This is why I don't like Guitar Hero/Rock Band

Have I ever expressed how much I like music games? I don't think I ever have.

Well I do. But I don't like these games. Specifically it is because of their use of incredibly popular rock songs. Now I'm not one of those kids who's music taste is the least popular bands he can find. I like the songs themselves, but they make for some awful note charts.

The games are OK as long as you're playing guitar or singing, but a lot of these songs have very repetitive bass or drums. For this reason, GH/RB are the only music games that can actually make me want to take a nap. This isn't meant to be funny, playing the same few notes for the duration of a 4 minute song can be very underwhelming.

I especially don't like Rock Band's drums. I don't like the symmetry and the pedal would be easier if it had it's own column instead of being one big line. Speaking of columns, I don't like the way the notes scroll (at you).

I think it's been quite clear that I'm leading up to something with this post, and I am. Guitar Freaks and Drummania are much better. They're made by Konami and are part of the Bemani series so you know they're good. The reason you haven't heard of them is because they're Japan only. I've played them both though, and they're great. I'll explain one at a time.

Guitar Freaks would look bad to someone who was used to Guitar Hero. This is because it only has three frets. They go a long way, however, because Konami tends to make the best note charts for music games (not counting DDR). I've played the games, and I much prefer Guitar Freaks' charts to Guitar Hero's. Anther thing I like about it, and this applies to GF and DM, is that it pays attention to timing. GH and RB, from what I've gathered, care more about whether or not you hit the note than how well you timed it. GFDM focuses on the actual timing of the note, so your score wouldn't be as good if you hit them a little early or late.

Drummania is more significant in this argument. Instead of having four drum pads, it has five (technically speaking it's three drums and two cymbals). There's also a pedal. The new drums that Guitar Hero is going to have will have the same number to my understanding, but DM's drums are more laid out (google for a picture of them). Drummania's charts make it a shining example of how fun a music game should be. This is because instead of going with popular songs that mostly have pretty repetitive drums, Konami uses music with more intricate drumming. A lot of songs are written specifically for the game by artists affiliated with Konami and as a result, are made to be easy to make great charts for. You can watch videos of people playing this and get a good idea of how great it is, but I can tell you from watching videos and having played it that videos won't do any justice to how fun DM actually is.

The best part of GFDM is that with the "V" series of games, Guitar Freaks and Drummania were put into the same game in a Rock Bandish fashion (except this was before Rock Band). This is why I've been referring to them as GFDM. I've done sessions at a friend's house before (he has an electric drum set that is setup to be used as a DM controller) and they're great.

I first played GFDM before trying Rock Band or Guitar Hero, which is why I never liked either of them very much. I can see why people would like them having not played GFDM, and plenty like them all, but I'm quite partial to GFDM.

Attention: Emotional women

That song you love is not about you. The artist did not have you in mind when he wrote it and probably doesn't know you anyway, and if he did he wouldn't have written a song about an emotional woman who he knew would go around being all "THIS SONG IS ABOUT ME" about it anyway, so just shut up.

Dear "artists" signed with Disney, fuck you.

Artists signed with Disney need to be shipped to China so they can manufacture all their merchandise and get paid almost nothing for it. Then we should forget to pick them up. Seriously, they are the most personality-free, generic "teen idols" I have ever seen. They all play boring music that supports something important (like friendship or trying to explain to be yourself) and try to convert their audiences to Christianity or something. I mean come on now. At the end of Miley Cyrus's concert at the Kids Choice Awards (I watched it only because Jack Black was hosting it) she thanked her "lord and savior, Jesus Christ." In front of a bunch of impressionable kids. Was that really necessary? They do not need religion to be yet another thing being pumped into their easily influenced minds. "Mommy, we're going to hell because we don't worship God."

Then there's the Jonas brothers and their purity rings. Do you need a ring to tell people you won't have pre-marital sex? No, you could just say it. Besides, it's only a matter of time before nudes of them show up online, probably with other people involved (or each other). It happens with all famous women. Shit, they aren't women. Well they're close enough.

Bose Computer MusicMonitor, my thoughts.

So while visiting the Apple store the other day, I noticed that they had a few pairs of Bose's sexy new MusicMonitor computer speakers on display. I'm not really a fan of Bose, but being the gadget freak that I am, I still had to try them out. And I'm not that impressed.

Yes, it probably is the best sound you'll get for that size, but that doesn't mean it sounds good, and that doesn't mean it's worth $400. The first thing I noticed was how much bass they try to shove down your ears. Then immediately afterward I noticed how bad the bass really was. Yes, there was some true bass to it, but that complicated a number of things. But first I'm going to complain about the sound of the bass.

Muddy. That's the word that comes to 

mind while listening to the bass from these. The way they get it to be as powerful as it is for speakers of that size is with dual passive radiators inside a little slot going through the back of each speaker. It is a very interesting design and it does get results, and I do think it is a pretty smart way of getting bass out of these small speakers. But again, it doesn't sound good. And it makes room for a design flaw which I thought was pretty distinctive. Since there's only one driver and those passive radiators get their radiaton from that one driver, it means that not only do they extend the bass, but they mud up all 

the mids as well. This is more noticeable at higher volumes, where the louder mids are also coming from the passive radiators. Of course, since they're still picking up bass that mixes the bass and mids quite a bit and of course, muds up them both. And to top it off, it's all coming from the same driver, so that driver is making both bass and mids to begin with, so it's already muddy by the time it gets to the passive radiators.  They just finish the job.

So because of that, they lose a lot of their quality when you start to turn them up. But since the bass and mids come from the same driver to begin with (as I just said), they're always going to be mixing and mudding each other up. The highs weren't so bad though.

Now, they're also using some fancy chip inside the speaker (called a DSP chip or something) to make the bass and highs louder than the mids. What's wrong there? Well, anyone who doesn't know much about high end audio (basically the average consumer, which is all Bose targets) tends to notice bass and highs the most in a store system. So they did that to impress people who don't know much about real hifi. And it's working, since they do it in a lot of their systems and they always impress the average consumer.

But after all that I just said, I'm sure you already know what's wrong here. The bass is purposely overpowering the mids, and the overpowering bass was one of the first things I noticed. And after all that I explained, this only worsens the muddiness of the sound. I can't help but wonder if Bose wants to co

mpletely erase mids from the sound spectrum. Are they not good enough? Bah.

So after all that, what do they sound like overall? Well to sum it up, muddy bass, muddy mids, the mids and bass tend to "mix," and as a result of that mixing just causes the overall sound to mash up and sound bad. After all I've said though, I do like the design they're doing. Why though? Well imagine if they (or some right-minded audio company) did a three way design with these same types of passive radiators. That way they could separate the lows, mids, and highs, and they could give the passive radiators only to the lows. This way the bass can still be powerful and loud without screwing up everything. A larger bass driver wouldn't hurt, though.

Update: Here's a picture I drew the other day after bothering to finally install Photoshop.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also tried the JBL Duet 2.0 speakers while I was there. They retail for $50 and I liked them much more. They weren't a whole lot bigger, but just about everything about them sounded better. Well played, JBL.