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Path: utzoo!watmath!watdcsu!herbie
From: herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong, Computing Services)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: Floating Point CD's - (nf)
Message-ID: <565@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Oct-84 13:50:45 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.565
Posted: Sun Oct 28 13:50:45 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Oct-84 02:15:14 EST
References: <1753@inmet.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 19

I think the main problem is the extra hardware that has to be added to
do these things.  Aside from that, I can see no major problem.  However,
logarithmic compression has almost exactly the same effect and has been
used in most of the 14 bit digital systems.  The other problem is that with
the exponent and mantissa repressentation of the number, at least 16 bits have
to be used for the mantissa and about 8 bits for the exponent.  Unless you
use a hexadecimal coding scheme for floating point number as IBM does for
their computers, you may even need more than that.  The net result is at
least 50% higher data rate.  When the original specs for CD's were
drawn up, 16 bits was considered barely achieveable on a commercial scale.

Herb...

I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

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