...at any comparable bitrate. I've listened to them side-by-side using studio quality DAC and hi-fi headphones (Grados and Sennheiser HD-580). WMA blew Ogg Vorbis away in terms of quality. I'm too lazy to compare WMA and AAC, but I wouldn't be surprised if WMA blows AAC away, too.
I guess they're in for a price hike on their OEM licensing agreements for desktops and laptops. Say $20 would be enough (I guess) to make the move to Linux unprofitable to the company as a whole.
We're talking about 76 MICROVOLT here for chrissakes. That's well below the noise floor of any acoustic system, not to mention any kind of audible threshold.
Badly ripping off the Windows file selector seems to be all those fellas are capable of. Come on, slashdotters, you like to lambast Microsoft for ripping off Apple, go ahead, unleash the dogs on these poor shmucks. It's a "ripoff squared", with a lot of important subtleties left off, as always, because they're boring to implement. Next thing you know, these fellas will be ripping off the file selector from beta versions of Longhorn.
That's why they have that steep sinc(x) filter after DAC. The signal is reproduced EXACTLY as it was recorded - nice'n'smooth, accurate in amplitude and phase. See Shannon-Kotelnikov's theorem for proof. It's hard to grasp the concept of restoring high-frequency components of the signal by just a few measurements per sine cycle, but all this stuff is well known and mathematically proven.
You can record a CD using full 96dB of dynamic range pretty easily. Have you ever wondered why nobody records them this way? Because people prefer compressed (in terms of dynamic range) sound. It sounds "loud" and "even" (which for 99.5% of folks out there equals to "good") to them. Thus to please the crowd sound engineers compress the heck out of CDs. If they didn't you wouldn't need a volume knob on your stereo, 'cause you would always have to run it at max. volume to keep low-level signal (commonly referred to as background detail) within audible range of your hearing.
Assuming that CD is properly recorded (which it rarely is, properly recorded CDs require properly constructed audio systems) and properly reproduced (even less chance, due to crappy stereos with cheap acoustics) there is NO information loss within audible frequency range. Shannon-Kotelnikov's theorem doesn't lie. Whatever gets in is reproduced exactly at the output. You have 96dB dynamic range (more than enough) and 2Hz to 20KHz frequency range (which is more that even babies can hear).
Now lemme explain why anything more than 20bit/96KHz is bull crap. First, let's tackle 96KHz. Raising the sampling frequency to 96KHz actually makes sense, because it becomes a lot easier to make a good sounding CD player. You don't need oversampling anymore and you don't need high-order digital filter to filter out the harmonic images in inaudible band. The same thing applies to recording. You can record with less than perfect low-pass filter, and even though there will be horrible aliasing you won't be able to hear it anyway as it will be well above 20KHz. Now let's consider 24bit part. If you calculate the potential dynamic range of a linear DAC with full 24 bit input you will see that it at this point it is PHYSICALLY impossible to construct an analog amplifier that will fully exploit more than 20 bits of its dynamic range. Why? Because the dynamic range will be limited by the noise floor, which in turn will be limited by thermal noise in resistors and semiconductors. Calculations show that anything above 20 bit is simply not worth the effort - you won't be able to hear a single bit of difference anyway, the first 4 bit will be well below the noise floor.
It was Russia who won WWII, not the US. The US had just chimed in at the end to reap the rewards and prevent the "communist threat".
For some reason this simple and historically undeniable fact raises violent opposition from my American friends. The lie that the US had won WWII is burned so deeply into their brains, they simply do not accept the facts.
Heck, if RedHat doesn't support 2 year old distros
on
Windows 98 Phased Out
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
of RedHat Linux. What's the point that you're trying to make here? Myself, I would pass some kind of legislation to impose prison terms on people who still use W98. They should be punished for their stupidity, cluelessness and misuse of hardware.
Every more or less famous musician has a web site these days, and most of them (well, at least the ones whose music I call "good") even go to their web sites and talk to fans sometimes. Email the web guy, ask your favorite artist's opinion on file swapping. Chances are you'll get a reply from the band directly published somewhere on the web site. At least you will know if file sharing is hurting them or not.
"Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS) enables administrators to quickly and reliably deploy the latest critical updates and security updates to Windows(R) 2000 and Windows Server(TM) 2003-based servers, as well as to desktop computers running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional. As part of the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), SUS helps provide core server manageability for Windows Server 2003."
and drive the car at the same time. My comment was about laptops. Having said that, I don't think TVs should be banned either. If someone is stupid enough to watch TV while driving, he will find something else but just as stupid to do, like reading a book, or sleeping on the steering wheel.
Why oh why does the government have to protect its citizens from themselves. If they want to use a laptop - let'em use it. Give them the statistics on injuries, though so that they make an informed choice. People using laptop are usually not among the dumbest.
Day by day, cup by cup. Chances are if you get your coffee at starbucks the resulting total will be a couple of hundred bucks each month. Think about the ways you'd rather use this $2400 a year. Quit cold turkey.
Will this ever happen? Unlikely. Important part is to be "planning" to do something and making noise. And whether or not this will ever materialize doesn't matter.
Paying taxes NOW is on the micro-scale of things. Making babies who will pay taxes when you become a burden for the economy (that is, when you retire and burn through most of your savings) is more significant.
I don't think homosexuality needs to be rewarded with tax breaks. After all, homosexual marriages do not contribute to the population (and thus to the economy). So I think fags and lezzies should be able to get married, but they should still pay the same taxes and have separate medical insurance. And god forbid allowing them to adopt children. We don't need any more kids with screwed up psychology here.
Just have a bottle of Vodka with a decent meal. And there you go, no recollection of the entire evening. If you can hold the liquor, you'll get an added bonus - no puking.
I gave $20. Go there and give them some money. Wikipedia is by far the interesting site on the web for me. When I get in it's hard to get out. No nonsense, no political agenda (except perhaps in articles on Microsoft and Bill Gates), thoroughly crosslinked. I spend hours reading it, very educational. For example, look at their article on F-word. Where else can you find something this comprehensive?
I should have said "they will try to turn this piece of crap off". Doing so is not a trivial thing to do, unfortunately. No MS "One-button removal (C)(TM)(R)" here.
Slashdot Mirror
...at any comparable bitrate. I've listened to them side-by-side using studio quality DAC and hi-fi headphones (Grados and Sennheiser HD-580). WMA blew Ogg Vorbis away in terms of quality. I'm too lazy to compare WMA and AAC, but I wouldn't be surprised if WMA blows AAC away, too.
I guess they're in for a price hike on their OEM licensing agreements for desktops and laptops. Say $20 would be enough (I guess) to make the move to Linux unprofitable to the company as a whole.
I meant to say "audio system" acoustic systems don't have any noise floor by themselves. :-)
We're talking about 76 MICROVOLT here for chrissakes. That's well below the noise floor of any acoustic system, not to mention any kind of audible threshold.
Badly ripping off the Windows file selector seems to be all those fellas are capable of. Come on, slashdotters, you like to lambast Microsoft for ripping off Apple, go ahead, unleash the dogs on these poor shmucks. It's a "ripoff squared", with a lot of important subtleties left off, as always, because they're boring to implement. Next thing you know, these fellas will be ripping off the file selector from beta versions of Longhorn.
That's why they have that steep sinc(x) filter after DAC. The signal is reproduced EXACTLY as it was recorded - nice'n'smooth, accurate in amplitude and phase. See Shannon-Kotelnikov's theorem for proof. It's hard to grasp the concept of restoring high-frequency components of the signal by just a few measurements per sine cycle, but all this stuff is well known and mathematically proven.
You can record a CD using full 96dB of dynamic range pretty easily. Have you ever wondered why nobody records them this way? Because people prefer compressed (in terms of dynamic range) sound. It sounds "loud" and "even" (which for 99.5% of folks out there equals to "good") to them. Thus to please the crowd sound engineers compress the heck out of CDs. If they didn't you wouldn't need a volume knob on your stereo, 'cause you would always have to run it at max. volume to keep low-level signal (commonly referred to as background detail) within audible range of your hearing.
Assuming that CD is properly recorded (which it rarely is, properly recorded CDs require properly constructed audio systems) and properly reproduced (even less chance, due to crappy stereos with cheap acoustics) there is NO information loss within audible frequency range. Shannon-Kotelnikov's theorem doesn't lie. Whatever gets in is reproduced exactly at the output. You have 96dB dynamic range (more than enough) and 2Hz to 20KHz frequency range (which is more that even babies can hear).
Now lemme explain why anything more than 20bit/96KHz is bull crap. First, let's tackle 96KHz. Raising the sampling frequency to 96KHz actually makes sense, because it becomes a lot easier to make a good sounding CD player. You don't need oversampling anymore and you don't need high-order digital filter to filter out the harmonic images in inaudible band. The same thing applies to recording. You can record with less than perfect low-pass filter, and even though there will be horrible aliasing you won't be able to hear it anyway as it will be well above 20KHz. Now let's consider 24bit part. If you calculate the potential dynamic range of a linear DAC with full 24 bit input you will see that it at this point it is PHYSICALLY impossible to construct an analog amplifier that will fully exploit more than 20 bits of its dynamic range. Why? Because the dynamic range will be limited by the noise floor, which in turn will be limited by thermal noise in resistors and semiconductors. Calculations show that anything above 20 bit is simply not worth the effort - you won't be able to hear a single bit of difference anyway, the first 4 bit will be well below the noise floor.
Here's the most taboo-ed heresy of them all:
It was Russia who won WWII, not the US. The US had just chimed in at the end to reap the rewards and prevent the "communist threat".
For some reason this simple and historically undeniable fact raises violent opposition from my American friends. The lie that the US had won WWII is burned so deeply into their brains, they simply do not accept the facts.
of RedHat Linux. What's the point that you're trying to make here? Myself, I would pass some kind of legislation to impose prison terms on people who still use W98. They should be punished for their stupidity, cluelessness and misuse of hardware.
Every more or less famous musician has a web site these days, and most of them (well, at least the ones whose music I call "good") even go to their web sites and talk to fans sometimes. Email the web guy, ask your favorite artist's opinion on file swapping. Chances are you'll get a reply from the band directly published somewhere on the web site. At least you will know if file sharing is hurting them or not.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sus/d efault.mspx
"Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS) enables administrators to quickly and reliably deploy the latest critical updates and security updates to Windows(R) 2000 and Windows Server(TM) 2003-based servers, as well as to desktop computers running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional. As part of the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), SUS helps provide core server manageability for Windows Server 2003."
at spam filtering if not at anything else. You've got to try this crap to believe it.
and drive the car at the same time. My comment was about laptops. Having said that, I don't think TVs should be banned either. If someone is stupid enough to watch TV while driving, he will find something else but just as stupid to do, like reading a book, or sleeping on the steering wheel.
Why oh why does the government have to protect its citizens from themselves. If they want to use a laptop - let'em use it. Give them the statistics on injuries, though so that they make an informed choice. People using laptop are usually not among the dumbest.
Day by day, cup by cup. Chances are if you get your coffee at starbucks the resulting total will be a couple of hundred bucks each month. Think about the ways you'd rather use this $2400 a year. Quit cold turkey.
Will this ever happen? Unlikely. Important part is to be "planning" to do something and making noise. And whether or not this will ever materialize doesn't matter.
And seeing female breasts in public? And seeing someone's genitals? What's so wrong about this? Why is it worse (legally) than, say, physical assault?
Paying taxes NOW is on the micro-scale of things. Making babies who will pay taxes when you become a burden for the economy (that is, when you retire and burn through most of your savings) is more significant.
I don't think homosexuality needs to be rewarded with tax breaks. After all, homosexual marriages do not contribute to the population (and thus to the economy). So I think fags and lezzies should be able to get married, but they should still pay the same taxes and have separate medical insurance. And god forbid allowing them to adopt children. We don't need any more kids with screwed up psychology here.
Just have a bottle of Vodka with a decent meal. And there you go, no recollection of the entire evening. If you can hold the liquor, you'll get an added bonus - no puking.
No, that makes you a fucking moron. :-)
I gave $20. Go there and give them some money. Wikipedia is by far the interesting site on the web for me. When I get in it's hard to get out. No nonsense, no political agenda (except perhaps in articles on Microsoft and Bill Gates), thoroughly crosslinked. I spend hours reading it, very educational. For example, look at their article on F-word. Where else can you find something this comprehensive?
>> Was quite an eye opener
You don't read slashot more than once a year, do you?
I should have said "they will try to turn this piece of crap off". Doing so is not a trivial thing to do, unfortunately. No MS "One-button removal (C)(TM)(R)" here.