What is Digg?Sponsored by Realtor.com
Top 5 most ridiculous properties sold for a single dollar view!
realtor.com - Looking for a deal on your next home? What if you could pay a dollar? What if it was a MLB stadium or a university?!?!?
81 Comments
- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+50These shouldn't be plugins. These should be there by default. These are standard, patent-free, royalty-free formats. Any other formats that get promoted are a recipe to lockin. Why can't people realise that companies manipulate the customers to decrease portability and increase self gain?
- TiMMY8765, on 11/14/2007, -0/+39now they just need flac and vorbis playback on ipods
- bettermentflux, on 11/14/2007, -6/+32I like iTunes. I LOVE Flac. I can't believe more people don't use it.
MP3 and other lossy formats give you smaller file sizes but at the cost of a noticeable loss in sound quality. It might sound acceptable on an ipod over headphones, but try running an MP3 through a decent home theater at party volumes. It would be like saving all of your photos at low-rez because that's all an iPod could show. What about when you want to blow it up into an 8'x10' and hand it on your wall?
With hard drive space so inexpensive these days, I just don't see the point. With FLAC, I'm not going to have to reburn my entire collection in a few years time. - ErifNeerg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20while apple will most likely not do that, rockbox and ipodlinux will.
http://www.ipodlinux.org/
&
http://www.rockbox.org/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Rio's Karma and other Rio models support FLAC and ogg. I don't think they're doing very well in the MP3 market these days, though.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+23I agree with you at 128kbps MP3s. However, with v0 and other new versions encoding that get the bitrate up around 275VBR, I cannot tell the difference on my home theatre or in my car. And that's still at about 1/3 the filesize of FLAC. I know that some people swear by FLAC, but if you do your MP3s well the lossy-ness can approach insignifigance (to my ear, anyway).
- chrisgeleven, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13There is a rumor that FLAC appears in the new Quicktime for OS X Leopard. It was demoed at WWDC.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=47526 - b612, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12umm...hate to bust your bubbles but it does not support native FLAC just ogg FLAC (which is not supported by much else, i don't know of any DAPs that support it)
read from the release notes
FLAC - FLAC decoder and importer for Ogg FLAC (no support for native FLAC file format yet);
also i have been using it for a while and it has a real problem with ID3 tags
If you don't use itunes and want to play flac (and have windows which i don't) just use media monkey, get a cowon iaudio player, or meizu mini player or a Rio player (do they still make those, i thought they went out of buisness?)
if anyone has a good solution for mac users let me know, the only one i know of is songbird. - Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Stuff that you rip yourself doesn't get DRM. And AAC is a non-proprietary codec.
- chrisgeleven, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9When your rip with iTunes, you do not get ANY DRM on your files. That's right, even if they are ALAC or AAC.
The ONLY thing that would cause you issues is if other players don't support ALAC or AAC. AAC support is actually getting pretty common.
That said, I still use LAME-encoded MP3's. I think AAC needs some more tuning before I switch over. - LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6dalex: Don't forget the Karma's successor the Vibez. It contains the same brand chipset as the Karma, but a later version that can do more. Of course, when it was featured here on Digg, nobody could get over how "ugly" it was, but personally, I love it.
"I don't think they're doing very well in the MP3 market these days, though."
Heh, no, they're not. DNNA, the parent company of Rio, shut down in 2005, iirc, and sold off all of their intellectual property to Sigmatel, who made the chips in the Vibez and Karma. Hopefully they'll continue to do amazing things with the stuff that they've acquired. - Devz0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Besides compatibility, for the life of me I don't understand why people don't prefer Ogg Vorbis over mp3(Besides for compatibility). Dozens of listening tests (that actually include Vorbis) almost always have Vorbis ranked higher than any other codec. It's simply superior in quality. Listen for yourself - http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/listen.html .
And plus, for the FLOSS fans, Vorbis is 100% patent free and open source. - MrViklund, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Maybe most of people can't, especially on none HIFI-Systems, but you always want the source-file in as high quality as possible and work from there. But fact is, 192 sound much much better then 128, I can at least hear that clearly.
- mkoby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I rip my CDs at 256 kbit/s (consistent too, none of this variable bitrate stuff). When played on a stereo there is little difference between that mp3 file and a FLAC file, at least noticeable difference.
I like the idea of re-ripping my entire CD collection to FLAC so that I can encode it to whatever format I would like later, but I do not have the funds to spend on hard drives at the moment. I think the ideal situation would be to start out ripping in FLAC, make copies of the FLAC files, decode them, encode the wavs into 128bit AAC for iPod (if you have an iPod), and then repeat that process for whatever other formats you want. Since FLAC is lossless, you will always start out with a digital copy of the source material and you can not really beat that. - mecki78, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10Actually I fail to hear the difference between a raw CD and a MP3 created with
lame --preset standard
Which will encode between 180 and 220 kbit/s, a lot smaller than FLAC will ever get. However, I personally prefer Ogg over MP3, usually already
oggenc -q5
will be transparent to most people, for the paranoid ones, use "-q6" and it will be transparent. "-q4" is already transparent for most songs. And Ogg is smaller, averages around 180 kbit/s and sounds so nice.
However, I have this thing installed on my Mac since Summer last year, so how old can news actually get? It has not changed since that time. So no digg. - mjsteinbaugh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I totally agree. I just use ALAC instead because it works with my iPod. ALAC and FLAC are pretty comparable except that FLAC works with more software, such as foobar, etc. You can always transcode between the two since they're lossless. dbPowerAmp will convert FLAC to ALAC really quickly.
- TechCF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I wish my iPod would play Ogg too
- nicc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3for playback of FLAC on OS X, check out Cog.
I believe its 16bit only, but I'm not 100% positive. - lesosso, on 11/14/2007, -5/+8Try listening to classic music with mp3's. Come on people, maybe if you listen to your music with plastic speakers, then it would always be crappy so you would not see the difference, mp3's lack the higher frequencies at any settings. Anybody that would say mp3's sounds like flac just does not have the ear for music.
- b612, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3release notes for those of you who don't believe me (but for some reason believe some other stranger)
http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/release_notes.html - ArthurSucks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've had a lot of friend who are Apple users who ask me how to put a flac album on their ipods. I always have to explain to them the complex process, but with plugins like this, they can just "sync" (transcode) them. Anything that makes it easier for the consumer, the better, right?
- catmistake, on 11/14/2007, -2/+5If you don't hear the difference between compressed and non-compressed digital music, good for you! I realized as soon as mp3s became popular that I could hear a huge difference between mp3s and CD audio, and started my anti-mp3 campeign during the Napster fiasco. My argument, mp3s are barely broadcast quality, and not a true digital copy of music off CDs. The RIAA fooled the judicial system, saying that mp3s are "digital quality," and no one anywhere is arguing against this. Big mistake. Once you realize that mp3s ARE NOT as good as they claimed (esp. back then), then broadcast radio stations have been 'violating' the same rules as Napster ever since people have been able to tape broadcasts.
That being said, I convert all FLAC stuff to Apple Lossless so the iPod will play it. But it doesn't really matter what the format is to me, as long as its lossless and I can use it. - smcavoy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8you mean their looking out for their business interests?
- EdLesMann, on 10/12/2007, -2/+560% of my music collection is in flac. Another 20% is ogg. The rest is misc other file formats.
I tried to use the iPod as it was but I HATED having to convert all my music into a lossy low quality format just so I could play it on my iPod. I honestly tried using iTunes and the iPod and I just couldnt. I got sick of trying to keep iTunes from renaming my songs (It once renamed my entire collection into 8 character Alpha-Numeric names with what seemed to be complete randomness. Thank God I had a backup!).
Of course, my luck kicked in and the 80GB iPods were released the next week. I paid 300$ for my 60GB and the best offer I got was for 150$ 2 weeks after I got it. So it sat around unused for a long time. Then I discovered Rockbox. OMG it is so cool! It made my iPod useful again!
I can sync with multiple computers so I have 3 backups of my music.
I can plug it into ANY computer and copy files off of it and copy files onto it. Sharing music is EXTREAMLY easy now.
I can plug it into my MythTV box and have the music play through the system.
I was able to customize the fonts to something other then the iPod default of way-to-big.
I have my own layout structure and custimized screen to tell me the battery life, current song (title, artist, file format, encoded rate, and time) as well as the next song in the list, date and time, and its all done with a really cool theme.
I can view pictures with a decent picture viewer that doesn't down-scale my pictures (it has zoom in and out and does a decent job).
The biggest plus is that ALL my music plays on it now.
I LOVE Rockbox! I highly recommend it to anyone with a iPod. - fangorious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"And AAC is a non-proprietary codec."
More than that it's MP4, which is truly the successor to MP3, by the same people ... It's like going from mpeg video to mpeg2 video. - Kawauso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2the korean Cowon iAudio series of mp3 players also pretty much all support flac
- williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I meant that reply to be for the parent below. Digg could use some work on the reply button placement. Too easy to get that wrong.
- codyman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I rip using lame 3.97 --preset-standard ... yeah, maybe its not like FLAC and is lossy, but overall it takes up little space and it still sounds pretty damn good
- omarciddo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@Devz0r
Compatibility is a pretty big issue to downplay like that. I definitely agree that OGG and FLAC are light years ahead of mp3, but it doesn't do very much good unless we can take that quality with us on our players. - vdubski, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Dalex1, you are right. The Lame 3.97b1 V0 preset sounds damned good. Almost indistinguishable from it's Flac counterpart. But I can still hear a difference between the two on my high-end home stereo. But for the iPod it's V0 all the way.
In the car, which is where I do most of my iPod listening, it's almost pointless to listen to cd quality with all the road noise and the placement of speakers is usually not ideal. - Muncher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3These have been around for a while, but still dugg.
- cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4FLAC is a good thing but it's just not feasable if you have a large collection. With a collection of over 24,000 music files, with FLAC it could take 1T versus the 130GB it takes now. I don't want to deal with a terrabyte of data for music, and FLAC files don't generally stream to my work PC very well with a cablemodem.
Considering that the quality is *damned near closed to uncompressed* with the new MP3 codecs and higher bitrate VBR- the storage management, bandwidth management, etc, make lossy compression Damned Good Enough for me.
There will always be audio snobs that insist they can tell the difference between high quality compression and uncompressed, but I'm not one of them. I truly do want awesome sound, and I do have some nice gear at home, but I'm not snobbish to the point of being stubborn. - norz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2if you need more than what winamp offers and have some time to learn, you can try foobar2000.
It's the best audio player for advanced users, has plenty of plugins, etc.
More info here: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Foobar2000 - brlittle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Impressive. 24 whole hours before someone bitched about DRM.
And was wrong about it, at that. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@LycoLoco
Thanks. I completely missed the Vibez. I've got an old 20G Karma that's living on borrowed time....I thought I was just going to succumb to the iPod borg for it's replacement, but I'll take a peek at what Sigmatel is doing . - yabos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anything over 22KHz isn't distorted on a CD. CDs only sample up to 22KHz due to the sampleing frequency of 44.1KHz. The audio is passed through a filter before being sampled so anything above 22KHz is not sampled. If you tried to sample a frequency above that it'd sound really screwed up due to aliasing so actually no frequencies are sampled above that, they are filtered out first.
- mecki78, on 11/14/2007, -2/+3Don't talk to me about little plastic speakers, my speakers are $600 per Speaker + an Extra Subwoofer for another $300. My Amplifier is about $800. My headphones are about $100. And I still can't hear a difference between MP3 and CD at preset standard, not with classical music either. I challenge everyone who says he can to do a blind test and he'll lose. Most people claiming so never did a blind test. A blind test is when a MP3 and a plain WAV both run at the same time, synchronously and a mixer randomly fades between both. Then the listener must press a button whenever he's sure to hear the MP3 and another one whenever he hears the CD. The hit rate is about 50% right and 50% wrong for 99% of the listeners, which is as good as random guessing and pressing the keys randomly would have been. So they can't hear the difference, they only believe they can when they know they are listening to a MP3.
- williamdyer, on 11/14/2007, -1/+2I'm 47 years old and went to my share of Led Zep concerts, and I can hear the difference, for MP3, at 192kbps. It isn't easy. but it is there. At 256, I'm "happy" with MP3. AAC at 192kbps VBR is fine, and my 30GB iPod can hold a lot 'o music at that size. My tiny Sennheiser in-ear "cheap enough not to care if I break them but not so cheap as to sound cheap" phones I take with me are good enough that bad MP3s sound REALLY REALLY bad.
- tropican8, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@OneAndOnlySnob:
What happens when MP3s go the way of the dinosaur? Will you convert those 192kbps MP3s to AAC or whatever comes next? You will only have effective 96kbps song files then. What about when you burn mixed CDs? If a friend imports the mixed CD into their computer (illegal, by the by), they also get the wonderful quality hit.
Also, with a poor encoder like Blade, you can even ABX the mp3 from the original at 320kbps. Just because LAME is a decent encoder whose file's get transparent around 128-160kbps for normal systems and 190kbps for Hi-Fi doesn't mean all mp3s are like that. - maexus, on 11/14/2007, -0/+1You are wrong. Forget audiophiles and HIFI. Listen to an mp3 and then a lossless rip though reference monitors with trained ears than talk some *****. HIFI doesn't have ***** on reference monitors. They have a flat response or as close to a flat response as a speaker can get. They are used to mix and master music in studios by audio engineers. People with trained ears. I have a pair of reference montiors and have done an A/B mp3 V2 vs Lossless test. It's very obvious, especially when you export your own music and then encode into mp3. mp3 KILLS the bright highs and lush lows. It muddles the dynamic range and overall, the track sounds more static (not noise but lack of movement)
- OneAndOnlySnob, on 11/14/2007, -1/+2You're all *****. And I used to be just like you.
I'm talking audiophiles listening to their HIFI sets. I've given and taken this test several times on flat systems. To people who care about hi fi audio. If I could administer this test in real life to each, I would seriously bet 1000 dollars that you won't be able to tell the difference between 192kbps LAME encoded mp3 and original. Easy money.
Get over yourself. The difference you hear is imagined.
Except MrViklund, he has a valid comment. But most people don't work with their music. They just listen to it. - regeya, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, yeah; different encoders. I wish I could tell you which is better. My ears tell me Lame, but I've never done an ABX.
- rawheadrex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, the ***** post is inaccurate. This does not support .flac QT/iTunes. Reading their FAQ, I see it's more off an Apple problem (I guess? Although I don't get why you can get iTunes to play back .ogg via a plugin but not .flac) but it doesn't change the fact that the title got my hopes up only to smash them down.
- Mirag3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3devz0r is right, ogg vorbis is amazing - its so much better than aac/mp3 while maintaining the exact same filesize. I like the flac plugin for compatibility, but im not as infatuated with it since it's basically the exact same as apple lossless. Btw, just because you can't hear the difference between 256 kbps mp3 and lossless audio, don't assume others can't (I did pass I blind test with Handel's Water Music if you really needed to know). If you listen to classical music (that hasn't had its audio remastered and edited for cd like most popular music) you can hear every single individual in lossless, unlike mp3. The problem is that most music has actually been edited by the studio for a clean tune and mp3 compatibility, thus all of your extraneous audio has already been cut out.
- norz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For those who are interested in scientific listening tests, and need more than impressions and placebo, see here:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Listening_Tests#Multiformat_Tests - landmonster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nice one, thanks.
- nicc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I followed the link, but he page doesnt specify if FLAC playback is for 16bit only or if it supports 24bit as well.
anyone know? (I'm at work on my XP machine w/o iTunes/QT) - williamdyer, on 11/14/2007, -1/+2After experimenting, I found that I can just barely tell, using my STAX elctrostatic headphones in a very quiet environment, the difference between a high quality CD source and AAC @ 192kpbs VBR. I found that I have to use MP3 at 256kpbs VBR or better to achieve an almost-as-good result.
Then again, those high tones that teenagers can hear are barely audible hiss to me. Meh. Let's me focus on stuff that matters, like ability to reproduce live dynamic range.
But MP3 really must be rubbish if I can tell so easily. - b612, on 11/14/2007, -4/+5also, why do people digg things without checking them out, please burry this for being wrong topic, THERE IS NO FLAC SUPPORT FOR ITUNES WITH THIS, change topic to ogg support.
- JackAxe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Having a large HD for audio storage, pretty much negates any advantage of OGG these days
With my Senns, I can definately hear the metalic oscillation that shows up on lower-bit-rate music. It's much more noticable when using my headphone amp. Tis why I compress everything with Apple Lossless. It does a great job, where as my ears can't discern any difference between it and the original CD.
Having the option for FLAC and OGG would be nice, since it would offer more choices to the music player that already plays the widest range of formats, so I hope future iPods will have built-in support. -
Show 51 - 81 of 81 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is