Personal site of Matt Montag, who writes about audio, music software, and small projects like an NES VST and a chiptune player.
HN links it for his research on Universal's audible watermark in streamed music, plus a listening test and NES sound tools.
I guess this is the time I ask the question I ask whenever a new self-hosted media streaming server gets posted...does anybody know of any similar server for demoscene tracker files and/or retroconsole music format (bit tunes) hosting, transcoding and serving the stream?
chip-player-js [1][2] has more or less exactly what I'm looking for, and I'd be perfectly happy with it, but I can't seem to get any of the docker containers I find to build properly or the repo to build due to dependency issues (probably ignorance on my part) [3][4].
1 - https://chiptune.app/ 2 - https://www.mattmontag.com/music/chip-player-js 3 - https://github.com/mmontag/chip-player-js 4 - https://github.com/soltune/chip-player-js-docker
Wow! Just listened to an A/B test: http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark
Pretty awful. I wonder why Spotify doesn't correct? Have been listening mostly to electronica on Premium account. So, this is the first I've heard.
UMG. Had suggested a mobile collaboration on iOS to UMG, a few years back. But, they were focused on Blackberry, back then.
[EDIT] Just tried the example song from the above link. And, yes, the watermark is still there. Wow!
Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210515132130/https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark
Website is down at this time for me, but web archive works.
There is a listening test up here that trains you to hear it. I couldn't hear it at first.
http://mattmontag.com/audio-listening-test/
The NES sound hardware is pretty simple and easily emulated, you can find some nice virtual synths: https://www.mattmontag.com/projects-page/nintendo-vst You might even just be able to use any old synth and its basic square, triangle, etc. waves to get really close to the NES sound.
For those who want to try it out, you can also access these sounds in a somewhat easier way by using an NES audio emulator in your favorite DAW, or by using one of the various tracker programs:
https://www.mattmontag.com/projects-page/nintendo-vst
http://famitracker.com
There are cases where "inaudible" watermarks in paid audio downloads are actually audible[0], meaning that buying the FLAC download gives a worse experience than a properly ripped CD.
[0]: https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark