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On Coding Snacks Idea
As to what made me donate, I'm a software developer myself.. It seems right to give back, particularly when someone is doing something as inarguably good as making software (useful software) available to everyone, even people who have little (or no) money. I can  afford to pay for it. I am glad to do so.
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Why 24-bit/192kHz music files make no sense - and may be bad for you!

cochlea-and-responses.png
It's been a while since I've been over to the xiph.org website. But a heads-up on the Hacker News RSS feed directed me to this:

http://people.xiph.o...demo/neil-young.html

An excellent article by Redhat's 'Monty' Montgomery entitled: 24/192 Music Downloads...and why they make no sense

Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young's group several months ago.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we're not going to see any actual improvement.
First, the bad news

In the past few weeks, I've had conversations with intelligent, scientifically minded individuals who believe in 24/192 downloads and want to know how anyone could possibly disagree. They asked good questions that deserve detailed answers.

I was also interested in what motivated high-rate digital audio advocacy. Responses indicate that few people understand basic signal theory or the sampling theorem, which is hardly surprising. Misunderstandings of the mathematics, technology, and physiology arose in most of the conversations, often asserted by professionals who otherwise possessed significant audio expertise. Some even argued that the sampling theorem doesn't really explain how digital audio actually works [1].

Misinformation and superstition only serve charlatans. So, let's cover some of the basics of why 24/192 distribution makes no sense before suggesting some improvements that actually do.

Click here to read more..



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