As the record industry’s fortunes decline, consumers experience increasing access to the world’s recorded music, legally and otherwise, through digital technologies. At the same time, recordings not only take up less physical space (on hard drives and MP3 players), they are compressed — not just as data, but in terms of dynamic range. While it allows for constant audibility in noisy environments like cars and offices, dynamic range compression has frustrated many listeners for limiting the impact of the music and causing “ear fatigue.” These listeners long for access to the purity of the original recording before it was “squashed,” but the problem is that the original recording does not, in a sense, exist. Producers and mastering engineers assemble the tracks recorded and create a particular sonic product that can later be revisited and “remastered.” Ostensibly this process is meant to get closer to the original sound, but in reality it simply comprises a different manner of interpreting the existing recording. Theodor Adorno had written of surprisingly similar phenomena more than half a century ago in essays like “The Radio Symphony” and the notes collected in Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction. Though infamous for his hostility toward popular music and its “infantile” listeners, Adorno’s writings on music contain much that is valuable for an understanding of how pop works in the digital age. Combined with a consideration of works on music and postmodernity by Fredric Jameson, Jacques Attali, François Lyotard and others, Adorno’s work helps one to consider how reification continues to work in an era where music is seemingly no longer a “thing.”

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Music." Includes bibliographical references (p. 170-176).

This study examines the possibility of creating original video-based content for the video-enabled iPod that was released in October 2005. Current trends show that existing content created for conventional media like television, cinema and computers are simply being ported over to this new medium. However, when this project began, none of the production studios are concentrating on creating content specifically for this medium, which has its own unique properties like portability, screen size and the ability to easily start and pause content as required. The purpose of this project is to prove that such medium-specific content can be created and made financially viable for the creators. Further, this hypothesis is put to the test by presenting it to a group of Ball State University students and their responses are examined in detail. / Department of Telecommunications

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the World Wide Web.

Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Science fiction has long promised the digitalization of books. Characters in films and television routinely check their palm-sized (or smaller) electronic displays for fast-scrolling information. However, this very technology, increasingly prevalent in today's world, has not been embraced universally. While the convenience of pocket-sized information pieces has the techno-savvy entranced, the general public still greets the advent of the e-book with a curious reluctance. This lack of enthusiasm seems strange in the face of the many advantages offered by the new medium - vastly superior storage capacity, searchability, portability, lower cost, and instantaneous access. This dissertation addresses the need for research examining the reading comprehension and the role emotional response plays in the perceived performance on e-document formats as compared to traditional paper format. This study compares the relative reading comprehension on three formats (Kindle, iTouch, and paper) and examines the relationship of subject's emotional response and relative technology exposure as factors that affect how the subject perceives they have performed on those formats. This study demonstrates that, for basic reading comprehension, the medium does not matter. Furthermore, it shows that, the more uncomfortable a person is with technology and expertise in the requested task (in this case, reading), the more they cling to the belief that they will do better on traditional (paper) media - regardless of how well they actually do.

xvi, 120 p. : ill. (some col.) A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Instructional use of the iPod Touch is increasing as evidenced by anecdotal reports of its efficacy as a learning tool. However, research documenting the impact of this technology has been limited. This study was based on the following research questions: (a) Does providing explicit reading comprehension strategy instruction using an iPod Touch increase students' reading comprehension outcomes based on standardized reading tests and multiple-choice probe measures when compared to a No Support comparison group? (b) Does providing different types of electronic text support increase students' reading comprehension outcomes, and if so, which type of support is most effective? (c) Does providing different levels of electronic text support influence students' attitudes toward the use of comprehension strategies as well as using an iPod Touch for this task? Participants included 155 sixth-grade students at a public middle school. Students were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups; (a) Notational Only support (a note-taking sheet), (b) Notational + Instructional support (embedded prompts), and (c) Notational + Instructional + Translational support (audio version of the text and prompts) and received reading comprehension strategy instruction and text support using an iPod Touch. An intact No Support ( N = 61) group that did not receive instruction or text support but read the texts using an iPod Touch was used as a quasi-experimental comparison group. Two standardized reading comprehension measures were employed at pretest and posttest as well as researcher developed probe measures that were used throughout the study. An ANOVA analysis determined that no statistically significant differences existed between the groups at pretest. An ANCOVA with pretest scores as a covariate found no statistically significant differences between groups on the standardized reading comprehension measures. Because of a high level of variation among the probe measure data, including significant missing data, these results were not analyzed statistically and were reported descriptively. Students responded positively to survey questions about using the iPod Touch for summarization strategy instruction and the text supports. / Committee in Charge: Dr. Edward J. Kame'enui, Chair; Dr. Kathleen Scalise; Dr. Louis Moses; Dr. Lynne Anderson-Inman