[vorbis] OT: Perfect Pitch

[Moz]

Myles wrote:
> I will add that his whole explanation of perfect pitch perception
> easily offers an explanation as to why  some individuals will only
> archive flac/pac/ape (Moz - do you?)

Not at all - I've been training myself to listen to more or less
anything (fm radio, car stereos...). As I implied, finding $US100k
audiophile systems irritatingly low in sound quality is a recipe for
lifelong unhappiness. The other way to approach perfect pitch is to
regard the recording as a reminder, a prompt that brings back the
reference "recording" in all its glory. I'm trying to do that more
than the other way round. Not to harp on the philosophy of life too
much, but if you learn about a subject purely in order to pick at it
and become unhappy, I don't think you're really doing yourself any
favours.

> Moz: do you perceive some .ogg's at q<=4.99 sound pingpongish?

I have not tried to critique the sound, but at q=5 I do notice an
improvement over MP3/128kb/s and I really don't have the equipment to
go further than that. I will probably do a hard comparison at some
point (using expensive HiFi) to work out what compression level I need
for the long term. Right now I have 40GB or so of 128kbits MP3 that
don't sound at all good even plugging the PC into a basic system
(Rotel pre and  power amp with B&W 600 series matrix speakers). I want
to avoid that next time while also not going past about 1.5MB/minute.

One other note on HiFi: Sturgeons Law applies with bells on. On the
one hand people pay $40 for a green permanent marker to make their CDs
sound better (really!), but contrawise many of them believe that vinyl
records sound better. Very rarely in HiFi do you see double blind
tests or any attempt at reasonable comparisons, and the manufacturers
are active in suppressing same. So even if ogg is technically
superior, I'm not sure how you'd sell that to audiophiles.

My personal interest in ogg is twofold: a better level of quality at
about 128-160 kbits so I can grab my CD collection onto the PC, which
requires a Win2000 compatible tool that interacts with CDDB or the
like; and decent bass response for loud music for my bicycle sound
system (a 250W amp with 4 250mm cones, 2 50mm ones, and two horn
tweeters) that I take to Critical Mass. Unfortunately for ogg I own a
Diva MP3 player (CF memory cards), so I'm pretty tied to MP3 for that
unless the Diva people start supporting ogg. But even as is, I can get
about 4 hours of reasonable music onto the 256MB card I bought.

<p>Moz

<p>--- >8 ----
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