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#16
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
On 2017-12-16, Ron wrote:
Oh, and I also need a dedicated GPS device for my job. I have to take business calls while I'm driving. Dangerous practice, very distracting even if operating hands-free. I refuse to take business (or any) calls when driving and leave the phone OFF. Unless you're talking about a medical emergency there is nothing that can't wait. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.) NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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#17
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 21:53:45 -0500, Nil
wrote: On 16 Dec 2017, Ron wrote in alt.comp.os.windows-10: I know that. I'm talking about MP3s that some people claim are lossless and sound just as good as a CD. Nobody with an ounce of sense has *ever* said that an MP3 is lossless. That's a complete contradiction of terms: MP3 is lossy by definition. Lossless formats include .FLAC, .ALAC, Monkey's Audio, .WAV, .AIFF, and others. And no matter HOW good any of those is, a person with a good ear can still usually tell the difference between digital and analog. USUALLY! |
#18
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 03:02:19 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake wrote:
On 2017-12-16, Ron wrote: Oh, and I also need a dedicated GPS device for my job. I have to take business calls while I'm driving. Dangerous practice, very distracting even if operating hands-free. I refuse to take business (or any) calls when driving and leave the phone OFF. Unless you're talking about a medical emergency there is nothing that can't wait. Illegal anyway in the UK. |
#19
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 10:37:21 +0000, mechanic
wrote: On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 03:02:19 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake wrote: On 2017-12-16, Ron wrote: Oh, and I also need a dedicated GPS device for my job. I have to take business calls while I'm driving. Dangerous practice, very distracting even if operating hands-free. I refuse to take business (or any) calls when driving and leave the phone OFF. Unless you're talking about a medical emergency there is nothing that can't wait. Illegal anyway in the UK. Just like criticizing Islam or having a conservative thought. |
#20
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 21:47:33 -0500, Ron wrote:
On 12/16/2017 8:25 PM, Char Jackson wrote: On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 20:15:09 -0500, Ron wrote: On 12/16/2017 5:02 PM, Nil wrote: On 16 Dec 2017, Ron wrote in alt.comp.os.windows-10: If you care about sound quality like I do CDs is the only way to go. I didn't invest thousands of dollars in my stereo eqt to listen to crappy MP3s that have to be downloaded. MP3s don't have to be downloaded, you can make them yourself. And you don't have to listen to crappy MP3s, you can listen to high quality ones that are all but indistinguishable from the source. There are also lossless digital audio formats that are bit-for-bit identical to the source. Yeah, make them myself from my own CDs, otherwise, you have to download them. On my stereo system *I* can tell the difference, no matter how "high quality" are "lossless" they are, Over the past decade, I've seen an awful lot of "I can hear the difference" claims. Those who have submitted to blind listening tests have fared no better than chance. Every time. I haven't seen a single exception. All I can tell you is what I've heard. And *I* can tell the difference between a song that was downloaded from iTunes and then playing that same song from a CD. I can't tell you anything about iTunes. I consider it to be a fairly benign form of malware, so it's not something I have access to. Still, I'd be surprised if iTunes only offers a single quality setting because surely they are aware that customers have differing expectations regarding the quality of what they download. In your case, check to see if they have a higher quality version of what you want. Then again, iTunes is far from the only game in town. If their product sucks, look elsewhere. As for the lossless formats such as flac and a few others, you won't hear a difference because there *is* no difference, so that's a non-starter. I know that. I'm talking about MP3s that some people claim are lossless and sound just as good as a CD. To echo Nil again, if they are mp3 then they aren't lossless, but mp3 at it's higher quality settings can be indistinguishable from the source for the vast majority of listeners. For the remaining elite, you have the non-mp3 lossless formats, for which there is no difference at all because, well, it's lossless. The same applies to DVDs/Blu-rays. Streaming movies lack bass. That may be true in some cases, but not in general. Any audio degradation would be due to compression, which would be most audible in the high frequencies. You are at the mercy of whoever and whatever processes the audio, and they/it could attenuate the bass as well, but I don't think it's general practice. Also, the audio on most DVDs is compressed in similar ways to streaming audio. The processing can be done well or poorly. I have streamed movies and you couldn't even tell I have a subwoofer. The same is true with my cable TV audio. DVD and Blu-ray is far superior in the bass department. It's just as Nil said, your streaming experience depends to a large degree on where you're streaming from. You might try putting your DVD/BluRay movies on your own server so that you can stream locally. That, at least, saves the discs from possible damage from handling and lets you watch movie after movie without getting up from your chair, in case that's important. A streaming movie is so compressed it can't compete with a Blu-ray or DVD when it comes to audio, especially i the bass. Same as above. If your streaming movies are that compressed, I suggest that you stream from another source. There's nothing inherent in streaming that mandates heavy compression or lack of bass. By the way, if you're still watching DVDs, I think you're not as serious about video quality as you are about sound quality. We are talking about audio here, but since you mentioned it, a DVD looks fine when played on a Blu-ray player because it's upscaled. It is close to Blu-ray quality. I hate to be the grinch, but upscaling doesn't generally improve video quality to a noticeable degree. An upscaled DVD won't magically look like a BluRay. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. In short, I wanna put a CD into my machine and enjoy high quality music. I've offered options to improve on that process. I wanna put a Blu-ray or DVD in my machine and enjoy high quality video and audio. It's just that simple. BluRay, yes, DVD not so much. I don't know about anyone else, but I cringe when I watch a DVD. The video quality takes me out of the viewing experience and I start watching the presentation instead of the movie content. Fast motion and evening/night scenes are the biggest offenders. Oh, and my main TV is a high-end 60" Panasonic Plasma. So I do care about video quality. I'm not familiar with that model, but no matter how good the display is, it's no better than the source that you feed to it. I'm pretty sure that once my Panny ****s the bed there will be something better than OLED. The 4K displays are supposed to be the hot thing. I don't have one because I don't have any source material that can take advantage of it. |
#21
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
Char Jackson wrote:
To echo Nil again, if they are mp3 then they aren't lossless, but mp3 at it's higher quality settings can be indistinguishable from the source for the vast majority of listeners. For the remaining elite, you have the non-mp3 lossless formats, for which there is no difference at all because, well, it's lossless. Win10 has FLAC support I tested in Windows Media Player and it works. FLAC has recordings in 5.1, so you can give a multi channel audio setup a workout. I've only got stereo computer speakers so I can't test that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flac "FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio" "FLAC support is included by default in Windows 10, Android, Blackberry 10 and Jolla devices." Some samples I could find, the compression ratio was about 2:1 or so. You'd need a big hard drive to keep a music collection in that format. I'd give a link to the samples, except they're classical music from public performances, and not really good enough for "calibrating your eardrums". I have a transistor radio that sounds better than that. Paul |
#22
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 19:42:14 -0500, Paul wrote:
Char Jackson wrote: To echo Nil again, if they are mp3 then they aren't lossless, but mp3 at it's higher quality settings can be indistinguishable from the source for the vast majority of listeners. For the remaining elite, you have the non-mp3 lossless formats, for which there is no difference at all because, well, it's lossless. Win10 has FLAC support I tested in Windows Media Player and it works. I don't know how many people are going to be interested in that. For the folks who want to use flac, myself included, we've already been using it since at least the early days of XP, if not longer. (It was developed in 2001). And most of us surely aren't interested in using Windows Media Player for anything. That's one of those applications that just takes up a bit of disk space. Some samples I could find, the compression ratio was about 2:1 or so. You'd need a big hard drive to keep a music collection in that format. I have a mix of flac and mp3, ripped from CDs and downloaded from various services, (Walmart had a music download service for a while!), so my ~60,000 files, with lots of dupes, takes less than 600GB. I wouldn't say a big hard drive is required. |
#23
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
Char Jackson wrote:
I can't tell you anything about iTunes. I consider it to be a fairly benign form of malware, so it's not something I have access to. Still, I'd be surprised if iTunes only offers a single quality setting because surely they are aware that customers have differing expectations regarding the quality of what they download. In your case, check to see if they have a higher quality version of what you want. All iTunes store music is downloaded in 256 kbps encoded using the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec and distributed with .m4a extensions from the iTunes store. The 256 kbps setting, afaik, is an average bit rate lossy encoding scheme, not a fixed bit rate encoding scheme. The actual sample rate is varied dynamically based on the content and time which iirc is not changeable. Music imported/copied into iTunes(e.g. CD, mp3, Media Player or other player supported format) or converting existing tracks via the iTunesEditPreferences has optional settings(but not applicable to downloaded iTunes Store music[1]). - 5 different audio playback bit rates ranging from 44.1 -192 kHz - 2 different bits per sample for audio - 16 or 24 - 2 Audio Play modes - Direct Sound or Windows Audio Session [1] Some folks do an end around on the 'downloaded from store' limit by burning the music to CD, deleting the store downloaded music and re-import to take advantage of the optional settings. Some claim improvement. I've never considered or wasted time to do it, so mileage may vary (better or even worse imo) Another way to look at it...as the listener ages, the ability to discern any plausible differences in digital, cd, analog music, vinyl, etc. declines...and that decline is much faster for the males than females who retain the ability to hear higher frequencies. Thus, if you need to discern the difference, don't ask in this group, ask a woman instead! ...w¡ñ§±¤ñ msft mvp windows experience 2007-2016, insider mvp 2016-2018 |
#24
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30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
On Sun, 17 Dec 2017 23:03:00 -0500, ...w¡ñ§±¤ñ
wrote: Char Jackson wrote: I can't tell you anything about iTunes. I consider it to be a fairly benign form of malware, so it's not something I have access to. Still, I'd be surprised if iTunes only offers a single quality setting because surely they are aware that customers have differing expectations regarding the quality of what they download. In your case, check to see if they have a higher quality version of what you want. All iTunes store music is downloaded in 256 kbps encoded using the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec and distributed with .m4a extensions from the iTunes store. The 256 kbps setting, afaik, is an average bit rate lossy encoding scheme, not a fixed bit rate encoding scheme. The actual sample rate is varied dynamically based on the content and time which iirc is not changeable. Music imported/copied into iTunes(e.g. CD, mp3, Media Player or other player supported format) or converting existing tracks via the iTunesEditPreferences has optional settings(but not applicable to downloaded iTunes Store music[1]). - 5 different audio playback bit rates ranging from 44.1 -192 kHz - 2 different bits per sample for audio - 16 or 24 - 2 Audio Play modes - Direct Sound or Windows Audio Session [1] Some folks do an end around on the 'downloaded from store' limit by burning the music to CD, deleting the store downloaded music and re-import to take advantage of the optional settings. Some claim improvement. I've never considered or wasted time to do it, so mileage may vary (better or even worse imo) Another way to look at it...as the listener ages, the ability to discern any plausible differences in digital, cd, analog music, vinyl, etc. declines...and that decline is much faster for the males than females who retain the ability to hear higher frequencies. Thus, if you need to discern the difference, don't ask in this group, ask a woman instead! Good points, thanks. Technically, you could ask younger people because they can still hear better, but then you'd get a young person's opinion, so there's that. |
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