SACD was hardware. In order to actually handle reading the variable pit length scheme (Pit Signal Processing), the drive itself had additional hardware. This isn't the same as decoding DSD streams, this is part of the reason why while SACDs are basically DVDs, your average DVD drive cannot actually decrypt the data on the disc.
PS2 backcompat was also hardware. The Emotion Engine *and* the Graphics Synthesizer chip were both included on the launch PS3 with software handling the rest of the system, such as the IOP (which is why PSX emulation is done entirely in software). The next revision had the EE cut, but the GS chip itself still remained. Now there's absolutely no PS2 hardware in the system.
These are cost-cutting methods, however, it's a total misnomer to actually claim this is just flipping some software bits like removing Other OS support has been.
Also, seeing as both XMMS and WinAMP are both using reference decoders that follow spec exactly, I find your claims to be entirely made of up placebo effect. What's more likely is that one mixer is louder than the other (Depending on which mixer is being used in Windows, this can be the case. Using KernelStreaming can seriously remove most questions such as this), which is another common way for users to make such assumptions.
If you were to use the diskwriting functions of both players on a test sample and compare them via a blind listening test program such as ABX and prove that one was better than the other with consistant, reproducable results then you'd have done a service to both program teams and likely allowed one to fix something incorrect. However, the burden of proof relies on yourself to prove such claims through science.
The only reason why Sonique's decoder sounds 'better' is because they're breaking spec and likely doing filtering behind the user's back. I'm not so sure if the 1.9x series of Sonique players before their eventual failure to realize 2.0 were any different, but I doubt it.
As it says in the article linked above, they weren't do anything they shouldn't in regards to filtering. All things being equal, everyone's MP3 decoder following proper specs, should sound exactly the same -- the way it should be. It's not the decoder's job to filter anything, that's the job of an actual DSP chain you can tweak how you wish.
So the next time someone is making claims about a decoder sounding 'better', provided that they're both using the same output at the same volume levels... One can realize that this is either placebo or there's something going on where nothing should be. Best way to resolve this, is to use whatever available wav logging options to capture samples from each of the disputed players and then ABX them.
.. their work on the SuperFX chip and Starfox for the Super Nintendo. Or maybe the meidocre platformer Croc. I'm sure they'd like to be better known for those. I would, anyway...
I've been a hardware and software collector for as a hobby for a long time. That original link is just some putz who is liquidating their store assetts. I've seen someone collect over 1,500 Mario Bros/Duck Hunt carts.
This guy we have here.. He knows what to collect and does it good. The odds and ends section alone are just are all rare and obscure, as if casually dismissed (Gee, only the rarest titles for some platforms very few have heard about outside of Japan -- and the only rare game for the Game.com!). It really would take a lifetime to get this sort of collection and it almost pains me to see such a beautiful assortment like this go up on eBay.
I think $70,00 is a fair price. I have trouble assessing the worth of some of it just due to how ungodly difficult it is to obtain, even if the price isn't that considerable.
To give you an example? Galactic Policewoman Legend Sapphire for PC Engine? Only about 300 copies of that game exist. Then the autographed games... Including a Nocturne in the Moonlight. Christ.
I'm far more impressed by this guy than the Slashvertisement in the article. I really hope this guy finds his collection a good home.
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Many schools, the last time I looked, weren't actually using a letter based grade anymore, they were simply using 'Pass' or 'Fail'. Theoretically, though I'm sure there are PE instructors out there who prove otherwise, it's worth stating...
You are not being graded at all based upon if you can do something or not. You're PE grade has nothing to do with if you did a certain number of situps by a certain ammount of time. Your grade has everything to do with if you bothered to try at all -- If you participated and made the effort.
There's plenty of students who wish to use whatever condition they have, real or imagined as an excuse to not even attempt. There are, of course, certain situations where this is entirely valid... However, I think it's an alarming trend in society, especially to be embraced by students where the problem isn't an obstacle so much as it is a crutch to wave in people's faces.
A good PE instructor isn't out to make anyone feel left out or inferior. It's to make everyone try and work together and improve what they can and find out what strengths they may have. And this is coming from a mediocre PE student at best. I couldn't run, I couldn't do a billion situps, I was generally weak and couldn't shoot a basket to save my life... but I sure kicked my class's ass at dodgeball.
On another note -- While I find DDR's idea of electronic music to be kinda fruity and I think a lot of it is silly, I do see merit in people using it as a good excuse for exercise. I've known several people who shed a lot of weight over one summer when they took up DDR and cut down on the soda. I almost envy them.
I think perhaps Konami could find a market in producing an 'Educational' version of DDR for use in American schools. I'd actually support such an idea if executed properly.
Completely incorrect. There *IS* a Maniac Mansion in Japan, and it's quite different than the US release. It's graphics are far more primitive looking and overall, the US port done by Jaleco was much better.
There's also ports of Loom to both the PC Engine (Turbo Grafx-16) and the FM Towns platforms. The FM Towns port is rather rare and had additional voices and audio beyond that of the PC CD-ROM, and it was in both English and Japanese. There was also a 256 color version of Zak McKraken for FM Towns. So, yeah, there's LucasArt games in Japan.
Most of the arguments presented by the article can be dismissed once the lowest common denominator is taken into account. Your average *CONSUMER* does not like having computers being more complicated than they 'really need to be'.
If and when the so-called great Linux revolution occurs, distros will have to keep the needs of the average consumer in mind. Y'know, the people who outnumber your average slashdot reader in droves? Most of these people have no desire or need to really learn anything beyond what it takes to turn on the machine, open a browser and check their email, maybe running an IM client and the occassional game. Having any expectations of them learning commandline tools such as chmod is pushing it. Microsoft's design choices weren't always out of their own stupidity so much as knowing the majority of potential customers -- the customers with the biggest numbers, thus ones you'd need to be a dominant OS -- aren't informed and *don't wish to be*.
Actually, the Genesis is more than capable of being backwards compatable with the SMS. There was an official Sega device called the Power Base Converter that sat atop of the Genesis and allowed the SMS cards, carts and controllers to be plugged into the system. At boot time on the Genesis, there's an interrupt you can call that sends the system into an SMS compatable mode. It's all pretty much there in hardware.
Backwards compatability is an old hat for many systems. All the Atari consoles of note were backwards compatable (though one required an adapter), the PC Engine/TG-16 line was rock solid in Japan due to how you could *upgrade* older systems to play newer games, in addition to backwards compatability, which is something no other console platform has really pulled off successfully. The 32x doesn't count in the slightest..
Actually, backwards compatability doesn't nessicarily ensure anything. There's been other consoles offering such, one being the Atari 5600 (via an expensive adapter, released being too late) , the Atari 7800 and more importantly, the NEC PC Engine/Turbo Grafx-16 line.
With the NEC PC Engine line you had the core system, which out of the box could crush the competition (i.e. NES and SMS). Then you could add on a CD drive. It came with a system card, you popped it in and you were ready to go. They later made a system called the Duo, released as the Turbo Duo here in the States. It intergrated the core, the CD drive and an upgrade to the system that allowed it to surpass other competitions at the time (i.e. the Sega Genesis).
Not only did it do that, it also allowed backwards compatability to all your previous games... and something no other system I'm aware of has really toyed with, other than Sega and it's failed 32x, you could purchase a System 3.0 card and pop it in your core/CD combo and upgrade it to a Duo. So, you didn't need to buy the new hardware at all and could still keep up.
Also in the middle of all this, they released a handheld system, the PC Engine GT/Turbo Express, which used the same game cards the console systems themselves used and (at the time) quite an impressive color screen that has only been surpassed in quality by the Sega Nomad, which also did the same sort of idea, using the Genesis carts as its games. The unit even offered a TV Tuner upgrade, which was quite insane back in '89-90. Unfortunately the thing ate batteries like they were going out of style.
The only system NEC had that was a complete flop (in Japan, anyway, the only area the PC Engine line was strong at all) was known as the SuperGrafx. It was a rather unusual system that added a good number of graphical features in order to combat the Super Famicom (SNES) before its release. Previous owners had no upgrade path and it required an adapter to attach a CD-ROM drive and a System 3.0 card, or a more expensive CD-ROM drive which featured an intergrated System 3.0 card that still sells for high prices to this day. When the SNES was released, it turned out to be not as much of a killer hardware platform as feared and NEC pretty much shot the mark. Most people hung onto their older platforms and the SuperGrafx died having only six games produced for it, although it's still perfectly capable of running every previous card based game and CD (provided you buy and attach the drive).
The last upgrade was offered in a card alone, known as the Arcade Card. It came in two versions, Arcade Pro and Arcade Duo, if your system had an intergraded 3.0 card, either in the system itself or the drive attached, then you grabbed the Duo. The Arcade Pro was for everything else. It allowed primitive polygonal effects and the ability to port a lot of SNK's Neo-Geo fighting titles to the system rather impresively. There were quite a handful of Arcade CDs released before the system's eventual demise. New games are unearthed for this platform even to this day, although admittedly they are quite rare, far, few and between.
In the end, the system had a very long extended life (in Japan.. it failed in the US), a rabid fanbase to this day and in every version of the system, a 6502 processor as its CPU. Yep, it was technically an 8-bit system offering the first CD-ROM attachment, graphics on par with the Genesis and SNES (although I'd never claim it could outnumbercrunch the Genesis with its 68k CPU which was beefiest of the bunch, despite the system's weaker graphics support) when fully upgraded and even one of the best Castlevania games ever, Dracula X, which the very popular PSX game Symphony of the Night is a direct sequel to and the GBA games also in the same Dracula X series.
However, none of this meant a thing in the US. It's a feature, admittedly a very useful feature, but one that doesn't ensure the livlihood of any popular system. The Atari platforms mentioned were failures, despite offering support for the blazingly successful 2600/VCS. The NEC system bombed in the United States and never kept its hold even in Japan, which resulted them in developing the PC-FX, totally not compatable with the others and also a terrible failure other than its mass of IF/Hentai games which still appeal to many, like the FM Towns Marty, which was compatable with the FM Towns II computer's CD-ROM software in most cases.
What definately matters for the success of a system is a signature. Something they are known for. Sony isn't known for anything in particular, as they're always changing their lineup and what to expect from them. Diversity isn't nessicarily a bad thing, but I knew when I bought my GameCube I'd (eventually) have a killer game featuring Mario that was a blast to play, at the very minimum. A counter point would be when I bought the Dreamcast (probably the closest spiritual successor to the PC Engine, especially in fanbase), I knew I would have a speed-frenzied Sonic platformer and AM2 titles. Unfortunately, despite not only having an amazing 1st gen lineup of games and graphical prowless that surpassed PS2's initial 1st and 2nd generation of games as developers eventually decyphered the workings of Sony's kludge-job of a devkit and system, it died due to most people holding out to see what else would be surfacing.
The X-Box and Sony's consoles haven't really scored anything other than hits of the moment and not even really in first party. Sure, Microsoft has Rare, but Rare hasn't really done anything other than file off the serial numbers of Miyamoto's work and attach an annoying set of characters to it. I'd have to go back pretty far before I'd see a game from them I really was crazy over, like maybe Pin-Bot or RC Pro Am.
Anyway, this is getting rather long. I should stop here. Sounds like a great idea.
I can't sit here and hope to convince you anything about SACD, since most of you are too busy speculating and screaming your heads off because you can't go and copy an SACD of a disc that has most likely been out in CD for quite some time. What I can do is tell you the following things and hope maybe at least one of you will actually go out and hear a high-res format sometime before posting without once even givng an honest listen to the format.
First off, there definately are SACD/DVD-A combo players. There's quite a few of them covering the entire spectrum of how much you want to spend on gear. Personally, I think a good purchase would be the Pioneer Elite 47Ai, which also has digital outputs, another thing that article is completely wrong about. The 47Ai has, by quite a few people's accounts including my own, some of the best video output of any DVD-Video player out there, especially at its price point.
Second off, most DVD-Audio discs *can* reach 192Khz for a sampling rate, however, most of them are released at 96Khz. Another thing is that Verance has actually changed their statement of their watermarking from being unperceptable to 'unnoticable'. That's because, well, you can actually hear it! This isn't a faint different, it actually colors the sound a bit from the original. There was a small test conducted by a person who obtained the Verance software and after doing a compare between the source and the watermarked version decided to isolate the difference between the two into a single.wav. It sounded like a poor AM radio version of the song playing, but that goes to show just how much info between the two were actually changed.
Third, SACD can be produced by independant artists if they wish to, there's actually several mastering kits out there ranging from $5k and up that you can save up, snag, take home and master stuff to. Products like SADiE, Pyramix, Sony's own Sonoma, are all available to be purchased by anyone who wishes to produce their own SACDs. Just searching on the web for 'SACD Mastering' brings up a lot of smaller production houses willing to do it for you as well. Slowly, places capable of pressing SACDs are catching up in pace as more plants are opened and the tech gets out there.
Also, claims about SACD not being higher than '24kHz' (when it's really around 100kHz) and the like are also rather bunk. There's a lot of people trying to test DSD by methods meant for PCM, which simply does NOT work because they are two completely alien methods of handling sound from each other with just enough in common that they both can be handled by some of the same processors. A good article found here will explain a bit more actually what's going on with DSD. There's been some people claiming that from a 'mathmatical standpoint' SACD is on par with a cassette tape (!), but even your layman doing an A->B between the two could tell you that's not the case. As a friend put it "If it measures bad, but your output is good, then you're measuring wrong".
Lastly, the bit about the CD layers of hybrid discs not sounding as good is also a lot of bunk thrown out by groups like Warner (DVD-Audio's big pusher) whom want to scare a lot of people away. However, one thing to keep in mind, is that SACD hybrid discs are being snuck in without any such labeling as to their hybrid status on the packaging. For example, that brand new set of Rolling Stones remastered stuff in digipak packaging are all SACD hybrids. Vivendi Universal has just begun releasing hybrid discs with the possible intention of switching over to exclusively releasing hybrids in the next year or so.
They don't cost anything more than the actual CD, and since SACD players can be snagged as low as $120 now, it's a bit easier to get into playing the the high-res layer. However, at $120, players I'd consider 'amazing' aren't many, in fact, it'd be just one that was recently discontinued. The Sony SCD-CE775 5-Disc SACD changer is one of the best players I've heard under $200, easily doing Redbook playback comparable to some $1k decks I've heard. Internally the SCD-CD775 is almost exactly the same as Sony's $450 SCD-C222ES SACD player, save its cheaper casing, slightly different power supply and a bit cheaper capacitors. If you really wish to get serious, you can have people like this guy spend some quality time with your SCD-CD775 or a few other models of players and have him upgrade and change a lot of the parts for better sounding playback. However, I doubt that'll appeal to everyone who doesn't own at least a good set of headphones (Sennheiser HD-600s, Sony MDR-CD3000s, Grado RS-1s, Audio Technica ATH-W100s, Etymotic ER-4S, etc.)
Also, most audiophile have been raving about some SACD players and their Redbook playback ability. I don't know about this Arizona group of '53 people' or one particular shop whom wasn't even aware of decks capable of DVD-A and SACD while also providing digital out, but you look for reviews of Sony's 'SCD-XA777ES' player and you'll find many saying it does some of the best CD playback you can possibly buy. Phillips, Denon and others are getting in on players of the same quality at comparable prices.
In short, I've found that article to be rather a lot of FUD, and the reactions of quite a few here to be playing into that quite nicely. Personally I own both a DVD-A and SACD player and titles for both, but I rather prefer SACD after spending a bit of time on each using decent gear (Carver CM-1090 amp, custom amps, Sennheiser HD-600 headphones, etc.) I also own about 350 legitimate CDs and continue to purchase CDs on top of higher-res formats. Am I at all alarmed that my ability for backups of these newer formats are limited? No, not really. I take care of my discs and my need to back them up or play them on my PC (although the new SB Audigy 2 can play back DVD-Audio on PCs) or portable unit is pretty unnessicary. One thing I will say, is that if interest picks up enough, I'm sure a DeCSS-alike will surface and so will another hailstorm of controversy and merry fun that Slashdot readers thrive on.
That wouldn't work in Hell. Satan already has gone MS for their three week long PowerPoint-presented orientation. I hear the souls of the damned don't like his Ben Stein impression none too much as he goes over it, either.
Actually, even according to William Gibson, the credit of the first cyberpunk story belongs to John Shirley, who wrote both the vastly superior 'City Come A'Walkin' and the short story 'Tricentennial'. Even Sterling has done forwards for Shirley's books. Shirley also has the credits for doing the screenplay to the Crow.
Then again, I suppose most people are used to Gibson, someone who wrote 'Neuromancer' out of his fear of computers, as the 'father' of Cyberpunk.
64Kbps is where the flaws of a codec are truely exposed. It's a great median between being too high to produce much results and too low where everything completely falls apart. You may not think any of this has any relevance to you as you're encoding above 128Kbps, but it actually does make a difference when you stress your encoder with a difficult piece of music.
However, if the difference between sounding 'good' and sounding 'accurate' mean little to you, as someone who'd make an argument of 64Kbps tests being worthless would, then you really aren't the intended audiance of such tests. You can merrily use any of those encoders at 128-192Kbps without ever really noticing or caring much.
I, personally, would like to see OGG1.0, MP3 Pro and WMA8 take on some real tough to beat codecs such as Dolby's AAC High-Complexity Mode (which no AAC freely available encoder supports, including QuickTime) and Sony's ATRAC3. But, that'd be kinda moot, because most people out there do not have access to those toys.
For now, I'm content to just watch people hop around and proclaim whatever they want as king of audio formats while sticking to 256Kbps Fraunhoffer MP3 (archival purposes) and 192Kbps LAME HQ MP3 (general usage) as something both widely supported and pratically indistinguishable from the source. Even if AAC-HC and ATRAC3 were freely available, it'd take an awful large effort to wean people off of MP3 so far as support base and to migrate them to a new format. New P2P programs, new players/plug-ins (in some cases) and new hardware players. Not gonna happen for a while.
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SACD was hardware. In order to actually handle reading the variable pit length scheme (Pit Signal Processing), the drive itself had additional hardware. This isn't the same as decoding DSD streams, this is part of the reason why while SACDs are basically DVDs, your average DVD drive cannot actually decrypt the data on the disc.
PS2 backcompat was also hardware. The Emotion Engine *and* the Graphics Synthesizer chip were both included on the launch PS3 with software handling the rest of the system, such as the IOP (which is why PSX emulation is done entirely in software). The next revision had the EE cut, but the GS chip itself still remained. Now there's absolutely no PS2 hardware in the system.
These are cost-cutting methods, however, it's a total misnomer to actually claim this is just flipping some software bits like removing Other OS support has been.
It seriously matters because not all changes someone is making will sound consistantly better across the board, just as one EQ setting may not work for every album in one's collection. This *still* is the responsibility of the DSP chain and every decent player out there at least has an EQ if it matters enough to you. Personally, I find to have met every single possible requirement I could ever need in that department, not to mention many other playlist-centric features and scripting support as well as disgustingly low resource usage. However, I don't think it magically 'sounds better' than its competition.
Also, seeing as both XMMS and WinAMP are both using reference decoders that follow spec exactly, I find your claims to be entirely made of up placebo effect. What's more likely is that one mixer is louder than the other (Depending on which mixer is being used in Windows, this can be the case. Using KernelStreaming can seriously remove most questions such as this), which is another common way for users to make such assumptions.
If you were to use the diskwriting functions of both players on a test sample and compare them via a blind listening test program such as ABX and prove that one was better than the other with consistant, reproducable results then you'd have done a service to both program teams and likely allowed one to fix something incorrect. However, the burden of proof relies on yourself to prove such claims through science.
The only reason why Sonique's decoder sounds 'better' is because they're breaking spec and likely doing filtering behind the user's back. I'm not so sure if the 1.9x series of Sonique players before their eventual failure to realize 2.0 were any different, but I doubt it.
As it says in the article linked above, they weren't do anything they shouldn't in regards to filtering. All things being equal, everyone's MP3 decoder following proper specs, should sound exactly the same -- the way it should be. It's not the decoder's job to filter anything, that's the job of an actual DSP chain you can tweak how you wish.
So the next time someone is making claims about a decoder sounding 'better', provided that they're both using the same output at the same volume levels... One can realize that this is either placebo or there's something going on where nothing should be. Best way to resolve this, is to use whatever available wav logging options to capture samples from each of the disputed players and then ABX them.
.. their work on the SuperFX chip and Starfox for the Super Nintendo. Or maybe the meidocre platformer Croc. I'm sure they'd like to be better known for those. I would, anyway...
I've been a hardware and software collector for as a hobby for a long time. That original link is just some putz who is liquidating their store assetts. I've seen someone collect over 1,500 Mario Bros/Duck Hunt carts.
This guy we have here.. He knows what to collect and does it good. The odds and ends section alone are just are all rare and obscure, as if casually dismissed (Gee, only the rarest titles for some platforms very few have heard about outside of Japan -- and the only rare game for the Game.com!). It really would take a lifetime to get this sort of collection and it almost pains me to see such a beautiful assortment like this go up on eBay.
I think $70,00 is a fair price. I have trouble assessing the worth of some of it just due to how ungodly difficult it is to obtain, even if the price isn't that considerable.
To give you an example? Galactic Policewoman Legend Sapphire for PC Engine? Only about 300 copies of that game exist. Then the autographed games... Including a Nocturne in the Moonlight. Christ.
I'm far more impressed by this guy than the Slashvertisement in the article. I really hope this guy finds his collection a good home.
You care too much about slashdot.
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Hitler...
Many schools, the last time I looked, weren't actually using a letter based grade anymore, they were simply using 'Pass' or 'Fail'. Theoretically, though I'm sure there are PE instructors out there who prove otherwise, it's worth stating...
You are not being graded at all based upon if you can do something or not. You're PE grade has nothing to do with if you did a certain number of situps by a certain ammount of time. Your grade has everything to do with if you bothered to try at all -- If you participated and made the effort.
There's plenty of students who wish to use whatever condition they have, real or imagined as an excuse to not even attempt. There are, of course, certain situations where this is entirely valid... However, I think it's an alarming trend in society, especially to be embraced by students where the problem isn't an obstacle so much as it is a crutch to wave in people's faces.
A good PE instructor isn't out to make anyone feel left out or inferior. It's to make everyone try and work together and improve what they can and find out what strengths they may have. And this is coming from a mediocre PE student at best. I couldn't run, I couldn't do a billion situps, I was generally weak and couldn't shoot a basket to save my life... but I sure kicked my class's ass at dodgeball.
On another note -- While I find DDR's idea of electronic music to be kinda fruity and I think a lot of it is silly, I do see merit in people using it as a good excuse for exercise. I've known several people who shed a lot of weight over one summer when they took up DDR and cut down on the soda. I almost envy them.
I think perhaps Konami could find a market in producing an 'Educational' version of DDR for use in American schools. I'd actually support such an idea if executed properly.
Completely incorrect. There *IS* a Maniac Mansion in Japan, and it's quite different than the US release. It's graphics are far more primitive looking and overall, the US port done by Jaleco was much better.
There's also ports of Loom to both the PC Engine (Turbo Grafx-16) and the FM Towns platforms. The FM Towns port is rather rare and had additional voices and audio beyond that of the PC CD-ROM, and it was in both English and Japanese. There was also a 256 color version of Zak McKraken for FM Towns. So, yeah, there's LucasArt games in Japan.
Most of the arguments presented by the article can be dismissed once the lowest common denominator is taken into account. Your average *CONSUMER* does not like having computers being more complicated than they 'really need to be'.
If and when the so-called great Linux revolution occurs, distros will have to keep the needs of the average consumer in mind. Y'know, the people who outnumber your average slashdot reader in droves? Most of these people have no desire or need to really learn anything beyond what it takes to turn on the machine, open a browser and check their email, maybe running an IM client and the occassional game. Having any expectations of them learning commandline tools such as chmod is pushing it. Microsoft's design choices weren't always out of their own stupidity so much as knowing the majority of potential customers -- the customers with the biggest numbers, thus ones you'd need to be a dominant OS -- aren't informed and *don't wish to be*.
Feel free to wring your hands over it.
Actually, the Genesis is more than capable of being backwards compatable with the SMS. There was an official Sega device called the Power Base Converter that sat atop of the Genesis and allowed the SMS cards, carts and controllers to be plugged into the system. At boot time on the Genesis, there's an interrupt you can call that sends the system into an SMS compatable mode. It's all pretty much there in hardware.
Backwards compatability is an old hat for many systems. All the Atari consoles of note were backwards compatable (though one required an adapter), the PC Engine/TG-16 line was rock solid in Japan due to how you could *upgrade* older systems to play newer games, in addition to backwards compatability, which is something no other console platform has really pulled off successfully. The 32x doesn't count in the slightest..
Actually, backwards compatability doesn't nessicarily ensure anything. There's been other consoles offering such, one being the Atari 5600 (via an expensive adapter, released being too late) , the Atari 7800 and more importantly, the NEC PC Engine/Turbo Grafx-16 line.
With the NEC PC Engine line you had the core system, which out of the box could crush the competition (i.e. NES and SMS). Then you could add on a CD drive. It came with a system card, you popped it in and you were ready to go. They later made a system called the Duo, released as the Turbo Duo here in the States. It intergrated the core, the CD drive and an upgrade to the system that allowed it to surpass other competitions at the time (i.e. the Sega Genesis).
Not only did it do that, it also allowed backwards compatability to all your previous games... and something no other system I'm aware of has really toyed with, other than Sega and it's failed 32x, you could purchase a System 3.0 card and pop it in your core/CD combo and upgrade it to a Duo. So, you didn't need to buy the new hardware at all and could still keep up.
Also in the middle of all this, they released a handheld system, the PC Engine GT/Turbo Express, which used the same game cards the console systems themselves used and (at the time) quite an impressive color screen that has only been surpassed in quality by the Sega Nomad, which also did the same sort of idea, using the Genesis carts as its games. The unit even offered a TV Tuner upgrade, which was quite insane back in '89-90. Unfortunately the thing ate batteries like they were going out of style.
The only system NEC had that was a complete flop (in Japan, anyway, the only area the PC Engine line was strong at all) was known as the SuperGrafx. It was a rather unusual system that added a good number of graphical features in order to combat the Super Famicom (SNES) before its release. Previous owners had no upgrade path and it required an adapter to attach a CD-ROM drive and a System 3.0 card, or a more expensive CD-ROM drive which featured an intergrated System 3.0 card that still sells for high prices to this day. When the SNES was released, it turned out to be not as much of a killer hardware platform as feared and NEC pretty much shot the mark. Most people hung onto their older platforms and the SuperGrafx died having only six games produced for it, although it's still perfectly capable of running every previous card based game and CD (provided you buy and attach the drive).
The last upgrade was offered in a card alone, known as the Arcade Card. It came in two versions, Arcade Pro and Arcade Duo, if your system had an intergraded 3.0 card, either in the system itself or the drive attached, then you grabbed the Duo. The Arcade Pro was for everything else. It allowed primitive polygonal effects and the ability to port a lot of SNK's Neo-Geo fighting titles to the system rather impresively. There were quite a handful of Arcade CDs released before the system's eventual demise. New games are unearthed for this platform even to this day, although admittedly they are quite rare, far, few and between.
In the end, the system had a very long extended life (in Japan.. it failed in the US), a rabid fanbase to this day and in every version of the system, a 6502 processor as its CPU. Yep, it was technically an 8-bit system offering the first CD-ROM attachment, graphics on par with the Genesis and SNES (although I'd never claim it could outnumbercrunch the Genesis with its 68k CPU which was beefiest of the bunch, despite the system's weaker graphics support) when fully upgraded and even one of the best Castlevania games ever, Dracula X, which the very popular PSX game Symphony of the Night is a direct sequel to and the GBA games also in the same Dracula X series.
However, none of this meant a thing in the US. It's a feature, admittedly a very useful feature, but one that doesn't ensure the livlihood of any popular system. The Atari platforms mentioned were failures, despite offering support for the blazingly successful 2600/VCS. The NEC system bombed in the United States and never kept its hold even in Japan, which resulted them in developing the PC-FX, totally not compatable with the others and also a terrible failure other than its mass of IF/Hentai games which still appeal to many, like the FM Towns Marty, which was compatable with the FM Towns II computer's CD-ROM software in most cases.
What definately matters for the success of a system is a signature. Something they are known for. Sony isn't known for anything in particular, as they're always changing their lineup and what to expect from them. Diversity isn't nessicarily a bad thing, but I knew when I bought my GameCube I'd (eventually) have a killer game featuring Mario that was a blast to play, at the very minimum. A counter point would be when I bought the Dreamcast (probably the closest spiritual successor to the PC Engine, especially in fanbase), I knew I would have a speed-frenzied Sonic platformer and AM2 titles. Unfortunately, despite not only having an amazing 1st gen lineup of games and graphical prowless that surpassed PS2's initial 1st and 2nd generation of games as developers eventually decyphered the workings of Sony's kludge-job of a devkit and system, it died due to most people holding out to see what else would be surfacing.
The X-Box and Sony's consoles haven't really scored anything other than hits of the moment and not even really in first party. Sure, Microsoft has Rare, but Rare hasn't really done anything other than file off the serial numbers of Miyamoto's work and attach an annoying set of characters to it. I'd have to go back pretty far before I'd see a game from them I really was crazy over, like maybe Pin-Bot or RC Pro Am.
Anyway, this is getting rather long. I should stop here. Sounds like a great idea.
I can't sit here and hope to convince you anything about SACD, since most of you are too busy speculating and screaming your heads off because you can't go and copy an SACD of a disc that has most likely been out in CD for quite some time. What I can do is tell you the following things and hope maybe at least one of you will actually go out and hear a high-res format sometime before posting without once even givng an honest listen to the format.
.wav. It sounded like a poor AM radio version of the song playing, but that goes to show just how much info between the two were actually changed.
First off, there definately are SACD/DVD-A combo players. There's quite a few of them covering the entire spectrum of how much you want to spend on gear. Personally, I think a good purchase would be the Pioneer Elite 47Ai, which also has digital outputs, another thing that article is completely wrong about. The 47Ai has, by quite a few people's accounts including my own, some of the best video output of any DVD-Video player out there, especially at its price point.
Second off, most DVD-Audio discs *can* reach 192Khz for a sampling rate, however, most of them are released at 96Khz. Another thing is that Verance has actually changed their statement of their watermarking from being unperceptable to 'unnoticable'. That's because, well, you can actually hear it! This isn't a faint different, it actually colors the sound a bit from the original. There was a small test conducted by a person who obtained the Verance software and after doing a compare between the source and the watermarked version decided to isolate the difference between the two into a single
Third, SACD can be produced by independant artists if they wish to, there's actually several mastering kits out there ranging from $5k and up that you can save up, snag, take home and master stuff to. Products like SADiE, Pyramix, Sony's own Sonoma, are all available to be purchased by anyone who wishes to produce their own SACDs. Just searching on the web for 'SACD Mastering' brings up a lot of smaller production houses willing to do it for you as well. Slowly, places capable of pressing SACDs are catching up in pace as more plants are opened and the tech gets out there.
Also, claims about SACD not being higher than '24kHz' (when it's really around 100kHz) and the like are also rather bunk. There's a lot of people trying to test DSD by methods meant for PCM, which simply does NOT work because they are two completely alien methods of handling sound from each other with just enough in common that they both can be handled by some of the same processors. A good article found here will explain a bit more actually what's going on with DSD. There's been some people claiming that from a 'mathmatical standpoint' SACD is on par with a cassette tape (!), but even your layman doing an A->B between the two could tell you that's not the case. As a friend put it "If it measures bad, but your output is good, then you're measuring wrong".
Lastly, the bit about the CD layers of hybrid discs not sounding as good is also a lot of bunk thrown out by groups like Warner (DVD-Audio's big pusher) whom want to scare a lot of people away. However, one thing to keep in mind, is that SACD hybrid discs are being snuck in without any such labeling as to their hybrid status on the packaging. For example, that brand new set of Rolling Stones remastered stuff in digipak packaging are all SACD hybrids. Vivendi Universal has just begun releasing hybrid discs with the possible intention of switching over to exclusively releasing hybrids in the next year or so.
They don't cost anything more than the actual CD, and since SACD players can be snagged as low as $120 now, it's a bit easier to get into playing the the high-res layer. However, at $120, players I'd consider 'amazing' aren't many, in fact, it'd be just one that was recently discontinued. The Sony SCD-CE775 5-Disc SACD changer is one of the best players I've heard under $200, easily doing Redbook playback comparable to some $1k decks I've heard. Internally the SCD-CD775 is almost exactly the same as Sony's $450 SCD-C222ES SACD player, save its cheaper casing, slightly different power supply and a bit cheaper capacitors. If you really wish to get serious, you can have people like this guy spend some quality time with your SCD-CD775 or a few other models of players and have him upgrade and change a lot of the parts for better sounding playback. However, I doubt that'll appeal to everyone who doesn't own at least a good set of headphones (Sennheiser HD-600s, Sony MDR-CD3000s, Grado RS-1s, Audio Technica ATH-W100s, Etymotic ER-4S, etc.)
Also, most audiophile have been raving about some SACD players and their Redbook playback ability. I don't know about this Arizona group of '53 people' or one particular shop whom wasn't even aware of decks capable of DVD-A and SACD while also providing digital out, but you look for reviews of Sony's 'SCD-XA777ES' player and you'll find many saying it does some of the best CD playback you can possibly buy. Phillips, Denon and others are getting in on players of the same quality at comparable prices.
In short, I've found that article to be rather a lot of FUD, and the reactions of quite a few here to be playing into that quite nicely. Personally I own both a DVD-A and SACD player and titles for both, but I rather prefer SACD after spending a bit of time on each using decent gear (Carver CM-1090 amp, custom amps, Sennheiser HD-600 headphones, etc.) I also own about 350 legitimate CDs and continue to purchase CDs on top of higher-res formats. Am I at all alarmed that my ability for backups of these newer formats are limited? No, not really. I take care of my discs and my need to back them up or play them on my PC (although the new SB Audigy 2 can play back DVD-Audio on PCs) or portable unit is pretty unnessicary. One thing I will say, is that if interest picks up enough, I'm sure a DeCSS-alike will surface and so will another hailstorm of controversy and merry fun that Slashdot readers thrive on.
That wouldn't work in Hell. Satan already has gone MS for their three week long PowerPoint-presented orientation. I hear the souls of the damned don't like his Ben Stein impression none too much as he goes over it, either.
Actually, even according to William Gibson, the credit of the first cyberpunk story belongs to John Shirley, who wrote both the vastly superior 'City Come A'Walkin' and the short story 'Tricentennial'. Even Sterling has done forwards for Shirley's books. Shirley also has the credits for doing the screenplay to the Crow.
Then again, I suppose most people are used to Gibson, someone who wrote 'Neuromancer' out of his fear of computers, as the 'father' of Cyberpunk.
For more information on John Shirley
64Kbps is where the flaws of a codec are truely exposed. It's a great median between being too high to produce much results and too low where everything completely falls apart. You may not think any of this has any relevance to you as you're encoding above 128Kbps, but it actually does make a difference when you stress your encoder with a difficult piece of music.
However, if the difference between sounding 'good' and sounding 'accurate' mean little to you, as someone who'd make an argument of 64Kbps tests being worthless would, then you really aren't the intended audiance of such tests. You can merrily use any of those encoders at 128-192Kbps without ever really noticing or caring much.
I, personally, would like to see OGG1.0, MP3 Pro and WMA8 take on some real tough to beat codecs such as Dolby's AAC High-Complexity Mode (which no AAC freely available encoder supports, including QuickTime) and Sony's ATRAC3. But, that'd be kinda moot, because most people out there do not have access to those toys.
For now, I'm content to just watch people hop around and proclaim whatever they want as king of audio formats while sticking to 256Kbps Fraunhoffer MP3 (archival purposes) and 192Kbps LAME HQ MP3 (general usage) as something both widely supported and pratically indistinguishable from the source. Even if AAC-HC and ATRAC3 were freely available, it'd take an awful large effort to wean people off of MP3 so far as support base and to migrate them to a new format. New P2P programs, new players/plug-ins (in some cases) and new hardware players. Not gonna happen for a while.