It doesn't solve the problem when your entire piece of music consists entirely of hundreds of sines all along;). But it most practical cases you're right, it makes things better.
Allow me to be very sceptical, or should I say, BS! Noise is noise, there's no way you can cut it into saying it's overtones, because it's just not a bunch of discrete stacked up sines. You can just Fourier transform any such noisy sound into figuring this out.
The problem is, when you give the encoder a precise bitrate to work with, and that you have hundreds of overtones which are all about as loud, well, it can't do, so things have to get ugly.
Yeah, you're right about the HAL-Photoshop comment, actually you know what, if you had an audio codec that looked at the features in a sound, "vectorised" them (or if you prefer, "described" them) instead of dumbly cutting the sound in time chunks and encoding that in the frequency domain, you'd get a hell of a strong compression algorithm, way higher than MP3, even though probably quite lossy. Funny this thought never occurred to me before.
And I'm not sure I understand your "bits are bits" comment. If you mean that you could already carry images in the sound by either modem-like communication or using a binary stream you miss the whole point by a huge shot. The point is that sounds can be created and modified as images.
Am I the only one who finds that the search function in Google Groups sucks abysmally? I mean, you've got 10 duplicate results for even thread returned all over the place which makes looking for results from threads you haven't read from yet impossible.
No it's not the point. The point is, in such kinds of music as "spectralist music" there's a much higher density of "sound information" due to the shear number of overtones and it requires higher encoding bitrates.
As for the point of the experiment I linked to, the point isn't to actually store images in MP3s but to show how images can be transmitted over sound with a good quality, furthermore in an intuitive format (i.e. the image's 2 space dimensions are 'mapped' to the sound's time and frequency dimensions). The practicality (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.
No he's right I'm afraid. On sounds with hundreds of overtones, even a rate of 256 kbps (in stereo) isn't enough. I know because I experimented with image transmission over the sound by synthesising an image into a sound by turning each horizontal line into a modulated sine at a specific frequency. Here's an example with the input and output image transmitted over a 256 kbps (mono!) MP3.
Long story short, when you've got over 500 overtones simultaneously, you need a much higher bitrate. In the aforementioned example with a bitrate of 128 kbps (mono) the output image would get very noisy, and at 64 kbps (mono) which should be considered a normal rate for normal audio music, you could barely recognise either the sound or the input image. The areas that wouldn't be blacked out (entire squares or triangles) would be noised out beyond recognition. Feel free to reproduce my example with varying MP3 encoding rates and you'll see for yourself, the amount of overtones matters an awful lot.
Wait, what? It's not a blind test? Fail. For it to be done correctly it should be a blind test (i.e. you don't know what was encoded with what) and made sure that all outputs have the same volume (that influences on your perception of quality, just like sugar level influences how tasty you think a soda is).
I'm afraid that the people who do have a much limited knowledge of the universe around them. And by 'universe around them' I mean 'whatever the fuck's outside the 3 American states they've ever visited'.
If you're having a hard time making out the image, it might be because the image is flipped, as though looking at it in a mirror. Emily Lakdawalla over at the Planetary Society blog figured this out and has flipped the image for us (see below). Why is the original image backwards? Emily explains, "Data doesn't come down from spacecraft in familiar formats like JPEG or TIFF; it's a stream of ones and zeroes, with a format unique to the science instrument, and scientists and engineers write their own software for translating that into raw image data. There are varying conventions for whether bits are written right or left, and if you take that raw image data and open it up in a piece of off-the-shelf image processing software, the image might be backwards." As Emily says, the error is not really important.
Wow, who fucking cares. Just flip it, who cares how their internal format represents the image. The BMP format is vertically flipped, does anyone care or convert BMP images so that they appear flipped vertically? No, nobody cares, god damnit, so why make half of the bloody article about it?
Funny you should mention cellphones, all the commercial game demos I've tried on my N95 all have "flashy" (by modern cell phone standards) 3D graphics, but abysmal gameplays that cannot compare to any standard during any era in the history of the video games.
Everything that won't always be necessary to our survival (sex, food, breathing) will eventually be a fad. Everything that will disappear will be deemable of having been a fad. Maybe even we will be deemed a fad of nature, when we disappear.
Very true. I think that since the widespread advent of 3D graphics, 3D has been seen as a must-do, i.e. well feel that 2D belongs to the early 90s. And therefore, 3D is forced onto any genre because well you don't have the choice, people still enjoy the relative novelty of 3D.
However, sometimes, often, as you pointed out, it makes the gameplay worse, by making things harder to control, to see, and so on. Sonic the Hedgehog was never better than when it was in 2D. It should have stayed this way, unfortunately it didn't have a choice. Besides, there's another aspect of 2D graphics that can make it a good choice compared to 3D graphics. 3D graphics, age poorly, models never have enough polygons, textures never have enough resolution, and so on. This being said, 2D graphics can be all you can want, considered modern hardware capabilities. And you've got to admit, Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis, Super Metroid for SNES or Super Mario SNES still look damn good.
In conclusion, I think that the peak of the 3D hype is just behind us, and that in the future we'll see 2D and 3D graphics, under their increasingly varying forms, be re-appreciated for what they're really worth.
Are you kidding? Anyone knows that Mega Man for SNES > Grand Theft Auto 4, by every possible metric. Oh and did you try that game E.T. for the Atari 2600? Best. Game. Ever. They don't make games like that anymore..
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's not really my point.
It doesn't solve the problem when your entire piece of music consists entirely of hundreds of sines all along ;). But it most practical cases you're right, it makes things better.
Allow me to be very sceptical, or should I say, BS! Noise is noise, there's no way you can cut it into saying it's overtones, because it's just not a bunch of discrete stacked up sines. You can just Fourier transform any such noisy sound into figuring this out.
There's overtones in cymbals? I thought it was more all like noise.. oh well, same difference, regarding the MP3 conversion that is.
The problem is, when you give the encoder a precise bitrate to work with, and that you have hundreds of overtones which are all about as loud, well, it can't do, so things have to get ugly.
Yeah, you're right about the HAL-Photoshop comment, actually you know what, if you had an audio codec that looked at the features in a sound, "vectorised" them (or if you prefer, "described" them) instead of dumbly cutting the sound in time chunks and encoding that in the frequency domain, you'd get a hell of a strong compression algorithm, way higher than MP3, even though probably quite lossy. Funny this thought never occurred to me before.
And I'm not sure I understand your "bits are bits" comment. If you mean that you could already carry images in the sound by either modem-like communication or using a binary stream you miss the whole point by a huge shot. The point is that sounds can be created and modified as images.
Pffft, STFU.
Unsubstantiated? Didn't you read what I say earlier about the effect of lower bitrates? STFU?
Am I the only one who finds that the search function in Google Groups sucks abysmally? I mean, you've got 10 duplicate results for even thread returned all over the place which makes looking for results from threads you haven't read from yet impossible.
By not RTFA and by assuming that if the tests were run by the user it meant he could know which made what.
No it's not the point. The point is, in such kinds of music as "spectralist music" there's a much higher density of "sound information" due to the shear number of overtones and it requires higher encoding bitrates.
As for the point of the experiment I linked to, the point isn't to actually store images in MP3s but to show how images can be transmitted over sound with a good quality, furthermore in an intuitive format (i.e. the image's 2 space dimensions are 'mapped' to the sound's time and frequency dimensions). The practicality (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.
No he's right I'm afraid. On sounds with hundreds of overtones, even a rate of 256 kbps (in stereo) isn't enough. I know because I experimented with image transmission over the sound by synthesising an image into a sound by turning each horizontal line into a modulated sine at a specific frequency. Here's an example with the input and output image transmitted over a 256 kbps (mono!) MP3.
Long story short, when you've got over 500 overtones simultaneously, you need a much higher bitrate. In the aforementioned example with a bitrate of 128 kbps (mono) the output image would get very noisy, and at 64 kbps (mono) which should be considered a normal rate for normal audio music, you could barely recognise either the sound or the input image. The areas that wouldn't be blacked out (entire squares or triangles) would be noised out beyond recognition. Feel free to reproduce my example with varying MP3 encoding rates and you'll see for yourself, the amount of overtones matters an awful lot.
Wait, what? It's not a blind test? Fail. For it to be done correctly it should be a blind test (i.e. you don't know what was encoded with what) and made sure that all outputs have the same volume (that influences on your perception of quality, just like sugar level influences how tasty you think a soda is).
Using a condom kills the spontaneity of getting fucked up the ass by a complete stranger at airport bathrooms.
Larry Craig? (I assume Larry Bagina would be your incognito name?)
This sounds alot like the movie "I am legend"
Which itself sounded a lot like the book "I Am Legend".
Surely you mean iAir, a device that would emit a playlist of scents.
Oh wait, it's not such a bad idea actually. First one to the USPTO wins!
My suggestion to the Slashdot administrators : add "yOUR" to your lameness filter. Problem solved.
I'm afraid that the people who do have a much limited knowledge of the universe around them. And by 'universe around them' I mean 'whatever the fuck's outside the 3 American states they've ever visited'.
The problem being, how do we get it where we need it, in time.
Who wouldn't be..
If you're having a hard time making out the image, it might be because the image is flipped, as though looking at it in a mirror. Emily Lakdawalla over at the Planetary Society blog figured this out and has flipped the image for us (see below). Why is the original image backwards? Emily explains, "Data doesn't come down from spacecraft in familiar formats like JPEG or TIFF; it's a stream of ones and zeroes, with a format unique to the science instrument, and scientists and engineers write their own software for translating that into raw image data. There are varying conventions for whether bits are written right or left, and if you take that raw image data and open it up in a piece of off-the-shelf image processing software, the image might be backwards." As Emily says, the error is not really important.
Wow, who fucking cares. Just flip it, who cares how their internal format represents the image. The BMP format is vertically flipped, does anyone care or convert BMP images so that they appear flipped vertically? No, nobody cares, god damnit, so why make half of the bloody article about it?
Funny you should mention cellphones, all the commercial game demos I've tried on my N95 all have "flashy" (by modern cell phone standards) 3D graphics, but abysmal gameplays that cannot compare to any standard during any era in the history of the video games.
Everything that won't always be necessary to our survival (sex, food, breathing) will eventually be a fad. Everything that will disappear will be deemable of having been a fad. Maybe even we will be deemed a fad of nature, when we disappear.
Very true. I think that since the widespread advent of 3D graphics, 3D has been seen as a must-do, i.e. well feel that 2D belongs to the early 90s. And therefore, 3D is forced onto any genre because well you don't have the choice, people still enjoy the relative novelty of 3D.
However, sometimes, often, as you pointed out, it makes the gameplay worse, by making things harder to control, to see, and so on. Sonic the Hedgehog was never better than when it was in 2D. It should have stayed this way, unfortunately it didn't have a choice. Besides, there's another aspect of 2D graphics that can make it a good choice compared to 3D graphics. 3D graphics, age poorly, models never have enough polygons, textures never have enough resolution, and so on. This being said, 2D graphics can be all you can want, considered modern hardware capabilities. And you've got to admit, Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis, Super Metroid for SNES or Super Mario SNES still look damn good.
In conclusion, I think that the peak of the 3D hype is just behind us, and that in the future we'll see 2D and 3D graphics, under their increasingly varying forms, be re-appreciated for what they're really worth.
Are you kidding? Anyone knows that Mega Man for SNES > Grand Theft Auto 4, by every possible metric. Oh and did you try that game E.T. for the Atari 2600? Best. Game. Ever. They don't make games like that anymore..