From: Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP (Paula Lieberman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Reasons for Amiga CD
Distribution: world
Date: 27 Jan 93 17:56:38 EDT
Organization: Amiga Colony BBS

In a message dated Fri 16 Jan 93  0:57, 2575brooksr@vms.csd.mu.edu (ryan K.
wrote:

 K> Message-ID: <009669AC.760C3000@vms.csd.mu.edu>
 K> Date: 14 Jan 93 21:53:05 GMT
 K> Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP (Paula Lieberman) writes:
>
>In a message dated Tue  6 Jan 93 23:14, Ggiles@cie.uoregon.edu (gregg
Giles
>wrote:
>
> GG> Path:
tegra!ulowell!das.wang.com!uunet!ogicse!cs.uoregon.edu!news.uore
> GG> gon.edu!cie.uoregon.edu!ggiles
> GG> From: ggiles@cie.uoregon.edu (Gregg Giles>
> GG> In article <0210aa5@ofa123.fidonet.org> Aric.Caley@ofa123.fidonet.org
> GG> writes:
>>
>>> CD-ROMs.  The audio industry will almost certainly insist on circuitry
>to
>>> prevent read-write CD drives from copying audio CDs, and the software
>>> publishing industry may get on the bandwagon by insisting on similar
>>> circuitry
>>
>>Well  the Sony MiniDisk is already out.  I dont know if it has this kind
>of
>>circuitry in it.
>
> GG>    I saw a Sony 2.5" MD player/recorder advertised in a catalog this
> GG> last
> GG> weekend, and it mentioned that the user could make a digital copy of
> GG> a CD or
> GG> a tape (ie: DAT or whatever), but they would be unable to make
> GG> another copy
> GG> of that copy. In essence, I guess the answer to the question is yes,
> GG> such
> GG> circuitry is in place.
> GG>    Sony (who controls both hardware and software for the audio
> GG> industry) is going to hold digital audio for ransom for as long as
> GG> they can.
> GG> Break the chains, dammit. I live for the day that CD-players all have
> GG> Digital-I/O ports... I'm sick of tapes.
>
> Pin the tail on the Recording Industries Association of America, which is
>the organization to blame about copy protection upon copy protection.  The
>AES  Audio Engineers Society?  I'm not sure precisely what the acronym
>stands for) fought but lost out to the politically connected and highly
>lucrative "the customers are all thieves!" recording industry.   By the
>way, MiniDisc and Digital Compact Cassette -both- are deliberately lossy
>recording formats 

 K> The reason they are "deliberately lossy" is only because the media
 K> chosen
 K> to store the audio data is much smaller (bit-wise) than is required to
 K> store
 K> a 100% representation of the sound.  MD and DCC wouldn't be so "Mini"
 K> and 
 K> "Compact" if they weren't lossy. 

Uh-uh, the data capacity either would be lower, or the price higher to
provide denser storage.
>Um, getting back to the start of that meandering sentence:  DCC and
>minidisk both do not keep full 16 bit, 0 - 48 kHz data; some of the
>frequencies get ditched, to reduce the data processing throughput load,
>among other things. 

 K> Neither format throws frequencies away, that would sound very odd.
They >compress< the data.  Simply put, certain aspects of the overall
 K> waveform are not recorded to disk/tape.  Not good for high-end stuff.
 K> But
 K> try listening to the same stuff off of CD and a MD/DCC copy, I
 K> couldn't
 K> tell the difference, and I doubt 90% of the people out there can.

a) I've run into a fair number of people who -can- tell the difference, who
still have the high ends of their hearing intact (go to too many LOUD rock
concerts, and the HF hearing response dies.  Jet pilots often have
-notches- in their hearing at engine whine frequencies.  Etc.

b) The DEFINITION of "lossy" is losing data.  The compression that MiniDisk
and DCC use BOTH removes high frequency date -- uh, do you know anything
about stuff like  Fourier Transformer, Laplace Transforms, Fast Fourier
Transforms, Discrete Cosine Transforms, etc., that convert between time and
frequency domains?  The -loss- in -lossy- compression using such techniques
deletes frequency domain data..... 

>So, both formats technically are inferior to DAT.

 K> DCC is very similar to DAT.  MD offers fast random access without any 
 K> tape-wear. The ONLY way that they are inferior is the lossy
And lossy stor  storage is INFERIOR in quality to lossless storage.  Sigh.
 K> compression.

>Throwing away digital signal information also means that neither DCC nor
>MiniDisc is appropriate as a data storage format..... just think, you go
to
>retrieve a file, and there's data -deliberately- missing!
>

 K> Bzzzzzzt! Try again.  Both formats store a PERFECT image of digital
 K> information.  The process that both Sony and Phillips chose for
 K> encoding
 K> music loses some information but  this compressed "image" is stored 
 K> perfectly to disk/tape.   Both formats would store computer data
 K> pefectly.

<screech -- the very STORAGE algorithm is lossy, it's BUILT in! 
 K>  ----------------------------
 K>  Ryan K. Brooks                Chip of the Month Club: TMS320C40
 K>  2575BrooksR@vms.csd.mu.edu

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