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Hydrogenaudio Closes Doors For Now
verloren writes "The Admins at Hydrogenaudio, the community site discussing audio compression and related issues, have temporarily closed the site. They've posted a notice stating that they're rethinking the standards of the community, and how they're enforced. It seems to have been sparked most recently by a debate over what media players to use, but has been brewing for some time as the objective standards required at the site have been overlooked by many posters. The sister sites Foobar2000 and Rarewares are still available."
Talking about what code to write never works. The rule is:
He who writes the code, gets to say what to do with that code.
Hydrogenaudio was noble, but misplaced. What is needed, simply, is less talk and more action on the codec front.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
They were pre-empting the slashdot effect.
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
New problems, such as the rising cost of reliable high speed hosting...
I think that has just became an even bigger problem!
We regret that we cannot be more specific about some of these points or that we cannot give a necessarily clear idea about how and when they addressed. We do, however, encourage people who are concerned or have something to offer to contact us for discussion.
;)
This smells fishy to me... almost sounds like the NSA shut them down
But seriously, can someone shed some light on the whole thing?
.: Max Romantschuk
That certainly is not what lead to this. The "media player" discussion you're referring to was actually harmless compared to past happenings, it's outright ridiculous to assume that this is what lead to the shutdown.
It's also stupid because it's too damn geeky. Both words refer to people in Terry Pratchett books, and what the hell has that got to do with digital media? Typical nerd naming scheme if you ask me.
So you think "MP3" is more descriptive? Silly argument if you ask me.
And, just for the record, Ogg is the container format, Vorbis is the codec. Vorbis can be used within Ogg, but also with other container formats as long as they provide enough information. The Vorbis-over-RTP draft is a good example of how this might work.
Lourens
Standards either evolve over time (mp3), are created by groups of large media companies (DVD, CD), and there are even a few technologies that accidently become a standard over time (Linux). Heck I think OGG and FLAC are just starting to show some of their promise in the form of device support. I'm busy rencoding my CD collection.
People tend to forget that MP3 has been around since the EARLY 90's, it takes a long time for any technology to become a REAL standard.
echo $close($site)+$slashdoting($site->server) +" very effective"
or am I too late already?
You should really define the function as int main(int argc, char *argv[])
I'm not sure why parent wasn't modded as Off-Topic but Hydrogenaudio != Ogg Vorbis. Hydrogenaudio is a forum for discussion of audio compression, and isn't affiliated, although Ogg Vorbis is one of the favoured codecs (along with MPC, AAC and of course, MP3) and has its own dedicated forums.
However, recently Ogg Vorbis has been falling out of favour because of some questions beinr brought up and currently still unanswered about the truth of the statement that Ogg Vorbis is "patent-free" because of a few patents uncovered recently which Ogg Vorbis may have infringed on. So far Xiph has not answered the questions to the satisfaction of the administrators of the forums... but I doubt all this is the main cause of the forum to suspend service, but maybe one of many. *shrug*
AAC wins on the name front if you call it MPEG-4 audio (or `mp4' for short), since people know about `mp3' already and will assume that an `mp4' is like an `mp3' only better.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
why isn't this off-topic... there's winamp 5 which is the best media player i've ever seen. And i did try quintessential player but it's pretty lame and mediocre.
One of the finest multi-format audio players, its simple looks belie its power, extensibility and ease of use. Give foobar2000 a whirl.
Developed at Hydrogenaudio by Peter Pawlowski [of former Winamp fame] et al.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Just a couple of things to make some things clear to the slashdot crowd:
1. HydrogenAudio is/was the No. 1 place on the net regarding the development of audio codecs and other audio related tools. Think of it as "the bugtraq of audio". Several developers of open- and closedsource codecs participated regularly in the discussions and the community helped by providing blind test results (some of them appeared on slashdot even), problem-samples and ideas/general input. It was the center of development of the widely used lame --alt-presets, which brought a new level of quality to MP3 and the foobar2000 audio player.
2. No legal problems whatsoever are connected to the closing down.
3. HA is going to come back shortly (= some days).
well I'm not assuming this - that's just what main post stated :> (have you read it?)
Anyway, I'm still curious...
Maybe you should give foobar2000 a try - it's from one of the winamp2 developpers, it's very unbloated, and supports all kinds of plugins and looks.
Yeah, like "Media Player Classic" for example :)
I find Media Player Classic (available from http://www.kazaalite.tk in the codec packs) to be an excellent player, unique in its simplicity and usefulness.
However, recently Ogg Vorbis has been falling out of favour because of some questions beinr brought up and currently still unanswered about the truth of the statement that Ogg Vorbis is "patent-free" because of a few patents uncovered recently which Ogg Vorbis may have infringed on.
To give air to the otherside of that flamewar, the 'unanswered' questions had more to do with a misunderstanding on the part of some forum members about how the patent system works in the US. "Patent-free" does not mean no one will sue you ever, because anyone can sue you anytime for anything. It's all about the negotiation of expectation for who would win at what cost in a potential legal action.
In that context, and because we feel Xiph.org the organization is a likely target of punitive legal action, we unfortunately feel the less said about what we think about specific patents, the better, to avoid advertising routes of legal attack. Hardly the usual values of openness, but that's what the US legal system argues for.
What Vorbis needs is independent defenders who understand the issues, not demands for justification from groups that should mostly be on the same side.
Now many people will argue that if you code an OSS project you can name it whatever the fuck you want. This is very true and it suits me just fine but developers should start to consider their potential user base before naming a good software product with a title that most people can't understand or at least partially derive from product name what it does. Here is just a small list of products with bad names:
Here are some names that are good or partially good:
Wow, a codec falling out of favour because a developer of freeware has not answered the questions to the satisfaction of the forum administrators over patent FUD!!??
This instantly raises red flags over this forum and how it operates.
The forum being unilaterally closed says the rest.
'.MP3' is not a format, it's the usual file extension for the 'Motion Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3' format. 'Ogg Vorbis' is certainly less descriptive.
Jag pratar lite svenska.
that'll be in v2.0
Translation: key primadonnas are really sick and tired of all these stupid people who just don't get it and all their incompatible ideas they keep having to reject over and over and over. Sounds like one of those dysfunctional organizations. Death will be the best thing for it.
Ogg Vorbis was mostly criticised for its lack of development - for over a year, nothing had happened since libVorbis 1.0 [20020717] was released. Other codecs such as HE-AAC and WMA9 were catching up, even beating it at lower bitrates which is Vorbis' forte.
Patent issues are a real concern if you build and sell the Ogg Vorbis portables we all clamour for.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I have been a member of Hydrogenaudio for a while and I have to say that I have throughly enjoyed it. Even though I didn't post that often, it was an awesome resource.
I hope that it returns soon.
Wow, a codec falling out of favour because a developer of freeware has not answered the questions to the satisfaction of the forum administrators over patent FUD!!??
It has absolutely nothing to do with the forum admins, they weren't even the ones who brought up the recent patent discussion. This situation is not as simple as you think it is. I'd give you links to the appropriate threads to see for yourself, but...
This instantly raises red flags over this forum and how it operates.
You are absolutely clueless. Wait till it becomes available again, and read the related threads before jumping to ill-informed conclusions like this.
WTF does Ogg Vorbis have to to do with this whole issue anyway?
The forum being unilaterally closed says the rest.
It is not closed for good, it will be made available again as soon as some issues have been ironed out. Granted, the closure did come as a surprise even for some of the moderators, but given the way things were starting to go from the admins' point of view, it is understandable.
Have you actually ever read the board? I doubt it, otherwise you wouldn't be making such negative comments. There is no other board I know of that is run as well as HA, both with regard to the "fairness" of the moderators and admins, and to the services provided. It's the fastest board I know of, yet there is not one single ad, and until now, it was financed totally privately by one of the admins (although, understandably, this is one of the things that will be changed in the future). I think that is very respectable.
MP3 is not "evolving". MP3 is an evolutionary dead end. Fraunhoffer isn't "evolving" MP3--they've moved on to AAC. The "free software" world can't evolve MP3 because of the patents.
MP3 is a dead-end.
My apologies, I had actually read it, but it must have escaped my mind when I posted. :-)
What the first post states is complete nonsense and pure speculation. The media player discussion did turn into a flamewar, but that's not at all the reason for the closure of the forum. How silly would that be?
That is all nice and well... however, I don't see how a non-profit community intends to create a new audio standards.
To my knowledge, we haven't seen an audio format or codec that has reached tier 1 status (RedBook, MP3, WAV, MIDI, etc.) that did not have major corporate involvement in its development. Even with DivX, we often see industry-standard audio codecs used... I don't see a community-based codec group inventing a new codec that gets used for anything more than illegally ripping DVDs and posting them on KaZaA.
HydrogenAudio is not trying to create new standards. It's merely a place to discuss the current formats and help the developers by providing listening tests and input.
A lot of developers hang out there and discuss their ideas with the users (e.g. Ivan Dimkovic and Menno Baker - Ahead Nero AAC codec; Josh Coalson - FLAC; J.M. Valin - Speex; G. Bouvigne - LAME).
HydrogenAudio only did what Slashdot would have done had Slashdot not become a business. If you ran HA (or this site for that matter) and had watched it become a pit of uninformed discussion, social posturing, and pointless debate, wouldn't YOU also think about closing it down?
Winamp 5 eh? I bet thats nice and stable on your Athlon 64FX 5Ghz running Windows Longhorn SP5!
I'm rather amazed at how people are misreading the topic.
/. closed down for a week or two and said "we're rethinking the standards of the community" (which, btw, is not what their page says) would you think that they're trying to change OSS/Linux/geek standards, or just doing some serious rethinking of how the posting/moderation/meta-mod system works?
The site is closed temporarily to rethink the standards of the community -- of the HydrogenAudio community, not of the music encoding community as a whole. They're not trying to create new audio compression standards while closed -- they're trying to formulate new rules to reduce flamage on the forums (which is pretty much all that HA is). If
And they would come with other crazy theories, for example challenging Shannon's theory that to encode a X Hz signal you only need 2X of bandiwdth.
While that may be true, what people don't seem to understand is that to encode in PCM format any signal of frequency X, you need a rate of 4X. If your sine wave is perfectly aligned to the sample interval of a 2X samping, then it'll work at 2X, but if you shift it 90 degrees, every sample recorded turns out to be 0 since the waveform is crossing 0 at each sample interval. Thus you need 4X to record every phase alignment of X.
Corporate sponsors or not, if there is a large community (as they claim), plans must be made to shut it down.
Gee, what would happen if /. did that?
Get rid of everything Micro and Soft: Buy Viagra and/or Linux
I'm really hoping that this story leads to more attention being paid to foobar, as I think it's a real gem.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
I think he called himself "CmdrTaco"
I know Candy and she thinks nothing like that at all. She is only interested in how fat I think her butt looks.
slashdote
intr.v. slash-dot-ed, slash-dot-ing, slash-dotes
To show excessive fondness or love of Linux, OGG, or Steve Jobs: geeks who slashdote on their new iPod.
slashdot'er n.
3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
Maybe I'm suggesting the obvious, but why don't you try iTunes? It's both free and fully-featured, and it's extensible through QuickTime components.
Communistic politics and high-bandwidth sites only work when someone else pays for it. RED CHINA lost their REDnaught. He's believed to be held up in a downtown bar, after knifing a negro waiter just trying to calm him down.
AAC essentially starts with improvement MP3 such as 100% MDCT (whereas MP3 is a hybrid solution), increased length of windows, all those things which should have been in MP3 in a first place, and now they can't be implemented because of incompatibility issues. So it is perfectly all right to think of AAC is like MP3 only better. It *is* better.
FLieger Abwehr Cannone?
Other formats may be technically superior...
You are right, but I guess that for a lot of people, a MP3 encoded at 128k sounds the same as the original. That can happen for several reasons: you may have a low-quality output device (bad speakers, cheap and lousy headphones), a bad sound card, you may have some kind of hearing disability (you may be deaf for some high or low frequecies).
So, agreeing with you, why should these people reencode their files using a better audio format? Like you mentioned, they already have several MP3 files, so it's kinda pointless to do so.
XMMS of course. Or mplayer for command line goodness.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Usenet
http://www.recordstorereview.com/misc/aacmp3.shtml
AAC vs. MP3 vs. OGG vs. AIF
This is a joke. How the FUCK does this get modded a troll?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. Nyquist formulated it; Shannon proved it formally.
Will I retire or break 10K?
it's the usual file extension for the 'Motion Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3' format. 'Ogg Vorbis' is certainly less descriptive.
How is the description of .ogg "certainly less descriptive"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
it was a shitty joke.
Foobar 2000 is now at a 0.71 release and is by far the most full featured and elegant media player I've seen on Windows. First time users might it a little sparse as the interface is very bland and not skinnable like Winamp or Sonique. However, under the hood is an amazing plugin architecture that is very well designed.
Some highlights for me:
If you are using Windows and are listening to mp3s or oggs through WinAmp or Media Play I thoroughly recommend giving Foobar2000 a go.
Kudos to the F2K team!
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot
you retard; winamp 5 is already out in beta release
And your mother just finished raping your father with a strap-on. Whats your point?
How is this off topic? The thread is "decent media players" Those are great players, if not for windows, so what?
Hydrogenaudio is back online.