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New I remember Philips saying that, too.
But I can't find it on their web site. I'm guessing that if they crack down heavily on it, the publishers would fast track any plans to move off CDs. Philips wouldn't want that.

Wade.

"Ah. One of the difficult questions."

New Hah..!__like the 'Walk-DVD Player' ? [scrap yer Old one !?]
New It gets complicated.
I'm sure Philips and Sony are still collecting a decent amount of royalties for the CD format. And both of them own a piece of the DVD royalty soup, too.
But moving forward is a tricky one. Backwards compatibility is interesting. Philips discovered that this didn't make up for the limits of linear access with DCC (Digital Compact Cassette). Meanwhile, Sony's MiniDisc has toppled the compact cassette only in Japan - elsewhere it has created its own market niche. Then, too, the Compact Disc required entirely new hardware yet it has successfully just about all but wiped out vinyl.

More recent advances in electronic music storage seem to involve patent-encumbered heavy psycho-acoustic compression on solid-state storage. Unfortunately, the versatile solid-state storage is a) very expensive and b) available in too many formats. More unfortunately, the patent-encumberance and the digital rights minded views of the publishing industry are creating hundreds of all fairly similar products. "Success" is getting redefined while they try to figure out how to control the patents, control the music and get consumers off CDs en-masse. We know that this currently doesn't work but consumers are being turning into boiled frogs in the meantime. If Philips decided to loudly and forcefully declare that "copy-protected" CDs aren't CDs at all, then consumers may find themselves being boiled frogs a lot sooner. And Philips' loses their CD license revenue a lot sooner :-/

Wade.

"Ah. One of the difficult questions."

New And overlaying all the digital permutations, remains..
Analog == the way we hear, from tympannum thru cochlea --> brain. And amidst all the *claimed* Golden Ears [this is a Very old topic BTW] are those also, who have demonstrated via double-blind tests:

Yes (and allowing for the guaranteed poorer S/N and the mere illusion that it is higher on CD = via simple sending the outliers to /dev/null) the sound of 'music' on the better --> best vinyls is indeed deemed more Lifelike than the digitized permutations -

Which must Always pass through [n+1] cascades of ADCs/DACs. Natch too - whether or not the all-along claimed factoids are indeed facts: the matter ceases to be terribly relevant when.. the instruments themselves are part of an electronic generator (!) And clearly These are the $$-makers du jour / thus where most attention is placed, in an age of Pop and of diminishing support for orchestras and the sound of such un-electronicised instruments actually regularly heard Live. (Gotta be rich for that, of late)

(And yes, I do recall when Dolby hit the boards; recall seeing hearing the Very Expen$ive Dolby-A compared on a Crown SS-800 R-to-R tape recorder: at a live string quartet gig.. and onwards thru the morphs.) I ceased seriously keeping up over a decade ago, though -- and there are Lots of 'religious'-cult opinions extant, I know. These natch tend to make all purists seem to be loonies, they being distinguished by NOT employing credible tests of their cockamamie stuff. [Like the welding cables for power amps!]

ie.. whatever the merits of the present and next- meeja; the analog/digital re-production Question shall remain to bug those (few remaining?) who deem music a necessity of life .. for the foreseeable.

Love. It.

Ashton
New I'd forgotten your aspect on that.
I generally move on with technology in my own time, but a certain "it gets easier to be better" tends to earmark it.

Case in point: I don't use cassettes any more, except to copy stuff off that I have on cassette. For the equivalent function, I use MiniDisc. Basically I found I was futzing around so much making Really Good cassette recordings whereas with MiniDisc it's a doddle.

Case #2: making decent sounding MP3 files was a trial of repitition. Apart from it being a novelty when I first looked into it, artifact problems et al made it a bit like the cassette problem. :-( A job change meant I could play my own music at work and that's when I discovered Ogg Vorbis. The encoder offers a ridiculously simple interface: "quality". I haven't encoded an MP3 in more than a year.

Wade.

"Ah. One of the difficult questions."

New Ogg Vorbis
If I ever sucker myself into the whole hog + postage - re Linux.. I see I'll have to try out an O.V. rendition of something with the full orchestral dynamic range and - hear. My ears can be fooled more easily now, for missing a few chunks of the spectrum - so good-enough will do.

..but I can still smell the glassiness of 'over-compressed' fiddling pretty well.

(And converting all those vinyls is comparable to doing the work of the Linux inculcation.. Twice! urk)

Ashton
New Vorbis ain't just for Linux
Go [link|http://www.vorbis.com/download_win.psp|here].
===
Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say "we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way." -- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=38978|Andrew Grygus]
New Thanks!
I'll risk a few more lines in the &^#$& Registry to give it a whirl. Nice to know that the files can be reused later under Linux and... Apple!
For now, quality 0 is roughly equivalent to 64kbps average, 5 is roughly 160kbps, and 10 gives about 400kbps. Most people seeking very-near-CD-quality audio encode at a quality of 5 or, for lossless stereo coupling, 6. The default setting is quality 3, which at approximately 110kbps gives a smaller filesize and significantly better fidelity than .mp3 compression at 128kbps.
So... I guess I'll try orchestral music at level 6 or more; it's gonna be tough to get a 80 dB range with triangles on through double-bass. MP3 (hearsay) fails that pretty much.

But hearing is believing.


Ashton
New Actually, q3 approximates MP3 @ 160, quality-wise.

"Ah. One of the difficult questions."

New Vinyls vs 1's and 0's
"the sound of 'music' on the better --> best vinyls is indeed deemed more Lifelike than the digitized permutations"

I have a lovely A-B comparison on hand. I have a 1945 Wurlitzer 1015 Jukebox that plays 10" 78 rpm singles. Rhino records (god bless them) has released a number of boxed sets of these goodies specifically for the juke collector - complete with printed title strips.

I also have a nice pair of Mackie 824 near field reference monitors - absolutely flat in response these babies are what the pros listen to when mixing your high end content - one of the true gold standards in the audio world (yes different pros favor different models - but these are right up there).

I have several soul classics on both CD and 78 including "This Magic Moment" by the Drifters and several Aretha hits. The Wurly with its single 15" speaker and lovely array of 6L6's sounds better by far.

Ditto for all guitar amps I've used. My Mesa Boogie is the finest amplifier I've ever used.

I love tubes.
I am out of the country for the duration of the Bush administration.
Please leave a message and I'll get back to you when democracy returns.
Expand Edited by tuberculosis Aug. 21, 2007, 06:08:38 AM EDT
New Have you seen the Tubes Rock! T?
[link|http://www.geekculture.com/geekculturestore/webstore/tubesrock.html|or button or cap]?

Darrell Spice, Jr.

[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore

New toobs
Ditto for all guitar amps I've used. My Mesa Boogie is the finest amplifier I've ever used


Totally. Solid State amps cannot even come close to matching the presence, tone, and soul of a good tube amp. Even with today's amp/cab modeling technology. I've got an old Peavey Deuce with a plethora of 6L6s..enough to make your ears bleed..and a Fender Blues Jr. with 12AX7 pre, and EL-34 power sections.

However, I use a Behringer V-amp2 for practice and when playing at my Church. 120watts at glass-shattering decibels doesn't go over in church very well hehehe.

And Spicyguy: got the shirt :)
-----
Steve
New Beg to differ
Toobs are (prolly) real sweet for the various textures of guitars. They really can move from the sweet warble of a Gibson ES being squeezed by the likes of B.B., up to the overdriven wail of a Strat in full heat.

But for the Bass, tubes just don't make it!

Sorry, but the best bass amp yet to be made is the Acoustic 360 (and its later, bigger brother, the 370).. That sucker could coax funk, warmth, slap pop or just plain good ol' Grand Funk growl from a Fender Jazz to a gibson EB to a Rick 4002, long before many of those sounds required active electronics to fully realize. All solid state, all the time! (And it almost met my ultimate requirement for a bass amp: Turn it on, crank it up, stand it front of it, hit the open 'E' string, and have it knock my feet out from underneath me!)

I've cooked several dozen (prolly up to a hundred) 6L6GCs and 12AX7s (and 12AY7s) in Fender tube amps for decades. Thank Ghod for Radio Shack's "Lifetime" tube series (now, alas, discontinued). For bass, I personally don't want to hear any discussion about tubes, overdriven front-ends, or the like...you 6-stringers can run that forum to yer heart's content. Just gimme 4, fat strings, 37" of neck, and 250W of solid-state juice driving a 2-way...then get out my way!


[Edit: Fixed numerous requisite typos....]
jb4
"They lead. They don't manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your horse. You can lead your horse to water, but you can't manage him to drink."
Richard Kerr, United Technologies Corporation, 1990
Expand Edited by jb4 Jan. 21, 2003, 05:32:41 PM EST
     BMG adding copy protection to all its CDs - (admin) - (41)
         An even better one: EMI - (admin) - (4)
             Re: An even better one: EMI - (SpiceWare) - (1)
                 Besides... those people get money for those blanks - (jake123)
             Christian, translation check please? - (drewk) - (1)
                 Sorry about the delay... But yes, it's pretty much exact. -NT - (CRConrad)
         Won't slow the rippers down. - (static) - (15)
             Link for that discussion? - (admin) - (13)
                 It would have been on the mailing list. - (static) - (12)
                     I have been goin... - (folkert) - (10)
                         He might have posted it on SlashDot. - (static) - (9)
                             Gah... - (folkert)
                             What's his /. userid? - (kmself) - (7)
                                 xiphmont ? -NT - (altmann) - (1)
                                     That would be it. -NT - (static)
                                 Dam... - (folkert) - (4)
                                     You're really keen! :-) - (static) - (3)
                                         Duhh... dull as a... - (folkert) - (2)
                                             No, I was being serious. - (static) - (1)
                                                 Oh... so I did,,, - (folkert)
                     Something similar from an interview on April 4, 2000. - (Another Scott)
             Related: Schneier, The Futility of Copy Protection - (kmself)
         Wait until they see what this costs - (tuberculosis) - (18)
             Of course, they'll mis-read the "message". - (static) - (17)
                 Yes, retailers are very important. - (jake123) - (13)
                     I remember Philips saying that, too. - (static) - (12)
                         Hah..!__like the 'Walk-DVD Player' ? [scrap yer Old one !?] -NT - (Ashton) - (11)
                             It gets complicated. - (static) - (10)
                                 And overlaying all the digital permutations, remains.. - (Ashton) - (9)
                                     I'd forgotten your aspect on that. - (static) - (4)
                                         Ogg Vorbis - (Ashton) - (3)
                                             Vorbis ain't just for Linux - (drewk) - (2)
                                                 Thanks! - (Ashton) - (1)
                                                     Actually, q3 approximates MP3 @ 160, quality-wise. -NT - (static)
                                     Vinyls vs 1's and 0's - (tuberculosis) - (3)
                                         Have you seen the Tubes Rock! T? - (SpiceWare)
                                         toobs - (Steve Lowe) - (1)
                                             Beg to differ - (jb4)
                 that wont work in the US - (boxley) - (2)
                     That would require persistence. - (static) - (1)
                         Yo Bryce! - (tuberculosis)
         And this is just the beginning... - (jb4)

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