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There are so many forms of entertainment these days. This is a wonderful thing for all of us. No longer do you have to harp on the fact that nothing is on TV. More than likely you have done this before. Heck, we all have at some point or another. However, nowadays there are other options than mere network television. Not only can people rent movies and DVDS from local video stores, but they can actually try downloading movies online as well. This is a great way to acquire a lot of the films you enjoy watching time and time again. Imagine all of the time and effort you can save when you embrace online movies. There are websites that can assist you.

If it is even possible, you may have never heard of Netflix before. Well, this is basically a movie rental company that is totally operated online. Needless to say, many people enjoy the convenience of this. In fact, it has all but put major movie rental companies like Blockbuster, out of business. You can take a peek at the official Netflix.com website, and learn a little more about what they have to offer in regards to rental plans. Basically this company allows you to acquire movie rentals by mail. You can also begin downloading movies online with Netflix. This way you can watch them instantly on your PC or television.

If you have never considered downloading movies online, now is the time. More and more, they are adding new and exciting titles and new releases that can be watched with utter convenience. This means sitting at your computer, and pulling up a website. If you already have a Neflix plan in place, you can basically click on the movie you prefer, and begin watching it with ease. Now, you really cannot get any easier than this. There are several genres all listed out in order to make the process of downloading movies online very simple. These are comedy, horror, action adventure, thriller, children, romance, and documentary.

Just so you are aware, there are some websites that allow downloading movies online, but they are not legal. It is always a good idea to do a little research before you select a site that you have never head of for downloading movies online. Netflix is a reputable site that you can trust. You can even log onto this nifty movie website at any time, day or night. CLearly you cannot do that with the video store. There is a search apparatus to help you find the title or titles you are looking for as well. You can use this to pinpoint new releases, as well as older titles that are more difficult to find.

If you are interested in recording at home, whether as a budding songwriter, a movie maker, a podcaster, or an experienced musician, figuring out how to get started and what kind of tools you need can be overwhelming. Let’s talk about some of the basics and suggest some good tools to get your started.

First, you will probably need a microphone. If you are a beginner, or someone who wants to save money, getting a cheap microphone is a great starting place. Nady makes a great dynamic microphone in their Starpower series called the SP-4C. It is highly reviewed, and very cheap at under $20. If you are already an experienced musician, you may want to get a condenser mic, which will run at a higher price but will capture sounds very nicely. Condenser microphones also need phantom power, which brings us to our next point.

You will need some kind of audio interface. If you are using a computer, you can buy a decent USB interface for a little over $100. If you are not using a computer, you can buy a cheap 4-track cassette recorder or a reel to reel that will have an audio interface built in. This older method is less used these days, but (especially in music) it can produce some wonderful sounding analog stuff.

If you do end up using a computer and not a 4-track or reel to reel, you will need some kind of digital audio workstation (DAW) if you want to have any editing power over the audio you have recorded. If you are using a Mac, a great cheap and standard software solution is Garageband. If you don’t own a Mac, there are some great alternatives to Garageband for Windows. If you don’t want to spend any money at all, you can try Audacity, which works for Macs, PCs, and Linux and is a free download online.

Using the above basic tools, you can soon be writing and producing your own music in your very own home studio setup.

Neil Young was interviewed by MTV about studio recording in digital format.  Neil commented, “We really needed good control over the sound and we got that with digital, but we lost the sound.  We don’t have the sound anymore unfortunately, it’s gone.”  So what the heck is he talking about?  Everyone knows that digital music is superior to analog music, right?  Well, it all depends on what aspect you are talking about.  If you are looking for a format that can easily be saved in multiple formats, ported to various devices for playback, edited, and remixed, then digital is definitely your format of choice.  But if you are looking for the truest form of sound reproduction, the analog is your only choice.

The reason for this is that an analog recording is a continuous sound wave that includes the entire spectrum of sound that was originally produced.  If you take an LP record and play it on a cheap turntable with cheap speakers, it will obviously sounds inferior to a CD.  But if you take the same LP and play it on a good stereo system, then the sound will be richer and if you listen closely you will hear things on the LP recording that are not present on the CD recordings.

The reason for this is that a digital recording is merely a sampling of the original sound wave, so things necessarily have to be cut out.  The BIT RATE of the digital recording defines how many samples per second are captured.  On a typical CD recording, the bit rate is 44.1K or 44,100 samples per second.  The BIT DEPTH defines how much information is stored in each of those samples, or basically how high are the high tones and how low are the low tones.  On a standard CD, the bit depth is 16-bits.

The industry is moving towards improving these standards to 48K and 24-bits, but at the end of the day it will still be a sample of the original sound and not a true reproduction of the sound like an LP record is.  This is why a lot of artists are insisting on analog studio recordings.  They are willing to pay extra to have the master produced in the truest form.