I was at a show at Square Cat Vinyl a couple of weekends ago, and while I was there, I noticed a record in the used section: “Coca Cola Q95 Album Project III”.
COCA-COLA Q95 album project III
I do a fair bit of poking around in local music history, but I’d not come across this one before. Not that I get too far into the 70s and early 80s; I just have no frame of reference beyond bits and pieces that I remember Charlie Hoovler or Steve the bartender telling me about music history around Lafayette.
It looks like this was somehow sponsored by Q95 (Indianapolis radio station WFBQ) and released by Karma records, a now almost defunct record store / headshop chain that most folks my age think of as the place you had to go to buy Ticketmaster concert tickets in the 90’s. The content was all Indiana bands. I started searching on this LP title a bit and initially wasn’t finding much until I googled just “album project”. Looks like there were 3 of them. Here are links to their Discogs pages: WFBQ 95 Karma Homegrown Album Project I WFBQ 95 Karma Album Project II Coca-Cola Q95 Album Project III
Every once in a while I have some luck finding ancient things like this on youtube, so I rolled the dice and found that someone had uploaded video from the award ceremony for the first homegrown album project. Pretty wild that video from that time somehow survived. I’m not gonna lie, this one is a real snoozer. Here’s the link if you want to check it out: WFBQ Q95 Homegrown Album I Award Ceremony
The same user had uploaded a real gem with a performance video from the second album. Most of the material feels dated, but there are a couple of songs on there that I think are worth a listen. Here are direct links if you don’t want to go through the whole thing:
The Edge – Fine Line – These guys seem like the early 80’s version of some band that I’d be friends with. It’s guitar driven power pop backed by Hammond organ and touches of synth with big vocal harmony choruses and some nice guitar leads. I think I see an Orange head in the background there. One guy in a satin jacket, one in a Beatles suit(?) another in a T-shirt. lol.
Lifer – She Clown – This starts off and you see a guy in bell bottoms with a weird hat and think it’s going to be pretty bad.. But then they launch into a really tasty lead harmony with great guitar tones. I feel like this could be on the sound track for Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. The vocal harmonies are probably the best of any of the bands in this video, and overall, the composition of the song is just really good. Tasteful.
I guess no real point here, other than the fact that this is kind of interesting. I suppose it never really occurred to me that there were this many of this level of band – “local” stuff – in the late 70s and 80s. While I remember my high school friend Jason telling me that his Dad’s band (two synth players and a drummer!) got played on Q95, I didn’t know how common that was. I figured that either you were working hard enough to have a shot at “making it”, or you were a punk rock band. Dumb assumption on my part, but I guess you just don’t hear about bands like these.
Also along these lines this makes me have a better appreciation for the “Star Tracks” local CD that Dave Lindquist put together 18 years ago as a time capsule of what was going on. I kind of hesitate linking to the weak review of it that I did, but I literally can’t find anything else about this comp on the ‘net.
Star Tracks CD cover
But while I’m at it.. Just digging for the Star Tracks review, I bumped into a couple of other compilations.. (Remember the Patio Battle of the bands? Check out young Rob G and Matt Chandler on the AirCheck comp.) and just recently I was reminded of both the IMN “Indy MP3 CD” and all of the IMN showcase CDs. Might be worth a listen back.
Every once in a while I feel like I should post about things I’ve worked on in the past. Sometimes it’s as a point of pride and others I feel like it’s just a matter of documentation. In this case, I was recently reminded of my time working with the Purdue Student Radio Station so I’m going to reflect on that here.
[Wow.. this post has been in the works for.. well, the first draft was logged in 2015. lol. I’m trying to do more writing, and dredging up some of the many things I’ve started in the past but not finished.]
A conservative place.. Purdue University is a conservative institution. Especially considering the aptitude for curiosity and exploration of many of the students (and some of the faculty) there. A former supervisor during my time working in IT at Purdue told me it hadn’t always been so stuffy. Things apparently got really conservative during the Hovde administration. This supervisor had a story from his undergrad experience at Purdue wherein a couple of students built a small hot air balloon that landed on top of a campus building and caught fire. The point of the story was that these students were expressing a healthy desire to create and learn, and weren’t punished for the relative danger they incurred in this pursuit, while a similar event in the current political climate (this was around 2000 mind you) would have gotten the students thrown out of school and probably sued for damages. This conservative tone echoed in many aspects of student life. “Mass” media was one.
[As an aside, I noticed something interesting as I researched for this article. The duration of time that Purdue presidents hold office is seriously diminishing over time. Cordova – 5yr | Jischke – 5yr | Beering – 17yr | Hansen – 11yr | Hovde – 25yr | Elliot – 23yr | Stone – 21yr … not sure what to draw from this, although I suspect it somehow fits into the discussion of “what’s wrong with higher education”]
Student life and media consumption.. Purdue as a University during my time had three main student facing media outlets: Boiler TV – the campus cable network, airing several regular cable channels along with a couple of terribly curated campus information feeds. The campus newspaper, “The Purdue Exponent” – once referred to by my friend Matt F. as “The leading source of misinformation in Tippecanoe County”. And finally, a radio station called WBAA – This is operated by the university, but seemed, at least during my tenure, to not consider students as their target market. The station played mostly classical music and some select NPR programs. It seemed like, in general, the University was very wary of either campus-wide communications, or campus -wide communications with students at the helm. There was also a general perception that it was unwanted, but I never had problems finding other students who were into the idea.
That said, Purdue has a long history of student run radio in the form of so called “dorm stations”. Many residence halls at Purdue had their own closed circuit stations at various times, some also having low power FM in times of less heavy regulation. WILY, WCCR in Cary Quad, Shreve.. There were more, but I don’t have any more info than this. For a time, something called PRN – Purdue Radio Network connected several of the dorm stations. (it seems to still exist in some form but is focused on sports coverage?) I DJed at WCCR when I lived at Cary Quad in 1996 and 1997 and learned a lot of the station lore. WCCR was purported to be the first station nationally to broadcast stereo by sending the left and right channels out two separate transmitters. They had a hell of a vinyl vault. Unfortunately, by the time I got there it was all melted due to improper climate control.
The problem with these dorm stations was that listenership was very low, mostly because to hear it you 1. had to live in that dorm and 2. had to go to the front desk and get a “splitter” to connect your cable TV line to a stereo.. if your stereo had an antenna input. In my time, I was lucky to get 2 or 3 of my friends to listen in. I suspect the dorm stations were more popular before tv and internet was readily available in the dorms. In the mid 2000’s some of the dorm stations experimented with web streaming. WCCR would get a handful of listeners from time to time.
[Some of these stations seem to continue on in some form and have web presences: WILY, WCCR]
My experience at WCCR was both informative and disappointing. The station had a cool vibe – there was a big lounge with typical institutional sofas and lots of old copies of CMJ laying around. The air studio was a small, but functional room with one wall lined with CDs. Some manner of junky Arrakis board was the operational centerpiece along with a chronically broken mac of some kind. I don’t remember a lot about the other bits, being new to it all, but there were surely a couple of CD decks, a (also broken) cart machine and at least one semi-working turntable. There was some manner of operational organization – station officers that we DJs were supposed to somehow report to, and send our play logs to, but now that I think about it, I had no idea what any of those people actually did, and honestly, I don’t think I ever saw them past the callout meeting.
Still, I had fun doing radio shows for my friends, playing my favorite stuff and also digging through the station’s CD collection. Once I even plugged my guitar into the board and played on “air” for a whole show. And lol, I remember Enrique, a guy who lived down the hall calling in with a fake voice every time I did a show and requesting Tool.
Some photos I took to use for the station website. This was in the Purdue Memorial Union basement. I really didn’t intend for these to be documentary, but they may be the only photos from the station that exist.
The start of “Purdue Student Radio” as a station.. Maybe a relevant piece of information in this story is that I was a student at Purdue for over 17 years, so I saw things come and go. When I moved off-campus, the dorm stations became little more than a fond memory. But I was still looking for things to do on campus.
I remember going to a callout for PSR, Purdue Student Radio, at some point prior to 2004. It was a kind of odd group, seemingly predicated on doling out various “director” positions to students volunteering. But lets jump outside of my personal experience and backtrack.
Apparently, the station had been formed under the premise of being a place for business students to practice.. business stuff. I don’t know the full story, but this seemed to be the brainchild of an undergrad who somehow had the ear of people at Krannert with money. Regardless, the business model was based around selling on-air advertising. A Purdue Staff director or engineer of some kind, Michael Gay from WBAA, was involved in planning an AM transmitter installation using gifted money. The transmitters would augment a web stream, and added a touch of legitimacy that the dorm stations lacked. WBAA also provided a massive, antique Harrison console and some other miscellaneous hardware. This was all housed in a room in the old student organizations area in the basement of the Union.
And that all happened. Kind of an amazing feat. But that’s about where progress stopped it seemed like. When I found out about all of this, it was kind of in a proof of concept state. The transmitters worked – 6 low power AM units perched atop the Krannert building, the transmission barely made it to Chauncey Hill at AM1610. The studio had all the parts it needed and was capable of doing most of what it was supposed to.. but there were many broken things, no music library, and not a lot of institutional knowledge.
And so back to my experience.. we had a lot of these meetings where people were trying to figure out how to synthesize the structure and operation of a college radio station. I remember the Programming Director instructing us, the non-director volunteers, to try to generate a station handbook by plagiarizing other college station’s handbooks. Little progress was made under this regime, and said Programming Director later was kicked out of school for some dubious reason if I recall. Another prime activity of these meetings was trying to recruit people to do the “sales”. The only training was “go talk to businesses and see if they’ll give us money”. Needless to say, this didn’t work. I always surmised that the real shortcoming in this plan was that the station wasn’t actually broadcasting anything yet. Eventually, the guard driving all this was changed. I’m not quite sure what happened. Probably some people graduated, and probably some got bored with the lack of progress. A couple of good people stayed for a while and did what they could, but there was really not enough knowledge to make it work.
The reorg.. At this time, somewhere in 2007, there were a few of us in the non-director set who were there for the music rather than the business and we decided to change the approach to: lets have a functional station and then try to get some money later. We started by building a music library. I knew a little about how this worked from my limited time doing record label promo. All of the labels and distros were quite happy to give you more music than you could handle if you were reporting to CMJ, (College Music Journal) so we shelled out the cash for CMJ membership. I recall this was over $1k for a year, which seems excessive.. but I digress. I handled the chart reporting, basically grepping the logs of our station automation software, SAM, for what was getting the most plays. At this point, the station was largely on autopilot so this was an easy process. We dumped some mp3’s in, and it played them randomly. Later we got more advanced, doing programming blocks by genre, etc. CD’s came in droves. More than we could deal with, in fact. [as an aside, when we wound down the station, there were still dozens of CDs a week coming in for our PO Box in Stewart Center. I remember the mail folks asking/demanding that we tell companies to stop sending stuff, but I didn’t even know where most of them were coming from. Labels and distros just chucked that stuff out to any entity on the CMJ list. Hopefully they’ve finally stopped or else someone in the mail department of STEW have just started taking the music for themselves.] There were also the starts of digital distribution, which eliminated some steps but added new ones. We initially hoped to get all music we received into the digital music library. I set up a ripping lab with four PCs with multiple CD drives so we could at least rip 4 discs at a time.
It seemed like we were doing pretty well. There were several regular shows, constant content with music and syndicated programming, I was keeping station manager office hours and reporting to CMJ weekly, and it felt like we were growing. At one point, because we still didn’t have any money and still weren’t really interested in doing sales, we hit up all the old dorm stations to see if they had gear they’d give us. One came through, told us to take whatever we wanted, then mysteriously stopped responding to emails/phonecalls after we took the first load. We also talked to WCCR at this time who were still going. They didn’t have any equipment for us, but we had some interesting talks about piping in their programming.
The death.. Things eventually just petered out. People weren’t showing up to do their shows as much, keeping the equipment working was hard, staying on top of ripping CDs that came in was daunting.. and the real nail in the coffin – the AM transmitters quit working. Their demise coincided with a re-roofing project on the Krannert building that we weren’t notified about until after I started investigating the dead transmitters. I got permission to go to the roof with the building deputy to inspect the equipment. ..and noticed that some of the 6 transmitters’ ground straps had been removed for the roofing and not reattached. I suspected that maybe they got a lightning strike, but who knows. The university seemed to have a stance of “we’ll we’re not real sure what happened, but we’re also not going to do anything. Sorry.” Not having the knowledge or motivation to troubleshoot any further, we basically packed it in. As far as I know, the transmitters are still up there, connected to the streaming box in the penthouse.
We folded the club, and sent most of the remaining gear to a burgeoning podcasting club that a couple of our folks were in. The Harrison console went back to WBAA, and God knows what dark basement it’s hanging out in now.
Here are some photos from my Krannert Roof exploration. All of the quality that a Motorola V551 flip phone can offer.
Looking back.. Well.. the station didn’t do what it was supposed to. Very few ad sales were made, if any, and in it’s prime, we didn’t do advertising at all. For music nerds, it worked a little bit. Longer than I would have expected.
It was an interesting thing to be a part of for sure. I’m glad I did this. I made a lot of friends, and it’s always good to have a shared goal with people. While this wasn’t an exercise that added a lot to my CV, it is one of the handful of things that I’m proud of. Notably, we had a couple of show hosts go on to minor celebrity in broadcasting and comedy, and I’d like to think that having a radio station to do shows on was at least a little boost for their skills and resume.
Shoutouts: I realize I have a bias for being negative, and accentuating the struggles in things like this over the good times, so I want to take a minute to thank people involved in this radio thing that brought joy to me in one way or another over the years that we did it:
Nur – for keeping things going in the transitional period mentioned above
Doug – for wiring up the whole thing in the first place
Emily, Jake and Andy – for being the core of motivation and participation for this thing.
Pat, Mike and Nick – for helping to keep things going
Ryan, Coby, Alex, Wes and Blair – for doing shows and keeping them going
Aaron and Michael – for all of the tech help and time spent
I’m probably forgetting a lot of people, but thanks for being there.
A while back, my friend Jason was telling me about some really affordable in ear monitors that amazon was selling. These seemed to have some buzz going online, and it sounded like other audio pros he knew had them or were interested in them as well. [Some review links here: rtings, Soundphile, Forbes, Audiofool]
The product in question is the KZ AS10, a Chinese import retailing at Amazon under $60. [https://amzn.to/2RaGWQ2 – This and other product links here are Amazon referrals. Feel free to search for them yourself if you don’t want to mess with it] They can be found even cheaper on Alibaba and other import sites if you’re willing to gamble with authenticity and long shipping times.
Stock photo from Amazon
I was a little curious, but I had no real need for IEMs, until I tried to practice using acoustic drums outside of a band context for the first time in some years. (shoutout to soundspace in Indy – If you need a rehearsal space downtown-ish, check them out) I tried playing along to a CD with my apple ear buds, but the drums drowned everything out. I used to have some sealed vic firth headphones that were better for this, but I couldn’t find them. I think I threw them out because they were so uncomfortable. For that session, I ended up having to blast the CD through a PA system to hear it, and even that wasn’t great.. This kind of practice seemed like a decent use for some $60 IEMs. So I bought em.
I’m no stranger to the world of “Chi-fi”. A few years ago I bought some of the much ballyhoo-ed Mrice E300’s, again, from Amazon. I think I paid less than $20 for those, and while I didn’t find enough a reason to use them for much more than a backup for listing to tv on the iPad while laying in bed, they aren’t bad, and the low price keeps me from feeling too bad about the purchase. I’ve heard them referred to as “beater ear buds for audiophiles”, which seems like a good way to put it. I don’t know, maybe they are just over-hyped, but not any worse than the stuff being sold for a lot more $$, IMO. [for in depth reviews of the E300 check out these links: Wired, AudioBudget, GadgetViper, Jan Beta]
Amazon stock photo
The KZs showed up in a modest but not totally useless box with 3 sizes of ear tips, and an over-the-ear cable with mini (1/8″) jack. They are pretty comfortable. I listened to some music, and played some video games through them and found them to sound pretty ok, if not actually good. I’ve heard of people saying they have a “burn in” period, but I haven’t taken the time to do anything like that.
I guess the real selling point with these is the low end.. the KZs have 5 drivers and they are all of the balanced armature type. I don’t know much about it, but apparently balanced armatures aren’t great at low frequency production, so other similar IEMs/headphones use a different kind of driver, dynamic drivers, for the low end. The KZ AS10 seems to be the first wave of products using a new balanced armature that can do the low stuff. And these did have some low end. The weak link in it all might be the rubber ear tips though – if you get a good seal by pressing the headphones into your ear and holding them there, the low frequencies sound great, but otherwise it’s kind of hit or miss. I’ve heard people say that the memory foam ear tips that you can buy separately work better.
One thing that I really like a lot about these is that they get loud without a ton of power, which I assume has something to do with the balanced armatures. A lot of the headphones I have need an additional dedicated headphone amp to drive at realistic volumes. The KZs had no problems here. Everything I plugged them into could push them just fine.
After I had used them for a bit, I got to wondering how they would do when connected to ear molds. I think for me, this idea is one of the more interesting parts of IEMs – stage use, and blocking out other sounds so you can completely control what’s in your ears. I have some old Sensaphonics silicone ear-mold “musicians ear plugs” that I got from Dawn at earEverything 10 or so years ago, and figured there had to be a way I could connect these to the headphones.. and there was..
The Senaphonics use filters made by a company called etymolic research to block sounds. I figured I could buy some extra filters and drill them to accommodate the KZ’s. I looked around, and found that the filters are kind of expensive.. ($30/pair) and then used this all as an excuse to play with some 3D modeling and printing. I modeled the exterior of the filter matching the originals, and made a channel through it that would fit the nozzle of the KZ. There are some little retaining barbs for the rubber tips, and I tried to design a groove for them, but didn’t anticipate it working really well since it was all pushing the tolerance of most 3D printers. And speaking of 3D printers, I don’t have one, and I don’t know anyone close by who has a real hi res one, so I decided to use this as an opportunity to try out Shapeways.com.
Shapeways worked out pretty well.. I did 2 of the filter “blanks” each in two types of material, just to see what it would be like. The total came to $30, which for such little things, seemed like a lot of money, but hey, it’s an experiment. They somehow only delivered 3 of the 4 pieces, which was kind of annoying, but thankfully, I got both of the ones in the material that I liked better.
Shapeways print on the left, etymolic research filter on the right
The blanks fit in my ear molds fine, but the channel for the KZs was a little narrow. I busted out the Italian file set and opened them up pretty quickly. The fit is snug. I had imagined that the fit wouldn’t be that tight and I’d need to put some rubber cement on to seal them, but it seems to be unnecessary. Re: the retention barbs – the barbs didn’t seem to cause a problem, though I suspect the ductility of the headphone tube is the cause of this, and may fatigue if I take these on and off frequently.
When connected to the ear molds, the whole thing sticks out from my head quite a bit, but the ear-loop cable still goes over my ear and at least so far hasn’t been uncomfortable. The overall seal of the headphones is definitely better and the low end more prominent. I do have some concern over the ear-molds and adapter altering the sound passing through them. the adapter’s channel has a reduction in it. I guess the place to start on figuring this out might be Kirchhoff, but it’s all stuff beyond me, and I really don’t have the interest.
ear-mold on KZ AS10 earphone using adapter the headphones stick out a little further from my ear when used with the ear-molds and adapters
I’m toying with the idea of making a pile of these and selling them, but I’m not sure. If you’re interested, drop me a line.
Sound comparisons from my experiment:
I used the first couple tracks off of Hum’s Downward Is Heavenward as a reference, played lossily from Spotify through an Avid MBox mini 3. I listened with Sennheiser HD600’s and Mackie HR824 nearfield monitors for comparisons. Take all these opinions with a grain of salt, because I certainly am no Golden Ear.
Listening to the KZs with the earmolds and adapters, the bass was definitely more present than with the rubber tips, or in my monitors. Bordering on Metallica – ..And Justice For All level “whoomping”. It didn’t necessarily sound unrealistic or over accentuated the way Beats headphones sound, but I think these just go lower than any of my other references. Overall, the music didn’t seem to have the “glue” that it does when listening on other devices. Maybe more mids than usual, but I don’t know if that’s true or me second guessing myself.
I switched to the HD600’s. Whoa.. these really make the high end come forward in a crispy way, though I don’t think I necessarily like it. A little more of the glue that was missing with the KZs/ear molds. Nothing going on in the low end, which isn’t surprising since these are open backed.
I switched to the KZs with the rubber tips installed. The low bass is gone. There are still lows and more than the HD600s had. Glue is still missing. Highs are less prominent/affected than the HD600s. I had the same questioning of the mids.
Finally, I brought up the Mackies.. Probably the reference I’m most used to, and it shows. None of the low low stuff. The glue is here. The highs seem “normal” and not accentuated in any way.
These comparisons all may be for naught because honestly, IEMs aren’t for critical monitoring, they’re for the stage. Well, I guess they’re for whatever you want them to be for. It would be nice to compare them to one of the more traditional IEM options like the Shures or Westones, but I don’t have any handy. At the very least, the KZs are an interesting toy for $60 and maybe the option of a rigged up ear mold configuration adds to the novelty.
When I moved to California in 2015, I was both excited and frustrated to see self order kiosks at Jack in the Box. Excited, because self-ordering as a non-interpersonal experience was something I’d been thinking about for a while, and frustrated because these kiosks were always off / out of service. Reduced operating costs and increased order accuracy seemed like some key selling points for such a setup, and the latter was very appealing to me, as someone who rarely orders food with out removing or substituting some topping. I was out there for a year and a half and never saw one of the kiosks turned on.
Fast forward to today, 2020, and we’ve had self ordering kiosks and apps for a while now. I have used Taco Bell’s kiosk a number of times, and generally liked the experience. It’s funny, the folks assembling orders still get my stuff wrong a lot, but I don’t stress about it as much as when I order with a human. I think the real value I’ve found in it is that I don’t feel pressured to decide my order quickly like I do when a cashier is staring at me as I scan the menu. A side product of that along with a more compartmentalized Information Architecture is that it’s easier for me to discover new menu items.
I don’t go to McDonald’s often, but when I do, I’ve enjoyed using their Kiosk. I went last weekend and was reflecting on the UX of the thing and the bigger service design that that kiosk fits into. A couple of observations / thoughts:
It’s weird that as touch screen kiosks become more common, they are getting larger, but we’re still using UI paradigms from the small screen world. ie: the “next” and “back” navigation buttons are at the bottom of the screen which is out of my field of attention, especially when items and status messages still appear at the top. It took me a second to realize what I needed to do next.
Physical product human factors are now more into play than they have been in the past. The kiosk works ok for me as a 5’11” person (with the caveat of the point above) but how does it work for a 4′ person.. or a 6’7″ person? At Taco Bell, the kiosk screen seems low for me, and the card reader is positioned strangely for someone of my height.
Where does the kiosk interaction fit in the larger experience? McDonalds has tied the digital to the physical with “table tents”. The UI asks you to grab a numbered tent, and enter it’s number. The server then uses that to find you to deliver your food. Taco Bell just calls out your number for you to retrieve the food yourself. I think it’s a nice touch on the part of McDonalds, but I wonder if the staff who deliver the food get any special training in hospitality. Should they?
There are a lot of opportunities to improve or change the larger experience. I think the biggest one is the handling of drinks. Both of these restaurants already do self-serve beverages, but under the kiosk ordering model, you don’t get your cup until your food is delivered. This is kind of a gap from the perspective of the traditional way of ordering where you get the cup as soon as you pay which gives you something to do / enjoy while you wait for the food. In an even broader context, we can reconsider what the fast food experience is, which could lead to differentiation strategies. I was always fascinated by the strange niche carved out by Steak N Shake – it’s fast(ish) food, but you sit down and have table service. The floundering of that business may be a sign that their model isn’t all that desirable, but maybe there are still desirable elements to it. McDonald’s kiosk + table delivery model gets into that. I appreciate not having to get up to go get my order. Do I need an actual waiter to visit me more than once? probably not. ..or maybe? It would be cool if someone came around offering napkins, condiments, or drink refills occasionally. Similarly, the breadstick person at Fazoli’s was always a motivator for my visits there.
It’ll be interesting to see where fast food goes from here. We’re seeing more trends towards carry out only restaurants (or are those now “food preparers”?) which I suspect will generate a lot of convergence with alternative ordering methods. This will also likely come into play with food delivery, an industry vertical that is showing a lot of demand, but no one has yet managed to do in a scalable, satisfying way.
life in the so called space age 