The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 6
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 27, 2012 8:57 AM ESTSorry for the delay this week! With Brian in Seoul, me getting back from NYC and Ian in London it was difficult to all get together for our usual Friday recording sessions for the podcast. We managed to get this episode recorded on Monday, but I then had to run off to DC for another NDA event. We did finally manage to get things edited so today we have the delayed episode 6.
This week's podcast begins with our review impressions of the iPhone 5. We also go over the other major smartphone announcements from the past week: Motorola's Medfield powered RAZR i, HTC's Windows Phone 8X/8S and LG's Optimus G. Last week we talked about Haswell from a platform perspective and this week we talk about it more from a CPU performance perspective. Finally, Ian shared his thoughts on Borderlands 2 and playing the title with NVIDIA's Physx enabled.
Also, due to popular request, we have submitted our podcast for inclusion in the Zune Marketplace although we haven't seen approval yet. Show notes including time stamps are also on the to-do list but they didn't make it in this round.
The AnandTech Podcast - Episode 6
featuring Anand Shimpi, Brian Klug & Dr. Ian Cutress
iTunes
RSS - mp3, m4a
Direct Links - mp3, m4a
Total Time: 1 hour 35 minutes
As always, comments are welcome and appreciated. Let us know what you liked, hated and want to hear more of.
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Kevin G - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I suspect that this authentication chip is actually just for calibration similar to how the chips found inside Thunderbolt cables. The chip could also be used for cable identification so that the iPhone 5 knows what is being plugged into it.GrizzledYoungMan - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Love the podcast, fellas, and I'm impressed with the top-notch audio quality right out of the gate.A quick suggestion: your recording might benefit from some addition compression applied during editing. (I'm talking about dynamic range compression, not data compression.) While having a broad dynamic range is great for music and movies, voice-heavy stuff like this becomes considerably easier to 'hear' with a bit more compression and the resulting increase in perceived loudness.
A real life example: I often listen to your podcast while doing something else (walking, cooking, being an millionaire playboy astronaut cowboy, etc). If I set the listening volume to a reasonable level, some of the quieter sections get lost easily.
SeannyB - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I remember suggesting the use of compressors & limiters in the comments of the first episode. This episode is the most problematic one I've heard so far. I don't know if something going wrong in their processing chain, or if people are moving their heads toward & away from the mic as they speak, but it sounds like there are regular 6dB drops all throughout the recording. I'd turn up the volume, and a few seconds later, Anand's voice is blowing up in my headphones, prompting me to turn it back down.This is exactly the problem that well-tuned dynamic range compression solves.
SeannyB - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
What it actually sounds like is some automatic "ducking", specifically input on Anand's mic automatically pushing down Brian's level in a poorly configured way.Brian Klug - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
It's funny you should mention that, I've noticed as well on my side that when he's talking my audio level gets pushed down. We're still trying to work out some of the details quite honestly.-Brian
Death666Angel - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
These audio issues won't stop me from listening to the podcasts, but it would be great if you could get a handle on them. :-)Sunrise089 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Agree, the podcast is generally excellent but there is definitely room for improvement on this margin.Lucian Armasu - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I'm so disappointed Haswell will only have OpenGL 4.0 support at launch. OpenGL 4.0 is 3 years old, and yet they will support DirectX11.1? Does Intel care about OpenGL at all? Also no surprise that even their new Medfield chips won't support OpenGL ES 3.0 either. So how do they want us to take them seriously in the mobile market?tipoo - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
What uses OpenGL 4.1-4.3 on PCs anyways? Just curious. On Windows at least, almost every game I can think of is DX minus two or three.Kevin G - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Professional level applications still use OpenGL and with fewer laptops sporting a discrete GPU, OpenGL support is important for that market.