1. LAME is the only encoder you should ever be using for MP3. It is both free, and available for Linux.
2. MP3pro uses a technology to compress the high frequencies. It therefore sounds better than MP3 at low bitrates, but worse at high bitrates. It will never be popular.
Check out www.hydrogenaudio.com for information on how to properly encode MP3s, Ogg etc.
I used to run Terminal Services through an SSH tunnel courtesy of PuTTY, on port 443, so that (in addition to extra encryption and compression, and the ability to tunnel through my linux firewall to my windows box) I could disguise the session as HTTPS, so the company net cops wouldn't come after me. Worked perfectly. Waaaaaay smoother than VNC btw.
Its such a tired argument, really. The fact is, the Pentium4 clocks awsomely by design, with an (intentional) tradeoff in IPC, while the Athlon is the opposite. They are both neck and neck now performance wise. So many people think that Intel "screwed up" on the IPCs. This is complete bullshit, they just took a different tactic.
The Pentium M is essentially a modified P3, which extra cache, SSE2 and a faster FSB. Since the P3 was at least in the same IPC ballpark as the Athlon, I'm sure the M is going to clean up at similar clockspeeds. However, again, it doesn't clock as high.
Just different tactics, they are all really quite comparible from a design (and performance) point of view. The only problem is the public perception of MHz being the only factor. For some reason this does not occur in the video card market, just in CPUs.
Actually, this is entirely the point of XML. XML is not Yet Another Word Processor Format. It's intended to store "content" as opposed to "presentation", leaving "presentation" up to the app, much as was the original intent of HTML. Rather than an evil Microsoft plot, they are in fact conforming to the spec when they produce such a file.
Bullshit, XML is designed to describe absolutely anything and everything.
Sure, in the case of XHTML there is a desire to eliminate presentation aspects through the use of XSL for instance, but even XSL (a stylesheet, content language) is XML.
There is no reason why a custom Word XML format can't contain both. XML does not restrict you like that.
Thats easy to fix, just rip with EAC (exact audio copy) and have it build its own TOC....wait... EAC is only available on Windows. We should really be trying to port THAT!
I'm telling you the results of hundreds of double-blind tests. I DON'T think there is any problem with the Vorbis format, just needs some psychoacoustic tuning to compete with MPC and MP3 at higher bitrates. I agree that Ogg is the king at 128kbps but that is not really a transparent bitrate to a trained listener (Again, I'm not being elitist, this is the result of double blind tests).
Vorbis does have pretty good chances of portable hardware support, which is nice. Of course I fully expect AAC (MP4) and WMA to have even better support. Hopefully Vorbis will make it onto some popular players - neither of the other two options are free in any sense of the word.
You should try MPC, its really slick! It encodes about 10x faster than LAME, and is completely transparent with --quality 5 (vbr around 170kbps). Its essentially patent-free I believe as well.
Yes, but the flu is already beyond containment. Tell me, if we had a reasonable chance of eliminating the flu through a few hundred quarantines for a few weeks, wouldn't you agree it was worth it? What about the common cold? I certainly would think thats a pretty good trade-off.
I was of course comparing MP3, a lossy codec, to WM9 lossy. To compare it unfavorably to a lossless codec (that creates files many times larger) is apples to oranges.
Have you tried a comparison of LAME --alt-preset standard to the equivalent WM9 (~200kbps VBR) using blind testing? I have. I can tell the WM9 encode appart from the original wave every time, while the LAME MP3 I cannot. This is because, with those settings, LAME acheives almost complete transparency. The only other codec I have seen achieve this is MPC --quality standard (~170kbps).
I don't have anything against MS per se, unlike most people here. I like their video codecs infact. I like WM for low bitrate applications. I prefer FLAC or Monkey's Audio for lossless because they are more space-efficient, but I think MS's first try was pretty good.
One last thing, I agree fully that WM9 128kbps ABR (its an average bitrate btw, not variable, because all files come out the same size - just a small point) is superior to say, a FhG or Xing encoded ABR MP3 at the same bitrate. I also consider 128kbps ABR to be awful for anything other than streaming.
Ultimately I think LAME wins out at higher bitrates not because MP3 is a better format (its actually an ugly mess), but because LAME has one of the best psychoacoustic models out there.
Ultimately MP3 will be replaced by AAC or AAC+, which DO support 5.1 and don't have the same hindrances. But for acoustically transparent encodings off CD, nothing beats LAME 3.90.2 --alt-preset standard at the moment with the exception of MPC --preset standard.
DRM is an optional component for WM. It will soon be an optional component in Ogg as well. There are plenty of reasons to avoid windows media format, audio quality being one of them. DRM is not a good reason though. If anything it really is an optional feature.
First of all, I don't understand the propensity around here to open an argument by insulting the intelligence of the other party.
Second of all, there is a difference between splicing in a naturally occuring immunity gene from another species, and adding a man-made gene to produce herbicidal or pestacidal toxins. I haven't seen any evidence that the latter is even possible yet.
well this is getting offtopic, but yes in that case I agree with you. My problem is with people buying "organic" foods because genetically engineered = evil. They don't realize that they are engineered to REDUCE reliance on pesticides for instance. "organic" foods are actually recalled something like 10 times as often for health reasons.
The thing is, living forest biomass is a store of CO2. So by cutting or burning down forests, you add CO2 to the atmosphere. but you are correct, forests are only a sink for CO2 if they are getting larger or more mature. Fossil fuel CO2 comes from underground, and that is where it has to return if we are to maintain equilibrium without reforesting the entire planet.
The problem with this argument is that science is a useful but imperfect tool. As a scientist, you SHOULD be distrustful of its application when a failure could be catastrophic. Predicting future climatic changes is a good thing, even if sometimes flawed. building nuclear power plants are NOT a good thing when done wrong.
I am a huge proponent of science. I think the outrage over genetically modified foods is reactionary and ungrounded. I support the development of alternative fuel sources (even nuclear) but I DON'T support the blind application of all things "scientific" when the consequences could be catastrophic.
it's is a special case. It's could be a contraction of "It is" or refer to "it's" ownership of something. Because of this, the latter useage is infact incorrect, and "its" is used instead. Follow?
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1. LAME is the only encoder you should ever be using for MP3. It is both free, and available for Linux.
2. MP3pro uses a technology to compress the high frequencies. It therefore sounds better than MP3 at low bitrates, but worse at high bitrates. It will never be popular.
Check out www.hydrogenaudio.com for information on how to properly encode MP3s, Ogg etc.
...which is why linksys is so inexpensive. If you need LAN equipment that is guaranteed to stay constant over a long period, buy high-end 3COM.
(actually, all the different linksys 100baseT cards I've tried have used the tulip driver anyhow, despite frequent chipset changes.)
I used to run Terminal Services through an SSH tunnel courtesy of PuTTY, on port 443, so that (in addition to extra encryption and compression, and the ability to tunnel through my linux firewall to my windows box) I could disguise the session as HTTPS, so the company net cops wouldn't come after me. Worked perfectly. Waaaaaay smoother than VNC btw.
Its such a tired argument, really. The fact is, the Pentium4 clocks awsomely by design, with an (intentional) tradeoff in IPC, while the Athlon is the opposite. They are both neck and neck now performance wise. So many people think that Intel "screwed up" on the IPCs. This is complete bullshit, they just took a different tactic.
The Pentium M is essentially a modified P3, which extra cache, SSE2 and a faster FSB. Since the P3 was at least in the same IPC ballpark as the Athlon, I'm sure the M is going to clean up at similar clockspeeds. However, again, it doesn't clock as high.
Just different tactics, they are all really quite comparible from a design (and performance) point of view. The only problem is the public perception of MHz being the only factor. For some reason this does not occur in the video card market, just in CPUs.
shoot, I meant XSL (a stylesheet, presentation language) is XML.
Actually, this is entirely the point of XML. XML is not Yet Another Word Processor Format. It's intended to store "content" as opposed to "presentation", leaving "presentation" up to the app, much as was the original intent of HTML. Rather than an evil Microsoft plot, they are in fact conforming to the spec when they produce such a file.
Bullshit, XML is designed to describe absolutely anything and everything.
Sure, in the case of XHTML there is a desire to eliminate presentation aspects through the use of XSL for instance, but even XSL (a stylesheet, content language) is XML.
There is no reason why a custom Word XML format can't contain both. XML does not restrict you like that.
Thats easy to fix, just rip with EAC (exact audio copy) and have it build its own TOC. ...wait... EAC is only available on Windows. We should really be trying to port THAT!
Oops called it Ogg once. This is incorrect - Ogg is a container format for Vorbis audio streams much as MP4 is a container for AAC.
I'm telling you the results of hundreds of double-blind tests. I DON'T think there is any problem with the Vorbis format, just needs some psychoacoustic tuning to compete with MPC and MP3 at higher bitrates. I agree that Ogg is the king at 128kbps but that is not really a transparent bitrate to a trained listener (Again, I'm not being elitist, this is the result of double blind tests).
Vorbis does have pretty good chances of portable hardware support, which is nice. Of course I fully expect AAC (MP4) and WMA to have even better support. Hopefully Vorbis will make it onto some popular players - neither of the other two options are free in any sense of the word.
You should try MPC, its really slick! It encodes about 10x faster than LAME, and is completely transparent with --quality 5 (vbr around 170kbps).
Its essentially patent-free I believe as well.
Yes, but the flu is already beyond containment. Tell me, if we had a reasonable chance of eliminating the flu through a few hundred quarantines for a few weeks, wouldn't you agree it was worth it? What about the common cold? I certainly would think thats a pretty good trade-off.
No, its a legal document. We still have to amend the constitution, can't just lend lip service to it like some countries do.
Besides, don't articles like this suggest that the US is treating the constitution lately like you claim other countries do?
I was of course comparing MP3, a lossy codec, to WM9 lossy. To compare it unfavorably to a lossless codec (that creates files many times larger) is apples to oranges.
Have you tried a comparison of LAME --alt-preset standard to the equivalent WM9 (~200kbps VBR) using blind testing? I have. I can tell the WM9 encode appart from the original wave every time, while the LAME MP3 I cannot. This is because, with those settings, LAME acheives almost complete transparency. The only other codec I have seen achieve this is MPC --quality standard (~170kbps).
I don't have anything against MS per se, unlike most people here. I like their video codecs infact. I like WM for low bitrate applications. I prefer FLAC or Monkey's Audio for lossless because they are more space-efficient, but I think MS's first try was pretty good.
One last thing, I agree fully that WM9 128kbps ABR (its an average bitrate btw, not variable, because all files come out the same size - just a small point) is superior to say, a FhG or Xing encoded ABR MP3 at the same bitrate. I also consider 128kbps ABR to be awful for anything other than streaming.
Ultimately I think LAME wins out at higher bitrates not because MP3 is a better format (its actually an ugly mess), but because LAME has one of the best psychoacoustic models out there.
Ultimately MP3 will be replaced by AAC or AAC+, which DO support 5.1 and don't have the same hindrances. But for acoustically transparent encodings off CD, nothing beats LAME 3.90.2 --alt-preset standard at the moment with the exception of MPC --preset standard.
Antialiasing on the PS2?? I'd sure like to see that! Biggest problem with that dang console.
That was a joke, right?
Ever listen to MPC, AAC+, Ogg or even a LAME --alt-preset standard MP3?
Far, far superior. WMA can compete at 64kbps I suppose, but who listens at that bitrate?
DRM is an optional component for WM. It will soon be an optional component in Ogg as well. There are plenty of reasons to avoid windows media format, audio quality being one of them. DRM is not a good reason though. If anything it really is an optional feature.
My bad, this study says 8x more likely:
0 .h tml
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/first/0605-16
Saw it on a documentary, can't remember which. I'll see if i can find something though.
First of all, I don't understand the propensity around here to open an argument by insulting the intelligence of the other party.
Second of all, there is a difference between splicing in a naturally occuring immunity gene from another species, and adding a man-made gene to produce herbicidal or pestacidal toxins. I haven't seen any evidence that the latter is even possible yet.
well this is getting offtopic, but yes in that case I agree with you. My problem is with people buying "organic" foods because genetically engineered = evil. They don't realize that they are engineered to REDUCE reliance on pesticides for instance. "organic" foods are actually recalled something like 10 times as often for health reasons.
The thing is, living forest biomass is a store of CO2. So by cutting or burning down forests, you add CO2 to the atmosphere. but you are correct, forests are only a sink for CO2 if they are getting larger or more mature. Fossil fuel CO2 comes from underground, and that is where it has to return if we are to maintain equilibrium without reforesting the entire planet.
The problem with this argument is that science is a useful but imperfect tool. As a scientist, you SHOULD be distrustful of its application when a failure could be catastrophic. Predicting future climatic changes is a good thing, even if sometimes flawed. building nuclear power plants are NOT a good thing when done wrong.
I am a huge proponent of science. I think the outrage over genetically modified foods is reactionary and ungrounded. I support the development of alternative fuel sources (even nuclear) but I DON'T support the blind application of all things "scientific" when the consequences could be catastrophic.
Yes it was with good reason, but do you think environmentalism had absolutely anything to do with it?
Good point... my guess is that he is now the proud owner of two unconnected properties.
Ahh Slashdot... where peoples' idea of enjoying the outdoors consists of playing gameboy in the sunlight :) I love you guys, seriously :)
it's is a special case. It's could be a contraction of "It is" or refer to "it's" ownership of something. Because of this, the latter useage is infact incorrect, and "its" is used instead.
Follow?