What is Digg?32 Comments
- streetstealth, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18Such a complicated and geeky thing, made so understandable...
This is why I love Ars Technica. - TheCosmicFool, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13I took it upon myself to understand how the mp3 format works one day when I was in my final year of Comp Sci at college...
That day became a week and by now I have retained about 10% of the knowledge... I also retained the knowledge that I don't really need to know how they work... - mattsx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11no you didn't...
- ZachSka87, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13I don't have my first Ph.D. yet. :(
- mattsx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Listening to mp3s will never be the same... I'm always gonna be wondering what got masked!
- cs188, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9VBR FTW! :)
- mattsx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8FTA: "Sure, geeks may once have traded music in large WAV or AIFF files through newsgroups,"
they called you a geek... - TheSeeker11, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7FLAC FTW!!!11!!1!!one!!!11
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5actually, lossless flac ftw
- zombiedepot, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Go get some fresh air.
- RadiatedAnt, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6arstechnica?? I was expecting hyrdogenaudio
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4ahhhhhhhh there is math 13,000 (13 * 100 / .1 = 13,000)
- damentz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3sorry, ABR cause I'm an argument zealot.
- TheSeeker11, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I'm inclined to agree with you. Compressed is a term better applied to lossless files suck as WavPack, APE, FLAC (ftw), SHN, TAK etc.
- Modestexcuse, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Really good read. Thanks.....
- daveisfera, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I can't exactly agree that that was a simple description or an easy read, but interesting and educating none-the-less.
- likeyehokwhatev, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3I wouldn't really say it's really controversial in and of itself.. we just do "controversial" things with it :)
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -4/+5Still too complicated. Not useful anyway.
- subliminalurge, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Not true. It is a very controversial file type, due to the number of arguments it generates. There are those who say that it's an absolutely ***** compression format, and even at the highest bitrates the resulting music is unlistenable. Then there are those who say that it works perfectly fine, and that on any "real world" audio equipment you can't tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD.
There are large numbers of people on both sides of the argument. - peppino, on 06/03/2008, -0/+1I listen to vinyl, CD and MP3. I like vinyl the best. I think most audiophiles will agree.
- antitab, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Sorry, wrong comment.
- oldcyborg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You know, I'm just not all that bright... But this, I can understand, and appreciate somebody breaking it down for me. Thanks, from all of us mathematically impaired.
Cyborg - antitab, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1HA wouldn't go out of their way to do ANYTHING for the common people.
- antitab, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Cute article, but the basic inaccuracies get it +1 bury.
"what it (quantization) boils down to is the process of assigning a numerical value to something"
In the sense of quantizing an analog signal, yes, but this isn't the context of the quote, making their definition wrong. Which is surprising coming from a tech blog with such clout. In signal compression, quantization refers to scaling down and approximating a set of values. Usually, a frequency matrix consisting of cosine coefficients are quantized (JPEG, MPEG video and audio).
"DVDs are a modified version of MPEG-2, as is your digital TV signal."
I didn't realize that using a different container format = modifying the compression scheme. DVD and DVR is not modified MPEG-2 in any way. It is vanilla MPEG-2 Main Profile @ Main Level. - aformalevent, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0best description of the workings of audio compression i've seen. great stuff, well done ars.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3Couldn't they just say its a compression algorithm? dang!
- Winston84, on 10/10/2007, -5/+2buried as inaccurate : MP3's are data-reduced, not compressed .
- Elranzer, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1No Google job for you, then.
- yoda17, on 10/10/2007, -9/+2I think I'll stick to the math papers (with my first). Good, but still lacking too many details.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -8/+1Couldn't they just say its a compression algorithm? dang!
- ifm1989, on 10/10/2007, -14/+2Excuuuuse me for never using MP3. FLAC and WAV just too sound much better.
- ifm1989, on 10/10/2007, -14/+2Heh, I thought you were talking about Metroid Prime 3...
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