, f11, 1/1300 exposure.  Post: Crop.  Manually selected circular sun and blacked background / haze.  Colorize.

Finally, here’s an image I got of the Transit of Venus on June 5, 2012. This used a filter over a video camera, zoomed in 40x.