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SanDisk, Music Publishers Push DRM-free SlotMusic Format
Strudelkugel writes "The LA Times and others are reporting the music industry is working with SanDisk to try unrestricted music files on microSD memory cards to improve sales of physical media: 'In addition to music, the slotMusic cards will come pre-loaded with other things, such as liner notes, album-cover artwork and sometimes video.' The important part: 'The music on slotMusic comes without copyright protection, so it can be used on almost all computers, mobile phones and music players — but it won't play on an iPod, which doesn't have a micro-SD memory slot. It has one gigabyte of memory, and the music tracks are played back at high quality.' Could it be the labels have finally recognized that providing features and convenience to customers is preferable to suing them?" Most computers also don't have microSD slots; according to EMI's press release, there will be a "tiny USB sleeve" packaged with each card, and the "high quality" format means up to 320kbps MP3. From the given description, it seems like it would be no harder to transfer the tracks to an iPod (via a computer) than to most other players.
My cell phone has a microSD slot, so I might consider *wince* buying music that way. But it would need to be at a reasonable price (I'd have to think more about at what price I would pay for this) and it would have to have music I didn't already have or couldn't acquire easier from other sources. I don't have an iPod (yeah I know, I'm one of those people), so that's not a problem for me. But I'm not sure I want to have a collection of 1GB microSD cards laying around. I have a hard enough time keeping track where my keys are.
At least they're finally trying to make something we want rather than forcing us to buy buggy whips though.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
the number of speakers, or surround do not determine the quality of music.
Actually, it has a potential to make things sound much more clear. Stereo, for example, was invented to create more space for sounds in a recording. If you have too many things going on at once on the same speaker, you'll get distortion and generally unpleasant sounds because too many waveforms are cramped together on the same output. That's why it helps to split recordings into different speakers, so you get a more clear sound. On this logic, I can definitely see how 5.1 might help to bring better sound quality.
But pretty much anyone with decent equipment *can* hear the difference between 24bit and 16bit, or 48khz and 96khz. That is a pretty well established fact, and not nearly as controversial as mp3 encoding quality. Audio CDs are generally encoded as 48khz, 16bit, 1411kbps PCM audio - which the majority of modern soundcards (including onboard cards) can outdo in recordings (though obviously they lack in other areas). For comparison, get one of the few albums available in DVD Audio and compare them to the CD - especially at high volumes.
;)
The downside is that 4 minutes of 2 channel music in 24/96 is 65.5MB in FLAC (bitrate of 2275kbps). Quite a bit heavier than CD quality audio.
But i'm also one of those people that is very convinced I can hear the difference between most MP3 and lossless, so you might want to take my opinion as slightly biased
would that explain why samsung tried to take sandisk over?
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/samsung-mulls-buying-sandisk/story.aspx?guid={E9E929E4-4C0C-401B-91D1-05B44D4EA8B2}&dist=msr_33
Audio CDs are generally encoded as 48khz, 16bit, 1411kbps PCM audio
Minor correction, audio CDs are encoded with a sample rate of 44.1khz, not 48khz.
Around the time of the initial development of CDs, audio was often stored using video recorders, since hard drives were an impractical choice back then. 44,100 samples per second suited both the NTSC and PAL formats, so this format was common at the time, and that's why this non-round number was originally chosen for the CD format too.
excuse me but are you clueless about music?
Insulting people (by stating or implying they are clueless) is generally not a good way to get positive moderation. Just thought you might want to have more karma to burn ;)
Also, the question you're addressing is not music (composition and performance), but recording, playback and auditory perception (production, HiFi, sound).
The number of speakers, or surround do not determine the quality of music.
True. Because music is composition and performance. In fact, the two are orthogonal; I've recently auditioned for a band and I quite liked their recorded songs even though the production on average was (gently put) not on par with commercial music.
The number of speakers does affect some dimension of the quality of what you're going to perceive. I've found that I even when I'm just listening to stereo, I want to have sound coming from behind me in addition to in front; whether it's the bigger, better speakers in the back (should be easy to test) or just the sound coming from all directions, it is subjectively more pleasant to listen to.
Also, if you do have real surround sound (even just 4.0), you can do nifty tricks like putting the drummer in the back, guitar and base subtly to either side and vocals in center/front. I'd think this makes each instrument more distinguishable while not destroying the integration into one auditory whole.
But I'm not audiophile, I just like having four speakers and sound coming from all directions.
No, but it adds to the experience.
I would love to have some 5.1 surround music.
Classical music would kick ass if you could hear where the violins were and so on.
Normal rock would also benefit to a degree.
It's important for the music industry to keep people thinking, even unconsciously, that these bits and bytes need to be attached to physical media. When the nebulous nature of intellectual property is emphasised then it's more difficult to associate conventional property rights to them.
Record companies are distribution and advertising companies. They know people think the current price is too high for a CD. They're just looking for a new way to justify the price by finding a newer shinier format. They're hoping that Joe Consumer will see this electronic item and attribute a higher value to it than a plastic disc.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
I've always wondered about this. Why do people say a single speaker will have distortion when it plays too many sounds at once, but my ear, a single microphone, doesn't have that sort of trouble when the sounds are all crammed together into a single input.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
There's nothing a sampling frequency higher than 44.1 kHz will bring you since you cannot hear anything above 22 kHz.
Using 96kHz allows you to use a rather stupid filter which starts at say 30kHz and does 100% filtering only at 45kHz. Such a filter is almost certain to not cause any distortion below 20kHz. In contrast, with CD you have to use a filter which only has the range 20kHz to 22KHz to play with, which means you have to use a rather sophisticated filter (or make the cut-off frequency lower).
You can of course do the recording at 96kHz (or higher) and then downsample to 44.1kHz using a perfect digital filter.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
However, there comes a point where it becomes ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. I am very keen on my sounds, and have some high end equipment in my living room.
As you said, to get the best out of it, you NEED high end throughout, no point having a "weakest link". So the source should be good quality well recorded CD/SACD/DVD-Audio/Other LossLess format. No point using a "high end" system with low quality MP3s.
Where the source is digital, ideally keep the signal digital, and unprocessed to the receiver, via TOSlink/SPDIF/HDMI(BluRay), and use the same transmission as the source, so if the source is CD, ensure the transmission is 44.1khz, 16bit,stereo. I have seen so called "Gold Plated TOSlink Optical cables" begin sold for a huge premium. This is ridiculous, as the gold plating has absolutely no effect on an optical cable. Instead, you want to know the quality of the glass used. Again, this is somethign that makes more of a issue with distance. For a 1m Cable, the absolute top quality may be overkill, as signal degradation will be lower than the tolerances of the error correction system. Again the key here is that Digital degrades differently to analogue, and may be up to a point far more forgiving.
How the hell did the parent get modded "Informative". It's standard audiophile drivel with a tiny hint of awareness of the ridiculousness of the phenomenon...
Let's start with the complete bullshit notion that the composition of digital cables can in any way affect their performance. If a digital signal gets through a $5 Walmart cable, it's as good as a signal that goes through a $5,000 audiophile cable. Period. End of story. Analog degradation of a digital signal makes absolutely no difference as long as the signal is recovered at the other end.
For analogue (and electrical based digital cabling), you need impedance matched "OxygenFree" cabling, where the connectors are electrically/chemically and mechanically matched. No point using a Cable with Gold Plated connectors, if the sockets on the source, or receiver is normal steel (this is a BAD thing, to mix gold plated and non gold plated, especially silver).
The same thing applies to speaker wires/connectors, make sure they are matched to the speakers, and the source.
Oh, goody. Now we move onto the bullshit about analog cables and how audiophiles think they can hear tiny anomalies in the conductance of wires that can hardly be detected by sensitive lab instruments.
Being an audiophile is all about self-delusion and elitism as far as I can tell. There is not a shred of evidence that they can actually tell the difference in carefully controlled double blind listening tests (which tend to really piss them off). This NYT article about high-end speaker wire is pretty funny: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E1D61739F930A15751C1A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.
If I ever find myself out of work, and lose all self-respect and sell my soul, I know I'll be able to make a living inventing bullshit audiophile products and peddling them with a straight face. Like a rock that sits on top of your CD player and adds "sonic purity" to its output. Oh wait, that one already exists.
For a good refutation of "subjectivist audiophile" BS by a respected audio engineer, read this: http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm (WARNING: Contains actual testable scientific arguments.)
My bicyles
"Some DVD-A and SACD albums are remastered without this execrable dynamic range compression... and sound better as a result."
It's more common to eschew the compression on DVD-A due to the fact that they often include a Dolby Digital track set for playing on standard DVD players that don't have a specific DVD-A capability. Dolby Digital has a calibrated average reference level that's well below those that have become common in the Loudness War, so there's much more likelihood that the rest of the content will follow suit. Sadly, SACD is as prone to over-recording as CDs are, and DVD-A is a long way from being free of it.
"But it would sound just as good in CD or MP3 format if record companies would stop butchering them."
CDs are capable of superb results when they're made from well recorded source material and played on a quality deck, hence the fact that Deutsche Grammophon, who have always been renowned for their very high fidelity classical recordings were notable early pioneers of the format. Interestingly, they continue in their pioneering spirit by offering classical tracks for (paid) download in 320 kbps MP3 format with no DRM, which is a notable vote of confidence in the quality of high-bitrate MP3 when it's properly encoded from an impeccable source signal.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.