The wax cylinder's threat to HD

[Mike Walker]

Mp3 players are great (NO I DON'T HAVE AN IPOD! Apple didn't invent the wheel, and they sure as hell didn't invent the mp3 player! My mp3 player buying patterns were well established long before Steve Jobs jumped on the bandwagon. By the time Apple introduced the Ipod, I'd already purchased a RaveMP, and an Archos Jukebox Recorder 10...which years ago did something Ipods still don't do...RECORD!)

I love mp3 players, and carry one with me most everywhere...along with my radio. Because I can't hear the news on an mp3 player. Can't get the weather. Can't get a traffic report. I can't get Car Talk, A Prarie Home Companion, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, What do you know, or any of the public radio shows I love. And most important of all, I will NEVER be surprised by what I hear on an mp3 player. That's the fun thing about radio...someone's programming the damn thing...someone other than me, so I NEVER KNOW WHAT'S NEXT! Even in "shuffle" mode, the next song will always be something from my library. NOT SO WITH RADIO!

And here's a kicker...HD Radio has better sound quality than most mp3s. Tee Hee! ;D

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Yes, you are not alone, HD supporters are lost in the distant past, trying to play wax cylinders on their old MP3 players. HD supporters are in denial, refusing to believe that technology has already made their HD radios obsolete.
News, traffic and weather from all over the world, extended weather forecasts, all of the programs you mentioned, plus millions of other programs and tunes worldwide (many not available on HD radio or even over AM or FM) are all available on MP3. Fill up your MP3 player on the way out and carry months of entertainment anywhere you go.
Spotty radio reception and interference on the train, bus, car, or in the workplace?
Long commutes where your favorite stations just can't carry the tune?
Tired of commercials, and boring babble?
For less then $30.00 you can have it all, in one thumb sized 1 ounce unit! No need to carry all that "stuff". Leave the old MP3 player, radio, wax cylinders, phonograph, spare needles, HD radio with multi-mile extension cord and multiple external antennas, telegraph key, Dictaphone, etc. at home. Welcome to the new Millennium.
MP3 player, FM radio (not HD) and recorder all for less then $30.00, about the size of your thumb!
Almost unlimited, continuous entertainment, totally under your control, on demand, when ever, wherever, and however you want it, that you can't get on HD radio.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2430468&CatId=2475&CMP=EMC-TIGEREMAIL&SRCCODE=WEM1280AF
Review:

Reviewed by: RichT on Nov 22, 2006
Summary:
Looks good, simple controls and easy to use (haven't needed to look at the instructions yet), easy to sync with WMP, plenty of space, bounce proof. Radio reception was excellent from my basement. Just what I was looking for for my daughter for Xmas. Will probably buy myself the 2GB one for Xmas too now!!! Came with a regular battery not a rechargeable... not a big deal

Rating: 5 stars out of 5!

Isn't modern technology wonderful?
It is a shame HD radio supporters are stuck on last century's technology.

 

[Mike Walker]

Yeah I could search and search, and download, and search, and subscribe to podcasts (which I do!) only to find that what I want wasn't downloaded, but ten things i didn't want were. Or I could just turn on the damn radio. Yeah...new technology solves all problems! Know how you can tell technology is successful? WHEN SOMEBODY MAKES MONEY FROM IT! Terrestrial radio IS. Internet, including podcasts and mp3 ain't.

If you were me...receiving money every month from terrestrial radio, would you give it up for the riches to be made from internet audio say...next month? Come on, tell the truth? I'll bet my future on terrestrial radio any day. Check back in twenty years and see if I'm not still gettin' a check every month!

 

[MotoMuzak]

Supercaster~

Bingo! Well stated.........

Meanwhile, there's Mike Walker:
"And here's a kicker...HD Radio has better sound quality than most mp3s. Tee Hee!"

Yeaaaahhhhh......you obviously never have heard an MPEG3 recorded at 44100/320CBR (or even better yet, 48000/320, essentially DVD-Video quality)  have you? Makes IBAC sound like a scratchy cell phone connection! (I take it you really don't record that much of your own MPEG3 content, do you?) There even exist MPEG3 codecs that can even surpass the sample/bit rates I mentioned above at that!

[SoapBoxMode]
Soap = 1

MPEG3's don't have coverage problems like IBAC does.
MPEG3's can carry other metadatas (JPEGs, text files, etc.) which are rather poorly implemented in Ibiquity.
MPEG3 players can be had for far cheaper than an IBAC radio can.
MPEG3 files comprise far more content than IBAC broadcasts and many can be downloaded for no more than it costs to receive IBAC, sans the cost of equipment.
More companies are supporting MPEG3 than IBAC. (Hell, even cell phones now have MPEG3 playback--have yet to see any with IBAC!!)
MPEG3 Players are more accessible to many listeners I know of than IBAC radios like the Accurian, to cite one example.

And did I mention the sound quality of a full-bandwidth 48000/320 MPEG3 BLOWS IBAC'S ASS RIGHT OUT OF THE WATER??

IBAC promising CD-Quality sound, my achin' foot!!

Now, as for me I use a Panasonic SL-CT579V CD player with MPEG3 support (doesn't have the "limited memory" issue memory-based devices like Apples, Zunes, Sandisks etc. have, unless you rn out of blank CDs!) and I wouldn't trade it for all the IBACs in the world! Oh, let's see, what else can it do? Well, it has a radio (Analogue AM and FM, very wide bandwidth at that) and....oh yeah.....IT PLAYS CDS!! What more wouldja want?

You know how you really can tell if a technology is a success? WHEN PEOPLE ARE FRICKIN' USING IT AND MAKING WIDE USE OF IT!!! Internet and MPEG3's ARE. IBAC ain't.

And you think people aren't making money off MPEG3? Ya ever heard of I-Tunes? Napster? Rhapsody, even? You can't tell me money can't be made off MPEG3. Check back in 20 years and tell me if nobody in that time has profited from MPEG3's!

[SoapBoxMode]
Soap=0

And just F.Y.I. I paid $40 for my machine at Fred Meyer's (West-coast USA supermarket) in Summer of 2006. And I have yet to see them carry IBAC equipment, or even find a worker who can even tell me what the (rather misleading) HD Radio even IS??

 

[700WLW]

http://www.google.com/trends?q="hd+radio",+ipod,+mp3

 

[Mike Walker]

With all due respect Motomuzak, don't tell me what I've never heard. I make my living doing radio production in a home studio, and distributing it to client stations over the 'net. I have as much practical experience with codecs as most anyone. I can describe EXACTLY what each popular codec does to the audio (GOOD mp3 sounds very slightly softened at the high end...but in an attractive way---similar to analog tape. WMA is much better than mp3 at low bitrates, but has a tendency to sound a little "sharp" at high frequencies...giving back more apparent hf content than was on the original. AAC+ is the BEST low bitrate codec, other than Windows Media, but also can sund a little "accentuated" at the high end. ALL are fully extended in the bass, unless the person doing the encoding is on drugs).

I've been compressing WORK...as in for money in my studio since 1995. I not only know what good (and bad) mp3 sounds like, I can identify exactly which artifacts will be left behind in a "null" test with various codecs. MP3 at high bitrates is MUCH better than, say, distributing work on half-inch 15ips open reel tape! It's FAR more transparent. I'll stake my livelihood on that. In fact I do...daily!

 

[MotoMuzak]

One More In The Name Of Curiosity (and Love, with apologies to Bono)~

Do you use the freeware/openware LAME codecs for your MPEG3s or do you use the old-skool Freunhofer system? I used to use Freunhofer for my CDs up until a couple of years ago until I discovered Lame, through a mutual friend of mine. Far more transparent than FGH, even at full bandwidth, because Lame is built upon a different psychoacoustic model. (In other words, the high end doesn't sound as "sharp" as Freunhofer's system. If there's an Audiophile MP3 codec, I would say it would have to be LAME.)

What sample rate/bandwidth do you use typically?

Then again, I soetimes have tendancy to sort-of push the limits of what my equipment can do.

You ought to hear a re-master I did of Philip Glass' "Einstein On The Beach", 48000/320 CBR in the LAME system, on a fancy DVD player on a high-end stereo. Better still, in a movie theatre! True story: someone from our church runs a local single-screen indie movie theatre downtown PDX equipped with six-channel Dolby and DTS systems.....a couple of months ago I recorded a "re-mastered" MPEG3 version of EOTB from the 1993 Elektra CD release, then got to run it in his theatre after-hours (i.e. about 9:00 PM after the last show). Pretty magical I must say..........

And re: distributing work on tape:
Show me a CD (or better still, DVDROM) of full bandwidth MPEG3's and show me a reel of tape, and try to guess which one I would pick.......... ;o)

But I still maintain strongly: IBAC can't even hold a candle to a high-fidelity full-bandwidth MPEG3. It's like there's no comparison. Apples to oranges! Until someone develops an IBAC codec that can actually achieve these quality rates it's cooked as far as I can tell.

 

[Mike Walker]

I have used lame for years. It just sounds better to me.

I'd LOVE to switch stations over to .wma, as it provides great sound at lower bitrates (hence less bandwidth usage), but radio stations are used to receiving everything in mp3. I don't want to rock the boat...especially since high bitrate mp3s can be demonstrated to remove almost nothing from the original, uncompressed audio (through null testing).

 

[700WLW]

I have used lame for years. It just sounds better to me.

I'd LOVE to switch stations over to .wma, as it provides great sound at lower bitrates (hence less bandwidth usage), but radio stations are used to receiving everything in mp3. I don't want to rock the boat...especially since high bitrate mp3s can be demonstrated to remove almost nothing from the original, uncompressed audio (through null testing).

The title of this thread, "The wax cylinder's threat to HD", has nothing to do with HD Radio, either - it is another desperate attempt to discredit Google Trends, and to confuse the issue !

 

[Mike Walker]

MotoMuzak, while 48khz sample rate might well have some advantages if it's used all the way through, the math necessary to resample a cd (44.1khz) to 48khz WILL ALWAYS do some damage to the original signal. You can't produce more information that was on the original cd. During resampling, information will fall where there is no data...between bits (to explain simply). But if you're resampling to an exact multiple of 44.1khz, such as 88.2khz (or 176.4khz), then determining where "the extra bits go" is a simple matter. But it's completely unnecessary. An oversampling d/a converter does the exact same thing (resampling in real time) when you play it back. Resampling the recording itself does nothing other than take more storage room for the same recording.

Also, lossy compression codecs NEED TO CONCENTRATE BITS WHERE THE EAR IS MOST SENSITIVE! Resampling to 48khz, then compressing to mp3 forces the codec to waste bits trying to encode data that isn't even there to begin with above the audible range! Adult men are mostly stone deaf above 15khz. So you're trying to force the codec to "encode" audio in a range you can't even hear. And remember...THERE'S NO AUDIO THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! PCM audio efficiently codes audio only as high as slightly less than half the sample rate. 44.1khz has an effective upper limit of slightly above 20khz. There was nothing above 20khz in the original cd. And there's nothing above 20khz on your 48khz resample, except for noise and dither components. This isn't theory, it can be easily seen on a spectrum analyzer.

But what about phase non-linearities from using a 44.1khz sample rate? Dude...that's what an oversampling d/a converter deals with. It's why we use 4x oversampling (176.2khz), or 8x oversampling (352.8khz). Sampling artifacts, phase non-linearities, and frequency response ripples from sharp figures at the edge of the audio band are now moved WAY beyond audibility. Again...this happens in realtime, there's no advantage to resampling, and producing a 48khz resample for your mp3. Purer audio ALWAYS results from keeping the same sample rate as the original, or at least an exact multiple. Want to greatly reduce artifacts from a low bitrate mp3? Before encoding, resample DOWN to 22.05khz. The top octave (10-20khz) is the least audibly significant of the ten octave range of human hearing, yet it requires TREMENDOUS effort for a codec to encode. Stripping it away lets the codec work harder in the midrange, where the ear is most sensitive.

In answer to your question, my work is done at 44.1khz, 320kbps, stereo in Lame, with the best quality settings. No high pass filtering is used, as low frequencies are simple and easy to encode. There's no audible downside to restricting low frequency response, even at low bitrates. But I sometimes use a LOW PASS FILTER, set at 15khz for material with lots going on in the midrange. The loss of highs is insignificant, but the gained "horsepower" by allocating more bits to the midrange is significant.

Note: Any mp3 encoding, or anything else which sounds "better than the original" is by nature poorer. The very definition of "high fidelity" is faith to the original. If the master sounded bad, well...an accurate reproduction of it ain't gonna' sound sweet!

This has EVERYTHING to do with HD, by the way, as all of what I've written about (codec efficiency/bit allocation) applies. Making the compromises I've spoken about is EXACTLY what so called "neural processing" used in low bitrate codecs on HD radio, satellite radio, and internet radio does. In real time it makes decisions about how the codec will respond to the incoming audio, and "tweaks" it on the fly...doing things like restricting high frequency extension during complex midrange-heavy passages, for instance (actually it does MUCH more than that...but that's a start).

So what do you think, Dude, do I know codecs? Don't think so? Do a little research. You might catch up with me by, say, 2040...33 years from now. That's how long it took me to learn the audio techniques I apply in my business.

By the way...if I wanted to impress someone with how great an encoding job was, I would compare it to only one thing...the uncompressed original. Does it sound like THAT? That's all that matters!

 

[vsa]

Mike Walker wrote: "...WMA is much better than mp3 at low bitrates, but has a tendency to sound a little "sharp" at high frequencies...giving back more apparent hf content than was on the original. AAC+ is the BEST low bitrate codec, other than Windows Media, but also can sund a little "accentuated" at the high end..."

I agree with you here on everything, except for your comments on WMA vs. AAC+. I think WMA completely falls apart under 32kbps. AAC+ v2 is optimized to sound reasonably good down to 24kbps and easily smokes WMA. I prefer the sound of high-bitrate MP2, but MP3 does seem to be more and more in common use by radio stations these days.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Mike Walker wrote: "...WMA is much better than mp3 at low bitrates, but has a tendency to sound a little "sharp" at high frequencies...giving back more apparent hf content than was on the original. AAC+ is the BEST low bitrate codec, other than Windows Media, but also can sund a little "accentuated" at the high end..."

I agree with you here on everything, except for your comments on WMA vs. AAC+. I think WMA completely falls apart under 32kbps. AAC+ v2 is optimized to sound reasonably good down to 24kbps and easily smokes WMA. I prefer the sound of high-bitrate MP2, but MP3 does seem to be more and more in common use by radio stations these days.

Yes, the aacPlus codec that iBiquity/HD radio, and FMeXtra (www.dreinc.com) licenses from Coding Technologies sounds better then WMA, MP3, or MP3PRO, at similar bitrates.
The FMeXtra digital HD signal provides the same fidelity at the same bitrates as iBiquity HD radio, without all the licensing, restrictions, expense, adjacent channel jamming, and with greater range, simplicity, and reliability.
Coding technologies has a pretty impressive client list. Scroll down to see the iBiquity logo:
http://www.codingtechnologies.com/partners/index.htm
So it's time to eliminate all that adjacent channel interference, and waxy cylinder build up, by switching to new and improved, high octane, digital radio HD, FMeXtra.
FMeXtra is the only fully FCC approved, digital FM system with no air pollution, or greenhouse gasses generated by HD radio's deceptive hype.

 

[Mike Walker]

I'll test your theory VSA about wma "falling apart" below 32kbps. I'll confess that I haven't tried wma in stereo at that bitrate in a while. The only thing I use really low bitrate wma for is occasionally the soundtrack of videos I encode for my PDA. It uses data MUCH more efficiently than mp3, which is what people usually use for avi files in divx or xvid format (because that's what hardware players expect to see). A 32khz wma can sound better than 64kbps mp3...and it either makes room for a smaller file, or slightly higher video bitrate.

When I have streamed with wma from my website at bitrates lower than 20kbps in the past, I've either downsampled the original to something like 22.050, or even 16khz before encoding, used mono, or both...to the codec can use the very few bits available in the midrange, rather than trying to encode very high frequencies.

At least one station in Charlotte plans to have an HD3 stream (WFAE 90.3). They have already experimented with it for a while, but I never heard it. I'm VERY curious what HD (and aac+) sounds like slicked this "thin".

 

[vsa]

Mike Walker wrote: "...A 32khz wma can sound better than 64kbps mp3...and it either makes room for a smaller file, or slightly higher video bitrate...."

I agree with you completely - smart way to go.

MIke also wrote: "...When I have streamed with wma from my website at bitrates lower than 20kbps in the past, I've either downsampled the original to something like 22.050, or even 16khz before encoding, used mono, or both...to the codec can use the very few bits available in the midrange, rather than trying to encode very high frequencies..."

WMA is capable of doing some amazing stuff, even at bitrates below 32kbps, but I have yet to hear anyone be able to eliminate that "watery" effect from it, particularly on the human voice. Rolling off the high end certainly helps a lot, but I think it's only fully effective down to 32kbps - although we all have a different set of ears. WNMB-AM's 20kbps stereo stream is one of the best sub-32kbps WMA streams I've heard, but they still can't get rid of that annoying "watery" effect. To my ears, a 24kbps AAC+ v2 file or stream suffers from little of that same watery effect. I'm still amazed when I hear a well-processed 24kbps AAC+ stream. There are a few good sounding ones at Tuner2.com.

 

[Mike Walker]

I've heard the AAC+ streams at tuner2.com and agree (I keep a bookmark to the site on my Dell PocketPC...my preferred device for internet radio).

I also agree that that "watery" effect is the worst thing about low bitrate encoding. GROSS! Like kissing your sister!