The Boyd Arts Blog

Why Can't I Listen to the Duruflé Requiem in the Car? One of the side effects of my teaching position is that I’m spending a fair amount of time in the car. It gives me a lot of time to think and react to various media that I consume. I’ve also been working on implementing more robust recording archives for my program and figuring out some metadata aspects of that.  Recently, instead of thinking about recording, I was in the mood to listen to some Duruflé—particularly his requiem and the whole “Quatre Motets...” This was a task that should have seemed rather simple: pull up Amazon Music and ask. Well, beyond Speech to Text having no idea who Duruflé was or that Ubi Caritas was something other than “duraface covy caritas”—don’t get me started on the larger work, apparently called “duraflake California motet”. When I did finally stop and manually type “Duruflé Requiem” into Amazon Music, it found me a couple versions that were fine, but after starting to listen, when my listening wa...

Network for Media Primer Full disclosure moment: This particular article is much longer and more technical than previous articles but I wrote it as a reference for my students.  I’d be happy to receive feedback on how I can make it better. I’ve also incorporated numbered headers to provide a bit more organization 1.0 Beyond the "Plastic Box" Most people treat the internet like a utility—you turn it on, it works, and you only notice it when it breaks. In media engineering, we need to dig deeper and understand the various components of a network so that we can configure them correctly for the demands of live audio and video. For us, the network isn't just a utility; it is the physical and logical infrastructure that determines whether a show succeeds or fails. To move beyond consumer convenience, we have to start by identifying exactly how our devices connect to that infrastructure. 1.1 The "Router" as a four-in-one device In a typical home or small office, the di...