Behold The RIAA Curve!

The RIAA has a bad reputation. But despite all of the horrible, unethical, hypocritical, soulless, malicious and devious things that RIAA has done... they still deserve credit for the RIAA curve. Prior to 1954, recorded audio had a problem. A world of wholly un-standardized playback and recording  equipment used across independent recording studios, radio studios etc had led to a wild west of audio quality. Differences between needles, reproducers, cartridges, microphones, and recording media made for mixed audio characteristics everywhere. Today the RIAA equalization specification permits longer playback times, and better, more consistent sound quality.  More here.

The RIAA 500R-13.7 equalization curve has operated as a de facto global industry standard for the recording and playback of vinyl records for over half a century. Before 1954 (especially from 1940) each record company applied its own equalization, each pressing plant, and recording studio... it has been estimated that there were over 100 combinations of turnover and roll-off frequencies in use.  (Audacity software actually has a EQ library you can install to emulate the numerous differing curves.) Below are just some of the more common standards.

• Columbia-78
• Decca-U.S.
• London LP
• BBC 2dB
• Bartok 629C
• NBC Ortacoustic
• NAB/NARTB
• RCA Orthacoustic
• Columbia LP
• Decca-FFRR-78
• AES

Each EQ curve is a combination of two filter characteristics: a bass boost curve which is defined by a Bass Turnover frequency, and a treble cut curve, defined by a Gain Rolloff parameter. Early 78s, especially in the US had no curve. (Not on purpose anyway). The EQ is flat and to the modern ear it sounds like it. This is unsurprising when you recall that the speed wasn't even consistent between record labels leading to utterly unavoidable differences in pitch. This was exacerbated by excessive patent hoarding wherein each company felt what they were doing used proprietary technology they often wouldn't license.

The earliest EQ standard I know if is the European 78, which dates to at least 1926. It had a pronounced boost in the bass range at 50 Hz. Nearly as old is the Blumlein 300, which has no boost in the high frequencies and a turnover at 300 Hz. It's named for Alan Blumlein a genius electrical and audio engineer at EMI. (He may have also invented stereo sound.)  But these (and many others) had developed for different purposes. The NAB standard was for radio transcriptions. RCA developed a standard for it's "Orthophonic" recordings in 1947 only to change it in 1952 to find a happy medium to pair with their new 45 rpm recordings.  More here.

The NAB standard was probably key to the later standards. The lateral cut NAB curve was remarkably similar to the NBC Orthacoustic curve. They were both boosting low frequencies not for mathematical reasons but to over equipment hum. When the Columbia LP was released in June 1948, it's EQ drew heavily on the former and used a bit more bass boost. The took the unusual step of publishing the information. AES followed suit in 1951 with the explicit goal of standardizing home stereo systems. But RCA and Columbia were adhering to dissimilar standards and it went nowhere.

Then in 1952 RCA published their EQ standard, with an article by R.C. Moyer claiming a technical lineage back to the Western Electric "rubber line" recorder in 1925. This argument was clearly intended to establish theirs as a "historical" standard. That Western Electric Rubber line was a magnetic disc cutter to which we can attribute the birth of EQ. It was a well engineered cutter, and maintained a constant velocity. This allowed engineers to detect a correlation to amplitude and frequency. So with the goal of avoiding amplitude distortion bass was boosted after recording ―the first deliberate EQ manipulation. This is credited to Joseph P. Maxwell and Henry C. Harrison of Bell Labs.

Then in July of 1954, the Engineering Committee of the RIAA published the RCA standard attempting to standardize all their member labels. Electronic Industries and Tele-tech magazine published a rebuttal claiming it was the same as the NARTB standard, an update of the NAB curve. This was not exactly true. But in reality the Columbia, RCA and RIAA curves were all similar by this time [What's a couple kHz between friends?] If anything the RIAA closed the gap between the other standards, a political decision as much as an engineering decision, but all three standards (RCA, Columbia, and NARTB) were totally workable. It was more important at that time to pick one and move forward.

Obama is wrong

I have been thrilled with many of the early actions of the Obama administration. In the cases where we disagree, or I am uncertain their consistent populist tilt have kept me contented. In general I've been pleased with what amounts to our new administrations Q1. Today I read something that just bothered me.

The Obama administration has sided with the RIAA in favor of excessive P2P fines. these are fines ranging from $750 to $150,000 per instance. This is insane. There is no math to validate this. These "infringements" are normally sold for about 89 cents each or 0.000593% of the fine. More here.

In other words the fine is up to over 150,000x the price. The notion is that these are statutory damages. The rationale is weak. No one is arguing that copyright law is bad. Clearly both artistic and scientific works need protected to encourage business and innovation. (Protecting them indefinitely is ridiculous but that's a side issue) The problem is section 2 of H.R.3456 also known as the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999. Overstepping the 200 previous years of rational statutory copyright penalties they just took the percentage structures we used for 2 centuries and increased it by 50%. I'll quote the wording here:

Section 504(c) of title 17, United States Code, is amended--
(1) in paragraph (1)--
(A) by striking `$500' and inserting `$750'; and
(B) by striking `$20,000' and inserting `$30,000'; and
(2) in paragraph (2), by striking `$100,000' and inserting `$150,000'.

The text is readable... it means leave wording as-is, take out old price insert new price. I find that the first time I strongly disagree with the Obama administration is the first time they firmly agree with the Bush administration. it's no coincidence that two lawyers in the new DOJ are former RIAA lawyers: Donald Verrilli Jr. is the one-man wrecking crew that destroyed Grokster, and Tom Perrilli the satanist that thought ISPs should release customer information to the RIAA even without a court subpoena. No subpoena. You know... the distant legal cousin to warrantless wiretapping. Anyway back to the legalese:

The section 504 the edit reads as follows:

§ 504. Remedies for infringement: Damages and profits:
In General. — Except as otherwise provided by this title, an infringer of copyright is liable for either —
(1) the copyright owner's actual damages and any additional profits of the infringer, as provided by subsection (b); or
(2) statutory damages, as provided by subsection (c).

This is simple. If you "share" an MP3 what damage did a record label incur? they had no physical loss. There were no physical copies of the CD stolen. Copies were made and distributed, so the only argument for actual damages is loss of sales. This has been laughed at internationally because we all know intuitively that each illegal download does NOT supplant a sale. Nonetheless distributing a work you do not own is also intuitively wrong even if the actual damages are difficult to compute.

That difficulty has moved the emphasis to statutory damages. The RIAA has lost millions on these trials so far. They lose in court frequently. But they can penalize the P2P users to intimidate other users. it's ugly, but under the present letter of the law they have some standing.

My objection is that in court these onerous fines can levy greater penalties than those on a drug dealer, a wife-beater or a burglar. They woudl levy up a fine of $450,000 on an 11-year old kid who downloads three Kelly Clarkson songs. This is an imbalance of power in the favor of very powerful corporations in to the detriment of everyone else in the entire world. You could be fined half a million dollars for 3 songs. That is more money than many Americans make in their entire lives. That is incongruous, and in my estimation that makes it unconstitutional. In my estimation this countermands our very plainly worded constitution. The eighth amendment of the US constitution explicitly prohibits excessive fines:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

NOT LICENSED FOR RADIO BROADCAST

In the 1920s the RIAA sued broadcasters to get them to STOP playing music. That's right kids. The record industry's "anti-airplay" platform lasted well into the 1930s.

We begin at the beginning... By the early 1920s, RCA was mass-producing commercial radios. While the radio didn't sound as good as the phonograph, it was still free. The recording industry was incensed and attempted to sue the radio stations to prevent them from playing recordings on the air. The first judges presented with this issue decided that if the radio station had purchased a copy of the recording they had a right to play it; since there was no law preventing it. It was a big set back for the RIAA.

In general, the 1930s were a tough period for the record industry. It was competing against the free content offered by radio stations in the great depression. The industry, dominated by 78 RPM records with a playing time of as little as three minutes per side, hit bottom around 1935. The juke box offered them something of a last minute reprieve. Yet the situation continued to be hampered in the 1940s by the wartime shortage of raw materials. The record industry concluded that they suffer when stations broadcast pre-recorded music. Their conclusion rested on two primary assumptions:
ONE - Consumers will not buy records when they could hear them on radio.
TWO - U.S. copyright law required that radio stations pay royalties to composers, lyricists, and publishers but not to record companies.

First, the New York Supreme Court ruled that if radio stations purchases a record, they were free to broadcast it ­ even when it bore a "Not Licensed for Broadcast" inscription. Displeased with this ruling, the dominant record firms pursued plans for obtaining fees from stations that broadcast pre-recorded music. To this day, they have still failed to get radio to pay the record labels for airplay.
In 1942, arguing that the new jukeboxs were putting live musicians out of work, the American Federation of Musicians declared a ban on recording. The AFM went on strike on August 1, 1942 in an attempt to get record companies to establish a fund for unemployed musicians. Most of the smaller and independent companies signed new contracts almost immediately; Decca signed a contract in September 1943, and the other major labels followed suit in November 1944.

Moving against the popular corporate wisdom, Capitol Records believed that broadcasting recordings would stimulate rather than harm sales. In search of airplay, Capitol promoted its records at radio stations. It was the first record firm to service free recordings to disk jockeys. it caused a dramatic increase in record sales. Unable to ignore Capitol's successful "pro-airplay" model, other dominant record firms followed suit.

Sounds familiar yet? The free music, doesn't sound as good as the original recorded media, but its popular, because its free. The then RIAA tries to sue the "offender" into submission...etc. A lots of bright folks see a parallel between the RIAAs recent desperate assaults on P2P platforms and their previous 1930s foolishness. I tend to agree. They've had a long history of resisting change, litigious zeal; and selective perception. Great article here.