Hey guys! For some time I have been listening to an audio stream which I'm receiving at 20kbps encoded with Windows Media Player codec. It's 1960's music and the thing is it's quite acceptable (comparable to a intermediate distance AM radio station) and I'm sure would be perfectably acceptable for audio books. When I say 20kbps thats the actual data transfer rate, not my connection to my ISP. Some quick arithmetic shows that at 20kbps, a 150MB minidisc would run for over 16 hours at this rate, fantastic for an audio book and without the terrible distortion you get with a similar speed RealAudio stream. Perhaps once MS has actually hit the bullseye and come up with a great algorithm. I know it is 70:1 compression, well okay 35:1 as it's mono but I could happily listen to it on a bus, coach or train. Thats seven times higher than MD, hell its over three times the 128kbps MP3 format we slag off and being mono halved again. I would be happy to have an audio book recorded in that format and run for 16 hours on one standard MD, hey for listening while travelling I could live quite happily with it, a stereo version would be better (eeek, only 8 hours per MD :-) Okay listening here at home on my hifi the compression artifacts are quite noticeable, this codec seems to deal with them a helluva lot better than RealPlayer does, and is actually enjoyable even at 20kbps! Cheers, PrinceGaz -- "if it harms none, do what you will" Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://website.lineone.net/~princegaz/ ICQ: 36892193 ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
