opaqueice wrote: > Suppose the SB and/or the server isn't able to do bit-accurate FLAC > decompression in real time? For example, in any computer occasionally > there will be an error due to a bad hard drive read or a RAM glitch or > something. In normal asynchronous applications this gets caught by > error checking and corrected. But here the decoding has to occur at > least fast enough to keep up with the music. So isn't it theoretically > possible that some errors could creep in due to this?
In theory, probably so. But FLAC is specifically designed to be asymetrical. It takes lots of computing power to compress, and is near trivial to decompress. It was designed for low power (CPU brain power) and even low power (milliwatt) devices like iPod kinds of things. It is designed to be very fast to decompress. So even a dumb microcontroller can decompress it. A more likely problem is network errors, and here FLAC being smaller is a win, as it can be retransmitted on average once (total twice) and still be keeping up with music speed. (whether that is real time, or if the master tapes are slow is a separate issue. > Let me be clear, I consider this very unlikely since it should be > possible to decode FLAC files much faster than real time, thus leaving > plenty of time for error corrections in the unlikely event one occurs. Even retransmission. > Also, such an uncorrected error would probably have a big effect on the > sound, not a subtle one - unless the SB does some kind of interpolation > after an error, as CD players do. But since FLAC files probably encode > the data in a non-local (in time) way, this might be impossible. This is correct. Both WAV (really PCM) and FLAC lack the fake out interpolation logic that real CD players are required to have by the RedBook spec. Depending on what the error is, it could be very bad with either .wav or FLAC. Of course, no self respecting audiophile would consider the gross error covering done per the RedBook spec as being acceptable. Most of your case is pretty esoteric and not unique to music. Random cosmic rays do flip bits in memory. Not often, but it is known to happen. Such a change could cause problems in data, application code, or the OS itself. Most mortals just ignore it as too rare to worry about. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
