economics for the win
Ran across this on boingboing - a company apparently offering p2p insurance. Their site's in swedish or something so I can't really determine what's going on, but that's beside the point.

This is capitalism/applied economics at its finest. This company recognizes that the threat of an RIAA lawsuit is significant given the average settlement (somewhere in the $2k-3k range last I heard), but runs some numbers to determine the actual risk per user per year of getting sued, and prices their insurance based on that - $20 a year or so.

Personally I'd put the actual cost of risk per user per year at closer to $3, assuming - pessimistically - average settlement of $4000 plus $500 overhead for additional variables that may arise, and assuming - again, pessimistically - there's a 1/1500 chance of getting sued (see article linked above). That doesn't include operational overhead from actually running a company providing the insurance, and any adverse selection - that is, the insurance being more attractive to high volume p2p users who are more likely to be sued than the average user.

Anyway, that's kind of beside the point. What it comes down to here is the RIAA has been using these highly publicized lawsuits as a scare tactic for a couple years now - but the actual economic penalty is minimal, particularly when risk is distributed as insurance is designed to.

I could see a US version of this - priced appropriately of course - effectively destroying the RIAA's p2p lawsuit strategy. It's way too optimistic to speculate they'd start to recognize the additional value that can be created by users sharing/copying content, or that they'd embrace social/networked distribution models which encourage copying, but if nothing else it'd be a step in a better direction...
- posted by vcmc @  6/30/2006 12:21:00 PM  |  0 comments

 
liquor, cont'd.
On to bourbon. I should start out this post with an admission of how inexperienced I am when it comes to whiskeys. There are just so many varieties of whiskey compared to any other hard liquor...

Our subject liquors tonight are two bourbons - Evan Williams Single Barrel 10-year (1996), and Eagle Rare Single Barrel (also a 10-year).

Whiskeys, unlike vodkas, are not distilled for purity. Whiskeys' distinctive flavors are exactly the opposite of what you'd want in a vodka, thus the distillation process is very different. Better whiskeys generally use pot stills, which are rather inefficient compared to column/continuous distillation, and are usually distilled 2-3 times (also one of the things that differentiates scotches and irish whiskeys, but I'll get to that when I actually have scotches to taste side by side. that stuff's expensive though). Neither of the bourbons I'm tasting actually list the number of distillations, or the type of still used, but the end result should speak for itself here - on to the tasting.

Evan Williams, bought at Surdyk's, $20 on sale. Has a really nice nose to it, on the sweeter side, with (at the risk of sounding like a liquor reviewing douchebag) a bit of bitter walnut to it. Tasting starts out with the malt, sweet but not unbalanced - with plenty of oak/charred barrel flavor complexity, then finishing with that "green wood" sort of flavor that's the classic characterization of bourbon. Definitely very smooth as far as bourbon is concerned; while all bourbons should be significantly harsher than, say, Jameson, there's still a matter of preference about how much burn there should be. I think this one's gotten the balance about perfect though.

On to Eagle Rare, also from Surdyk's, $25 on sale. I tasted this one after the Evan Williams, so I was kind of judging it from my impression of that... There's a lot less nose here, comparatively; after I get past the usual charred oak, I think I'm getting something that I can only describe as... glue. Of course that doesn't sound good, but I had to really breathe in deeply to pull that out of it, so it's not something that's actually distracting during the tasting. And on to that - this is definitely less malty/sweet than the Evan Williams. There's more burn/harshness here, which I think is actually obscuring some of the initial flavors as it hits the tongue. Charred wood is dimished as well. Significantly more of the signature bourbon finish that stays around in the nasal cavities. I might call this as a touch astringent.

That's straight, though. I did note that adding a single ice cube - so as not to chill the whiskey too much (alternatively a little bit of water) did change the way this tastes. Not by a lot, but the nose had way more to it after adding water, and some of the harshness/burn was reduced which restored some balance I felt was lacking. Still a little too much there for my preference. (I should probably try this with the Evan Williams too, but my roommate polished off the bottle without asking. Love it when that happens.)

Summary? I think I'll be buying more of the Evan Williams. It's just more...drinkable; smoother and slightly sweeter. The Eagle Rare is still good - and may be a better representation of what a bourbon should be - but I personally don't like the drier, slightly astringent thing so much.

One disclaimer though. Since both of these are single barrel whiskeys, there can be a lot of variation between barrels, and my comments here may not be entirely accurate for other bottles. If I try either of these elsewhere, and find them to be significantly different, I'll post it here...
- posted by vcmc @  6/11/2006 11:45:00 PM  |  1 comments

 
capital studios blog
So last night I messed around a bit with WordPress on my site which I was basically just using for hosting until now... it's really cool, very customizable. I think I'll like it better than blogger once I get used to it...

I'm definitely going to keep this blog up though, and keep the same subject matter (i.e., whatever random shit strikes my fancy) - capital studios will be a technical discussion of audio, primarily mixing/mastering analysis with some production focus as well. It'll definitely keep the blog feel, but I'll be putting up static content to turn it into a more professional/portfolio sort of thing.

I also like how easy it was to find a good looking template, and start customizing it...

In other news, Minnesotans have more natural teeth per capita than all but 3 other states. Congrats us!
- posted by vcmc @  6/07/2006 10:33:00 AM  |  0 comments

 
intro to liquor reviewing
So I went to Surdyk's the other day to continue my quest to find my favorite whiskeys... $60 later (which included some of my already-determined favorite vodka and beer), the thought struck me to use my blog for liquor reviews.

After all, my obsessive/geek tendencies aren't just limited to music/economics/business strategy/audio/recording equipment. Might as well make an attempt to be well-rounded in my obsessiveness.


So - we'll start off with the aforementioned favorite vodka:

Tito's.
This one I discovered when the company had a rep giving out tastings at Surdyks. At the time, 2003 or so, I was a connisseur in infancy - I had little to no experience to base my preferences on. Even so, I was immediately able to tell this vodka was quite out of the ordinary.

Some back story. According to the Tito's website, this stuff is made at the only legal distillery in Texas, out of corn. Not that that should matter - a properly distilled vodka shouldn't retain enough signature phenols/esters/etc (for the non-chemically inclined, these are what give many hard liquors their distinctive flavor) to recognize the type of grain originally used in the fermentation. But I'm getting ahead of myself again...

To properly explain exactly why this vodka is so good, I have to touch on the chemical processes involved in making distilled liquors. I'll try to keep it short and link to wikipedia etc. for details for those who may have further interest.

All liquor gets its start with the fermentation process. After grains are 'malted' to convert their naturally occurring starch to yeast-fermentable sugars, yeast is added to the malt and does its thing, taking anywhere between a couple days to a few weeks to complete (depending on the intended result). At this point we have a beer-like substance. Normally the ethanol ("pure" alcohol) concentration in this liquid is in the range of 4-8%, depending on a number of factors.

There's a lot of other stuff in this liquid, though, too. So we have the impure products of fermentation, and for vodka, we want to turn this into ethanol as pure as we can get it. And thus the distillation step.

The basic concept here is pretty simple; ethanol boils at 78.3°C compared to water at 100°C. So we heat up this mixture to 78°, and condense the resulting vapor. The problem is that it's really not quite so easy in practice. All those impurities generated during the fermentation process - though low in concentration - also have boiling points, some of which in the temperature range where we'd rather be vaporizing pure ethanol. Most notably, isopropyl alcohol - rubbing alcohol - boils at 80.3° C. Two degrees isn't a whole lot of room for error, particularly at the volume most vodka producers are dealing with.

And that's where most vodkas go wrong. This is the most obvious problem - in my opinion - with most vodkas, even top shelf brands. There's that unmistakable rubbing alcohol smell to them, which shouldn't be present with a well-distilled vodka.

The other thing is the nature of the distillation process itself. No matter how well you control the distillation temperature, the process itself will not be perfect. Some of the compounds that should be evaporating at a higher or lower temperature will end up coming through the still at ethanol temperatures, and these cause off flavors - or excessive harshness, in the case of higher or lower alchohols. These impurities can be reduced by redistilling the end product, and all vodkas do this to some extent, usually between 3-5 times.

Tito's, however, goes through distillation six times. Compare this to Stolichnaya, 2x, and Smirnoff, 3x, and most "premium" vodkas at 4-5x.

Although that the number of distillations is often used as an indicator of quality by vodka manufacturers, it is not a consistent indicator of quality because of variations in both the the type of distillation used as well as the temperature cutoff points (above and below which undesirable impurities can pass through) used for the process. I've tasted some mediocre vodkas that claim 5x-7x distillations.

(So much for keeping this short. I think I might need to shrink the font size on my blog just for this post.)

Almost all vodkas go through a final filtration process as well. This can be a good or a bad thing; generally it'll clean up the taste of the vodka, further removing impurities and such and refining the flavor. But due to the limitations of filtering, certain impurities - most notably isopropyl alcohol - cannot be removed by this process. So distillers that depend heavily on thorough filtration may produce a clean tasting vodka but it will still remain impurities which cause off flavors and worsen the metabolization byproducts and effects. That's why I prefer a more thorough distillation process, then a final filtration to clean up any last trace of congeners etc.

Anyway. Back to the vodka itself.

In short, Tito is truly a master distiller. This shit is good. The nose is ever so slightly sweet, with one of that overpowering rubbing alcohol smell I criticized earlier. No other vodka I've tasted can match Tito's in this respect. The taste is also incredibly clean; it's just a little bit sweet. Mouthfeel is about perfect - it's warm, as you'd expect from a liquor, but there's little to no "burn" here, just that subtle presence in the mouth and nose as the ethanol evaporates.

As good as Tito's is, I don't generally prefer to drink it straight - which isn't to say it's not suitable for sipping; if you're looking for a sipping vodka this is the one to get. But it's also a fantastic mixer. I enjoy this around 2/5ths vodka with orange, cranberry, or grapefruit juice - that's the point where it's dilute enough to cut the "burn" to nonexistent, but for the vodka's presence and clean character to still come through.

And price? You'd think, what, $25-30 to compete with other ultra-premium brands? Nope. Somehow they manage to price this stuff at around $20. It's not the easiest to find - since it's relatively new in the liquor world, and they're not paying for store placement/magazine ads/etc, not all stores carry it. Surdyk's in Minneapolis keeps it in stock; I've also seen it at one Haskell's location so it's worth checking there as well. If you're not in the Twin Cities area, you might have to ask around at liquor stores or something - it seems to be distributed in most states though (check the Tito's site for details).
- posted by vcmc @  6/03/2006 01:08:00 PM  |  1 comments

 
record mini-updates
Espers - Espers II

Did I review this one before? I don't care to dig through my old blog post right now... stuck at work, running slow data pulls and waiting for someone else to finish their part in a certain project so I can get started on mine....

Anyway, Espers. Their first record was... I guess I don't really remember it well anyway, so it's probably pretty similar to this one. How so, you ask? It's... really...forgettable. Lush acoustic-electric arrangements, beautiful vocals, etc., and the complete absence of anything remotely musically compelling.

Well, maybe there's a thing or two on one of those tracks in the middle of the album. But I had a realization that this record as a whole was so bland that it was boring me even when I was busy with other things, just listening to it in the background - and that's something most mediocre musicians never even accomplish.

If you like folky, "pastoral" music such as this with some varied instrumentation, I'd recommend Cyann & Ben instead. Their album Spring from 2003 kind of lags in spots, but overall is pretty solid.


His Name Is Alive - Detrola

I guess this band's been around for some time - 10 years or something, which is a long time to be writing music, I think - you have to be exceptional to keep coming up with good new stuff. So most bands that succeed at that tend to be fairly well-known.

This band is not one of them.

The album suffers from a severe case of half-assed songwriting. Production can't save you from a lack of inspiration, and anyone listening can feel how little effort was put into it...


Enough band-bashing for now. I actually do like (some) music:

Lady Sovereign - Vertically Challenged EP

When I'm out in my car, I like to listen to rap music. Something with a good beat, preferably with good flow on top of it - and Lady Sov fits the bill perfectly. Simply put, this shit is bangin'. Sov's doing the UK grime thing(recently signed to Rocafella, I hear) is getting huge buzz, but no full-length yet. So this is basically a bunch of singles and a couple of remixes thrown in (I'm not counting "ch ching(cheque 1-2 remix)" as one, since it's the only version I've heard). While the remixes lack the fantastic production of the originals, they do succeed in significantly changing the feel of the tracks. The Random (Menta Remix) throws in more of a standard east coast beat, and features Riko rapping over a phone (unintelligible at times), apparently from jail. Even if it's just a gimmick it actually works well on the track.

The "Shhh..." remix features a basic 4/4 club beat, which I find boring compared to the rest of the production here. Likewise the Fiddle With The Volume remix drops an M.I.A/grime-sounding afrobeat ...which in my opinion M.I.A. was the only artist to actually do well.

Overall - it's just an EP, and I'm not expecting it to be coherent or 'flow', particularly with remixes on it - so the weak points are definitely forgivable. I'd say this is worth buying just for Random and Ch Ching, and the original of Fiddle With The Volume's pretty good too.


More later...
- posted by vcmc @  6/01/2006 03:39:00 PM  |  0 comments