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From: garton@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Bradford Garton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Showing off the sounds
Keywords: hacking, playing, wasting time... : -)
Message-ID: <1991May25.161653.28563@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: 25 May 91 16:16:53 GMT
References: <1991May24.230242.22506@cs.mcgill.ca> <1991May25.081857.27167@cs.umn.edu>
Sender: usenet@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (The Network News)
Reply-To: garton@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Bradford Garton)
Organization: Columbia University Electronic Music Center
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In article <1991May25.081857.27167@cs.umn.edu> lindner@cs.umn.edu (Paul Lindner) writes:
>
>I also have digitized some of my favorite tunes to Optical Disk.

Ack!  Ack!  Ack!  Later on in the article...

>        if (err = SNDAlloc(&buffers[i], size, SND_FORMAT_MULAW_8,
>			   SND_RATE_CODEC, 1, 4))

Hoo boy, this is one of my "hot buttons" -- doesn't it bother you at all
that your CD recordings now sound like a phone conversation to Anchorage?
We worry sooooo much about how many gazillion colors we can display on
billions of pixels, but then workstation manufacturers get away with saying
"digital sound!" when what they mean is "sound quality similar to cheap
analog c. 1957".  Sorry, but 8-bit/8k conversion just doesn't measure up in
my book (of course, I am a teeny-tiny bit prejudiced :-).  NeXT did a truly
wonderful thing by putting 16-bit, 44.1k d-to-a convertors as standard
equipment on the cube.  Let's push for a-to-d with similar specs!  On all
workstations!  Yeah!

Of course I realize the problems with net bandwidth, disk space, etc.
supporting this amount of data -- but soon it will be trivial, right?
And when it is...


>(Though if
>ASCAP or BMI finds out,

Indeed!  The SCMS/R-DAT controversy will look pretty silly once we're able
to ftp CD-quality sounds from our favorite archive.  What will those poor
record companies do?

I don't mean to denigrate your project -- I think it's a pretty cool idea.
I just hate the thought that CODEC might become "acceptable" sound quality.

Brad Garton
Music Dept.
brad@woof.columbia.edu