Text 12421, 103 rader
Skriven 2009-02-14 19:18:34 av Russell Tiedt (5:7105/1)
  Kommentar till text 12420 av Maurice Kinal (1:261/38)
Ärende: the hills are alive with the sound of music
===================================================
Hello Maurice.

13 Feb 09 13:33, you wrote to me:

 MK> Don't be so sure about that.  Given that Fido is chock full of
 MK> DOS-think and that M$ never could fully ditch that mode of operation
 MK> no matter how hard they tried, then I'd conclude you were bitten
 MK> before you even started your first attempt at Linux, no matter which
 MK> distribution. I won't even mention which distribution(s) are the worst
 MK> for this sad state of affairs.  They all have at least a little bit of
 MK> leakage ... unfortunetly.  Myself I am doing my best to avoid that.
 MK> Hence my need for a purely console based solution.

Well, the only faults DOS had, where it could not multi-task, was not 
multi-user, and it's extremely limited memory usage ability ... 640k, never 
was enough ...

The only features of WIN 3.1 that really appealed to me, was scalable fonts 
... , and the graphic file handling and viewing abilities, these are still 
what appeal to me to-day when using 'Windows' ... , Linux based or otherwise, 
the rest, I can do without ...

If I could get something like "mc" for viewing graphics, and including them in 
"normal" documents, playing mp3/ogg files, etc., I'd be more than happy ...

 >> Using ogg format, you get slightly bigger files,

 MK> I'll check that once I get the opportunety.  I may have to resort to
 MK> starting from scratch with a new input.  At the moment all the music
 MK> here was created ages ago.

Mmmm ... , here, I'll still keep files with a mp3 extension, but wma and other 
windows centric file formats, get the Kinal patented "heave ho" function ... , 
but all audio files, made here, are either ogg, if compressed format is 
required, otherwise, flac, encoding is used ...

 >> which sound way better than any mp3 bitrate version, only bettered
 >> by flac format

 MK> Possibly.  I started playing with the libsndfile which here is linked
 MK> with libfftw3 (fastest fourier transform in the west) and it offers
 MK> some high quality filtering, or so ecasound suggests.  I haven't had
 MK> the chance to fully explore what is possible, digitally mastered wise.
 MK> Once I have a decent sample to play with I'll compare oggenc and lame
 MK> with it and see what the differences are, keeping the options the same
 MK> (ie sample rate, bitrate, etc.).  Without knowing for sure, it looks
 MK> like libsndfile is a keeper.  I'll have to check if flac is one of
 MK> it's dependencies. I currently have flac onboard, along with a few
 MK> other sound libs I am thinking aren't really needed.

A very capable library that is ... , does not do mp3 tho, tho there is lame 
for that ...

libsndfile can handle 8/16/24 bit PCM encoded FLAC files ... , or so the 
webpage says ... :-)

Must get to play with it and ecasound sometime ...

 >> A bit expensive, but also, nowhere near as expensive as other cards

 MK> Right.  I've noticed that.  Also at least in one case which I won't
 MK> mention (most popular these days), the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 is
 MK> INFINITELY better in all respects and costs less.

Agreed ...

 >> I'll settle for the Audiophile 192

 MK> So would I if I had one.  :-)

I want one, to feed my Yamamoto HA-02 headphone amp with, which feeds my 14 
year old Sennhieser HD 580's ...

 >> I agree, it is worth the asking price, but, I'll pass on that one

 MK> Me too but you were the one who started this 'wish list' and I just
 MK> altered it a tad.  Mind you I did see some even more expensive stuff
 MK> on their site than the Delta 1010R that made me drool a bit.  Oh well.

Yeah, well, that has more outputs/inputs than I can usefully use ...

 >> Well, as I haven't seen any of those advertised here, I'll take
 >> what I can get

 MK> Understood.  I doubt it is mission critical at this stage of the game.
 MK> Definetly something to consider for when it might become mission
 MK> critical though.  I am sure if that does happen then there is a
 MK> workable solution.

I consider it mission critical, as music listening at a quality level higher 
than most appreciate, is one of my major "hobbies" as per the equipment listed 
above ... , most of my aquaintances in the "audio hobby" poo poo, the computer 
as a storage and playback source for quality music ... , where as I think, 
with the right ancilaries, like the above mentioned card, I think an 
acceptable sound quality can be achieved, but I still need one of those cards 
to be able to "prove" that ...

Maybe next year, or the year after or ...

Russell

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5
 * Origin: Rusty's BBS - Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africa (5:7105/1)