[BC] Cascading Algorithms

[Ron Cole]

Well put John,

FYI, you can now get a Bluetooth Headset that does stereo audio and a Phone
connection at the same time.
neat toy.  Not HiFi headphones but its as good as the average MP3...

I use them at the office to listen to music between the conference and
customer support calls.

Ron


On 7/2/06, John Buffaloe <johnbuffaloe at bext.com> wrote:
>
> OK.  Let's face the facts like real men.  Nobody under 30 (with the
> exception of a few MIT engineering students) gives a crap any more about
> audio quality.  All of us GEB's (of which Rich Wood is the Golden Ear Lobe
> winner) are dinosaurs.  Audio quality has given way to convenience in
> dragging around three thousand songs data bit mashed to hell so we can
> have
> our entire libraries of songs we're sick of anyway available to us while
> we
> visit the terlit on our 757 from Poughdunk to Sausagelito.  It's important
> that we have these devices because everyone else that has a Donna Karan
> suit
> has one too.  The difficulty is in fitting the Blue Tooth earpiece under
> the
> Bose noise canceling headphones so that we can actually hear the phone
> call
> and the right channel at the same time.  That is of course if you happen
> to
> be right eared, but that's another topic and I digress.
>
> Look back at the efforts we used to make to have the best studios, the
> best
> monitoring, the best home systems, the best tube amplifiers, or whatever,
> and look at the modern user that just wants convenience and what they want
> when and where they want it.  I had the best sounding radio station in San
> Diego running uncompressed CD's through an uncompressed digital STL with
> processing sans clipping.  The PD decided to run compressed live assist
> automation so the jocks could take more phone calls.  There was a marked
> difference (loss) in the audio quality, but I'm just another old GEB.
>
> Today, it's about convenient gizmos.  They don't have to sound the best,
> they only have to fulfill the need for instant gratification.  It ain't
> about the quality of the audio folks.  If it was, manufacturers would be
> touting the latest full spectrum audio linear devices and selling them by
> the boodle.  Seen one lately in your local "Tweeter?"
>
> It defies logic to me, but so does the popularity of Rap and Hip Hop.
>
> All of this reduced data stuff is crap packaged as perfume.  And the
> multitudes are shelling out for it.  Not IBOC, but iPods, Sirius, XM, cell
> phone MP3 players, ad nauseum.  Fine.  That's what they want, then give it
> to them then go home and hug your kids.  Maybe they'll awaken to the
> swinging pendulum and demand more when they hear what good audio sounds
> like
> in the never ending game of "gadgets."
>
> Sorry.  I think I had one glass of wine too many.
>
> John A. Buffaloe
> Bext, Inc.
> 1-888-BEXTINC
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
> [mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Kevin Tekel
> Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2006 8:37 PM
> To: broadcast at radiolists.net
> Subject: [BC] Cascading Algorithms
>
> Rich Wood wrote:
> > I ask "how long can you listen to CDs with good quality earbuds." The
> > answer from everyone, so far, is some variation of "I can listen for
> > hours."  The second question is "how long can you listen to your MP3
> > player with good quality earbuds.?" The last response I got was
> > "about an hour. It hurts my ears." No discussion of codecs is involved.
>
> That's nothing.  Try asking how long they can listen to XM through
> earbuds. In a noisy store when played through cheap demo speakers it
> already sounds hideous.  Listening to XM in a quiet environment through
> earbuds or headphones would be like torture to me, and would surely give
> me a headache after only a few minutes.  Its horrendous SBR "synthetic
> treble" has all the mellowness of a swarm of screeching cicadas.  And
> since it also uses SBR, IBOC has this same exact problem, especially now
> that most FM IBOC stations are multicasting and bitrate of their main
> audio channel has been severely compromised.
>
> Sirius may not be aural heaven either, since they're still using the
> Lucent PAC codec whose use with IBOC was embarrassingly rejected by the
> NRSC, but since PAC does not use "synthetic treble" I actually find Sirius
> to be less painful to my ears than XM or IBOC.  Sirius also limits their
> treble response to 12 kHz and blends all audio above 1.8 kHz to mono,
> which helps to mask a lot of the codec artifacts.  After all, there is no
> need to try to squeeze full "digital-quality" stereo audio through a codec
> which just can't handle it gracefully.
>
> Another reason why XM sounds so bad is that they are deliberately
> transcoding their audio.  Last I heard, their music is stored on their
> servers as 384 kbps MP2 files.  That format by itself already has plenty
> of audible artifacts, and when you transcode it to ~32 kbps AACplus for
> transmission over XM, it surely isn't going to sound any better!  And yet
> the RIAA is still getting their knickers in a knot over the concept of XM
> subscribers being able to make "CD-quality" digital recordings of the
> music that comes over their favorite channels.  Add in another layer of
> transcoding when the received XM audio is saved as, say, a 128 kbps MP3
> file, and the result is probably so poor that it would be the aural
> equivalent of what you see when you try to dub a MacroVision-protected
> video tape.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This is the BROADCAST mailing list
> To send to the list, email: broadcast at radiolists.net
> For sub changes, archives and info on this other lists:
> http://www.radiolists.net/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This is the BROADCAST mailing list
> To send to the list, email: broadcast at radiolists.net
> For sub changes, archives and info on this other lists:
> http://www.radiolists.net/
>