Slashdot Mirror
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."
What do I win, oh big one?
Do I win too, oh big one?
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. --
So the site (never heard of it) is closed because of growth problems. Is that all the news?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
They were pre-empting the slashdot effect.
EGG, the Electronic Gamers Guild
"rethinking the standards of the community"... Usually right before I got my final paycheck :P
End of Line.
The USA is Dying
.9 of a Euro. Coming on the heels of a recent Usenet survey which plainly states that The American Economy is in a recession, this news serves to
It is official -- The UN is now confirming: The USA is dying
One more crippling bombshell crushed the already beleaguered American economy
when x-rates.com confirmed that the American Dollar has dropped yet again,
now down to
reinforce what we've known all along. The USA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the USA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: The USA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't
be any future at all for the USA because it is dying. Things are looking very bad for America. As many of us are already aware, the US continues to lose relevence. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The IT industry is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core
developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time IT jobs to india only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: The American IT Industry is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Microsoft Encarta states that there are 291,065,636 people in America. What is the US's national debt? Let's see. According to the The Debt clock the USA's National Debt is 6,465,271,811,559.14. Therefore each American
is $22,212.42. in debt. In fact, the USA's national debt has continued to
increase an average of $992 million per day since September 30, 2002. Indeed,
it can clearly be seen the the US is going broke faster then the Soviet Union did
Due to the troubles of American Meddling, An Capitalist Gorvernment and so on,
South Vietnam was attacked was taken over by North Vietnam who sell another
a more compassionate government. Now Iraq is also dead, its corpse turned over
to feed the US media.
All major surveys show that the USA has steadily declined in the world economy.
America is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If
the USA is to survive at all it will be among a broken collection of warring
factions. America continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save
it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the United States of America is dead.
Fact: The USA is dying
Ogg Vorbis is a stupid name. It doesn't give the casual user any indication of what it does (especially as it itself is not a codec only a container).
We need a format called "Standard Media Format" or SMF for short. It can be versioned and since it is the "standard" everyone will need to implement it.
What lies underneath the name is superfluous.
I meant irrelevant.
New problems, such as the rising cost of reliable high speed hosting...
I think that has just became an even bigger problem!
so somebody has perhaps link to cached-or-something discussion about media players taht "sparkled" this?
I'm just curious...
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
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?
http://www.motionmountain.rg3.net/
has been considerably extended. It adds a new section on nuclear physics that includes the story of radioactivity, a MRI scan of humans making love and the dream of grand unification. The present 14th revision also adds more figures on special relativity, a short explanation of k calculus, the paradox of the relativistic submarine, a photograph and description of how some caterpillars shoot away their faecal matter, a photograph of a basilisk running over water, Stowe's periodic table of the elements, a beautiful picture of the analemma, references to monadology, the question why birds are not usually seen on high voltage lines, the question whether the moon is larger or smaller than the nail of your thumb at the end of your extended arm, the proof that Peary did not reach the north pole, and much more. Many photographs and drawings have been added, the graphical presentation reworked and several hundred challenge solutions have been added. (Tell me which ones you want next!) For all fields of physics the newest research results and the main unanswered questions are presented. The text remains a structured walk through classical physics, relativity, quantum theory and unification. In total, the text aims to give an overview of what motion is and what it can effect. The accent on surprises and thought-provoking puzzles has been kept. It will please both readers who open the text at random and those who read it systematically. Thank you to everybody who has sent criticisms, corrections and suggestions. Enjoy!
Bruno Bezerra Lima
P.S. In physics texts, figures take the biggest part of the budget - both in time and in money. Any help on (preferably colour postscript) images to be added to the text (with permission of course) is much appreciated. Such help will allow me to concentrate on the writing and make sure that the text can continue to be free for all readers throughout the world.
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. Founder Dibrom created the infamous lame --alt-presets, which brought a new level of quality to MP3.
2. No legal problems whatsoever are connected to the closing down.
3. HA is going to come back shortly (= some days).
Although WinAmp2 is superb, it does have one big flaw... ie its as unstable as hell on my XP machines.
WinAmp3 is more stable, but its also bigger and bloatier... I don't want to wait an extra 3 seconds for it to load just so I can listen to a song or a short wav file.
Microsoft's Media player is ok if a little dull... it's pretty stable but looks a bit crappy (especially the visualisations) and also has DRM implications... I don't like being told what I can and can't do with music I've bought, thank you very much.
By far the best MP3 player I've used so far is the Quintessential Player which is very much like WinAmp2 but much more stable. Wiggys Rating: 5 out of 5; gold star and a tick.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
It didn't work -- all I got was a mostly blank page. Which is annoying, as I really wanted to see the MRI scans of people fucking.
Yo fucking asshole.
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).
Did they play Ogg?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
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:
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.
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.
Really? What do you think these laid-off chip designers are gonna do when they get back to Chennai? Sell trinkets to tourists?
MYTH #3: "R&D jobs don't go overseas. Hell, they don't even leave the US east and west coast, for the most part."
REALITY:
- GE Corporate Research in Bangalore and Shanghai
- HP Opens New Research Center in Singapore
- HP Bangalore Research
- IBM India Research Center
- IBM China Research Center
- Microsoft Research Beijing
MYTH #4: "If you're truly working on something high-tech, today's high-tech, you'll never have to worry about your job moving."REALITY: Per nasscom.org, "A recent study on the biotech market by business intelligence firm, Ernst & Young, has shown that India has the potential to become a leading hub of biotech projects. Indian companies have the capability to enter segments such as manufacturing biogenerics, contract research services, clinical trials and even areas such as bio-informatics."
MYTH #5: "Ultimately, what xenophobes need to realize is that writing shitty code doesn't make anyone "high-tech." You're no more entitled to an inflated salary than the auto workers who saw their work moved overseas - if someone with no education can do your job cheaper, you don't deserve your job."
REALITY: "Accenture in India has also been moving into front office work such as doing clinical data management for its pharma clients. Accenture's pharma team here, which consists of doctors, dentists and biologists, analyses data from tests and helps its pharma client to gain `time-to-market' advantage. "Normally, for a BPO, back office activities are the target, but we are beginning to spot opportunities in front office activities as well," Cole said."
moddration sucks.
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?
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 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!
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.
Usenet
http://www.recordstorereview.com/misc/aacmp3.shtml
AAC vs. MP3 vs. OGG vs. AIF
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?
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
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.