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Music Media

Linux-Based Audiophile CD Archival System 414

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-remember-good-audio-fidelity dept.
cporter writes: "My disappointment with the quality of compressed digital music formats (MP3, Ogg, WMA, the list goes on ...) and playback hardware has so far forced me to stick with the good ol' aluminum coated plastic discs. However, Linn has created the Kivor Knekt multi-unit linux-based hard disk system for archiving CDs in uncompressed form for cataloging and playback (yes, it does support ripping to MP3). It includes the Tunboks storage system, the Linnk control interface, the Oktal D/A converter, and the PCI Musik Machine sound board. The system can support up to 11 hard drives for storing audio. Stereophile magazine has a review in their current dead-tree issue, not available online, during which the reviewer hooked up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and found an AMD Duron system running Linux. The price is a mere $20,000, plus installation. Guess I'm sticking to CDs for the moment." Looks amazing despite the price. They should send me a review model :)
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Linux-Based Audiophile CD Archival System More

Linux-Based Audiophile CD Archival System

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  • Try FLAC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by redcliffe ( 466773 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:38PM (#2615773) Homepage Journal
    Try the Free Lossless Audio Codec. It isn't as compressive as MP3 or OGG, but will help.

    http://flac.sf.net

    David

  • jukebox (Score:2, Funny)

    by vinnythenose ( 214595 )
    Bah, just get a CD jukebox. Yah yah, wonderful machines for archiving CDs :)

  • Ummm... (Score:2, Informative)

    by the Man in Black ( 102634 )
    forced me to stick with the good ol' aluminum coated plastic discs.

    Sorry to nitpick, but....aren't they PLASTIC coated ALUMINUM discs?

    • Not really (Score:2, Informative)

      by epepke ( 462220 )

      Unless you're dealing with double-sided discs like DVD, the aluminum is deposited on top of the polycarbonate disc. I suppose the resin they spray on top of that to provide some nominal protection might technically be called "plastic," but it's really more like paint.

      Most people don't realize that the label side is the fragile side.

  • To be able to tell the difference between an MP3 encoded at 640 kbps and the actual wav file. Just because the shit you dl off napster's quality sucks, doesn't mean the whole format does.

    • Re:I defy you... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Your average music listener would most likely not be able to tell the difference, especially the average Mp3 music listener.

      To us very snobby audiophile types any form of even uncompressed digital music is not up to snuff of good ole analog. Yes, that's right I did a back to back comparison of an $8000 CD rig (Manley tube DAC and supremely isolated AudioMecha transport) against a mediocre turntable (about $2000 new). Wasn't even close the LP sounded leaps and bounds better. There weren't small little audiophile only nit pickings to be found, either. Everyone that listened to both setups liked the LPs better. And this was with recently remastered "audiophile" quality CDs vs their analog LP counter parts.

      So, to suggest that any sort of *lossy* compression can stand up, well... color me a skeptic.

      That being said, everything I've heard about Sony's new SACD seems pretty good.

      • Re:I defy you... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        Was this a blind test? I.E., did you get someone else to play the audio, from somewhere you and the participants couldnt see? If not, it isn't much of a test. Anyone asked would pick the turntable, since it's generally common knowledge that "turntables sound better", so your mind plays tricks on you. It wouldn't be much of a test unless it was run like 10 times, each time blind, with different tracks, switching the 2 sources randomly. THEN we'll see which one really sounds better to you.

      • I've grown tired of snobby audiophile types that claim there is a difference, that analog plastic LPs are much better than "digital".
        The bottom line is, CDs encode the entire range of human hearing. The sampling is beyond the Nyquist frequency of human hearing.
        The only way that a human could tell a digital recording is different from an analog is if it is done incorrectly, i.e. bad digitization (recording) or bad analog conversion (the result of a badly adjusted CD player).
        • Yes, CDs encode the entire range of human hearing, however they also miss part of the picture. Now, I don't know the exact physics behind all of this but I do know that because of the way information is pulled from a CD, called PCM, it lends itself to jitter (not all of the bits get lined up correctly at playback) and harshness. In fact, this is so well known that Sony, one of the PCM originators, has come up with a completely different method of digitally storing music, call SACD. It not only samples at a much higher rate (hence the larger storage requirements of a DVD for 2 channel audio) but it also transfers information in a completely different fashion.

          Most audiophile LP types agree that this new SACD format bridges the gap between LPs and CDs. I have yet to hear it so I can't comment on that.

        • It's true that the sampling rate at 44khz is just about enough to cover the nyquist of human hearing (about 20khz, so they say). But this doesn't say anything about the sampling resolution. You could sample at 44hkz but use 4 bits per sample, and the result would be awful. 16 bits is pretty damn good, but it is not perfect. (And it doesn't help that it is spread linearly over the range. 32-bit floating point sounds much nicer.)

          Anyway, I say that CDs sound pretty good, personally, though I do wish that it wasn't so common to compress (as in, flatten out the dynamics, not as in MP3) them so much. If they didn't do this (DVD audio typically doesn't), I think they would sound as good as LPs (and be much more convenient and robust).
        • "The bottom line is, CDs encode the entire range of human hearing"

          i'm not qualified to debate that point. but consider this: people may actually LIKE the imperfections inherent in record players. even if the CD is scientifically better, a record be more subjectively pleasing to some peoples' ears.
        • I do remember, back in the early 80's when I bought one of my first CDs. It was Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." The clarity was so good you could hear the hiss of the master (analog, presumably) between tracks and at other times. That was obnoxious. I've noticed later releases of the same disk don't have the hiss...
      • CD sound quality was never meant to compete with audiophile analog. It wa always meant as a medium quality consumer product.

        It's the marketing people who started pushing it as a high-end product -- if only because the first CD players started out in the $4-digits range.

        About the only real value of CD quality digital audio is that you can copy it to your heart's content, with zero quality loss, and and mix it, within reason, with near-zero quality loss.

        For proper digital studio work, however, you want to digitize at a multiple of the CD bit rate with a couple of extra bits of dynamic range.

        DAT doesn't actually cut it. Although it's a higher sample rate than CD, it's not a whole multiple, so you end up with (sometimes nasty) artifacts when you convert.

    • Re:I defy you... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @05:08PM (#2615972)
      You can fix most quality problems with audio on
      your computer by carefully coloring the case of
      your hard drive with a green marker. Too many
      people give MP3s a bad rap because they don't
      know this simple tip.
      • You can fix most quality problems with audio on your computer by carefully coloring the case of your hard drive with a green marker. Too many people give MP3s a bad rap because they don't know this simple tip.
        No...you need to open the hard drive and run the green marker around each of the platters. That'll get the bits to sound better.

        (better throw in a :-) for the humor-impaired while I'm at it...)

  • price for additional hard drives? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TMB ( 70166 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:40PM (#2615793)
    I wonder what the price for additional hard drives are? Can you stick in a generic 76 gig IDE drive, or do you need to buy specific ones from them? 250 hours of music isn't all that much...

    [TMB]

  • you might want to look into non-lossy compression (Score:3, Informative)

    by htmlboy ( 31265 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:42PM (#2615803)
    different formats will likely make you happier. wma, mp3, ogg, and the like are all lossy compression schemes, so they discard some audio information when you encode the sound into their format.

    there are other options, though, that use lossless compression, so what you get from the file is the same as what's on the cd. there are a few out there, but shorten is the only format i can remember. it's widely used for trading live recordings where the fans want the best possible quality without sending .wav files to each other.

  • $20,000 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Count ( 107594 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:42PM (#2615804)
    think of how many 'great' bands you could just purchace for that much. Dokken, Kix, Winger, and probably enough left over for DIO and some pizza. Actually the system would be wonderfull if the price was right or if I were rich.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:42PM (#2615814)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The problem isn't just that so many digital formats use lossy compression...it's also that the quality of the playback electronics just isn't up to audiophile snuff.


      I can most definitely tell the difference between my $700 CD player and my $900 computer playing through my stereo system. Now, I'll admit that for an awful lot of people, it doesn't matter, and that's OK, but to me, it does.


      Even the Linn product makes sonic sacrifices in the name of convenience, but obviously a take-no-prisoners audiophile isn't going to buy one.


      -h-

      • You can also get a sound card with an S/PDIF Optical output, and connect it an arbitrarily expensive standalone DAC to get as high of quality sound as you want (assuming CD's sampling rate, of course).

  • uncompressed? hello? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:43PM (#2615817) Homepage Journal
    Why aren't you at least using Shorten? It's lossless audio compression and it'll at least double the amount of stuff you can archive.

    I'm doing it now on a 300 GB RAID 5 partition, and things are sweet.

    Read about SHN here [umbc.edu], and then use it.
    • Also, check out Etree [etree.org] if you are interested in getting or distributing live shows in Shorten format from bands that allow taping and trading.

    • Re:uncompressed? hello? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @05:03PM (#2615942)
      Oh, come on, and since when so called 'esoteric' audio component makers make meaningful decisions? It's just a matter of perceptions, if it's priced at $20,000, a lot of 'audiophiles' will think it's worth it.

      It's the same rationale as people who think that a CD player that has a gold plated/rare woods case sounds better than a standard plasticky CD player regardless of what actually is inside.

      Same goes for people who spend hundreds of dollars for gold-everything interconnects (cables) and other various snake oil products.

      Music appreciation is by definition subjective, so if one spends several hundred bucks for a component which *might* produce a difference measurable in a lab with ultra-sensitive equipment, one mysteriously becomes able to hear this difference even while listening to the newly enhanced hi-fi kit from three rooms away and under the shower...

      While it's obvious that there *is* quite a difference between a $300 hi-fi, and a $3000, most of the things above a, say, $5,000 threshold for a complete system (CD+pre+amp+speakers+interconnects) tend to cater more to your aesthetic senses than actually sound incrementally better. If the room you put this system in has not been modified in any way (i.e. if you stick the speakers in a wall mounted library 3" apart from each other etc.) cut the $5,000 by half at least. Same goes if you live in an apartment and you can't turn the knob on your 400W RMS amp higher than 1 without your neighbours threatening to evict you.

  • Complicated, expensive, and stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:44PM (#2615827)
    If you don't want any compression, why not go down to Circuit City and buy a 400-disk CD jukebox for $300? What's the point of spending a lot of time and money to transfer CD's (uncompressed, no less) to a computer?
    • If you don't want any compression, why not go down to Circuit City and buy a 400-disk CD jukebox for $300?
      Those jukeboxes are hella unreliable. When I was working for The Man [bestbuy.com], there was rarely a day when the service techs didn't take in a jukebox that needed to be unjammed, have CDs fished out of it, or whatever.

      (Yes, hard drives can fail, but as long as you stick with fairly decent drives and avoid junk [maxtor.com], you should be OK...especially for something that more than likely won't be fired up all the time.)

  • I don't know... (Score:2, Informative)

    by rlangis ( 534366 )
    I bought a Panasonic DVD-CV51 [panasonic.com] 5-disc carousel DVD player recently. Has MP3 CD playability, for only $249 down at Best Buy. [bestbuy.com] Burned up a 131-song MP3 CD, and piped it out of my 5.1 surround home-theater.

    I was actually quite i
    mpressed. I was expecting clicks, pops, crappy dynamic range, etc etc. However I ripped most of the tracks on that CD myself, using mid-high (192ish) quality VBR encoding. Some of the songs I did NOT rip myself that were encoded at 128kbps were obviously inferior, but as long as you rip them well, you should have a good bang for your buck audio experience.

    Of course, YMMV. :)
    • It doesn't say anything about it on the web page, but it seems like that would be an obvious feature that they're 90% of the way to providing anyway.
      And *that* would be sweet: having essentially my entire music collection on one disc. I couldn't squeeze everything onto 5 CDs without compressing well past the point where I start to notice artifacts.
  • Mp3s are cheap.

    this is not.

    you could build a box with 50,000 monkeys in it to go get your CDs too, or hire an orchestra to recreate your music full-time, too.

    on those, cost would also be prohibitive.

    a "comparable" solution will have cd quality and mp3 cost.


  • What good is lossless storage of music??? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When there is not such thing as a audiophile quality sound card. It seems to me that until the Denon's, and Bang/Olufsen's of the world start coming out with sound cards, there is no point in worrying about loss on the storage end. You're gonna get some loss on the output side that makes it all a waste of time.
    • What good is lossless storage of music??? ... When there is not such thing as a audiophile quality sound card.

      There are plenty of sound cards with digital output. An optical cable goes straight from the card to your fancy receiver, so no information loss occurs before the signal reaches the amp. Even cheap receivers these days have very good DACs, so you can easily get all the way to the analog portion of the signal train with no measurable degredation.

      An optical-out sound card runs about US$1000, which is a minor cost to an audiophile. Personally, I'm happy with 128 kbps compression and a pair of cheap headphones.

      • An optical-out sound card runs about US$1000

        It does not, bottom end sound blasters are starting to sprout digital out. And it doesn't need to be optical either.

        Dave
    • When there is not such thing as a audiophile quality sound card
      Any soundcard with a digital out is audiophile quality. Why? Because you can pass that perfect digital bitstream to your audiophile grade DAC.

  • Linn (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PoiBoy ( 525770 ) <brian@poihol d i ngs.com> on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:50PM (#2615867) Homepage
    IMHO as an audiophile Linn products tend to be somewhat overpriced relative to similar products from other companies. I wouldn't be surprised if more high-end companies produce similar systems for under $7500 or so.

    In the meantime, there is the Sutherland 12dax7 system which works with any type of music on your computer for $1699 IIRC. www.12dax7.com

    Nevertheless, it is good to see high-end audio companies paying attention to newer recording technologies.

  • $20,000? (Score:2, Troll)

    by libre lover ( 516057 )
    At that price it better have nothin' but vacuum tubes in it. Transistors just don't cut it when it comes to high-end equipment like that.

    • Re:$20,000? (Score:3, Troll)

      by shepd ( 155729 )
      I'd like to introduce you to www.r3mix.net [r3mix.net]. Specifically, click on the link labelled "Myths".

      If you don't like listening to the true, unadulterated source, well, I guess tubes are for ya! Me, I like to hear what the musician played, so I buy transistor/fet based equipment.
      • That guy misses the point when he talks about dynamic range...

        If DVD audio is to be believed, then you could record a dynamic range wide enough to capture a jet engine's loudness. This is not possible to reproduce on current analog equipment without distortion and serious damage to your hearing.

        Isn't severe damage to my hearing the point? I -want- to hear those 105mm howitzers at real volume! Why else would I have that 5 meter subwoofer built into my foundation?

        ;)
        • A subwoofer alone can't replicate a howitzer. A good sharp crisp sound of a large artillery piece contains higher frequency components.

      • Factual Myths (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Sara Chan ( 138144 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @06:27PM (#2616422)
        It's interesting to see so much written by someone who has obviously never listened. Let's look at the "myths" on the page that you cite:

        • Myth 1. Tube amplifiers are the best way to listen to music.

          Facts. Tube amplifiers tend to give a more realistic presentation of vocals and soundstaging--especially depth. If, due to your preferred music, that is what you most care about, then tube amps give great value for money.
        • Myth 2. Vinyl records are the best because they are analog while digital sampling ruins the sound.

          Facts. Simply listen on a good turntable: use your ears, and you will prefer vinyl. I have never met anyone who disagreed after actually listening. There are various theories as to why. (A) Vinyl has a greater dynamic range (you can hear ~20 dB into the hiss, which is ignored). (B) Vinyl allows much faster transients (the human ear detects up to 30 kHz, even though pure tones are inaudible above about 20 kHz). (C) Things related to Shun Mook and PWB (which seem to work, though I don't understand why). (D) etc.
        • Myth 3. CD doesn't have a low enough signal to noise ratio. The new DVD super audio is a huge improvement.

          Facts. This is really the same as above: CD has to throw away a lot of the information, especially getting rid of fast transients. The CD standard compresses music much more than DVD-A: so much so that the difference is audible (though "huge" might be exaggerated).
        • Myth 4. Equalizers are bad.

          Facts. Anything in the signal path will cause some unwanted distortion, and so should generally be avoided. This is truly obvious.


        In other words, the things claimed to be myths are largely true.


        There is nothing wrong with being ignorant. There is something wrong with pretending you're not and promulgating untruths.

        • Simply listen on a good turntable: use your ears, and you will prefer vinyl. I have never met anyone who disagreed after actually listening.

          Guess what - vinyl is not more accurate than a CD. The fact that you and your cronies prefer to listen to records just means that you enjoy the audial artifacts that the arise from the vinyl process. You like the pops and the hiss and the warmth. It does not mean that the audio is more "pure".

          • You would not believe how difficult it is to get a CD to perform comparably with even an ordinary vinyl record in the resolution domain. Take it from somebody who writes (open source) digital audio dithering software: the resolution domain is potentially a horrible weakness in CDs. It CAN be overcome with exceptional dithering and careful handling of the digital signal throughout, but it usually is not.

            What you're hearing when you hear CD as 'purer' is really the drying up of low level detail, particularly in the 3K area where the human ear is most sensitive. Vinyl has high but frequency-localized noise levels and is quite capable of higher resolution performance AT 3K, where the ear is particularly sensitive.

            A CD really done properly doesn't sound 'pure'. It sounds convincing, and juicy/reverberant/lively/etc depending on the source material. Real world sounds don't sound 'pure' in the way that CDs do- that is a side-effect of a noise floor that is very different in character from analog noise.

  • Bunch of crap (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @04:59PM (#2615923)
    "My disappointment with the quality of compressed digital music formats [blah]"

    That's classic snobbism from self-declared "audiophiles". The truth is, 99% of people won't be able to hear a difference between a well-encoded 128kbp MP3 and the original CD. Of the remaining 1%, 99% won't be able to tell the difference anymore if the MP3 is encoded at or above 256kbps. And that's even with top-of-the-line amplifiers and speakers. It's the same kind of people who claimed years ago that vinyls were so much better sounding than CDs, when the truth is that the dynamics and S/N ratio of a good vinyl will never match that of a bad CD, and the only difference between a vinyl and a CD is the audio on the vinyl is compressed.

    Those who really can tell a difference whatever the encoding are golden ears used as sonar officers in nuclear submarines, and professional audio testers in their anechoic chambers working for Kenwood, Denon and the likes. Is the poster one of these people ? not bloody likely.

    • MP3 and Vorbis both make a hash out of "real" music. Show me an MP3 of a Sergei Nakariakov cadenza that sounds as good as the CD and I'll give you $1000 cash money. LAME makes complex music sound like line noise. iTunes makes orchestras move around from left to right. Vorbis induces all sorts of audible spatial problems. Uncompressed music has none of these problems.

      At any rate, audiophilia has moved beyond the CD to 24-bit/96KHz audio on DVDs or other media. The results, to my ear, are great.

    • Re:Bunch of crap (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cporter ( 61382 )
      Wow, I had a slashdot story accepted on my 2nd try. I was hoping this would be a "fun" story, and an opposite-side-of-the table from the recent stories about Rio MP3 appliances.

      I've done quite a bit of listening and comparing CD source to compressed audio sources. It's quite apparent what's compressed and what's not. And it is more apparent on better equipment, despite what you say. The test rig I have setup is a CD player into a high-end 24/96 DAC and a sound card with digital optical out into that same DAC. Playing uncompressed music is basically indistinguishable from CD; playing compressed ogg at 220Kbps and MP3 at 320Kbps is definitely lower grade. At that bit rate, it's not the artifacts that are evident, but the complete lack of stereo separation. After all, correlations between the left and right channels is one of the means of eliminating "redundant" information and reducing file sizes.

      I have also experimented with a bunch of the lossless compression formats. They sound fine, but I have concerns about software support for these formats, namely command-line players and cataloging software.

      I am not a fan of vinyl, even on very high-end analog playback systems. Nor am I a fan of tubes. All digital and solide state for me. I agree with you on the dynamic range and S/N issue.

      As a real audiophile, who's primary interest is music, not equipment, my advice is always: listen, listen, listen. For $20,000, I probably will be more interested in hiring a local string quartet to play private parties for me.

      • After all, correlations between the left and right channels is one of the means of eliminating "redundant" information and reducing file sizes.

        Now this I didn't know. I was assuming MP3 basically did a DCT on lumps of waveform and threw away the bits you couldn't hear. Has anyone done any tests on wavelet compression for Audio?

        Dave
      • Were these blind tests? I've heard plenty of claims like yours that "I can distinguish a 320kbps mp3 from a WAV from the stereo separation," but they all turned out to be people who knew which was the mp3 and which was the WAV. If you know which is which it's easy to convince yourself you hear a difference. Have you tried having someone else compress a WAV to 320kbps mp3 and then uncompress back to WAV, and then listen to the two (unlabeled) WAVs and try to distinguish them? I've never seen a test done like this that concluded there was a difference - the results were always within the test's margin of error of the results you'd get from random guessing.
        • Do you get to pick your choice of WAV (or AIFF)?

          I could set you up with either a master that was indistinguishable from even 128K mp3, or one where you could tell it from even 320K blind every time.

          For the latter- do a minimalist recording in a good hall, and listen specifically for soundstage depth. ATH level and psy model go straight for the reverberant field and throw most of it away. If ATH level's not up to the task you get a very shallow soundstage or a total drying up of reverberant information. If psy model is in effect you get twice as much of this, and it's got a weird unnatural quality. It's brutally hard to get soundstage depth out of an mp3, because if you have ATH threshold TOO low, the whole mp3 is used up trying to encode reverb information and sounds horrible and muddy.

          For the one you can't tell between a 128K mp3- well, you could just do a lot of digital gain tweaking all on 16 bit busses for the maximum quantization error and coarsening of the sound, but if you think about it, it would be even more effective to just make the WAV the decompressed version of a 32K mp3 ;)

          HTH, HAD...

      • "As a real audiophile, who's primary interest is music, not equipment, my advice is always: listen, listen, listen."

        Point taken for the "real" audiophile ;-) The problem I have with the Joe Bob "audiophile" is that he doesn't really know jack about music.

        I guess the question is, what are you trying to achieve ? if you try to obtain the purest, most accurate reproduction of a musical artwork, the best thing is to sit at the concert, then the next best thing is to have audio equipment like yours, then things go down from there. But is this really the point ?

        My interest is the pleasure I derive from listening to music, not the fidelity of the reproduction. I personally have a huge collection of everything from vinyls to CDs, including tapes, 8-tracks and cassettes. When I play an 8-track, I enjoy the music, but I enjoy it less because the sound isn't as rich as with a CD. When I play a CD, I enjoy myself and no reproduction defect (usually) takes some of the pleasure away. Well, when I MP3d my entire collection of CDs (128kbs), I sometime could tell there was a slight sound reproduction difference, but it wasn't worse, just different, and I derive the exact same pleasure from listening to the MP3s than from listening to the original CDs. And believe me, I'm not talking about Shitty Street Boyz, I'm referring to complex works like Ligeti or Xenakis (stuff I'm into).

        The question you should ask yourself is : does listening to 96KHz 24-bit music honestly enhance your listening *pleasure* that much compared to listening to the same artwork at the standard 44.1KHz 16 bits ? I'm sure the fidelity is enhanced with your equipment, but is your listening pleasure enhanced by the same factor ? I've never listened 96KHz 24-bit music myself, but I guess conceptually it's the same question of enhanced pleasure between my 44.1KHz CDs and my 128kbps MP3.

        If you honestly think listening to music from your high-end audio equipment is better than from standard good equipment, not because you know it's 96Khz 24 bits but because you get more of that nondescript feeling if your guts when you listen to it, then you're one of the lucky few with a very above-average hearing, and I'll consider myself one of the lucky few music lovers who have frugal technical needs.

      • At that bit rate, it's not the artifacts that are evident, but the complete lack of stereo separation. After all, correlations between the left and right channels is one of the means of eliminating "redundant" information and reducing file sizes.

        Did you try the obvious solution of encoding without channel coupling, or with lossless channel coupling?

        Actually, up until the latest release (RC2), oggenc performed no coupling at all; it just encoded each channel as an independent stream. Nowadays vorbis supports a variety of stereo modes [vorbis.com], including two that disable all stereo-separation loss. [Note that stereo modes aren't user-configurable [xiph.org] in the released version of oggenc.]

    • Re:Bunch of crap (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shaper ( 88544 )

      That's classic snobbism from self-declared "audiophiles". The truth is, 99% of people won't be able to hear a difference between a well-encoded 128kbp MP3 and the original CD. Of the remaining 1%, 99% won't be able to tell the difference anymore if the MP3 is encoded at or above 256kbps. And that's even with top-of-the-line amplifiers and speakers.


      That's funny, I have no trouble at all distinguishing differences among different MP3 bit rates and original CD's, even on fairly lousy computer speakers. On decent stereo equipment, the difference is pretty glaring. I have found that my personal minimum tolerable threshold for MP3 is 160-192 kbps for casual listening while I'm working or otherwise busy. For serious listening, I still go back to the original CD.


      Maybe some people just hear better or at least differently. I know that I hear things that my wife and friends never notice, both in music and just ambient noises like monitor squeal and flourescent lights. Maybe I'm in your remaining 1%, but I'm no sonar officer or professional audio tester, "bloody likely" or otherwise. I just know what I can hear and what I like to listen to.

      • Yes, many people can tell bad mp3s from the original CD. But in all the listening tests I've seen, a very small percentage of even people with top-of-the-line stereo systems can tell the difference between high-bitrate mp3s and the original CD (specifically the "--dm-preset insane" switch in LAME).
    • I tried those "blind listening tests" that were featured on /. a while ago (can't be bothered digging up URL) and I couldn't tell the difference using $150 Sennheiser headphones through an SBLive Value, nor my $1000 stereo setup (though my CD player isn't the greatest). I still maintain that badly encoded MP3s sound like crap, but from that test it seems to me that modern encoders are better than my ears, even at 128 kbps, and these days I count as a semi-professional musician (I get beer to play in a cafe :) ).
    • I'm going to jump on the bandwagon of people telling you you're more full of shit than a Christmas turkey, as my dad would put it. The "people who claimed years ago that vinyls were so much better sounding than CDs" are still claiming that today, and they're right. Don't pay attention to the numbers, listen to the music! Vinyl has always sounded more like the real thing than CDs, and you don't need "golden ears" (or ears made out of any other metal, for that matter) to tell. Yes, a CD is theoretically better than vinyl when it comes to S/N ratio and dynamic range, but this superiority is almost always overcome by the losses inherent in the process of converting an analog signal to digital.

      It's rather disingenuous of you to say that the audio on vinyl is compressed. It is, but not in the same sense as an MP3 is a compressed digital audio signal, so your statement is misleading. In this case it means that the dynamic range has been flattened a bit, and on pop music vinyl this was generally done to increase the average level of the music, based on the idea that louder music sold better. But they do this with CDs too [georgegraham.com] for no apparent reason, and to the detriment of the quality of the sound -- in fact, the practise erases the increased dynamic range that's the primary advantage of CDs over vinyl as far as I'm concerned.

      • Don't pay attention to the numbers, listen to the music!

        I have. Records sound like shit, particularly after repeated playing. The snap, crackle, and pop is dead easy to hear, and *entirely* absent from CD's.

        • The snap, crackle, and pop is dead easy to hear, and *entirely* absent from CD's.

          But at least you get a few good plays out of vinyl.(More actually, if you maintain it properly.) CDs start out by sounding nothing at all like live music. I know there are a great many people who can't tell the difference. You're one of them? Great! Just don't go around telling everyone who can tell the difference they're wrong.

          FWIW, no sound system really compares with a live performance, which is why I don't really understand audiophiles who spend enough on their sound systems to pay a string quartet to give weekly performances in their houses. And much recorded music is so over-produced that the recording medium really doesn't make much difference, so in most cases the question is probably moot. But not always.

    • Couple of points.
      1)this post should never have been mooded as troll.
      2)I know quite a few people who can tell the difference between 128mp3 and cd. I also know people that can tell the difference between CD and Vinyl. Anybody who listens to them regularly can usually tell the difference.
      3)most people don't care about that extra bit of quality, or they have never heard better, so it doesn't matter.
      of course the whole original post was lame, because you could by many cd jukeboxes for 20,000 and not have to burn anything.

    • Re:Bunch of crap (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Nailer ( 69468 )
      the truth is that the dynamics and S/N ratio of a good vinyl will never match that of a bad CD, and the only difference between a vinyl and a CD is the audio on the vinyl is compressed.

      Er, no. The CD has a frequency: it beeps 44100 times a second. The record player on the other hand is atomically granular - it plays whatever the atoms below the head is. S/N is severely lessened if you're using modern unit, especially a laser vinyl player.

      Yeah, you're right - the overwhelming amount of people can't hear the diff, but I think you might not be 100% accurate about some of technical stuff.

  • A cheaper solution.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ruis ( 21357 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @05:08PM (#2615969)
    Just listen to your music A LOT louder. Eventually, you won't be able to tell the difference between compressed and non compressed. Worked for me!

  • Dear CmdrTaco (Rob),

    Thank you for your time spent testing our review system. We hope you enjoyed the awesome sound this system is capable of producing. We have noted from a review of our server logs that your "Slashdot" reader base has purchased a lot of our units, and therefore we extend our gratitude for your indirect financial support as well.

    Since our unit has given you so much joy, you can extend your listening pleasure by visiting us on the web at http://cheesyecommerce.com/musik/payusnowdammit.as p. Your demo unit's hardware capabilities are set to self destruct in 15 days if payment is not received.

    Please note that our hardware's self destruct mechanism is protected against tampering by advanced ROT13 encryption. Any attempt (which undoubtedly will fail) to modify the hardware control routines attached to our patented C4 explosive destruct device contained within will result in our special Linux edition "Magic Lantern U.K." software reporting you directly to the FBI, and may result in loss of life or limb as well.

    Once again, thank you for trying our unit. To avoid accidental explosions, please remit payment in full ($20,000 USD) within 15 calendar days. We appreciate your business!

    Sincerely,

    Linn.Co.Uk Sales Team

    --------

    Web hosting by geeks, for geeks. Now starting at $4/month (USD)! [trilucid.com]
    If you're gonna email, use the public key!

  • Not Enough Storage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @05:46PM (#2616177) Homepage Journal
    11 80GB hard disks would only hold ~1100 800Mb CDs, assuming maximum capacity per CD. I've got 1500 CDs. Admittedly, the vast majority aren't max capacity, but still, I'd probably be pushing the capacity of the system very close; and that doesn't make any allowances for filesystem overhead or anything else....

    Even if it were at a more reasonable cost, I don't see how it would be of use for anything but the moderate CD owner. Which doesn't make sense, given that the pricetag pretty much guarantees they're trying for the radio station market....

  • Great... a Linux box that contains uncompressed music. There are lossless compression formats, and they could be used to dramatically increase the number of songs stored on the system.

    An interesting use for this kind of system follows: What I'd like to see is a machine that looks like a jukebox but is totally computerized. Instead of flipping pages, album covers and information would be displayed on screens. The audio would be stored in any of several supported formats on a RAID array inside the machine. Lossy and lossless compression would be supported, as well as uncompressed audio. (Leaving it uncompressed is stupid, in my opinion, as decompressing a losslessly compressed file will produce exactly the same information as no compression at all in the first place.)

    Here's where my idea becomes interesting. Networking hardware would be built in, and additional screens, which would look somewhat like miniature jukeboxes, could be placed around the room, as in some restaurants. Internet connectivity would be possible, and would link the jukebox to a central resource, any of its mirrors, or any other site that supports the required protocol. You could conceivably select to play songs that aren't saved inside the jukebox at all! While other songs are being played (songs that were selected before your selection), it will download your song in the background (in a small-file format, such as MP3).

    Songs that are seldom played would eventually be removed from the jukebox using a simple LRU (Least Recently Used) algorithm, unless they are marked as permanent by the jukebox owner, in which case they won't be deleted. Songs that are played often would be downloaded in a larger, lossless format during idle cycles, for better sound quality.

    OF COURSE, THIS JUKEBOX WOULD RUN LINUX.

    The main jukebox and smaller "consoles" that would be placed around the room would all accept money, just as "real" jukeboxes do. This would be a great product for bars and restaurants. (I often visit a nearby bar that has a jukebox, and there are plenty of songs I wish they had. This jukebox would solve that problem.)

    OH WELL.

  • Get a Mac. (Score:2, Informative)

    by gig ( 78408 )
    All Macs come with iTunes and FireWire. You can easily hook on more than 11 FireWire hard disks, and iTunes is happy to rip to AIFF and work only with uncompressed audio. It's UI is a pleasure to use to archive lots and lots of music. I have about 800 albums archived in iTunes and can find any song in a second or two. For a couple of grand, you can get an iBook and a couple of 80GB FireWire drives, and you'll be able to edit movies and surf the Web or play DVD's and do other things with it as well.

  • use 'shorten' - its lossless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @06:04PM (#2616273)
    if you really care about total audio quality, here's what you have to do:

    • encode your .wav's to shorten format [etree.org].

    • play them back (after expending them, on-the-fly) to an spdif card such as the c-media 8738 or midiman series of s/pdif cards. alsasound supports the 8738 just dandy - better than the latest linux kernel does (sadly to say).

    • connect the s/pdif out on your sound card to a quality DAC (digital to analog converter) such as an audio alchemy DAC, as found used on ebay for cheap.

    • connect that DAC to your home stereo and enjoy.

    you'd be extremely hardpressed to tell the diff between a silver stamped cd going thru its audio chain and this setup as I described. in fact, my setup will be better, on average, since the audio alchemy (or even midiman) DAC will usually be better than the one built into your cd player.

  • My disappointment with the quality of compressed digital music formats (MP3, Ogg, WMA, the list goes on ...) and playback hardware has so far forced me to stick with the good ol' aluminum coated plastic discs.
    If your that picky, you should be listening to LPs, or tapes.

  • As the saying goes... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mysta ( 67129 )
    Audiophiles are people who listen to the sound system, not the music.

  • $20k? You gotta be kidding.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Toodles ( 60042 ) on Monday November 26, 2001 @06:58PM (#2616568) Homepage
    Let's see... For $20,000 US, I can buy:

    1. Terabyte Fileserver [slashdot.org]: $5000

    2. Turtlebeach sound card with optical out (SBLive won't do it; it resamples the data for no reason): $400

    3. 'Ultimate Linux Box 2001' [slashdot.org]= $3200-$7000

    4. Choice of storage formats: WAVs (Free[as in beer]:1250-1750 cds:lossless) MP3 (done proper) [r3mix.net] (Free[as in beer]:12,500-17,500 cds:lossy) Ogg Vorbis [ogg.org] (Free[as in speech]:12,500-17,500 cds:lossy), and FLAC [sourceforge.net] (Free[as in speech]:2500-3500 cds:lossless)

    All this, 2.54*10^24 times more storage, and a set of components guaranteed to be better than what is in that POS that's being sold. Oh, and lets not forget the $7000 or so you'll be saving.

    I'll pass.

    Toodles
  • All this extra audio hardware is pretty silly considering the biggest improvement in sound quality comes with using an external D/A converter. Of course the real trick is trying to find a good digital output card. SB Live normally sucks for this because anything sent to /dev/dsp* gets internally processed and resampled before getting sent back out via SPDIF. However, there is a neat hack available with the emu-tools for Linux (http://opensource.creative.com) that lets you use the "digital pass-through" feature of the driver to send raw 48Khz PCM streams (or even more fun, AC3 streams from your favorite DVD player..) out via the SPDIF connector. Now the last problem is jitter (time domain non-linearity) and it's probably the nastiest one to solve. AFAIK, the only way to truly deal with it is to use a D/A converter that buffers the input and precisely re-clocks the signal using an internal clock before the D/A circuit sees it. Linn probably minimizes this problem by using AES as the digital interconnect instead of the SPDIF via Toslink or coax that you'll get with most solutions. Digital audio isn't as simple as it first seems. (-:

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