Seldom without a computer of some sort since graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1978, I have been a full-time Linux user since 2005, a full-time Solaris and SunOS user from 1986 through 2005, and UNIX System V user before that.
On the technical side of things, I have spent a great deal of my career as a consultant, doing data analysis and visualization; especially spatial data analysis. I have a substantial amount of related programming experience, using C, awk, Java, Python, PostgreSQL, PostGIS and lately Groovy. I'm looking at Julia with great interest. I have also built a few desktop and web-based applications, primarily in Java and lately in Grails with lots of JavaScript on the front end and PostgreSQL as my database of choice.
Aside from that, I spend a considerable amount of time writing proposals, technical reports and - of course - stuff on https://www.opensource.com.
Authored Comments
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Antoine Thomas.
I originally started buying 24/96 re-releases that claimed to be remasters of previous music. What I wanted were better-sounding versions of some of my favourite tunes, where the mastering engineer backed off on the level a bit to leave some headroom, got rid of some of the compression, and (I hoped) re-equalized the low frequencies that were often reduced to make records that played on toy record players of the 60s and 70s. And, I've kept buying high resolution music when possible, not because I'm certain I can hear the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/96, but because it seems to me that my original idea - the engineer making high-res releases is going to be more concerned about sound quality - is more or less correct.
So, starting with the best material is a key step, in my opinion at least.
I find your comments about Linux vs Windows interesting as well. I have read that Windows users really concerned with sound quality will download some kind of driver (?) that bypasses the audio mixing that takes place in Windows. I guess when I blacklist my external DAC in Pulse and use it only through ALSA I'm doing something similar. I have to confess that I haven't done a whole bunch of comparisons of different setups in the way that you have. I think you should write an article about that here on opensource.com!
As to measuring the differences between different music reproduction chains, that sounds like a great idea. I don't necessarily trust claims that "wow this sounds much better than that", nor do I necessarily trust the results of elaborate blind or double-blind testing. Certainly it would be cool to figure out some way of unequivocally determining that chain A provides a higher fidelity than chain B. But it's also good to remember the wise words of Siegfried Linkwitz (requiescat in pace), as quoted by Michael Fremer here:
'What is important to the eye is not necessarily important to the ear,' he said. 'Why should it be? Nature makes sure each does its job and does its job perfectly. You get cues from the eye, but some things that look gross in the frequency response, the ear says, "I don't care".'
(https://www.stereophile.com/content/siegfried-linkwitz-rip#sfSBoup5oLcd…)
Thank YOU for your kind comment, Sooty. I'm glad you enjoyed it.