Re:Anyone seen real specs for Apple's format?
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
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· Score: 1
Oh, and if you want to avoid going through a CD, one route you can take is Audio Hijack, which will record to an AIFF file anything that's sent to your speakers. Drop-convert the AIFF to MP3, and voila.
Re:Anyone seen real specs for Apple's format?
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
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· Score: 5, Informative
Although the AAC->CD->MP3 route is possible, and I intended to buy a track and see how the quality comes out, has anyone seen anything about how the DRM works on the Apple files?
Regarding the AAC->CD->MP3, I burned a couple of Music Store tracks to CD, then re-ripped them (using iTunes, no less) using VBR High, and they sounded indistinguishable from the original Music Store files (albeit being significantly higher average bitrates).
Regarding DRM, it appears that your Music Store file is locked to your Apple ID, and you have to Register up to three computers that you want to be able to play songs associated with your Apple ID. If you sell a computer, you have to unregister it before you can register a replacement computer. This appears to be the only restriction on usage -- you can still burn the songs to as many CDs as you want, copy them to as many iPods as you want, and streamthem to as many other Macs (and TiVo) as you want using Rendezvous.
Sorry, GSM is just a stepping stone to WCDMA, which is the 3G standard that's going to replace GSM around the world. Unfortunately, WCDMA will require new phones (again). Sprint/Verizon/other CDMA carriers are moving to CDMA2000, which is backwards and forwards compatible with CDMA.
The iPod uses a 1.8 in. hard disk; the Creative uses a standard 2.5 in. notebook hard disk -- therefore the Creative player is about twice as big as the iPod. Not only is this not novel (Archos has been using 2.5 in. notebook drives in similarly-sized MP3 players for a while), it's also not a competitor in my book.
The entire Quartz graphic subsystem that Apple uses has nothing to do with X-windows (in fact, X-windows apps do not run natively under Quartz/Aqua); similarly, the Carbon layer that Office is written on top of is basically a modernized version of the Classic Mac OS that only requires developers to re-write up to 20% of their code, and has very little to do with the BSD layer. Sure, BSD CLI apps run fine under OS X, but to think that Quartz/Aqua is in any way, shape, or form related to X-windows is to miss a large part of what OS X is about.
Unfortunately, MAGIC really does just confuse the digital future of music, primarily because it is an inferior technology to Yamaha's mLan. Advantages of mLan:
- mLan is FireWire (rather than this "modified" Ethernet), so it already works with virtually any new computer
- mLan is also nominally at least twice the speed of MAGIC (typically more since FireWire generally gets much closer to its rated throughput than Ethernet)
- mLan combines (modified) MIDI and audio data over the same bus
- FireWire supports isochronous transfer which makes it far more valuable for time-sensitive data (i.e. music) -- one of the main reasons FireWire is the predominant standard for DV.
- mLAN devices have already been available for around a year.
Why would anyone use this when they could use Yamaha's mLAN anyway? mLAN's based on FireWire, so it's much faster and has the advantage of having a built-in isochoronous (time-dependent) transport protocol.
It's clearly the audio bus of the future (due in no small part to the fact that it can be connected to most off-the-shelf computers these days) -- it's even already supported in Mac OS X Core Audio.
Wouldn't trust AMDPower's tech history too much -- for example, the reason that monitors flicker at 60Hz while TVs don't has nothing to do with progressive-scan vs. interlaced (in fact, all else being equal, 60 frame-per-second progressive scan should flicker less than 30 frame-per-second, 60 field-per-second interlaced).
Instead, the reason that TVs flicker less is that TVs have higher-persistence phosphors, i.e. after the phosphors are excited by the CRT's electron gun, the image takes longer to fade away -- a phenomenon that's totally acceptable with full-motion video but not when you don't want your mouse pointer looking smeary.
For proof of this, ask anyone who has a progressive-scan DVD player connected to a progressive-scan TV -- it certainly does not flicker more than a non-progressive scan player (would be somewhat defeatist, no?)
This is a huge misrepresentation of the facts. First, *all* lossy encoding (be it ATRAC, MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, AAC, etc.) "throws away" data based on "psychoacoustic principles" -- ATRAC is 5:1 compression (while 128Kbps MP3 is roughly 12:1 compression -- how does this make ATRAC "technically worse"?), and to most people ATRAC (especially in its more recent incarnations) sounds *far* better than MP3 (especially at common MP3 bitrates).
It's also a misnomer to say that ATRAC is "throwing away" the data -- it's more that it's differently-representing the data as a very close approximation. This is similar to saying that JPEG photo compression "throws away" data -- it doesn't. Or, to look at it another way, it's like saying that 1.0001 rounded to 1 is throwing away 80% of the data: technically true, but a meaningful misrepresentation.
The reason that the phones have different model numbers is that they work under different network technologies. Any two networks that use the same technology (e.g. BellSouth DCS and VoiceStream, which are GSM 1900 networks) will use the same model phone (e.g. Nokia 5190); other networks use phones in the same family but with different model numbers and network technologies (e.g. Sprint PCS is CDMA, and therefore uses the CDMA Nokia 5170 phone).
All GSM, and only GSM, phones use SIM cards of varying capacities that allow you to store phonebooks, which is why even the same model phone from two GSM providers may have different phonebook capacities, to say nothing of two phones that use different technologies (all non-GSM phones store phonebooks in the phone; also some GSM phones allow you to store phonebooks in the phone as well as on the SIM card). This means that with a GSM phone you can just upgrade the SIM card to a higher capacity if you want more phonebook entries, and has the added benefit of allowing you to just move the SIM card when you upgrade phones, so that you don't have to re-input your entire phonebook.
lying through his teeth. it's a ridiculous assertion anyway, because unless you're getting dropouts, the digital network is guaranteed to sound better than analog, and there's no way that it could switch to analog fast enough for a 1/4 sec. dropout.
When you miniaturize a window, a snapshot of the window is taken and placed in the dock. This is where the magnification feature is really handy. You can actually see which document the icon represents before you expand it.
Actually, this isn't quite true. It's not a snapshot of the window -- the miniaturized window is actually live (Apple has demoed Quicktime movies that were still running minaturized)
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Oh, and if you want to avoid going through a CD, one route you can take is Audio Hijack, which will record to an AIFF file anything that's sent to your speakers. Drop-convert the AIFF to MP3, and voila.
Regarding the AAC->CD->MP3, I burned a couple of Music Store tracks to CD, then re-ripped them (using iTunes, no less) using VBR High, and they sounded indistinguishable from the original Music Store files (albeit being significantly higher average bitrates).
Regarding DRM, it appears that your Music Store file is locked to your Apple ID, and you have to Register up to three computers that you want to be able to play songs associated with your Apple ID. If you sell a computer, you have to unregister it before you can register a replacement computer. This appears to be the only restriction on usage -- you can still burn the songs to as many CDs as you want, copy them to as many iPods as you want, and streamthem to as many other Macs (and TiVo) as you want using Rendezvous.
If you're worried about AAC sound quality, listen to some professionally-encoded samples here:
http://www.epicrecords.com/mpeg4/?qt
Battery life has gone from 10 hours to 8 hours, but battery capacity has gone from 1200 mAh to 630 mAh, so efficiency has actually gone way up.
I have a Newton, and I have Graffiti on it. Was developed by U.S. Robotics. Newton 2.0 handwriting recognition ("Rosetta") is far superior, however.
What?
Clearly likely that the entire model line will be refreshed by June anyway.
Sorry, GSM is just a stepping stone to WCDMA, which is the 3G standard that's going to replace GSM around the world. Unfortunately, WCDMA will require new phones (again). Sprint/Verizon/other CDMA carriers are moving to CDMA2000, which is backwards and forwards compatible with CDMA.
The iPod uses a 1.8 in. hard disk; the Creative uses a standard 2.5 in. notebook
hard disk -- therefore the Creative player is about twice as big as the iPod.
Not only is this not novel (Archos has been using 2.5 in. notebook
drives in similarly-sized MP3 players for a while), it's also not a competitor
in my book.
The entire Quartz graphic subsystem that Apple uses has nothing to do with X-windows (in fact, X-windows apps do not run natively under Quartz/Aqua); similarly, the Carbon layer that Office is written on top of is basically a modernized version of the Classic Mac OS that only requires developers to re-write up to 20% of their code, and has very little to do with the BSD layer. Sure, BSD CLI apps run fine under OS X, but to think that Quartz/Aqua is in any way, shape, or form related to X-windows is to miss a large part of what OS X is about.
Unfortunately, MAGIC really does just confuse the digital future of music, primarily because it is an inferior technology to Yamaha's mLan. Advantages of mLan:
- mLan is FireWire (rather than this "modified" Ethernet), so it already works with virtually any new computer
- mLan is also nominally at least twice the speed of MAGIC (typically more since FireWire generally gets much closer to its rated throughput than Ethernet)
- mLan combines (modified) MIDI and audio data over the same bus
- FireWire supports isochronous transfer which makes it far more valuable for time-sensitive data (i.e. music) -- one of the main reasons FireWire is the predominant standard for DV.
- mLAN devices have already been available for around a year.
Why would anyone use this when they could use Yamaha's mLAN anyway? mLAN's based on FireWire, so it's much faster and has the advantage of having a built-in isochoronous (time-dependent) transport protocol.
It's clearly the audio bus of the future (due in no small part to the fact that it can be connected to most off-the-shelf computers these days) -- it's even already supported in Mac OS X Core Audio.
Instead, the reason that TVs flicker less is that TVs have higher-persistence phosphors, i.e. after the phosphors are excited by the CRT's electron gun, the image takes longer to fade away -- a phenomenon that's totally acceptable with full-motion video but not when you don't want your mouse pointer looking smeary.
For proof of this, ask anyone who has a progressive-scan DVD player connected to a progressive-scan TV -- it certainly does not flicker more than a non-progressive scan player (would be somewhat defeatist, no?)
Why not just spend the $20 and get a damn firewire card? Ever tried transferring 5GB over USB? *Not* pretty.
Or did you mean to ask, "why doesn't Apple release iTunes for Windows?"
This is a huge misrepresentation of the facts. First, *all* lossy encoding (be it ATRAC, MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, AAC, etc.) "throws away" data based on "psychoacoustic principles" -- ATRAC is 5:1 compression (while 128Kbps MP3 is roughly 12:1 compression -- how does this make ATRAC "technically worse"?), and to most people ATRAC (especially in its more recent incarnations) sounds *far* better than MP3 (especially at common MP3 bitrates).
It's also a misnomer to say that ATRAC is "throwing away" the data -- it's more that it's differently-representing the data as a very close approximation. This is similar to saying that JPEG photo compression "throws away" data -- it doesn't. Or, to look at it another way, it's like saying that 1.0001 rounded to 1 is throwing away 80% of the data: technically true, but a meaningful misrepresentation.
The reason that the phones have different model numbers is that they work under different network technologies. Any two networks that use the same technology (e.g. BellSouth DCS and VoiceStream, which are GSM 1900 networks) will use the same model phone (e.g. Nokia 5190); other networks use phones in the same family but with different model numbers and network technologies (e.g. Sprint PCS is CDMA, and therefore uses the CDMA Nokia 5170 phone).
All GSM, and only GSM, phones use SIM cards of varying capacities that allow you to store phonebooks, which is why even the same model phone from two GSM providers may have different phonebook capacities, to say nothing of two phones that use different technologies (all non-GSM phones store phonebooks in the phone; also some GSM phones allow you to store phonebooks in the phone as well as on the SIM card). This means that with a GSM phone you can just upgrade the SIM card to a higher capacity if you want more phonebook entries, and has the added benefit of allowing you to just move the SIM card when you upgrade phones, so that you don't have to re-input your entire phonebook.
lying through his teeth. it's a ridiculous assertion anyway, because unless you're getting dropouts, the digital network is guaranteed to sound better than analog, and there's no way that it could switch to analog fast enough for a 1/4 sec. dropout.
Depends on what provider you choose. With AT&T and Sprint PCS the analog is built in to the 61xx series.
Actually, this isn't quite true. It's not a snapshot of the window -- the miniaturized window is actually live (Apple has demoed Quicktime movies that were still running minaturized)