Adaptive Compression of the Dynamic Range

Dynamic range compression is a technique used by audio engineers to optimise the distribution of frequencies in a mix. In popular music it is often abused, resulting in a flat and overly loud sound. An audio engineer applies some static parameters of threshold, knee, compression ratio, attack, delay and gain based on the typical listening environment of their anticipated user. This is why you can hear your favourite top 40 track in a noisy environment but you can barely hear classical music at the same volume level on your audio device. Therefore, I propose that these parameters should adapt to the environment of the user. If it is noisy, the compression ratio is pushed up and if it is quiet it can be relaxed. By intuition, I assume that this would be a relatively easy solution to solve with machine learning. My simple explanation with one of the parameters is trivial. I am sure more complex relationships exist between the parameters and user satisfaction. If someone could embed this in a popular music player with the correct audio source, it could be a winning combination. However, this requires an unmastered, or a minimally mastered audio source.

Unqualified should is evil

I was recently discussing the use of the word should with my research supervisor. I detest the word because I believe that is often used very ambiguously.

To quote myself,

"It [the word should] seems sly to me. In my mind it makes the statement "I really want you to do this but I don't have the guts to say it to you directly". I do not mind the use of should when it is qualified. i.e. "you should take a shower if you don't want to stink". This way the intent is clearly stated and there is no ambiguity. If I tell you that "you should take a shower", it could mean that I think you should shower because I am hand-wavy dictator that does things because that's how I feel on the day or I just hate people that don't shower 15 times a day. The statement "you must shower now" clearly demonstrates that you are being draconian instead of being underhanded and ambiguous."

The word should is often used when someone thinks that it is the proper thing to do. The word proper implies someone else's idea of correctness. I strongly believe that people must not force their beliefs onto other people because it restricts different points of view. This sentence might seem to contradict itself because I am trying to force this belief onto you. However, I am only trying to convince you. You are free to take it or leave it. English is very ambiguous and this leads to my suspicion that it is pointless to form an argument in it.

If we look at different meanings of the word should then we find out how ambiguous it can be.

Dictionary.com

Google

Wiktionary

Maybe I should be doing my research instead of pronouncing my hatred of the word should (contradiction and bad pun intended).

Why do microwaves have so many features?

I was using the microwave today and I looked at all the buttons I do not use. There were plenty. It seems like such a waste. I only need a power setting (high medium low), time setting and maybe a defrost mode. I suspect that other people barely use all the features of their microwaves. There is always the chance that everyone uses a different 5% of the features. Either way I'd like to see more products with less feature bloat. I am fed up of superfluous features for the sake of "value adding" or making it more "marketable".