A Retirement Portfolio Distribution Strategy

From Accumulation To Distribution is a good article in the May 2006 issue of Financial Planning Magazine by financial planner Harold Evensky specifically presenting a strategy for the distribution phase of retirement, that is when you're retired and now need to start using the money you've accumulated throughout your life. There seems to be too much emphasis placed on strategies for investing and wealth accumulation rather than distribution, and I feel really sorry for anyone having to retire last or this year because they're probably seriously hurting. In the article, his strategy outlasted a conventional balanced stocks/bonds portfolio as well as an all-bond portfolio during the stressful period of the early 1970s when stocks and bonds tanked (similar to our situation now except with monster inflation). I think it's more important now than ever to have a retirement plan in place, and a huge portion of that is a tactic for distributing your money.

Some HDTV Myths Dispelled

I'm a big fan of Mark Schubin because he's an undisputed historian of television technology and has a tongue-in-cheeky way of cutting through all of the clutter to focus on the most important aspects of whatever topic he's reporting on. In an October 2004 article in Digital TV Magazine High & Why, he mentions that the average American at the average American viewing distance of 9 feet can't see more than the 480 active lines in standard TV resolution on a 42-inch widescreen TV. He backs this up in a May 2005 article in Videography Magazine What IS HDTV Anyway, when he mentions a Consumer Reports study of plasma televisions that showed high-definition video content looking just as good on the best standard-definition TV sets as the HDTV sets! What makes HD look so "good" regardless of your TV set is that the design of HD cameras and lenses increases the human perception of "sharpness" based on having more contrast over the range of detail resolution. Note that at typical PC monitor distances (3 feet or so), HD resolutions do make a perceivable difference though. He goes on to say that in psychovisual studies, the perceived resolution of 1080i is about the same as 720p. Also in an August 2005 Television Broadcast Magazine article Cameron Diaz Looks Fine On HDTV, he says that the 1953 NTSC color standard actually offers a greater range of reds (0.67x/0.33y) than HDTVs (0.64x/0.33y). Finally, in that same article, he talks about tests performed by CBS in movie theaters, where projector mechanical jitter and weave reduced the perceived resolution down to just 875 lines in a Hollywood auditorium. Great stuff.

Best Pro-Audio Cables Are Twisted-Pair With A Combined Foil-and-Braid Shield

Mary Gruszka concluded in a June 22, 2005 TV Technology Magazine article called Audio Interconnections Make a Difference that the pro-audio cable to use for "best" noise rejection is twisted-pair with a combined foil-and-braid shield, based largely on research by Jim Brown and Neil Muncy of AES. But there's a catch: does anybody make such a cable?

Properly Connecting Balanced And Unbalanced Audio Equipment

I consider Bill Whitlock at Jensen Transformers one of the experts on proper analog audio interface design. He published a great article in the March 2002 edition of Sound & Video Contractor Magazine on proper audio gear connectivity, a subject matter I find still eludes many audio professionals today, entitled Mix-And-Match Intefaces. There's also some additional feedback on this article here where Mr. Whitlock goes into more depth on a reader's questions. He's got plenty of write-ups on correct grounding, shielding, and hum removal of audio systems.

Which multimedia player most accurately downmixes 5.1 to stereo?

Since I work with 5.1 mixes that are frequently played back in stereo on a PC, I decided to do some informal testing to see which multimedia player most accurately adheres to Dolby's default method of 5.1 to stereo downmixing, which is:

Lo = L - (3dB)C - (3dB)Ls + noLFE

Ro is a mirror image of Lo.

Here's what I found in my informal tests:

Windows Media Player: Lo = L - (3dB)C + Ls + (5.5dB)LFE

VideoLAN VLC Player: Lo = L + (6.1dB)C - (3.6dB)Ls + noLFE

Foobar2000 with "Convert 5.1 to stereo" DSP activated: Lo = L - (3dB)C - (3dB)Ls + LFE

Apple QuickTime Player Lo = L - (3dB)C - (3dB)Ls + noLFE

It appears QuickTime Player is our winner! Foobar2000 with its "Convert 5.1 to stereo" DSP activated comes in second place, and is good if you must listen to the LFE channel. The surprising one was VLC Player, which is just way off. I keep wondering if I screwed up the test with this popular player, or perhaps there's a setting somewhere I missed. Now, if QuickTime Player only launched faster...