Idolm@ster coming to DS: Part two

...ok, so I was wrong, it is going to have 3D.

I just saw a picture of the 3D concert here:

http://nds.tgbus.com/news/etc/200907/20090722152656.shtml

The movie is obviously faked and pre-rendered - since when DS has lighting effects, if the amount of detail isn't an obvious giveaway. But look at the pictures. Those look believable. Then again, considering the graphics power of the DS, we'll still in for some trouble. 120 thousand polygons per second versus 33 million on the PSP...

And something strange isn't it... if they have 3D, why do they have normal conversations in 2D? Why not in 3D like the previous 4 generations of IdolM@ster series?

Lady user

Seriously... what's the point of saying "Lady user" in sales ads? Lady user = take better care of their things issit?

If they dun scratch up their things by dumping everything into their handbags.

I've seen ladies that are rowdy. I have seen gentlemen that take good care of their things too.

Heck, I see more males spending time to polish their cars (or LCD screens) on their weekends. I seldom see females do that.

Because it is the male spirit. It's in our genes. To love something.

And the best part is that when you deal the seller turns out to be a he instead. Maybe it's a she-male, wouldn't know.

Actually... what is a tube DAC?

Tube DAC tube DAC, this term keeps popping up now and then, people choosing them for either the tube sound or the tube presence.

What would be the most accurate thing to be called a tube DAC?

Tube, like transistors, are semiconductor devices. You can make a computer out of it.

So instead of using an IC containing tonnes of transistors, you use individual tubes to make the DAC stage instead. Tonnes of individual tubes.

And that's why tubes are never used in computers anymore.

So a tube DAC doesn't exist.

What we have are IC DACs with a tube buffer.

If one argue that since it is a DAC with a tube inside can be called a tube DAC, I can say that a chip amp with a tube inside can be called a tube amp. Some people will go crazy over this statement. But it's the same logic.

Of course, some people think that a hybrid amp is the same as a tube amp. I won't try to argue further. I never do in pointless situations.

Don't we love it when noobs respond to pros and try to act pro and treat the pros like noobs on the internet?

But I think you know that already.

Can't we just strangle all the noobs?

Idolm@ster coming to DS

EDIT: See part two here

...as Idolm@ster: Dearly Stars, some kind of a side story to The Idolm@ster (well... not as if The Idolm@ster has any storyline).

So no Haruka, no Yayoi, no Chihaya, no Azusa, no Iori etc for you, not in your control.

And don't expect it to have 3D either. Since certain dancing games on the DS have proved that DS is total crap when it comes to rendering a character. In comparison, the PSP is... half crap. At least half is better than none.

So no concerts either.

Well wtf. What's Idolm@ster without the concerts. It'd be like a pussy breeding type game for girls.

Although I love Idolm@ster alot, I have a feeling that this thing is doomed to failure. The Idolm@ster SP is already a highly cut-down version with limited clothing and song choices and pretty bad graphics. Now how much can you fit into a DS cartridge.

More Burson madness:

"We have done direct comparisons with some of the leading brand names in the market. We can’t disclose the technical results on the Internet for obvious legal concerns. However some of the so-called “2ps, even 1ps” “ Low Jitter” claims, we found to be exaggerated. Our listening test confirmed that we couldn’t detect any differences between our clock and those costing five to six times more. If you can detect any differences, please let us know."

http://www.bursonaudio.com/burson_clock.htm

To use their words back against them, one can easily say that one couldn't detect any difference between their clock and those costing five to six times less. Hence its performance is found to be exaggerated.

"We can’t disclose the technical results on the Internet for obvious legal concerns", haha yeah right, sales concerns maybe.

"A standard CD player outputs signal at 24V"

"Most portable devices are powered by USB and their power supply is limited to 5V. This means the output of the signal is limited to the maximum of 5V. On the other hand, a full scale component like a CD / DVD player has no such constraint, a standard CD player will happily output signal at 24V (+/-12V DC)

A standard amplifier that is designed to accept the standard 24V line input is going to struggle to deal with the 5V input. The end result is a 100W rated power amplifier struggling to produce 23W. That is why it does not sound right!"

http://www.bursonaudio.com/burson_buffer_160.htm

I don't feel like commenting too much, you should at least spot the obvious. Maybe next time.

Do you listen to harmonics?

This statement ticked off something in me when reading the article:

"The "Earths" are certainly very neutral, like their definition. But on the whole, they sound a bit rough: the sound, completely on fire and precise, is, however, a bit impoverished, [B]with the main notes very much in evidence, and lacking in harmonic tone[/B], a fact that one is able to notice, above all, in the acoustic pieces."

http://www.bursonaudio.com/burson_opamp_pc_tuner_review.htm

There can be 2 scenarios actually - A) OPA-Earth did not reproduce faithfully the sound and cut off the (nth-order, where n is a random number) harmonics, and B) The rest of the op-amps produced harmonics as their by-products which the listeners loved

But since it is widely known that chip op-amps produce more harmonics than transistor op-amps, B) is more likely to be possible.

People love harmonics, no doubt - evident in the widespread obsession with tubes, especially signal preamps as an unnecessary gain stage.

I'm not going to argue about hi-fi vs nice-fi, since I am guilty of using enhancements (I'd prefer calling compensation) and my system possibly has a big fat boost in the midrange

But calling the sound "completely on fire and precise" yet "impoverished" due to the lack of harmonics seems very contradictory, and the mention of acoustic pieces stretches it further - the violin has its own characteristic timbre, but when you record it, does the system see the timbre as itself - a complex waveform of sound pressure, or as the harmonics of the fundamental frequency?

Dance×Mixer beta review

Before we start, here's something to show you:


I knew this coming. No single Anime character in recent history (ee... Anime history is short and goes fast) has had such an impact as our diva. Not Haruhi, not Kira Yamato, not L. And she doesn't even have her own series to start with.

Yet I was one of those suckers who bought the $100 figure which had to be re-released 3 times. For no apparent reason. I was just thinking that one day I have my own hi-fi corner, recording studio, or an audio shop, she must be displayed somewhere. Else I wouldn't be an audio geek.

If there were a dance editor, she MUST be in it.

So here we go.

And the scary part is, she looks like the original version. Not the cutified hard-color version that seems to be more popular, but the original concept art from Yamaha.

Ok ok, to the review...

I usually don't do reviews because others would have done it. But since others have not, I will take the liberty of doing so. This is for people who have not gotten the software and are wondering if this is the right thing for them/their computers.

Speaking of "their computers", this thing has pretty demanding requirements. Not CPU - apparently it thinks it needs as much time to encode as to render, when it can be compressed to H.264 in less than half the time it takes to render), not RAM - I have only one gig yet I never hear my hard disk scratching, but THE GRAPHICS CARD - I have a HD3850 and I can't even preview properly with more than one character on screen. And rendering takes a farking long time - maybe 5x the video duration or way longer.

HD3850 is a mid-range card by today's standards. So this software has to be used with a HD4870 or GTX260 or something even better. Apparently the official recommended requirement of GeForce 8 series is for reference only - the highest in the series is the 8800GT, which the HD3800 series has a performance close to. If a HD3850 lags so bad, god knows what happens to 8600GT which is less than half as powerful.

And HDD space requirements, this program is stupid enough to think that on-the-fly encoding requires as much space as uncompressed. So 20GB for a short dance. Cool.

On to the wardrobe (and cloning center/DNA modification facility)

Since this is just a small (250MB) beta for testing and teaser purposes, do not expect the wardrobe to be filled. Audition, IdolM@ster, (insert random hentai game here) all have more clothing choices than this.

The cloning center also has its problems - apparently it cannot clone anything above 12 years old (or 14 years old and 142cm according to the developers). This is fixed in an update.

Dance editor - this is where all hell breaks loose.

Firstly, have you ever seen an editor (of any media) that CANNOT adjust length and duration other than by a factor/multiplier of 2? This is one.

Luckily I found a way past it for the camera, but for all others (dance, lights, effects), you're pretty much fukked. It wouldn't be a problem if the effects come in multiples of 8 beats, but noooooooooooooo.

Yes, dance. You CANNOT adjust how many out of the whole 8 beat you want to use and what to exclude. This is stupid if you want to use part of the move e.g. the first half while having variations in the second half. And this is stupid because you cannot cut off anything that you do not need for a move that needs NINE beats. How are we supposed to use a move with 9 beats? These kind of moves appear often in real life usually as a finisher, but without a way to cut the next move this is just going to introduce lag, hence making their use impossible if not painful.

The separated dance movements are stupid also - it seems to assume the guy (or girl - limitations of the cloning center, but nobody's complaining) must start from a standstill and end with a standstill. This is a dance goddammit. Not a dork. And without a way to cut the useless start and end and replace it with motion tweening, the tweens are next to useless since you'd be tweening to stupid positions.

Having dance moves in 8 beats also means loads of problems in choreography. Too many moves to select from the list, less than half that makes sense for each particular genre of music, and almost nil that is halfway similar to what you had in mind. If you are an otaku with no music or artistic background watsoever, then good as this makes it more convenient, but for somebody who wants serious work...

And the speed adjustments (which is a bad replacement for duration adjustments) does not work well with dance at all. You just see them in slow motion. Which is stupid. It feels like Audition.

The developers should've gone with key frames in a dance move that can be mixed and matched, solving the problem of too long a list and yet not enough choice. That will solve the speed problems as people just increase the waiting time between actions, not slow them down.

Even better would be to include the ability to make our own moves. Shouldn't be too hard for anybody with some experience in making things move.

And the PV is misleading. Apparently they custom-made all the moves. Then cut them out into sections to make it as if it was created with the editor. This trick fails obviously.

Verdict - This thing does not pass as professional software. But if you're a professional, doing it from scratch shouldn't be too hard. We have Time Leap Paradise and Dream C Club coming up this summer. The former is more doujin then mainstream, the latter has an engine better than The IdolM@ster. If they can do that, I don't see why anyone serious on rendered dance cannot.

Note that I tested the beta version. The full version will have improvements, but apparently not much as of now. And probably not on the serious parts, because the engine itself is flawed in the first place.

Random quote of the day:

It's not about having the skills,

It's all about having the WEAPONS!!!

The US military does that. As a geek (level 0.5), my softwares are my weapons. It doesn't matter if I'm going to use it at all. Just wanna have it. Must be a geek thing.