[G4] Integratng with home stereo

[Alex]

On Wednesday, Jun 9, 2004, at 15:58 Canada/Eastern, zhmmy harper wrote:

>  [...] As to your question about "compressed", that means MP3.

Not necessarily. MP3 is one among several compression formats. It is a 
lossy format (i.e., compression is partly achieved by throwing away 
data), but there are lossless compression formats as well (cf. 
<http://www.firstpr.com.au/audiocomp/lossless/>).

> AIFF is the uncompressed digital tracks on a music CD.

Not at all. CD-DA (audio CDs) do not contain files as such, and the 
audio is not encoded in AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format), nor, for 
that matter, in WAV. Tracks on a CD-DA appear as AIFF files (Mac) or 
WAV files (Win) only as an illusion, a convenience provided by the 
operating system. Ripping is the process of converting audio from the 
CD-DA format to a format such as AIFF or WAV, and for technical 
reasons, it is often inaccurate, although the accuracy may not be 
noticeable by less demanding listeners.

> Yes, MP3 does lose some of the quality just as JPEG loses some photo 
> quality.  However, unless your eyes and ears are as sensitive as 
> scientific instruments I rather doubt you will ever be able to hear 
> the difference.

Again, not at all. The difference can be quite noticeable, even by less 
demanding listeners. It depends on the source music, on the compression 
level, on the codec used, and, finally, on the audio system used to 
reproduce the sound. If you play Brittney Spears encoded at 160kbps on 
a $30 CD/MP3 discman, then quite likely you won't hear any difference. 
But compare Ray Brown's "Walk On" at the same encoding through a NAD CD 
and amp on Mission speakers (entry-level audiophile) and I bet you'll 
hear the difference.

>  [...] MP3 is what is fed from the computer [...]

No, MP3 is decoded by the computer on-the-fly (that's why you can't 
play MP3s on '030 Macs -- they're not powerful enough); only then the 
audio data is sent on its way.

<0x0192>