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Miscellaneous

November 06, 2006

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

Recently, I've been checking out parts for a hypothetical new PC. The variable parts at the moment are CPU, graphics card, power supply and motherboard.

Which means I've settled on a case.

Checking out potential sound cards and I came across something that gave me pause. I like Creative Labs products. I've been buying them since the first Sound Blaster came out a very, very long time ago. But this is utterly ridiculous.

They have an X-Fi device that promises:

  • Imagine being in the studio as your favorite artist records a new album. The sound is real and live the way it was meant to be heard.
  • When the album gets mass-produced on CD, it is being converted to 16-bit CD quality. And the sound quality of that original performance suffers.
  • When you compress the songs into MP3, you'll notice an even greater loss of sound quality. Your favorite album now sounds flat and lifeless.

    • Flat and lifeless? Ok. MP3s are not as good as CDs are not as good as live. Gotcha.

    But... You're analyzing and breaking out signals "intelligently", converting a stereo sound to a synthetic surround. Thats fine. Its actually quite interesting. But you're never going to get back to a pristine signal.

    Which is why I had to laugh at their graph.

    Letting alone the fact that, somehow, they have quantified the listening 'experience' (how?), playing a CD through X-Fi will be a better experience than sitting in a Studio?

    Even more wizardry - playing an MP3 will give the same level of experience as the CD.

    I'm sorry. CD is digital. By definition, the clipping levels and sampling rates are dropping information.

    MP3s toss even more information when compressing. Very cunningly, so you don't really notice a degradation, but still tossing bits in the quest for 10:1 compression.

    And you can restore them to better-than-live fidelity by intelligently guessing the bits that were dropped? Right. So you're saying I'd get a better MP3 by playing the CD on the stereo via an X-Fi and sampling the output?

    I'll trust that its a clever signal enhancer. But better than live? Not buying it.

    Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at November 6, 2006 09:58 PM

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