Sound formats

Sat Sep 24 16:49:24 EDT 2005

Dan, 

Here's my appreciation about it as a developper, a user, and a musician
(weird one, but... it's genreX and I do make sample recordings)...

Since we are dealing with rev I'll stick to rev's and user realm.
If you are a musician, mp3s can be bad. Like jpg they eat up the crispness
of a sound. Too high a bit rate and you loose the aural perception of high
trebles and if you use too low a bitrate, the bass is wobbled... Note music
samples are recorded in wav or raw or aiff (I presume on macs) for best
recording fidelity playback... But higher bitrates 160-256 are best. 128 is
definitely perfect for "normal" playback and I LOVE winamp radio at 128 kbps
which played on a decent amp, audio card (96KHz) and decent monitors (the
name of music professional speakers) does a huge difference...

Tip: if you think your radio sucks, change the speakers first... you could
be in for a big surprise...

Now, the important stuff:

Windows media player will play mp3s there's no doubt about it. Windows users
use either WMP (yuck) or Winamp or any alternative player... I prefer a
dedicated tool like Winamp (which on top is quite cool in amazonian green).
Some of the best video players in windows (bsplayer for example) suck at
player mp3s correctly... I don't know why, it's just that way...

for a game I created (for windows) I used some carefully played and tested
wavs, and they did weight some 3-5 megabytes (some 25 sounds) but that's
acceptable imoho in todays' storage devices and delivery channels (net or
cd).

Sure mp3s are better. Most games have their own drivers - so they don't need
to require clients to have quicktime... But alas, that's the problem with
rev... It doesn't use the windows sound drivers, doesn't use the windows
media player so it's missing all the formats windows can deliver already
without quicktime...

im sure rev will fix this bitrate format soon, so we can use "much" smaller
sound samples because you don't need 44KHz 512bps sounds for a game... Makes
the game nicer though ;)

Now with videos mixing codecs in any way (divx has video effects or some
other formats include subtitles' display - qt does this too), it would be a
shame to have no "native" support for the platform's standards... But
quicktime is somewhat ok I guess for the "bi-platform" solution... Wavs on
the other hand, are not that big (as AIFF) and they go everywere I
believe... Other formats like au or pcm are not really the most modern and
standard so I suggest staying away from those unless they suit your fancy
short term...

cheers
Xavier

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Shafer [mailto:revdan at danshafer.com] 
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2005 10:17 PM
To: x at monsieurx.com; How to use Revolution
Subject: Re: Sound formats

Xavier....

WAV and AIFF files are HUGE compared to MP3's.; on the order of 20x.  
For Internet delivery, my understanding is that mp3 is really pretty
standard. Microsoft claims ( http://www.microsoft.com/windows/
windowsmedia/knowledgecenter/mediaadvice/0071.aspx#417) that Windows Media
Player (Version 9 and later) supports the .mp3 format as well, but my audio
consultant tells me that's just a lie as far as he can tell.

If I'm understanding this correctly -- and as I've already said, I'm clearly
not the multimedia guru in these parts -- it is not possible to find a
single file format that can be guaranteed to play on both Windows and OS X
without requiring the user of one system or the other (or both) to download
either an app or a codec. My survey suggests that MP3 is the default
standard for compressed audio but that if you want higher-fidelity delivery
(generally not over the Net but rather on CD/DVD), you offer both AIFF and
WAV formats and pretty much cover the waterfront.

I've noticed that sites that make sound files available generally default to
.mp3 files; I assume Windows users must have some fairly convenient if not
automatic way of playing them.

Maybe it's just me but this state of affairs seems quite abominable given
how long we've been at this stuff.

On Sep 24, 2005, at 12:09 PM, MisterX wrote:

> Hi Jacque
>
> WAVs are far more common BUT you have to use the right bitrate (rather 
> high than low) or as you say, you hear noise (rev missinterprets 
> something - QT player will not
> though....)
>
> mp3s (which are more compact than high bitrate wavs) are only playable 
> on quicktime equipped pcs only though...
>
> never tried pcm... ;)
>
> cheers
> Xavier
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com
> [mailto:use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf Of J.  
> Landman Gay
> Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2005 8:52 PM
> To: Revolution Mailing List
> Subject: Sound formats
>
> I'm converting some sound files on my Mac that eventually may need to 
> play on Windows. Using Virtual PC, it looks like the "PCM" format 
> plays okay (other encodings just screech.) Can someone confirm that 
> this will work so I don't have to drag my ancient PC out of the closet 
> and set it up?
> Thanks.
>
> -- 
> Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
> HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
http://www.shafermedia.com
Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
 From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html