resolutions

It may be a lofty goal to try to make recordings that sound as close as possible to real, live music. But every now and then the state of the art advances.

I attended such a recording session in mid-December and was treated to the best, most realistically natural sound I've heard. Over monitor speakers the sound was excellent, but the sound over my Ultimate Ears Reference Monitor in-ear headphones was vastly better. I could listen to the music "live," and then rush back to the control room and don the headphones. The gap between live and … Read more

The Guardian Eyewitness is a free app for viewing striking, memorable photographs--with a new one added each day--from The Guardian newspaper.

Each Guardian Eyewitness photograph also appears in the center spread of the print edition of The Guardian (and on its Web site), and the images come from all over the world--from a refugee clinic in Darfur to a panda pen in China to a gang shootout in Rio de Janeiro. According to the developers behind the app (and we're inclined to agree), each photo "isn't just another news photograph," but rather a complex, visually extraordinary … Read more

In several recent versions of Snow Leopard, including OS X 10.6.4 and 10.6.5, a few people have had an issue crop up when adjusting display properties (resolution, multiple monitors, etc.) where sometimes changing settings will result in the loss of all display modes and switch the display to 640x480-pixel resolution with the text "<<do not localize>>" in the list of display resolutions.

Though this can happen when adjusting resolutions and other properties, it may happen immediately when opening the Display preferences, indicating some cache and settings files the preferences use … Read more

I've referred to the AIX Records "Audio Calibration Disc & HD Music Sampler" Blu-ray in a bunch of my CNET equipment reviews, because it's loaded with terrific-sounding Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio music tracks. AIX refrains from using dynamic range compression, equalization, or signal processing, so the sound is as close to the original session as can be.

Now, with the release of "Goldberg Variations Acoustica" AIX has ventured into producing original 3D video programming. The new Blu-ray was shot with four prototype Panasonic 3D A1 cameras, and the sound was recorded in 96 kHz/24-bit high-resolution audio.

"Goldberg" maintains AIX's high standards for sound quality, but I'm an audio guy, so I called upon two of my video-reviewing CNET colleagues, David Katzmaier and Matthew Moskovciak, to comment on the disc's 3D picture quality. They watched the Blu-ray on a Panasonic TC-P65VT25 display and were generally impressed. They liked the picture's depth, but expressed concerns about visible crosstalk, which can appear as doubled outlines around onscreen objects, such as on the stand-up bass' strings. Katzmaier and Moskovciak also thought the image wasn't as sharp as it could have been. The crosstalk artifacts varied from shot to shot, but Moskovciak still thought the "Goldberg" Blu-ray might be the best live-action 3D picture he's seen "in a home theater setting" (the 3D image quality of "Avatar" in a movie theater was better).

Regarding the crosstalk, Katzmaier said it wasn't the disc's fault, and the crosstalk might not show up on future generations of 3D TVs. "Goldberg" is fully compatible with standard 2D Blu-ray players and displays, so you can enjoy the disc even if you don't own a 3D set. … Read more

Our Weekly Utilities Update report is a list of all the updates for many Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though utilities can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is to bring you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems.… Read more

Thought 1080p video on YouTube was big? Think bigger.

YouTube on Friday announced that its player now supports 4k, a standard resolution for films that measures 4096x3072 pixels. As YouTube Engineer Ramesh Sarukkai explained in the announcement on YouTube's official blog, "4K is nearly four times the size of 1080p," and it dwarfs even Imax, which projects films in the slightly smaller 2k format, with its 2048?1080-pixel resolution.

Of course, the proof of 4k's merits is in the pudding, which is why YouTube has a special playlist of five films that can be played back … Read more

Peter Frampton was the lead singer and guitarist for the Herd when he was just a lad of 16, and a couple of years later he co-founded Humble Pie. That band's "Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore" is one of the best live hard-rock albums ever. But most of you probably know him best for his solo work, and one of the top-selling concert albums of all time, "Frampton Comes Alive." A true classic.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Peter in New York City. He was in town to talk about his new album, &… Read more

With the 10.6.3 update Apple addressed a number of graphics-related issues, but in doing so introduced a problem for some people where they cannot get external monitors to either display the native resolution, or in some cases even work at all. When the monitors are connected and detected, the system will display at a resolution that's one step down from the native resolution, causing text and images to appear larger and blurry.… Read more

In some situations your Mac may get to the log-in screen and display it at a different resolution than when it logs in to the desktop. This may result in the log-in window being fairly big with large text, and the screen blinking to black when you log in while it changes resolution.… Read more