Monthly Archives: March 2009

Digital Media

‘lossless’ and ‘MP3’ are no longer mutually exclusive

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Well, it seems that the folks at Thompson have been busy little engineers. They have released a ‘lossless’ version of the ubiquitous MP3 codec. The greatest benefit of the MP3 codec has been it’s role as lowest-common-demonator when it comes to compressed music formats. It is supported on every PC, Mac and most every linux computer on the planet not to mention every portable music player and most modern phones.

However, audio quality has never been a hallmark of MP3 compression; several other encoding schemes produce ‘better’ audio reproduction at the same, or lower, bitrates/filesize; Windows Media, Ogg/Vorbis and AAC are prime examples. At the high end of the scale have been the lossless codecs such as FLAC , APE  and SHN that regenerate exact copies of the original audio waveform at the cost of greatly increased file sizes. However, all these lack broad support across platforms (PC, Mac, Linux) and devices.

So what’s a listener to do? Do you trade broad device/software support for reduced audio quality or high quality but limited playback options?

You could take the approach that nutjobs like me take is to do both. When I buy a new CD I encode it to both MP3 and FLAC. I use the MP3 version for playback on iTunes and the higher quality FLAC version on my lLinux based entertainment system. Yes, it takes up lots of disk space and can be a pain to manage (applying metadata for example is a major PITA). Enter MP3HD.

At first glance MP3HD looks like just another lossless codec but the slipped in a little surprise. When an MP3HD encoder processes a file it generates a lossless version and a high bitrate standard MP3 in the same file. The result is a file that plays both on iTunes and portable players (standard MP3) as well as high-end playback devices in lossless format.  Nice.

They have adopted the ‘gracefully degrade’ design philosophy. If a playback device/software is capable of lossless playback it does it. However, if it is not it will play the standard MP3 instead. The other lossless formats are not backwards compatable; FLAC and Apple Lossless require specific support for those formats or they don’t play at all.

The gotcha (there’s always a ‘gotcha’) is that the files are much bigger than a standard MP3 but less than an standard MP3 + a FLAC file.

I’m going to give it a go in my encoding workflow. I’m not going to bother re-encoding my existing tracks but baring anything nasty I’ll may use it in place of FLAC for future encodes.

Of course, this assumes there is support for it within the OSS tools/players I use — more on that later I guess.

For more info. and software downloads visit Thompson’s site.

Personal, Politics

Congress, can you hear me now? Work on stuff that matters!!!

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When I first read this I thought it was a joke and after reading it again, I’m sure; it is.  But not the funny kind.

A California rep. who clearly spends way too much time watching TV has proposed a new federal law to limit, are you sitting down?…  the loudness of TV commercials.

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (“CALM-A” — Are you fracking kidding me?  Who makes up this stuff?) proposes to require the FCC to “prescribe a standard to preclude commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program they accompany.”.

Now before I launch into a three page discussion of how ‘loudness’ is a completely subjective concept and is dependent on the perception of the individual I’ll hold my breath, count to 10, and stifle the urge to throttle yet another well meaning but clueless legislator that is attempting to establish controls over something they are utterly unqualified to determine.

Ok, so I had to count to twenty.

I’m willing to let it pass that Rep. Eshoo feels that her having ‘grown tired of being blasted off my couch’ is a reasonable basis for new federal legistation.  I’m also willing to let it pass that she is obviously trying to make some political points by addressing a popular ‘complaint’ of her constituancy.

However, I’m not willing to let it pass that she feels it’s appropriate to spend Congress’ time considering this meaningless drivel when we are faced with two wars, a World economy in the worst shape in human history, collapsing real estate market, millions of people in the street due to home foreclosure, millions more forced to choose between food and healthcare, historically high unemployment and Earth’s climate on the verge of meltdown.

It not only defies explanation, is so obsurd to be insulting to those with even a hit of wits about them, it borders on a criminal disregard for the responsibility of her office.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=135244