Five Years Later - Why bullpups aren't a great solution

In my ongoing series revisiting posts from five (or six) years ago, I thought I'd update one of my most read and linked posts, the one on bullpups.

In this case, I'm not doing a new post, but I've completely re-written (and corrected all the typos and dead links in) the old post. In particular I greatly simplified it, pulling out a bunch of wonkish detail on human mechanics and ergonomics which just about everyone ignored.

Oh and I renamed it; since I don't actually thing they're a BAD idea, but they aren't an optimal solution:

For some reason, the the bullpup rifle keeps being put forward as a good idea.

...Really, for the most part, they are not.

I'm an engineer and a firearms expert; by training, inclination, experience, and employment. I'm a veteran, a former security contractor, a former firearms trainer, and a class III armorer and light duty gunsmith (I don't have a barrel lathe or mill at the moment, and I don't want to be an FFL again; so I don't offer full gunsmithing).

I have a great appreciation for good engineering. Bullpups are, in general, not good engineering.

The bullpup rifle has one real advantage: bullpup designs allow for a shorter overall weapon, for a given length of barrel (typically between 4" and 7" shorter than a conventional rifle).

That's not an insignificant advantage. In some missions it's even a huge asset (particularly in urban combat, or infantry dismounted from armored vehicles).

In most missions though, that 4-7 inches isn't much of a plus.

On the other hand, the bullpup configuration has a number of disadvantages:

• Bullpup designs are mechanically more complex, requiring a long trigger linkage, and control system linkages. This seriously degrades both control feel, and reliability, and increases bulk and weight (there may be engineering solutions to this problem).
  
  If current munitions infrastructure and laws allowed for electronic trigger, feed, and ignition systems, this would be a non issue, and the bullpups advantage may outweigh it's several disadvantages; but for now, that's not an option (also, electronic systems have their own issues).
  
  
• If a bullpup has a catastrophic failure, instead of the explosion being six or eight inches in front of your eyes, it's right at your eyesocket, or touching your cheekbone or ear. The only good thing is, if the bolt flys back, it doesn't end up in your eye socket.
  
  Most bullpups also eject hot brass, and vent hot gasses in the vicinity of your eyes and ears (some eject downward or forward, which is a better solution for a bullpup, if it's engineered properly).
  
  
• Mag changes on most bullpups are slower (sometimes much slower) because they require more repositioning, that positioning can be awkward, and can be difficult to see (if necessary) without fully dismounting the rifle.
  
  A conventional rifle allows you to see your mag changes, and is more easily maneuvered with your dominant hand, which makes mag changes easier in general.
  
  More importantly a human being can naturally bring their hands together in the dark. As a basic design guideline, magwells should either be in your dominant hand, or just in front of it; because it is far more difficult to manipulate anything dexterously that is located behind your dominant hand.
  
• Because of the positioning of the magazine (usually the part of a gun extending lowest) close to your shoulder when the weapon is mounted, bullpups can be difficult to fire while prone (though this is common with some other rifle designs as well).
  
  Note in the pictures below, the magazine is by far the lowest point of the rifle; and being located behind the dominant hand and close to your shoulder; when you drop prone it will tend to strike the ground forcing the muzzle downward.
  
  This can also cause problems with mags being warped, ripped out of the magwell, having the baseplate broken off, or the rifle itself being ripped out of the users hand when hitting the deck.
  
  A conventional rifle with a long magazine can have issues with dropping prone as well, but because the mag is positioned forward of the dominant hand, instead of forcing the muzzle down, it will tend to force the muzzle up; and though it's not advisable to use the magazine as a monopod, it's possible. With a bullpup, it isn't.
  
  This isn't an issue for rifles that are generally fired off bipods, so in an SAW or LMG role, the bullpup may be an appropriate solution (though having the feed system in such tight quarters with your shoulder and cheek is its own issue).
  
  
• Charging the rifle and manipulating the operating handle is often more difficult, and sometimes can't be done without dismounting the rifle, or reaching over the rifle with your support hand (again, some conventional rifles do share this weakness; and this is a problem that can easily be solved with proper engineering).
  
  
• Bullpups are naturally balanced in a non-instinctive way.
  
  This is really the biggest problem, and the one that is hardest to solve with engineering.
  
  The balance point on most bullpups is in between your hand and your shoulder when mounted, which is unnatural. We have a natural tendency to try to balance things between our hands, not between our hand and shoulder.
  
  The only way to correct this is to put heavy things in front of your dominant hand, or to make the weapon short and light enough that this won't make a difference (and even then it will still be more awkward and less instinctive to point; but several modern bullpups have taken the second approach).
  
  This balance will tend to make a bullpup tend to shift its butt under recoil, unless it is very tightly mounted to your shoulder; particularly during rapid fire. This tendency is somewhat countered by the position of your support hand so far forward on the barrel,  by the fact that the overall leverage moment of the muzzle is lower (the muzzle isn't as far from either your shoulder, or your dominant hand), and by the fact that most bullpups have straightline recoil.
  
  A conventional rifle is balanced in between your dominant and support hands, and there are good reasons for that. A human being naturally handles things that balance in the palm, or in front of your dominant hand, better, because we naturally want to balance things between our hands.
  
  Under recoil, the muzzle of a conventional rifle rises, but just from gravity will fall into you support hand again without actually holding or pulling it down, because the fulcrum of the lever is in your dominant hand, and the balance point is in front of the fulcrum. 

Some of these issues can be solved, or mitigated with engineering (and most modern bullpup designs do resolve, or at least reduce, many of those issues). Also, a lot of this can be worked around with training.

What it comes down to though, is that bullpups are ergonomically incorrect for human beings. When you have the option, you don't train someone to do something ergonomically incorrect, you redesign the equipment to fit human ergonomics.

The only good thing about a bullpup is the short overall length in relation to their barrel length; and that is not advantage enough to outweigh the disadvantages for most missions.

Well, that and the fact that they look cool, which is the real reason so many people are enamored of them.

A lot of folks have watched a lot of stargate (or played a lot of stealth shooter video games). They use the FN-P90 PDW which isn't exactly a bullpup, but follows a similar concept; and they do just look kind of futuristic.

The Steyr AUG was designed in 1976, and it still looks like a space gun:

Several countries have adopted bullpup designes as their primary service arm, notably Austria, and Australia (the AUG above), France (the FAMAS),

and the UK (the SA80 system, now in the L85-A2 variant):

The reasons cited are usually overall length, the extra accuracy and velocity afforded by the longer barrels allowed by the configuration, and some medical or efficiency studies showing that the bullpup was actually ergonomically correct.

Here's the thing: every study that the British did showing that the SA80 design was ergonomically correct, or that the reliability issue was solved, has over the past few years been proven to have been "Unjustifiably optimistic", or some other such euphemism for fraud.

The SA80 has  proven to be ridiculously unreliable , though at least it is SA80 is quite accurate when it functions properly (also the HK refit and remanufacture of the A2 variant has dramatically improved reliability... Though it's still not great).

The SA80 in fact is so poorly designed, that firing it from your left shoulder will give you a black eye (and can even break your cheekbone) and send hot brass and gasses flying into your eyes. You also can't fire the thing from the left side of cover without exposing your whole head and torso.

I have tried the P90, the SA80, the Steyr AUG, the Bushmaster M17, the FAMAS, and the IMI Tavor (the latter two held and played with, but not shot), and I haven't found any of them but the P90 to be remotely comfortable, or anything but awkward. I've tried a couple of bullpup conversions from other weapons as well, same thing (excepting several bullpup sniper rifles, that I quite liked, and as I said, the P90 which is only sort of a bullpup... it's quite handy and nice to shoot).

UPDATE: Since I first wrote this, I've had a chance to shoot with the FN F/S2000 in both semi and full auto variants: 

While it looks like a heavy and awkward spacegun, it's actually very light, well balanced, and comfortable. Reports from the field are that it is generally reliable, but there aren't a lot out there yet to establish a useful sample.  

Mag changes are still less than ideal, and the trigger is still poor; but the handling of the gun is good, and it is reasonably accurate for an assault rifle. I do worry however about the forward ejection system. It seems to me like it would be easy to jam up in the field. 

Also, since I originally wrote this, Kel-Tec has introduced their RFB forward ejecting bullpup in 7.62x51: 

Unfortunately, not many of them are out in the world yet, so I haven't had a chance to fire one; but the design seems to address some of the issues above.  I have real concerns about the forward and up ejection system, and the inability to clear a jam without field stripping the weapon however. 

Until someone has shot thousands of rounds through them, had to change mags in the dark, and in cramped conditions, had to clear jams under combat conditions etc... they can't know how unsuitable bullpups are as anything other than a niche weapon, to be used only where OAL is the most critical factor (but where SMGs are not an appropriate choice).

For example, bullpup sniper rifles make a lot of sense, particularly in .50bmg and other anti-materiel chamberings. In fact, any weapon that you would normally fire off a bipod makes sense as a bullpup, because the ergonomic issues around balance, and lying prone don't really apply.

People say "Well the designs just aren't good enough yet, I'm sure as they mature they'll get better, isn't it the natural way to go eventually?"

First of all, why would it be?

Other than the fact that the Sci-Fi network likes featuring bullpups in their television shows, there is no reason why bullpups should be "the future". They have one design advantage, shorter length, and many design disadvantages.

Now, when we use caseless ammmo loaded in 1000 round blocks, and using electronic ignition systems... sure, bullpups make sense. At that point, all the basic engineering weaknesses are compensated for, and the advantage of a longer barrel for length of weapon offsets the balance issues... if they even exist then, given progress in materials.

But for now, so long as we are using relatively "conventional" ammunition and firing mechanisms, those engineering problems outweight the one real advantage; and the ergonomic issues simply compound the problem.

Engineers aren't miracle workers. We can refine a design until it's mechanically perfect within its design parameters; but the point I'm trying to make, is that at our current level of cartridge firing weapons development, there is no way to design an ergonomic bullpup.

So, bullpups are only slightly shorter than their conventional counterparts (maybe 7" in the case of an assault rifle), nothing to sneeze at, but not a huge advantage in most cases considering the missions they are intended for; they are less reliable and more mechanically complex than conventional designs, they are ergonomically incorrect, and they are more likely to injure their user.

I'm not denying there are missions where a bullpup is appropriate (as I said above), but I can't see any conventional situation where a bullpup assault rifle is the right tradeoff to make; even urban warfare and infantry dismounted from armor.

But they look cool...

How to feed your PoodleShooter

So, I've talked a LOT about what types of ammunition to use in ARs, what bullets work best, what barrel twist works with what ammo... why the AR exist in the first place and uses the ammo that it does...

Somehow I never managed to get around to talking much about magazines; except to note they are the single biggest point of failure for the AR platform, and the first thing to consider when things go wrong.

Well they ARE. I harp on it for a reason.

Somehow though I never managed to talk about what magazines to buy, or not to buy, and how to pick'em.

Well, a friend of mine was heading to the gunshow this past weekend, and he asked for advice on mags; so I wrote this up for him, and I thought I'd share it with the rest of you.

Ok, let's break it down.

First things first, don't buy mags at the gun show (or at the gun shop for that matter), unless they're a spectacular bargain... or a reasonable price, but new in the plastic with the original manufacturers imprint on them, and/or in a sealed crate with a trademark you can read.

I don't trust mags bought at gunshows very much, and unfortunately most gunshops are only one step above that... after all most of the guys selling dodgy, mismarked, clearly fraudulent crap mags at gunshows, are gunshops.

Honestly, if they aren't 100% quality and cheaper than $20 don't bother, just order from Brownells. In fact I'd say cheaper than $15; and that's for brand new.

Second, what to buy and what to avoid.

Let's piss some people off shall we?

For aluminum commercial mags, Brownells mags are excellent; and are available straight from Brownells with an upgraded follower, spring and baseplate for $2-$6 extra. They are both the best value in commercial magazines, and the best quality. I recommend them over all other commercial magazines.

Bushmasters all metal mags are good, but avoid the ones with the plastic baseplates (they are reliable, but can't be rebuilt).

HK mags are also excellent, and actually worth a couple extra bucks, but not the $40+ that they charge for them (remember "HK, because you suck, and we hate you"). In that same vein, Colt commercial mags are good, but they try to charge a large premium for them just because of the name, and they aren't worth it.

C-products mags are generally very good, and they are the only manufacturer I know who sells new mag bodies only, in bulk, to the general public (convenient if you want to use your own spring, baseplate, and follower). They're also VERY reasonably priced.

Cammenga makes a new "speedloader" type magazine, that actually splits apart (the front of the mag slides down), to let you rapidly load them. Reports on them are good so far; but they're only a couple years old and havent seen much hard use yet. I'd be worried about fine dust and the like jamming them up... but for a range mag it seems like a great idea.

The Beta C-mag from Betaco is a heck of a beast. It's the only reliable drum magazine for the AR (and most other 5.56 rifles, and the M14 and others by the by) on the market, and it's great fun... but I don't know that I'd trust my life to one exclusively. Also, REALLY expensive.

That said, I do have one, and I love it. If you can afford one, it's the perfect companion for a heavy barreled AR on a bipod. You can just sit their and pick targets off all day long.

Aluminum USGI mags... a mixed bunch to be honest. First of all, frauds abound. Second, honestly, some of them just aren't that great, even though they are "mil spec".

Also it is VERY IMPORTANT to remember that a lot of the USGI magazines that end up on the commercial market are there because they were rejected by the Gov't (it's illegal to sell rejected USGI mags, but it happens all the time anyway). They may be generally good with a small flaw, or they may be unreliable POSes.

I have never seen Brownells USGI mags for sale commercially, but as I said, they are the best.

Sabre are excellent (their commercial and gov't contract mags are the same).

Bushmaster USGI mags are excellent (better than their commercial).

FN mags are generally good, but their springs are iffy on their USGI mags. I personally have seen failures in their springs, baseplates tabs, and feed lips to a higher extent than other manufacturers; but anecdote != data.

Colt mil-spec mags, if real, are excellent, as are Okay industries/OK, Universal Industries, Simmonds Precision, Knights armament, and original Armalite. They should be, they are all from the same manufacturer (OK). Again though, watch out because frauds are everywhere (usually made in Taiwan or Singapore).

LaBelle mags are excellent, in fact probably the best older USGI mags (Brownells and HK are the best commercial, and better than LaBelle by a small amount). DPMS labeled mags are from LaBelle, as are newer Armalite, Knights, Stoner, Smith and Wesson, General Stamping, Eagle Arms (not Eagle or American Eagle) and some others.

If your AR is from a reputable manufacturer other than Bushmaster, FN, Colt, or Sabre (who all make their own) and it came with an own brand stamped magazine; it's probably a LaBelle... or rather NOW a "General Stamping" as they bought LaBelle some years ago; though I believe they continue to use BOTH imprints.

Adventure Arms, Adventure Line, Center Industries and Parsons, are all also the same manufacturer, and pretty good.

Take this as you will, but as of today, there are only three certified providers of contract USGI AR magazines, Brownells, Center Industries, and OK industries.

Everybody elses aluminum mags , I'd stay away from.

Sanchez mags are not very good. Cooper mags are horrible.

Remember, all legitimate USGI mags, and U.S. commercial mags will have the manufacturer clearly stamped on the baseplate; however with used mags, it's entirely likely the baseplate won't reflect the original manufacturer of the other components, as things get mixed around with cleanign etc...

The Singapore and UK steel mags are excellent if you don't mind the weight, but the lips can gall and bind on steel ammo. Other then c-products, I haven't seen any good commercial steel mags.

For polymer mags, Magpuls pmags are excellent. Thermold and Orlite mags are also very good. In any polymer mag though (even new ones), be very careful about cracks and warping.

The REAL israeli milspec polymer (Orlite, but may not be labled as such) and milspec metal mags are very good, but fakes are everywhere. Same thing for the South African mags.

USA mags, Triple K mags, Promags, National, Eagle, American Eagle, (but not Eagle Arms) and American Magazine are all horrible.

Any magazine with a finish other than than phosphated (parkerized), teflon coated, or epoxy coated, should be avoided as well; as no matter what the markings are, they are either cheap foreign made crap, refinished by god knows who concealing god knows what problems, or a fake.

For ANY of the above magazine, commercial or USGI, I'd change the followers to magpul followers. They're about $2 a piece. You can also buy Brownells mags with them installed already, and of course all magpul mags have them. Oh and HK has a direct ripoff of the magpul follower that they refused to license (they do that sort of thing).

What about used, or mag kits?

You can pick up mags with perfectly good bodies but with the older black follower design very cheap, as people read "green follower" on the net, and all of a sudden black follower mags are anathema. Well, the green follower isn't very good either, and for $2 you can change the follower to magpul, and get a real bargain in the process.

All USGI mag springs prior to the late 80s are suspect. I change them out for Wolff and Brownells springs as a matter of course. I would also recommend replacing the springs and followers of any used magazines you by as a matter of course (you just don't know where they've been so to speak).

Magpul and Brownells both sell rebuild kits that include a new spring and follower for around $5. Baseplates are cheap. If you can get a deal on good USGI, or good qaulity commercial (you'll have to look for proofmarks) mag bodies, you might want to consider it.

What to look for (and hopefully not find).

When you're evaluating a mag, the first place to look is the feed lips. They should be free of ripples, dings, gouges, nicks or burrs, and they should be even and smooth.

The feed lips are the second most common failure point on the AR mags behind the springs. A bad spring is fixable though; if you have bad feedlips, you've got a bad mag.

Then look at the base plate and see if it's secure. Are the body tabs good, does the plate move without too much binding, but not so loosely that it will vibrate out? Does the base plate bend and stay bent (bad. The mag is either old and abused, or a forgery. The plate should spring back)? Is there any discoloration, cracks, or burrs in the tabs, and do the tabs bend easily under finger pressure (they shouldn't)?

Use something to depress the follower as far as it will go. Make sure you're pressing down in the center as you push, and check to make sure it doesn't bind excessively (a very little bit is normal), or tilt excessively (again a little bit is normal).

Check the entire body for dings or gouges. Even if the finish is worn off it could be a good mag, so long as the body is sound.

Check the welds. They should be clean, neat, and evenly spaced. There should be a minimum of 4 of them front and back, and as many as 7 (different manufacturers at different times, have used different numbers of welds). Some earlier (or cheaper made) USGI and commercial magazines only had 3 welds and should be avoided. Current Milspec is 6 welds, front and back.

Try to twist the top and base of the mag in different directions; you shouldn't be able to or at least not to any significant degree. If you can, the welds are bad, the aluminum sheet is too thin, the aluminum alloy used is wrong, or it hasn't been properly heat treated (or possibly not at all).

Remember, AR mags are essentially disposable.

Excepting HK (remember, HK because you suck and we hate you) and the Beta-C mag, they sell for $10 to $20, and a slight structural defect is not worth trying to fix or work around.

If you start thinking of them as something other than disposable, you'll be tempted to keep them when they malfunction.

The HK mags are a special case here, in that HK may charge more for them, but they really take the disposable aspect seriously. HK mags are designed to be absolutely reliable, for 100 reloads. After that, HK doesn't care; and they have done their metallurgy to reflect this. They are known to develop feeding problems with extended use because of spring wear, and mag lip deformation.

AR mags always have been designed to be disposable, and you should treat them as such. You can replace springs and followers, but once the feed lips or the baseplate tabs go wonky, they cannot be recovered. You MAY use them as a range mag, but I just crushem or use them as targets.

Most "unreliable" ARs (from reputable manufacturers anyway) are just fine; they're just using bad mags (and usually bad ammo too. Cheap out on one thing, they're probably cheaping out on another).

It's very cathartic packing a bad magazine full of reactive explosives and blowing it up. Just stay at least 50 yards away, those aluminum bits can fly pretty far.

Oh and just on a note of personal preference, may I suggest 20 round mags over 30 rounders. I personally think they work better in general, and they're a lot easier to deal with at the range,
prone, on the bench etc... I prefer the straight bodied ones myself.

For more, and more detailed info, check out Troys Mag FAQ.

Two is One, One is None

That is the preparedness maxim.

Basically it means that if you only have one of something important, you can't count on it, because it WILL eventually break, fail, be lost, or stolen, or otherwise refuse or be unable to perform its required function.

Now, when writing here, I generally apply the maxim to the essentials; you know, water, toilet paper, guns, ammo, spare parts for guns and cars etc...

Today though, I'm going to talk about computers.

Ahhh computers, the boon and bane of our existence; and to many of us not much lower on the priority list than those things above (at least until TEOTWAWKI).

So why talk about the two is one maxim and computers today?

Well, how about because I'm irritated.

In the last few months (the current spate of failures started around November I think... maybe October), just at home, we've had the following (just what I can remember, and just in computers... probably more than that actually; plus the TV that died):

• three hard drives just flat out fail
• four power supplies die (one desktop, three laptop)
• two monitors fail
• three network interfaces fail
• two cd-rom drives fail
• several flash memory cards die
• one PDA have it's charging port break off
• one laptop just fail completely
  
• Two routers die
  

I think you get the point.

Now of course that's a lot more failures than most people experience; but Mel and I both work at home, and run my business from my home office; so we've got a lot more computers than most (2 laptops active, two desktops active, a couple servers, a couple of testing machines, a couple old boxes as emergency backups/spares... a total of about 10 systems; and that's down from about 15 a few months ago).

We keep hardware around a long time; and we buy a fair bit of new hardware for various reasons; so most of the failures were either beyond their service life, or still in their infant mortality period. We also have very dirty power here, and up until recently we didn't have everything on power conditioners (which is what killed the TV, and which has most definitely been fixed). All that adds up to more failures per system than most experience;

Combined, more systems and more failures per system... well, do the math.

The problem is of course, when something fails here, it generally means I can't work until it gets fixed; and that can get expensive.

As to why I'm particularly irritated today; just in the last three days, the motherboard for the girls computer died, and I had a hard drive physically break while I was doing maintenance on my primary desktop.

My windows boot drive, to be more specific.

Importantly though, only a couple of these breakages caused me an immediate problem, other than some irritation and time wastage; because I followed the maxim. I have spare parts for all my systems, and backups for all my data.

Yes, I had to pick up 2 new monitors; but I was able to function until I did by using old monitors (I always keep a couple around as spares). They were ugly, but they worked.

I was able to recover my windows boot drive using my backup software, onto a spare hard drive (I always keep several around, because they are the most frequent failure in computers). Each of the other hard drive failures, I was also able to put in a spare, and recover from backups. I bought the hard drives on special at woot, 3x 500gb drives for $240 total; just to make sure I had spares around.

The last time woot had them on special, I picked up 3 targus labeled (actually made by iGo, a great company) universal laptop power supplies for $20 each; so when my OEM power supplies have died, I've been able to slot in an iGo until I could get a replacement (or actually in the case of two of them, not bother getting OEM replacements because the iGos are actually better).

It doesn't take a huge investment to make sure you can always keep functioning. A spare hard drive costs under $100 these days. A spare router is $60. A spare DVD burner is about $35. Desktop and laptop power supplies are generally $60 to $80 for either.

Oh and don't forget spare cables. Cables fail all the time, and it's generally cheap to have a couple spares around. You can probably get spare power, network, USB, IDE, and SATA cables for each of your computers for under $30.

Generally speaking, when I upgrade something, I keep the old parts around as spares. Then if I need to use the spare, I buy a replacement and keep cycling things through. If I don't get a spare that way, I just snag them whenever I can pick them up on sale or special etc...

Also, I strip out all the useful cables, screws, brackets, etc... from old computers and other electronics I'm going to toss. You wouldn't believe how often the whole "for want of a nail" scenario plays out; and those spare screws etc... have saved my butt.

The couple of breakages that DID cause me an immediate problem that I mentioned above?

Both were because I didn't follow the maxim.

About a nine months ago, my router died; and I replaced it with my spare. I then forgot to replace the spare. About two months ago, my previous spare router that I was then using as my primary router also died; because of a power surge.

I work over a VPN, and without an internet connection I can't work. I also start work before most stores are open, because my co-workers are all in other time zones. I ended up having to go out to super-walmart at midnight to go and overpay for a router (and not the one I would have bought if given a choice).

You can be damn sure that a couple days later I went out and bought the router I actually needed. Now the midnight walmart router is my spare.

The other one is the girls motherboard.

There are generally two pieces I don't have any spares of: motherboards, and processors.

Basically, I don't keep spares because failure is very rare, because they are quite expensive, and because they tend to go obsolete very quickly. It just doesn't make sense to have a spare mobo and proc around.

What I do always have around is at least one spare computer. With computers so cheap these days, $300 gets you all you really need for a backup box; and you can always have it be a multifunction system (make it a media server or an archive server for example).

If I need to get that computer FUNCTION back up and running quickly, I have all my data backed up, and all my operating systems imaged; and I can just load it up on one of the extra computers rather than try and do a rush repair on the broken one.

I talk about building backup and security systems here, and here.

Thankfully, the girls computer isn't exactly critical to my work; so it isn't really necessary to keep such spares around; and I don't need to clone it onto another machine; but it's still a pain in the butt.

Oh well, time to order a new motherboard.

So you want to buy a 1911? A basic primer

Arrighty then... You've just seen "Sin City", "Pulp Fiction", or "Last Man Standing"... or maybe you've been watching too many episodes of "The Unit", but you've got the itch.

You're a gun owner already, or at least you've shot before; and all the gun rags are full of them... but you don't know anything about them.

Maybe you've only shot your dads .22

Maybe, God forbid, you're a Glock shooter...

And now... you want the purest expression of personal defensive firearms perfection ever created. Gods gift to gunnies, through the genius of Holy St. John Moses Browning.

You need a 1911.

But, how do you get started? Who do you ask? Won't my counterstrike guild hate me for abandoning the church of St. Gaston? Won't the gun shop mafia laugh at me for not knowing about the holy hogleg?

Nay my son; the church of Browning is a forgiving church. We, like the Jesuits, understand that once presented with the light of truth; mans great gift from god of reason, will lead him to the righteous path.

We do not fear, or hate our misguided "safe action" brethren; for they know not what they do. We love and pray that they will see the light.

Now, in all seriousness, the 1911 is the most popular single model of handgun in the United States; and most likely, it's the second most manufactured centerfire handgun in the world ( the K frame S&W revolver being number one. I say "most likely", because the makarov may be close, but reliable production numbers of it, and all it's clones... who knows).

There's about a hundred years of history there; and there are literally hundreds of different manufacturers, gunsmiths, configurations, and variations to consider.

As 1911 guy, let me break down some of those major factors for you.

I. Size and configuration
II. Manufacturer (or smith)
III. Options
IV. Chambering

I. Size and Configuration

Ok, so first, there are three basic sizes, all originally introduced commercially by Colt, and thus canonically referred to by the Colt name (though technically "Commander" is a Colt trademark).

You may see a given model of 1911 referred to by the model it's manufacturer chose, or frequently, by the Colt designation:

1. Government Model: 5" barrel, full sized grip frame, 7 or 8 round magazine. Kimber calls this size "custom", Springfield calls it "full size", most everyone else just calls it a 1911, or a Government model.

2. Commander: 4" or 4.25" barrel, full sized grip frame, 7 or 8 rd. magazine. Kimber calls this size "Pro", Springfield calls this size "Champion", others often call this size "custom", "compact", or "carry".

3. Officers model: 3" or 3.5" barrel, shortened grip frame, 6 or 7rd magazine. Kimber calls this size "Ultra" , Springfield calls this "Micro-Compact" (or their 3.5" barrel the Ultra-Compact". Most others call it something like micro-carry, ultra-carry, ultra-compact, hideout, undercover etc...

Additionally, there are some other variations, including the long slide (typically a 6" barrel and slide), the CCO (commander barrel and slide on the officers frame), and a few have put an officers slide and barrel on a full sized frame, with several different names.

There is some controversy among Colt purists (irritating wankers for the most part) about whether a 4" gun should be classified as "commander" length, or a 3" gun as "Officers length", because technically the original Colt models were 4.25" and 3.5" respectively. Of course as of right now, the only officers length gun that Colt manufactures is the "Defender", and it's a 3" gun.

Oh and a note on names: Different manufacturers are inconsistent about what they call their different sized 1911s. In fact, sometimes the same manufacturer isn't consistent with model names. Kimber and Springfield have both changed what they call different sizes more than once.

II. Manufacturer or gunsmith

There are pretty much 4 tiers of 1911 manufacturer:

1. Discount 1911s: These are usually made in the Phillipines. Examples include Rock Island, Charles Daly etc... In general I would say avoid them.

Some people will rave all day about the excellent deal they got and how their gun was perfect etc... Unfortunately anecdote does not equal data; and from working in gunshops and doing gunsmith work, I can tell you that far more people have been very unhappy with their cut rate 1911s, than those who have been happy.

If you get a golden sample; great, you just saved $200; but honestly, is saving $200 worth the 80/20 shot you're going to get a lemon?

There are two exception to this rule:

Taurus, who sell one of the best 1911 for under $800. Theirs lists for $600 (a lot more than the Phillipine models, but a lot less than a Kimber or Springer of similar feature spec) and other than some early QC problems they've had (pretty much every Taurus has QC problems in the early production run), is just as good as any other production model 1911... Once you get any issues worked out... which may take a trip back to the factory.  They offer a lifetime warranty on all their guns, so all the guns with problems get fixed; but their customer service is less than great, so there were a lot of delays in shipping etc... 

Only one quality 1911 manufacturer offers a basic model at a much lower price point than their main line; STI, a small volume semi-custom maker. Their "Spartan" model, is a reasonably well featured 1911, made with offshore parts (Phillipine), but still high quality fitting and good quality control; and selling for $660 list (or around $600 retail). 

STI is a great company, who really support gun rights (they won't sell guns to some states because of their gun laws for example). Well... excellent but for one thing. Order a gun from them, and it may take three months to get to you. They're VERY busy, mostly producing high end competition 1911s.

If you're on a very limited budget, and you want a low priced 1911, I STRONGLY recommend you look at the Taurus, or the STI. 

Actually... honestly I recommend buying something other than a 1911 if you're shopping in this price range; unless this is your second or third gun. 

Expect to pay: $400 to $600 or so. Basically cheaper than a used top tier 1911 in good condition. Other than the Taurus or STI, I'd rather buy a better gun used though.

2. Factory standard: These include Colt, Kimber, Springfield Armory, Smith and Wesson, SIG, Para-Ordnance, Dan Wesson, and a few others (the ones I mentioned are combined, damn near 100% of the market)

Though there are brand partisans, mostly they are full of it. Chest beating for brand loyalty, which never made much sense to me. This is especially true of Colt, and Kimber; which to me seems mostly like people either fetishizing history, or working themselves up to feel better about the elevated price they paid (don't even get me started about the HK lunatics).

All the major manufacturers are roughly equivalent in quality for a given feature set. All use certain cast or MIM parts. Most of them have their frames and slides forged in Brazil or Argentina; and only final machined here in the U.S. (even though other than Springer, they don't label them as such).

Of this group, Para-Ord, S&W, SIG, and Dan Wesson are the only manufacturers doing their own forging, or at least using forgings done in the U.S. or Canada (Para-Ordnance used to be Canadian, and did their own forgings in Canada; but they moved to the US a couple years ago, and I'm not sure if they still do. At some point, all three of the others have used Caspian forgings, but again, they may have changed by now. Someone has reported to be that Paras U.S. frames are all cast in house now) for any models at all ; and I'm not even sure they're still doing that. I've heard from various sources that all of them have offshored or moved to investment casting (nothing wrong with a good casting, it's just hard to get right, and very easy to get wrong); but I haven't confirmed it.

So, what are the real differences?

S&W and Springfield cost a bit less than the others at a given feature level, and SIG, Colt and Kimber a bit more. Dan Wesson, S&W and SIG use slightly higher quality (Ed Brown, Les Baer, and Wilson Combat) small parts on all their guns. Kimber and Springfield use higher quality (in house) parts on their high end models.

Colt has excellent quality control, but poor customer service. Kimber has poor quality control, and awful customer service. Both S&W and Springer have excellent quality control and customer service.

Dan Wesson is now owned by CZ, who has a reputation for excellent quality control and customer service, but they are new to the 1911 business and the new Dan Wesson line hasn't had much time to build up a market history as of yet. That said, all indications so far are very good; especially since they have decided to use hard parts from STI and Ed Brown (two of the best custom manufacturers in the business). I almsot put DW in the "semi-custom" category because of this.

Oh and both Colt and Springfield offer some low end models, with the most basic features. If you don't like the "modern" 1911 features , you can get a Springfield Mil-Spec, or GI model; or a basic 1991 or a repro WW2 pistol from Colt. The Colts are still Colt expensive; but the Springers list out at $600.

Oh and one thing that almost all of the factory 1911s have, is poor magazines. It's one way for the factories to save money. If you think you've got an unreliable junker of a gun, try shooting it with a high quality magazine from Wilson Combat, or Chip McCormick and see if that fixes the problem.

If you buy a SIG, an S&W, or a Dan Wesson, you don't have that problem; because they come with Wilson or McCormick mags already.

Expect to pay from around $600 to around $1300.

3. The factory/semi customs: All the major manufacturers play in this space; but S&W, Kimber, Colt, and Springer all have a MAJOR production effort devoted to it (in fact, all Colts guns except the basic 1991 are "custom shop"). They use higher quality parts, and have their in house custom shops do the final machining, assembly, and QC.

Also, the larger custom manufacturers like Ed Brown, Les Baer, Wilson Combat, Rock River, STI, SVI, and Nighthawk all have offerings in this market position as well.

Amusingly, almost all of the factory/semi customs (except Kimber and Springfield armory), use parts from Ed Brown, Les Baer, Wilson Combat, or STI; and most of them (again, excepting Kimber and Springer) use frames and slides from Caspian or STI. So what you end up with when you order from one maker, are probably the same actual parts you would get if you ordered the same features from another maker. The only differences being the finishing, and the specifics of gunsmithing etc...

All are excellent; and they have any number of models and features to choose from, at several different price points.

Expect to pay: anywhere from around $1200 to around $2500.

4. Full custom: This is the domain of the custom manufacturers listed above; as well as a few high end custom gun smiths  (Ted Yost, Hank Fleming, Wayne Novak, Bill Laughridge, Clark Custom etc...).

They use the highest quality parts, and meticulous hand machining, fitting, final assembly, testing, and quality control. They also fit a gun specifically to you, with whatever features you want (and leaving off those you don't, which can be more important).

The gunsmiths who have good reputations in this business have it for a reason. They all do great work, and it's hard to say one is any better than another.

Expect to pay: anywhere from $1500 all the way up to $5000 for standard 1911s; without accounting for any fancy decoration, engraving etc... which can run into the five figures range.

III. Options

Whoooo boy this is a big one... The 1911 is easily the most customizable; and most customized pistol of the modern era. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different parts and options to deal with; and you can (and I have) write individual articles on each of them.

Let's just keep it to the basics shall we?

1. Frame materials: Most of the frame configurations mentioned above are available in several different frame materials. Traditional is of course carbon steel (usually blued), but most manufacturers also offer stainless steel, and lightweight aluminum options. Some even offer titanium, or polymer frames.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each choice:

• Carbon steel is strong, durable, and relatively cheap; but it is heavy, and has essentially no corrosion resistance.
  
• Titanium is light, strong, and corrosion resistant; but expensive to manufacture and machine, difficult to finish, and can crack easier than the others.
• Aluminum is light, corrosion resistant, and easy to machine; but not as strong or wear resistant as steel, and more expensive.
• Stainless is corrosion resistant, but more expensive than carbon steel, more difficult to machine finely, and to finish (you pretty much need one of the cured finishes)
• Polymer is cheap, easy to manufacture, and corrosion resistant; but it's hard to keep it to tight tolerances, durability for some parts is iffy (they usually put steel inserts in various places to help compensate), and it's ugly.

2. Single or double stack: Almost all manufacturers offer their frames in the traditional single stack configuration; which typically holds 6, 7, or 8 rounds (at least in .45 acp). Many manufacturers also make doublestack models, which as the name implies are thicker in the grip, and hold as many as 14 rounds (in .45 - as many as 18 in 9mm).

3. Trigger: different lengths, weights, faces, materials, and pull weights are available. Try a few, figure out what's comfortable, and go with that.

My personal preference is for a short, extra light, aluminum trigger, with a curved smooth face; but no-one makes them so I usually end up with serrated faces. Most people prefer long or extra long triggers, with serrated faces.

As to trigger feel, I like a trigger between 2.5# and 4.25# in weight, with little takeup, a crisp break, and no overtravel (all my triggers are adjustable for overtravel).

A lot of people find that trigger weight too light, and like a little bit of takeup (my wife for example), which lets them comfortably stage the trigger. A short and light trigger takes them by surprise. Personally I think that's a good thing, but that's just me.

4. Hammer: Again, you have different shapes, weights, and materials are available. There are three basic styles:

• The spur, which is long, narrow, and flat; and usually has a serrated or knurled cocking surface
  
  
• The rowell, which is round, has a hole through the center, and serrations. Sometimes called the commander hammer, or the HiPower hammer, because both configurations use this style by default.
  
  
• The skeleton: If you took the long part of the spur hammer, grafted the circle part of the rowel onto the tipl, and hollowed out the middle, you would have a skeleton hammer. This is the most popular style in premium and custom guns today.

There are also numerous other styles that involve bobbing off bits from one of the above, or changing the shape a bit one way or another.

As to material, I personally recommend going with a forged and machined tool steel part; but cast parts, MIM parts, even titanium hammers are available.

5. The grips: This is utterly a matter of personal preference. It effects both ergonomics and looks; but as with a trigger, try a few different styles and types out, see what you like, and go with it.

Also, you should remember, the grips are the single easist change you can make to a 1911. You can completely alter the look and feel of the gun with a simple $20 (or $200 or more depending on your tastes) grip change. So if you like a gun but don't like the grips, go for it, they're cheap and easy to change.

6. The grip safety: There two choices to make with a grip safety

• Beavertail or not. A beavertail allows you to grip the gun deeper into the web of your hand; and also prevents hammer bite. I recommend beavertails to most people for most guns. Without it, you have to have the gun sit a bit higher, which worsens recoil control. Some people simple dislike the way they look.
  
  
• Speedbump or not. A speed bump, is a bump, hump, or wedge shaped protrusion on the bottom back of the grip safety, that helps your hand more positively disengage the trigger blocking mechanism; and also helps you index your grip by feel a bit faster. Some people find them uncomfortable or awkward.

I personally recommend that people get a beavertail, with some kind of bump; because they really do improve ones grip and indexing; but some people just hate them.

Oh and some folks either pin the grip safety in the deactivated position; or replace it with a solid piece that has the same effect. I don't care for this option, simply for liability reasons; but if you really hate the grip safety, it's up to you.

Again as to materials there are several different available; but as the grip safety is not a stressed part, most just go with standard cast steel or aluminum.

6. The safety: Again there two choices to make here

• Single sided or ambidextrous. Some people prefer to have a safety on both sides of the gun for left or right handed use. Some people prefer to keep the safety right side only, both for looks, and to reduce points to snag on.
  
  
• The shape of the safety itself. There are several different shapes; wide, narrow, long, short, bobbed etc... Again some people don't like how various styles look or feel.

Honestly, there are advantages and disadvantages to whatever you chose; just go with what feels good in your hand.

Whatever you choose though; I HIGHLY recommend going with a forged and machined steel part here. I've had safeties fail on me due to accelerated wear from a poorly cast part. Being forged doesn't guarantee it's better; but you've got a much better shot as far as I'm concerned.

7. The sights: To my mind, the most critical option; the sights are your second most important interface with the weapon after the trigger... and only slightly less important at that.

There are many visual options here, including plain black, three dot, tritium (night sights), fiber optics; as well as several construction or style options like low profile, high profile, target style etc...

Basically, again, other than strongly recommending night sights on any gun intended for defense; it's a matter of personal preference, and what you intend to use the weapon for.


8. The barrel: There are two basic barrel styles here.

• Bull barrels have thicker metal machined in a cone-ish shape at the muzzle end, and engage the slide directly to lockup the muzzle end.
  
  
• Standard barrels keep approximately the metal the same thickness throughout, and engage a bushing in the slide to lockup.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both; it generally end up being a matter of personal preference again. The one big difference is that bull barrels tend to move the balance of the gun a bit further forward than bushinged barrels.

Either one can have either a "standard" aka "thumbnail" feed ramp; which uses a partial feed ramp built into the frame, and a partial thumbnail feedramp cut into the chamber; or they can be a fully ramped barrel; which cuts the feed ramp out of the frame, and builds it into the barrel.

Generally speaking, fully ramped barrels are stronger, and feed better, so I prefer them; but some do not (I'm not sure why, other than perhaps traditionalism).

9. Guide rods and Recoil control: This is probably the single most controversial option on 1911 type pistols (which is a bit odd, because they are standard on most other types of automatic pistol). The subject is a bit too long to go into in a paragraph. I wrote an entire article on the subject here: MuthaFLGR

Honestly, except for match guns, and guns shooting odd calibers, it makes little practical difference; so I say do what you like.

No matter what you do though, the first thing you should do when you get the gun broken in, is buy a couple of higher power main springs (from Wolff for example), and use the heaviest one that your weapon will cycle reliably with.

10. The finish: There are a lot of options here; with modern polymer based finishes, nearly anything you'd like in fact.

I personally prefer matte or brushed stainless steel; because it can't wear off, and you can machine it, or buff/brush/blast scratches out without refinishing. Others prefer traditional blued finishes, which are beautiful, but not very wear or corrosion resistant.

Many pistols are now coated with cured (heat, chemical, or both) ceramic, or polymer based finishes; which can be had in nearly any color. Some of them even have nickel, or teflon, or other materials embedded in them, to add wear and corrosion resistance.

My personal recommendation is to choose a wear resistant, and corrosion resistant finish (as I said, I generally prefer satin or matte stainless for this reason); that matches whatever aesthetic you prefer.

IV. Chambering

OK guys, no holy wars in comments here, take that to THR/TFL if you want.

The traditional, and still most popular chambering for the 1911 is .45acp. It represents a good balance between size, weight, power and wounding performance, shootability, and cost.

Most people will want their 1911 in .45

That said, there are many other options. My wife has 1911s in 9mm and .380acp for example (technically the .380 is a shrunken 1911 clone not a true 1911). I have a 1911 in 10mm (my favorite gun in fact). Also popular are .40S&W, .38 super, and several chamberings that are used in pistol competitions.

Pick whatever chambering works for you. It's your gun, enjoy it as you like.

Personally, I think everyone should have a 1911 in .45... if you want some in other calibers as well, go ahead; but always have the .45. It's what St. Browning would have wanted.

Dangerous Territory

By which I mean both the internet, and the software store (or Frys, or Best Buy etc...). For someone who doesn't do this sort of thing for a living, it's kind of like attempting to tapdance through a minefield... only no-one actually... you know... dies.

You CAN end up with a stolen identity, drained bank accounts, run up credit cards, and lost data though; and some of those things can make you wish you've died.

Funny thing, someone was asking about this on the gunthing forums yesterday; so I wrote up this whole thing. I wasn't actually going to publish here, since I've covered this territory before (though in less detail), but after that cartoon showed up this morning... well sometimes the universe is telling you something eh?

Here's goes.

If you want to be secure at home (or home or small office) here's what you do:

1. MOST IMPORTANT Get a good hardware firewall: Almost any router will give you a basic level of protection, but some are better than others. Sonicwall, Netscreen/Junipers home/small office line, Checkpoints small/home office line, Sohoware etc… are all decent commercial products. Unfortunately, they aren’t cheap.

You have some cheaper options though. You can also buy a router (wireless or otherwise) that can have it’s firmware replaced by a linux firewall distro. The Netgear WRT series of wireless routers for example can be modified with the DD-WRT firmware, to provide a very decent home firewall solution (that’s what I ran up until recently, and will most likely run again after I replace my fried WRT-54G).

You can also take an old, cheap computer, or buy a stripped down computer (that $199 refurbished special will do just fine); or even one of those ultra tiny microsized computers no bigger than a book; and as long as they have two network ports, you can make it into a firewall.

There are “firewall on a disk” programs you can download for free. I like smoothwall and IPCop. Just boot off the disk, install it onto that stripped computer, and bingo, you’ve got a very good quality firewall.

Don’t bother with so called “software firewalls”, that you install on your personal computer (ZoneAlarm, SystemDefender, BlackIce etc...).

Firstly, a firewall is a device that provides segregation between a trusted network, and an untrusted network. "Software firewalls" don't do any segregating. What they do, is listen to all incoming connections, and try to figure out what traffic is good and what is bad. Firewalls do that too, but the difference is, a firewall prevents the hostile traffic from ever reaching the vulnerable host.

Software security clients are not firewalls. They don’t work very well, they alert you needlessly about normal things, and miss the bad stuff often when it happens. Even when they detect something real, half the time they can’t stop it. Oh and sometimes, having them on your system actually ATTRACTS more attacks.

How's that?

The proper response to a portscan or a penetration attempt is nothing. Connection attempts to ports that do not match a session or a listener should be silently dropped. This is called “blackholing” or “stealthing”.

ZoneAlarm, (and most other software security clients - one probably comes with your virus scanning software) in order to detect port scans and other attacks, listens on ports that would not otherwise have a listener associated with them (at least in their default configuration). Further, their default behavior for some protocols is not to silently drop, but to block (through a n-ack). Blocking lets an attacking host know that a system is there, and has responded to an attack. In fact, you can often identify systems which have zone alarm on them through response signature based ID.

Once a host is identified as existing, and the attacker knows you have zone alarm, they can work around it. The better way is to simply expose as little information as possible to the outside world.

There are a few software security clients which implement a true stateful inspection stack (which is the closest thing you can get to a real firewall without extra hardware); but they have their own issues. Most of them break a lot of network based software.

The one really useful thing the software security clients do, is block access for applications you don't explicitly authorize. Unfortunately, it's annoying, and most people either allow everything whenever the window pops up, or they just disable that functionality. In order to make an intelligent decision about what to allow or deny you need to understand what applications need what type of network access... and even I dont always know if traffic is legitimate, and I do this for a living.

Also, there is no longer a need to run ZoneAlarm for simple access blocking; that can be managed through the windows firewall service. It isn’t really a firewall (none of the software clients really are), but if you’re only using it for port blocking, it’s jsut as good (or bad) as any other software client.

Of course this might have changed in the last two or three years, since I did any real penetration testing. I doubt it, but it might have.

The only time I ever suggest using them, is when you are using a laptop on an untrusted network; where it may be the only protection you can arrange. In those situations, they are better than nothing.

2. Run at least two different types of anti-virus, and keep them updated: The major commercial AV vendors wont let you install a competitors product while theirs is running, but you can install AVG and Avast! for free... or even ClamAV if you want to stay open source.

If you want a commercial product, I rank the majors as Trend Micro being the best, McAffee next, and Norton third. There are some other players of course, but those three are utterly dominant in the commercial market.

3. Run at least two different types of anti-spyware, and keep them updated: I personally run BillP’s WinPatrol, Spybot S&D, AD-Aware, AND whatever anti-spyware is offered by the virus suite I’ve installed (I have several different on different machines at different times, depending on their purpose, compatibility, testing etc...).

4. Maximize your system memory: Otherwise even basic anti-virus is going to kill your performance completely. bringing me to…

5. The default virus scanning options are a conspiracy: By default, virus scanning companies turn every option on to maximum. This means they scan every bit coming in and out of your computer in every way, at least 4 times. That eats up cpu, memory, and I/O, and makes you think your machine is slow; thus driving you to upgrade.

You don’t need on access scanning of your hard drive. You don’t need to scan outgoing traffic unless you are on a network with a bunch of other pcs that you could infect, and that dont have virus scanning themselves. What you need is nightly full system scans, and every email and download scanned.... and MAYBE scanning web pages as they are loaded, depending on how paranoid you are, and how risky the websites you visit are.

6. Disable all the risky and stupid windows services: Windows ships with a couple dozen “services” enabled automatically. These services are programs that run in the background, transparent to the user, and do things; some of which are quite insecure, and most of which rob performance. MOst of them can be disabled. Unfortunately, you need to know which ones you can and can’t and it changes from user to user depending on your configuration, your network, your software etc…

The ones that EVERYONE should disable unless they are on a corporate PC, are “remote registry”, “remote desktop”, and “telnet”. There are a lot of other that should be, or can be disabled to increase security or performance, but those three are guaranteed to get your computer cracked within minutes of being put on a public network outside a firewall.

7. Never, ever, put a windows box outside a firewall, exposed on the net, if you can at all avoid it: It doesn’t matter what security software you think you’ve got running; unless you run Ciscos CSA or McAffees entercept, and have them configured and maintained daily by experts; you WILL be cracked within minutes.

8. Don’t be stupid: First part of don't be stupid, is a bit controversial. Don't run windows if you can avoid it. There are a lot of alternatives available to you. You might get a Mac, or a Linux box of some kind. I personally run Kubuntu (a version of Linux) for most functions; excepting those functions that absolutely require windows (some of my work functions, and my gaming box).

Now, all that aside; most people are going to run Windows; so we need to do what we can to stay secure with Windows.

First step, if you have to run Windows, don't run Internet Explorer; use Firefox with the adblock, no-script, and flashblock extensions.

Not only will you be more secure, you'll have a MUCH better overall browsing experience.

Don’t download software from sources you don’t know and trust as software sources; and that includes your friends, because it’s like AIDS; you aren’t just sleeping with them, you’re sleeping with everyone they ever slept with. If you do, make sure you virus scan it twice, by two different scanners.

Don’t visit dodgy websites, websites that ask for lots of personal info for no good reason, websites that have lots of popups (except major corporate idiot sites that seem to do that too, no matter how much consumers insist it irritates them).

Don’t download email attachments from untrusted sources, and double virus scan them as well.

Due to the wonders of windows media player, microsoft office, and internet explorer, you can actually embed a virus in almost anything now; not just .exe files. Music files, video files, documents, web pages, they can all contain malware.

Which brings up a very important concept…

9. Eventually, they WILL get in: Unless you compute in a concrete box with no connectivity to the outside world (yes, there are computers that do that, for security reasons), eventually, by maliciousness, by accident, or by stupidity; something will go wrong. Some bit of nastiness will get in… or heck just the hardware gremlins.

You have to be prepared for when this happens. Not IF, WHEN.

10. Backup your computer completely automatically, and externally; at least every week: When I say completely, I mean take a full system image. This is a file for file (or even bit for bit) copy, that can be used to completely restore your system to the exact state it was in before you had a problem.

Automatically means have it be a scheduled process that you can’t forget. You want a full system image at least once a week; possibly once a night, if you’re paranoid enough, and have enough storage space. You also want to keep at least one month of full system images; plus a baseline image (more on that later). You keep multiple copies, in case you don’t notice that you’ve got a problem for a week, or two; so you can go back

You want to do this on a system or hard drive, external to your computer; in case your computer explodes, or burns, or is stolen etc… You can get external hard drives with a terabyte of storage (probably 10 to 50 times what you actually use, unless you work with a lot of video) for $350 these days. They connect directly to your computers USB ports. You can get 500GB for $150.

You can also get storage systems that plug into your network, that all the computers in your house can use. I have a setup like this. I have a NAS (network attached storage) box, with 1.5tb of space on it, that all my systems run a scheduled image backup to once a week.

11. Keep a baseline image: A baseline image is a simple concept. Once you have your computer exactly as you want it, no more, no less; you take an image of it. From that point on, if you ever have to start over again, all you need to do is restore the baseline.

When you make your baseline, the best way is to start with a fresh install of your OS, and all your applications; and then copy your critical data and files onto the system. Make all the tweaks to your settings, templates and interfaces etc… Basically get it ready to do everything you want to do with it, exactly as you want; and then freeze it in time.

12. Keep incremental backups of your important files, or your files that change frequently: If you do a lot of image editing or document manipulation etc… Anything that changes frequently, or that you might need to take to another machine to recover in the event of a fire for example; put backup copies of that data on a USB drive, or portable hard drive

13. Keep offsite copies of both sets of backups: What if there IS a fire, or you are robbed? Make a copy of all that stuff once a month, and put it in a secure location. Safe deposit box, safe at the office, even in a locked box, in a locked storage unit; whatever, so long as it’s secure, away from your primary location, and you can get to it when you need to. There are even services that will do this for you online, if you only have a few gigs of stuff you need to keep secure.

14. Have a set of rescue and restore CDs (or other media): These would include all the data and utilities necessary to get your system back to at least a baseline state; or preferably whatever your last full backup was (if you have the space).

This isn’t just a backup set that I’m talking about. First, keep a bootable CD or thumb drive that has a runnable copy of the restore utility for your backups. That’s the absolute minimum.

If you want to be prepared (and you really should), you should also have a CD/DVD with an installable copy your operating system. More discs with installable copies of your major applications, and your hardware drivers.

I think at a minimum you should also include system rescue, and cleaning and recovery utilities etc… I also include a copy of Knoppix or linuxrescue in my set (and I have a set of forensics tools as well, but that’s for security purposes).

Thankfully with DVD’s these days, having a full set of recovery disks isn’t as hard as it used to be. Each DVD can hold close to 5 gigs of data. There are even USB thumb drives with 64, and 128gb of capacity now (though they are quite expensive), and 32gb drives are quite affordable. Portable USB hard drives are also quite cheap for the capacity you get now.

15. Make sure all your machines, and all the machines on your network, get the same treatment: It’s no good to do this to your work laptop, if your kid is downloading virii all day while he steals music. His computer is going to get infected, and then infect your computer, and all your other computers.

Even if your computer is totally secure (no such thing) his computer will be spying on all the network traffic out of your house, and sending out spam and kiddy porn to the entire world.

Oh and don’t let people put their insecure computers on your network. If they’re going to connect they should be just as secure as you are. If not; make them a DMZ where they can destroy themselves without screwing you up.

You know the old story, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

That’s it.

That’s basically everything you can do.

I have never had a machine of mine permanently taken out by a virus, nor has any of my information been compromised in this way, nor have any of my machines become spam relays or secret porn sites. This is because I do these things. I’ve had to clean up plenty of messes for other people though, and lord how I wish they’d have followed this advice.

Oh well, it’s called job security.

Why todays CD's sound like crap

Leaving aside your judgment of the "quality" of music produced by Britney Spears , Justin Timberlake, and their ilk; most of todays CD's, even from otherwise great artists, unquestionably sound like crap to anyone who appreciates music as something other than a beat to bob your head to.

The reason why, is often referred to in the business as "the loudness war", and this is about the best simple, but clear explanation of why it's ruining music:



Oh and here's a REALLY great explanation of it, that someone who linked to this piece pointed out (better than mine I think, but I didn't know about it 'til after I wrote this): Imperfect Sound Forever

Music is sound waves, just like any other sound. It has peaks and valleys in the wave form corresponding to frequency and amplitude. The higher the amplitude, the higher the peak, and the louder it is.

Dynamic range, is the difference between the quietest audible sounds in a recording, and the loudest (the big peaks and valleys I just mentioned above). Live music has a maximum dynamic range of around 120db. Vinyl records only have a maximum dynamic range of around 70db. CD's, which in comparison to vinyl are very "wide open" so to speak; still have far less available range than live music, at about 96db.

Now, for any recording, there is a maximum possible level; above which the sound will drop out or "clip", which causes distortion.


When music was mastered for vinyl records, that clipping level was relatively low; because the available dynamic range was relatively low (at 50db less than live music, and 26db less than a CD). Because of this, instead of trying for "loudness", recording engineers tried to get the most dynamic range out of a recording that they possibly could (excepting pop singles intended for dance and radio airplay, where loudness was considered more important).

Also, records were generally listened to in relatively quiet, stationary environments (again, except for 45rpm singles) on hi-fi stereo systems. These listening environments and equipment strongly emphasized detail (or the lack of it) and clarity over loudness; because when you have a medium working against you (the vinyl LP, which has an inherently low dynamic range compared to a CD, never mind a 9 or 14 track master audio tape), you do everything you can to compensate for it.

When the music business transitioned from vinyl to CDs in the late 80s, recoding engineers suddenly had a (relatively) HUGE amount of overhead available to them for the music. This allowed for much greater dynamic range to be reproduced.

Greater dynamic range means more detail, space, and expressiveness in music. It lets you reproduce the sound of live music better.

Unfortunately for us listeners 20 years later, it also makes recordings less loud on average; because the loudest sounds in a rock or pop recording (usually kick drums) are typically 5 or more times as loud as the average sounds; and may be 50 times as loud as the quietest. In classical music (which in general is noted for it's dynamic range) the difference from the loudest, can be 30 or 40 times or more than the average.

Given the basic characteristics of the music, when the kick drums (or brass, or kettle drums in classical) are set to just below the clipping level, the vocals (or the woodwinds), are a little bit quiet in comparison.

Which is as it should be; because human hearing is far less sensitive in the very low bass, and very high treble ranges. So those sounds NEED to be louder, to be heard properly. Also, they are INTENDED to be louder by the artists and performers. If the performers wanted the vocals to be as loud as the drums, they would have sung that way in the first place.

If the vocals are quiet, turn up the volume (not the loudness), and you'll hear BOTH clearly, and without distortion (well... the overly loud brass in todays classical is another discussion entirely).

The average loudness of a pop recording in the pre-loudness war era was -18db (18db below the clipping level), while the loudest sounds in a recording were mastered at just below that level (well... -3 to -6db, but still); indicating a very large variation in sound levels.

Now if you love music, this is how it SHOULD be. If you want it louder, you just turn up the volume knob.

Unfortunately, record company executives don't love music, they love record sales; and quiet music doesn't grab peoples attention as much as louder music. If your track is louder on the radio without the listener having to turn their volume knob up, people are more likely to notice it; and the thinking goes, more likely to buy it.

Also, if your music is being played in a very noisy environment; having the vocals be as loud as the drums, means people can hear the vocals easier without turning up the volume. If you're in a very loud environment, like a club, or in your car in heavy traffic, or listening to your mp3 player on a crowded train; again, people are more likely to notice, and possibly buy.

So starting in about 1989, when digital tools to do so with less distortion became available; record companies started having engineers pump the loudness up.

Prior to this time, the analog compression filters used to hot master those old 45 dance singles, would produce very poor results if you attempted to hot master a CD with them. With a record, you couldn't hear just how bad it was; with a CD, well, clarity works both way. Garbage in, Garbage out.

Also, the nature of analog vs. digital signal was working in favor of the records; because when you slightly overdrive analog amplifiers, with an analog signal, they distort in ways that are warm, and organic sounding. It's a gentle fuzz, with interesting overtones. In fact, it's something that was (and is) often done intentionally in rock music. When you overdrive a discrete solid state amp (the kind most of us have now) with a digital signal however, the results are distinctly unpleasant. You get loud hissing, pops, dropout, and squeals.

Up until very recently, the dominant mode of recording in a studio was on a 1/2", 3/4", 1" or even 2" master tape (9 track is common at the bottom end, all the way up to 28 track tape). A 2" master tape, has the dynamic range to capture just about everything you can get out of a microphone, or an amplifier. Recently digital recording onto hard disk has taken over; and again, you have enough dynamic range in the medium to capture the full expressiveness of a live performance... or at least as much as the mikes can get anyway (microphones don't capture harmonics and overtones very well; in fact they deliberately supress some of them because they can cause odd sounds in the recoding. Recording directly off a pre-amp output for an instrument cant capture them at all).

With the original high dynamic range master recordings of the artist playing live in the studio, the level of the loudest sound (like the kick drums) is set so that to a few decibels below the clipping point. If you do that; then you can't increase the overall volume of the recording without losing and distorting (clipping) a lot of that drum sound.

Unfortunately, record executives want louder music; and in order to get it, they use full track audio compression.

Now, audio compression isn't like file compression, where you reduce the size of the data. With audio compression you are reducing, or "compressing" the differences in amplitude between the loudest, and the quietest sounds. This makes the average loudness of the recording higher; and thus overall louder; but you lose dynamic range.

Losing dynamic range, means losing that detail, space, "air" that made CD's better than vinyl in the first place (ok you analog heads, back off).

Not only that, but increasing the volume like that doesn't increase the music, it just kind of adds dimensionless, detailless noise. It increases the sound pressure level without increasing the content. It sounds like noise, because it IS noise.

Compression has been around forever, and in some cases the effect is good, and not harmful. analog compression has been used in guitar and vocal recordings since the 50's to make them sound "fuller", and stand out more in a mix for example. But those are relatively small variations, focused on the mid and mid high frequencies.

Full track audio compression (dynamic range compression) is a little bit different. Instead of using it to fill out the sound of a vocal, they're taking ALL the sound and making it stand out more; and if everything is "standing out more", obviously nothing is. When everyone in a conversation starts shouting, you don't hear anything clearer... in fact, everything gets muddier and harder to pick out.

Importantly, we aren't talking about just increasing the volume; because that would make everything louder, but keep the range of variation. With dynamic range compression, you're just making the stuff that should be quiet, louder. You are increasing loudness, not volume.

For those of you who understand classical music, or musical notation, what they are doing is effectively taking whatever the loudest sound of the recording is, setting that at fortissimo (even if it should only be forte); and taking the absolute quietest sound which should be pianissimo, and playing it mezzo forte.

It's as if you were taking Mozarts "Agnus Dei", from Requiem; and playing it with as much intensity and loudness as the allegro sections "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik", the whole time, with no variation.

Or for those of you not classical fans, Imagine if Queens "who wants to live forever" which has a HUGE dynamic range from Pianissimo to Fortissimo in the same song, were simply all sung and played at the level of "We Will Rock You".

This practice is called "hot mastering", and as I said, its been with us since the days of 45rpm dance records; but it was never widespread for all types of popular music, until the '90s.

The pre-hot master days (as I mentioned above) had an average recoding loudness of -18db. Todays hot mastered recordings have an average loudness of -9db.

Thats a HUGE difference, because the DB scale is logarithmic, not linear. Every 3db of loudness increase is actually a doubling of the sound pressure, so going from -18 to -9 doesn't just double the sound, it's actually 8 times as loud.

Human hearing isn't calibrated the same way electronics are, so we don't quite hear it that way. To us, a 3db change in loudness is about the smallest clearly audible step (yes, really, it takes a doubling or halving of sound energy for us to notice). We perceive a 9db change as a doubling or halving of sound.

What that means, is that compared to a 1987 recording, a 2007 recording will sound twice as loud for a given volume setting on your stereo; or if you don't WANT to blow your eardrums out, you'll turn the volume down; but when you turn the volume down on a low dynamic range recording, it sounds even worse. It's muddy and lacks definition; and it completely negates the purpose of having hot mastered the thing in the first place.

Which means of course that record company executives are idiots; but we all knew that.

If proper mastering is Pavarotti singing "Nessun Dorma", then hot mastering is Ben Stein reading Ayn Rand VERY LOUDLY.

Here's another graphic illustration of what I'm talking about. These two images are both of the same recording; The track "One of Us" off the very first commercially released popular music CD, ABBA's "The Visitors".

The first image (left and right waveforms are shown in each) is the original CD release from 1981, and the second is a re-relase, remastered in 2005 under todays practices:

You can easily see here what I'm talking about (click to enlarge); where the loudest sound in the track is set to be just a bit below the clipping level, and the quietest audible sound is at perhaps 1/30th that level, with the average being about 1/4th or 1/5th the level.

Now the hot mastered track...

Remember, these are the EXACT SAME SONG, from the exact same original master recordings. Looking at those wave forms however, you can tell just how different they would sound.

In the second recording, instead of the loudest send being set slightly below the clipping level, almost all of the recording is set AT the clipping level. The differences are gone; and clearly, so is the detail. The differences between the loudest and quietest sounds in this track is 1/8th or maybe 1/10th that of the loudest, instead of 1/30th. Worse, with so much of the track at the clipping level (the average on this track is -8db)... well, it just sounds like noise to your ears.

When your ear hears continuous sound at the exact same amplitude level, your brain tends to disregard frequency variations, and it all sort of blends together into mud and noise.

LISTENINGTOMUSICLIKETHATISLIKETRYINGTOREADAPARAGRAPH
WRITTENINALLCAPSANDBOLDUNDERLINEDWITHOUTPUNCTUATION
YESYOUCANREADITBUTITTAKESALOTOFEFFORTITSFATIGUINGAND
IRRITATINGANDJUSTPLAINHARDWHYWOULDYOUWANTOLISTENTO
MUSICLIKETHAT

An aside: To anyone who would mock my choice of ABBA as an example above; first, let me say they are a PERFECT choice, because they are the exact type of music that would have been compressed even in the 70s (pop/dance records).

The fact that they maintained a wide dynamic range, clarity, and definition in their recordings; even though they were producing for a "wall of sound" effect, for dance music, is quite impressive. In fact ABBA have always been noted for producing very high quality recordings.

Not only that, but say what you will about the content of their songs (yes, it's mostly silly or sappy bouncy pop. Thats what they were trying for, and that's what they got), they produced perfect pop music, they wrote all their own lyrics and music, and their singing is uniformly excellent. They sold 400 million records in a time when the only artists to have broken 100 million were Elvis, the Beatles, and Frank Sinatra; and they are still today, the second best selling recording group of all time (second only to the Beatles).

So, though you may not like them; you have to respect their achievement.

Well, some artists are finally doing something about it; because they want their music to sound like, oh, I dunno... Music.

Bob Dylan, who has always kept tight control over his music (though the uses for which he licenses it are a different story), has been very vocal in speaking out against this practice; going so far as to say he can't listen to most new CDs without pain. He has always prevented record companies from hot mastering his music; and is actively trying to get other artists to do the same.

Notably, classical and Jazz (with the exception of pop pseudo jazz idiots like Kenny G) artists have also strongly resisted such adulteration of their music; and for the most part record companies have wisely stayed away; because they know that Jazz and classical consumers will not stand for their music being destroyed by stupidity.

Destroyed? Absolutely. A hot mastered Jazz recording isn't music, it's noise.

I have listened to original CD remasters of "Kind of Blue" (actually, I listen to it frequently), and a hot mastered re-release of it produced after Miles death (not the '97 remaster; a compilation set remaster from I think 2004)... The re-release is absolutely unlistenable. I forced myself to listen through the whole thing, at the same volume I used for the original; and at the end of it, I felt like I had been listening to jackhammers for 45 minutes.

I haven't listened to any classical that has been hot mastered; but if you want the same effect, turn up a TV or radio commercial with classical music in it really loud. See, hot mastering was originally (and still is) a technique used to make commercials louder than the music they were played between.

Would you really want to listen to that for an hour?

But wait, it gets worse...

The last few years, CD sales have been heading downward, as digital download sales have been soaring; never mind the effects of digital piracy etc...

Even physical CD's that are being purchased, are more than likely going to end up on a computer, or a personal media player like the iPod; because almost everyone under 35 (and thats almost the entire demographic market for new music purchases) listens to most of their music either in their car, on their computer, or on their PMP.

Unfortunately, digital downloads as we commonly use today, have a few weaknesses when it comes to music reproduction.

A typical CD audio track is mastered at 44,100 samples per second, or 44.1khz, and 16 bits per sample. That's about 706kilobits of data per second; 86.1 kilobytes per second, or about 5 megabytes per minute.

It's that 16 bits per sample by the way that gives us the 96db of dynamic range mentioned above; because you get approximately 6db of dynamic range per sampling bit.

Just as a comparison, DVD-Audo discs use 24 bits per sample (by default anyway, DVD-A also supports increasing sampling rates up to 176khz). This is the current standard for professional audio recording as well; because it provides for approximately 144db of dynamic range (which is about 24db more than almost all live music, and about 4db more than the difference between silence, and a jet engine at full throttle).

A 24 bit bitstream at 44.1khz would result in a bitstream of just under 130 kilobytes per second; or about 7.5 megabytes per minute.

If you could write a raw single channel bitstream, that would only be 550 megabytes for a full 74 minute CD (or 377mb for standard 16 bit).

Of course, you cant just write the raw bitstream to the disc, and have anything other than the original recording equipment read it; and of course there are multiple channels in a sound mix (in cd's two discrete PCM channels, with the potential for superencoded pseudo channels like Dolby ProLogic). There has to be some encoding standard that recorders and readers can all use, to maintain compatibility.

So, CD's do have some encoding involved (it's called Red Book encoding, which uses specific PCM and filesystem parameters ), as well as additional data for error correction etc... Unfortunately, it's rather bandwidth inefficient (it produces relatively large, sparse datastreams that take up more space than some other formats); so a full 74 minute CD, has about 650 megabytes of info, about 9 megabytes per minute, or about 150kilobytes per second (1200 kilobits). Given that an average pop song is 3:05, you're looking at about 27 megabytes for a song.

Given that most people in the US have a 1.5 megabit per second or so internet connection, (6 or so seconds per megabyte in theory; usually its more like about 20 seconds minimum ), a single track download would take 10 minutes, and a full album download would take about 2-4 hours.

Clearly, that wouldn't fly commercially.

What was needed was compression, in the other sense; file compression, or data compression.

In the late 80s, the Frauenhoffer institute used something called psychoacoustic analysis to determine how you could best remove data from an audio recording, and still have it sound acceptable to the human ear. They submitted the CODEC (coding/decoding algoritm) that resulted to the motion picture experts group (mpeg - sounds familiar don't it), and it became the MP3 format.

It was well known that we are most sensitive to upper mid range frequencies (those around the range of the human voice), less sensitive to low bass (below 80hz, and especially below 30hz), and most of us have little sensitivity above 12khz and almost none at all above 16khz (the conventional "limits of human hearing" are regarded as 20hz to 20khz, though some can hear as low as 16hz, or as high as 22khz). They took those sensitivities, and then mapped the actual response of the ear and the brain exactly.

Once they figured out what are brain mostly ignores, they just dropped it. The rest, they compressed, folded, spindled, and mutilated so that our brain and ears "fill in" the missing information. In so doing, they took raw (well... encoded) data that was 1200 kilobits per second; and they reduced it to the point where you brain can't tell the difference, but the file size is only 320 kilobits per second.

That means that they compressed the file from about 9 megs per minute PCM, to about 2.3 megs per minute average; without any perceptible loss of quality (it takes an oscilloscope to tell the difference. Double blind studies have proven it repeatedly; no matter what audiophile snobs like to think).

The length of time it takes to download a full 74 minute album on a 1.5Mb internet connection just went from 4 hours, to an hour and a bit; slightly better than real time download speed... and most albums aren't 74 minutes long.

That's amazing. It's really really impressive. It's also meaningless, because almost no-one uses the near perfect 320kbit encoding rate.

When MP3 first became popular in the mid 90s, DSL and Cablemodems were just becoming widely available, and you were lucky if you could get 256k over DSL, and 512k over your cablemodem. Most people were still on 56k dialup, which in the real world meant 32k (or less); and remember all these numbers are in bits not bytes.

Realworld download speeds for a single 320k music track on 56k dialup were something on the order of 90 minutes or so for a three minute song; or about a day and a half for a full album. Even on 512k cablemodem, you were talking about 6-10 minutes per song, and two hours per album.

Also, portable music players of the day only had 32-512 megabytes of storage space, not the 2-80 gigabytes of todays players, so 8 megabyte songs were just too big.

Obviously this wasn't commercially viable either.

The MP3 standard however doesn't require you to use a specific encoding bit rate. You can encode sound at lower bit rates, for smaller sizes. Of course doing so reduces quality greatly, but some music at lower quality is better than no music right?

You can encode a human voice all the way down to 32k and still have it be intelligible; but it sounds pretty bad. Music encoded at128k though has about the same quality level as FM radio, which most people find acceptable; and the file sizes are only bout 40% that of 320k encoded files. It's also good for internet streaming, because your connection can usually download it faster than your computer can play it (in fact all the youtube clips I've linked here, probably the ultimate expression of streaming media in todays internet, are probably encoded at 96k or 128k, and thus subject to the same issues).

2.5 to 3.2 megabytes a song was doable. You could fit a whole Ramones album on the small 32mb internal memories of the first generation music players; or a single 'Yes" song...

Okay Yes fans, back away from the keyboard slowly. I love them too; but seriously, "Dance of the Dawn" ? It's an incredible song (off an incredible album. You really have to listen to "Tales from Topographic Oceans"), but it's over 23 minutes long.

At any rate, 128k became the dominant encoding rate for MP3s, and today it still is; though bandwidth and storage increases have been slowly changing that. Most newly encoded tracks are at least available at 192k or 256k (though still most often downloaded at 128k); and most people, on most equipment, can't hear the difference between 256k and a CD...

IF...

The equalization is adjusted properly for MP3 that is.

Because MP3 uses that psychoacoustic algorithm, it emphasizes certain frequencies, and deemphasizes others. The lower the bit rate, the more it deemphasizes.

Well, at 128k, and even 256k, this results in somewhat overloaded midrange with response dips in odd places, and a lack of bass and treble response.

Unfortunately, most people have no idea how to use an equalizer, if they even have one. Most portable music players have a very limited EQ capability, with a bass and treble slider; if they have any at all.

To compensate for that, the labels have in the last two years, started changing the music even more. In addition to boosting loudness; they are now equalizing for mp3.

They're applying what's called "smile curve" equailiztion, named because if you plot the freqeuncy EQ curve it looks kind of like a smile, with upturned corners (bass and treble), and a dip in the middle (midrange).

Of course if you happen to be listing to a CD on a good stereo system, what you get is loud, noisy, boomy, hollow, tinny, and harsh sounding "music".

... and yet, the record companies wonder why sales are down?