Existential mindscrew

I got Nightwish‘s latest album “Endless forms most beautiful” from the library and I’m currently listening to the final song on the album (a short ~24 minutes long) and Richard Dawkins steps in at +18m10s to say:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds, it is you and I in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?

Whoa.

Whoa.

Indeed.

I cannot remember when I last read such a load of pretentious rubbish.

I cannot remember when I last read such a load of pretentious rubbish.

I can’t recall the date, but it was the same source. Usually is. Stuff that at first glance sounds profound, then you engage the brain cells

I cannot remember when I last read such a load of pretentious rubbish.

Glad it’s not just me who thought along those lines.

I’ve just interrupted my listening pleasure to pay a visit to YouTube and try a little Nightwish. Suffice it to say, I’m glad to return to what I was listening to before.

Is it only Rick that will enjoy listening to Symphony of Science then? ;-)

My Iyonix, which I bought when they first were available, was deficient in producing sound. I never got to the bottom of why. So since then I have not bothered with the acoustic possibilities of my computer. Now I have a Raspberry Pi maybe I should think again. So what do I need? Speakers? Have to be cheap, tiny and and simple to connect.

Is it only Rick that will enjoy listening to Symphony of Science then? ;-)

No, I’ve enjoyed a few of those when I’ve heard them.

@Gavin

So what do I need? Speakers? Have to be cheap, tiny and and simple to connect.

If your display has speakers, check to see if it has a 3.5mm audio in socket – many these days do. If so, you can probably go cheaper than a cheap set of speakers, and just buy a lead with 3.5mm jacks at each end.

(I’ve never bothered with the sound on my Pi, so I’ve no idea what it’s like.)

Now I have a Raspberry Pi maybe I should think again. So what do I need? Speakers? Have to be cheap, tiny and and simple to connect.

There is a 3.5mm jack on the side of the Pi. If you are using an HDMI to VGA adaptor, it may have a 3.5mm jack on it to split out the digital audio (or there’s some config command to route audio to the onboard jack if your HDMI stuff doesn’t do it).
That’s the source.

For playback, as Vince said, see if your monitor has speakers. If not, you can get battery powered amplified speakers pretty cheaply. The Pi can drive headphones, but isn’t up to getting loud sounds directly.
The audio quality isn’t brilliant, it is your standard 44/48kHz, but to be honest I find the speakers are much more important than the source audio. Crap speakers sound crap no matter how good the audio signals.

The audio output on the Pi seems free of parasites. No clicks, buzzes, or other nasties, so it is okay to listen to mp3s and streaming radio via speakers or headphones.

Okay, I’ll await Jim to tell me that it is actually really horrible and provide complicated looking diagrams to explain why. ;-)

The audio output on the Pi seems free of parasites. No clicks, buzzes, or other nasties, so it is okay to listen to mp3s and streaming radio via speakers or headphones.

Although that does depend on which Pi and ROM you’re using.

Although that does depend on which Pi and ROM you’re using.

Does the Pi2 suffer from this?

I don’t have a Pi 2 so I can’t say.

Edit: And I see that the other thread has been updated :)