In this blog I want to discuss the High Resolution Audio formats Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD Audio (DVD-A). The standard cd's that we buy are known as Redbook CD. The sampling rate of regular audio cd's we purchase in stores are 44.1khz at a resolution of 16 bits, whereas the sampling rates for SACD are almost 64 times that of a regular cd , and DVD-a is around 2-4 times more than a regular audio cd.
Sampling rate is the number of samples per second. A higher sampling rate would mean, more information is stored in the same second compared to the regular audio cd.
The bit depth refers to how much information is stored for each sample. So the higher the bit depth, more information is stored per sample. So its clear now why these are high resolution formats because for the same music, they store a lot more information which help in reproducing the audio closer to what was originally coming from the instruments or voices.
While this might not make a big impact for computer generated music such as techno and dance, the genre this has the largest impact on is the Classical music genre. When there is so much happening at the same time, several instruments playing together, you can imagine what a big difference 64 times more information can store.
The disadvantages of these formats are that they need dedicated players to decode the information and they will not work on our regular cd players. To make things worse, neither of these formats really got much recognition and there are only select artists who have released their albums in these formats. Also, the differences are night and day only when the corresponding equipment used (speakers, receivers, amplifiers) are all of high quality. Cheaper systems will not reveal the differences to justify investing in a dedicated player and buying the album again in a higher resolution.
The area where even cheaper systems can justify a purchase is when it comes to surround sound. Both formats support surround sound. If you currently have a home theater system setup with say a 5.1 setup, Left, Right, Center, Rear Left and Rear Right (thats 5) + subwoofer( thats 1), and if you have an album you like on SACD or DVDA, you should definitely pick it up and give it a shot. There are several extremely well executed Surround sound albums, even though the artist originally intended it to be a stereo recording. In most cases, they go back and remix the whole album in surround sound.
If you do not want to invest in a SACD player or DVDA player just yet, the advantage of most DVDA releases are that they are usually accompanied by a Dolby/DTS track also with the album in surround sound. While not equivalent to the quality of SACD, its still superior to the regular audio cd. So if you have a home theater with a regular DVD player (which can decode Dolby or DTS) then you can enjoy these albums in surround sound.
Some of the really good SACD's DVDA's
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of The Moon (SACD)
Nickelcreek - Nickelcreek (SACD)
Porcupine Tree - In Absentia (DVDA)
Porcupine Tree - Stupid Dream(DVDA)
Queen - A Night At The Opera (DVDA)
The Allman Brothers Band - Live At Fillmore East (DVDA)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Off the Air HDTV
Something a lot of people don't seem to know today is that you can get free HDTV channels off the air. All you need is an antenna that can receive HDTV signals. I have personally tried out several of these HDTV indoor antennas starting with RCA, moving on to Philips, and then settling for what is called a Silver Sensor antenna made my both Zenith and Terk. These are different from your regular rabbit ears antenna and are highly directional in nature. This means you have to figure out where the TV stations transmitters are located with respect to your TV's location and then find the optimal spot to place the antenna facing those transmitters. This can be found by trial and error, or by a visit to antennaweb.org. While the latter is not very intuitive, it gives out a detailed result of the compass directions of the transmitters based on your home address. If you have a compass handy, you can point the silver sensor in that direction. Even otherwise, you should be able to find East/West fairly easily, use that as reference.
I tried this and then tweaked the direction slightly based on trial and error, and managed to get NBC,CBS,ABC,Fox and MyNW all in full HD. The catch here is that all the towers might not be in the same direction. I have tried this at three locations and they seem to be more or less in the same direction, but you might have to end up picking favourites, or be ready to get up and turn the antenna a bit to watch your favourite program on a different station.
The best thing to do initially during setup would be to find a neutral direction which can tune in to all the channels so you can save them (even if some of them skip badly to an extent that they are unwatchable, your TV should atleast be able to identify that the station exists) and then fine tune the direction when you are watching TV based on which channel you want.
The other thing to remember here is that your TV needs to have an ATSC tuner built in or you need to get an ATSC tuner. External ATSC tuners seem to be hard to come by and quite expensive. Several name brand HDTV's have built in tuners, but there are a few smaller ones that don't. Make sure you check for that before you invest.
I tried this and then tweaked the direction slightly based on trial and error, and managed to get NBC,CBS,ABC,Fox and MyNW all in full HD. The catch here is that all the towers might not be in the same direction. I have tried this at three locations and they seem to be more or less in the same direction, but you might have to end up picking favourites, or be ready to get up and turn the antenna a bit to watch your favourite program on a different station.
The best thing to do initially during setup would be to find a neutral direction which can tune in to all the channels so you can save them (even if some of them skip badly to an extent that they are unwatchable, your TV should atleast be able to identify that the station exists) and then fine tune the direction when you are watching TV based on which channel you want.
The other thing to remember here is that your TV needs to have an ATSC tuner built in or you need to get an ATSC tuner. External ATSC tuners seem to be hard to come by and quite expensive. Several name brand HDTV's have built in tuners, but there are a few smaller ones that don't. Make sure you check for that before you invest.
Relocating Start Bar in XP/Vista
For starters I will give a very simple XP/Vista tip that I have found very useful and time saving. This boils down to personal preference as well but you may like it once you have tried it. I am talking about changing the location of the taskbar to the top of the screen rather than the bottom of the screen.
The first time I saw a demo for XP, I noticed that they had the start bar on top of the screen and I thought it was pretty cool, so I tried it out. I later thought about why this makes sense. If you notice, most of the buttons are closer to the top of the screen rather than the bottom of the screen. In modern machines, the resolutions are quite high meaning you have more ground to cover on the screen if you havent changed the sensitivity of the mouse. For a simple check, place the cursor in the middle of the screen, try moving the mouse cursor to the bottom left of the screen. Then start from center and move it to the top left. In most cases, you will notice that it takes less effort to move the mouse cursor to the top right, since you can do that by just moving your wrist and not having to move your hand. This is made even simpler when you move the mouse cursor from somewhere near the File/Edit/View menu's in any window, or even the X or - sign on a window. Its a lot easier and quicker to move to the top right compared to moving all the way to the bottom left.
Theres a catch though. This will work efficiently only if you have the taskbar locked on the top of the screen. If you choose to auto hide it, the close,maximize and minimize buttons go behind
the taskbar when you are in focus, and sometimes when you want to minimize, you might end up triggering the taskbar to show, in which case you would have to move the mouse down
and then move back up. This can get quite frustrating.
So the tradeoff here is that fans of auto hide might not like this and you lose a bit of real estate on the screen cos the taskbar is always showing and the close/maximize/minimize buttons are moved under it. But this works for me, and I have found that I am able to work a lot quicker with the taskbar on the top and auto hide disabled.
To set this up, right click on the task bar (not on any application window, on a blank space on the taskbar)
Make sure Lock the Taskbar is unselected.
Then drag the taskbar to the top of the screen
Right click, go to properties and disable auto-hide, and enable Keep taskbar above other windows, hit ok
You can then right click and lock the task bar again
Follow same steps to bring the taskbar back to the bottom of the screen(need to re enable auto-hide if you want it back the way it was)
The first time I saw a demo for XP, I noticed that they had the start bar on top of the screen and I thought it was pretty cool, so I tried it out. I later thought about why this makes sense. If you notice, most of the buttons are closer to the top of the screen rather than the bottom of the screen. In modern machines, the resolutions are quite high meaning you have more ground to cover on the screen if you havent changed the sensitivity of the mouse. For a simple check, place the cursor in the middle of the screen, try moving the mouse cursor to the bottom left of the screen. Then start from center and move it to the top left. In most cases, you will notice that it takes less effort to move the mouse cursor to the top right, since you can do that by just moving your wrist and not having to move your hand. This is made even simpler when you move the mouse cursor from somewhere near the File/Edit/View menu's in any window, or even the X or - sign on a window. Its a lot easier and quicker to move to the top right compared to moving all the way to the bottom left.
Theres a catch though. This will work efficiently only if you have the taskbar locked on the top of the screen. If you choose to auto hide it, the close,maximize and minimize buttons go behind
the taskbar when you are in focus, and sometimes when you want to minimize, you might end up triggering the taskbar to show, in which case you would have to move the mouse down
and then move back up. This can get quite frustrating.
So the tradeoff here is that fans of auto hide might not like this and you lose a bit of real estate on the screen cos the taskbar is always showing and the close/maximize/minimize buttons are moved under it. But this works for me, and I have found that I am able to work a lot quicker with the taskbar on the top and auto hide disabled.
To set this up, right click on the task bar (not on any application window, on a blank space on the taskbar)
Make sure Lock the Taskbar is unselected.
Then drag the taskbar to the top of the screen
Right click, go to properties and disable auto-hide, and enable Keep taskbar above other windows, hit ok
You can then right click and lock the task bar again
Follow same steps to bring the taskbar back to the bottom of the screen(need to re enable auto-hide if you want it back the way it was)
Intro
This blog is gonna be an technology oriented blog as the name suggests. Focussing on various aspects of modern technology which consumers have to deal with. Basically I will cover various aspects such as computers and consumer/pro-sumer(weird term I know) electronics This blog will have explanations on how things work, terminologies, upcoming technology updates, tips and tricks etc.
There are sites like Wikipedia and howstuff work for a more detailed explanation, but I will add elements from an end user perspective, my views will be added on whats what as well to give a more real world perspective instead of a purely academic perspective.
There are several people who will for sure know more than me in each aspect, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong, or add to the existing info if you feel its lacking. Thanks for visiting, hope this site helps.
There are sites like Wikipedia and howstuff work for a more detailed explanation, but I will add elements from an end user perspective, my views will be added on whats what as well to give a more real world perspective instead of a purely academic perspective.
There are several people who will for sure know more than me in each aspect, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong, or add to the existing info if you feel its lacking. Thanks for visiting, hope this site helps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)