Klarinet Archive - Posting 000087.txt from 2007/12

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] The library of congress website
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:08:00 -0500

Tony Pay wrote,
>>Without overdoing the matter, I'd like to register my own reaction
>>to the piece of shit that appears on the l.o.c. website. I find it to
>>be a triumph of hype and presentation over content, like so much
>>of American culture.

Whatever one may think of American culture, that unfortunate presentation is
not typical of the culture of the Library of Congress.

Meanwhile, I gave up on listening to what's available on the Library of
Congress web site, because it turns out that some of the EarthLink features,
including the Accelerator, don't work in Vista. I can re-set the speed all
I like from EarthLink's toolbar, but when I go back and re-check it, saving
the setting hasn't worked, and it's back to minimum speed with the finest
graphics resolution, the opposite of what I need to listen to an audio
broadcast. Combine that non-feature with the crappy sound card with high
latency that came pre-intalled in this new computer--and the result is
playback that stutters so badly it's unlistenable, with about ten seconds of
audio at a time followed by a five-second silence, so that in Dan's lecture,
for instance, the word "Mozart" ends up with "Moz..." on one side of the
silence and "...art" five seconds later on the other side. Maddening.
That'll teach me to dither around about which audio card to buy as a
replacement.

I messed up with the WETA radio broadcast, too--my own stupid fault
entirely. Since Kevin and I had previous plans for that evening, I set up a
tape recorder on a timer instead of listening live. I thought I'd put in a
120-minute tape that would record the whole broadcast neatly onto one side.
Nope--I'd put in a 90-minute tape and therefore got the first 45 minutes of
the broadcast, cut off in mid-note. Rats!

Will the Soloists of the OAE will record a legit CD of that whole concert
(and supply good liner notes)? I hope so, because the performance last
December really was superb and I'd love to be able to listen to these people
playing those pieces again.

Lelia Loban

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