Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!info-high-audio-request
From: lou@caber.valid.com (Louis K. Scheffer)
Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end
Subject: Re: What's up with RDAT?
Message-ID: <11582@uwm.edu>
Date: 30 Apr 91 12:59:44 GMT
Sender: news@uwm.edu
Lines: 27
Approved: tjk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Originator: tjk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu


Janne.Anttila@lut.fi (Janne Anttila) writes:

>The sound quality of DCC is likely to be clearly inferior to DAT due to 
>heavy data compression.

This is not clear one way or another.  16 bit linear encoding is not that
great either.  Suppose, for example, that you took 20 bit samples, and then
applied data compression to them.  The audible results would depend on whether
you gained more from higher resolution samples than you lost from compression.
I read that the Phillips system has more dynamic range than 16 bit linear
coding, so there are at least _some_ things that are better with that scheme.

Listening tests will be the only way to tell if the DCC scheme sounds better,
worse, or the same as 16 bit linear.  Until these are done the situation is
unclear.

There is one thing that is clear, however.  People will complain about the
compression, blaming it for all sorts of things.  I think that for this
reason alone Phillips should have a lossless coding mode.  This could still save
a factor of 2 or 3 in bits, but at no loss in accuracy.  I suppose, however,
that they wanted bigger compression factors.

With lossless data compression, you could put 60 KHz, 20 bit samples on
current CDs easily.  Now that would be a good use of data compression!

-Lou Scheffer-