Microsoft's Foray into Music

[mobrien_12]

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060725

[worker201]

That's not funny, simply because the paper clip actually makes command decisions at Microsoft.

[hm_murdock]

I wonder how many people will buy a Zune, then return it or throw it away never to buy one again since it can't play their iTunes music.

And because it sucks, just like all the other non-iPod players.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

mp3 players suck period ... cuz mp3s suck

[worker201]

mp3 players suck period ... cuz mp3s suck

I never thought they sucked, but I never thought they were that great either.  But I bought an iPod because I just felt like I needed to have one.  Good thing I did, because that $300 investment saved my life.  When I was on a boat in the Indian Ocean for 3 months, with no Mexican food or Screeching Weasel albums within 3000 miles, it was extremely nice to have my entire cd collection sitting in my pocket.  The 22 hour plane ride from Atlanta to Johannesburg would have been torture without the iPod as well. And recently I got a car stereo that the iPod connects to, for long road trips.  I'm not one of those guys that carries my iPod with me all the time and always has earphones in.  But the convenience of portability is worth the money.  Besides, any free space can be used as a removable hard drive.

[piratePenguin]

mp3 players rock, but I probably wouldn't get an ipod since I don't like to waste money on things like that. If all I need is something that works, that's exactly what I'd get.

(I had a 256Mb player up until a few weeks ago, it was the shit. (Whhhhhy did I leave it behind?))

[hm_murdock]

The big problem is that all the other players suck. Total suxation. Cojones get licked.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

But mp3s sound horrible ... don't they ? I always thought they did ... cuz they compress the shit out of em (even on highest quality/lowest compression they still sound like shit) ! Oggs are much better ... I also prefer flacs cuz they're lossless, unfortunately it's only about 33% compression ratio compared to wav (that's to say if a wav = 30 MB, it's flac = 20 MB roughly and mp3 = 3 MB, ogg = 10 MB).

[Lead Head]

But mp3s sound horrible ... don't they ? I always thought they did ... cuz they compress the shit out of em (even on highest quality/lowest compression they still sound like shit) ! Oggs are much better ... I also prefer flacs cuz they're lossless, unfortunately it's only about 33% compression ratio compared to wav (that's to say if a wav = 30 MB, it's flac = 20 MB roughly and mp3 = 3 MB).

196KB/s Mp3 sounds awsome, i don't know what your smoking

[hm_murdock]

I've worked in audio recording since 1998 and can't hear the mythical "huge degredation in quality" in MP3s that everybody else can.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

I disagree, and besides if you encode them that way they're on par with ogg compression, and ogg sounds much better to me. (in my scheme best quality mp3 is 10 MB, and so is ogg)

[piratePenguin]

I've worked in audio recording since 1998 and can't hear the mythical "huge degredation in quality" in MP3s that everybody else can.

Supposedly an OGG with a similar file-size to an MP3 of the same music sounds much better.

[hm_murdock]

I'll have to try to see it.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

You know the type of music you listen to also affects if you notice a difference, so maybe you won't notice a difference ... or maybe my hearing is just really good ? To me the difference is huge ... others may not notice one

[GenuineAdvantage]

Uh, sure, mp3 sucks. But so does ogg for that matter. Any sound compression does going by that criteria. I don't know about low size compression, since any encoding sucks in such cases, but at the highest ones if someone says they can tell the difference between the formats, it's baloney. They do what they should though. It's nice to have a relatively high quality sound in compressed form. And I say relatively because it's better than nothing. I was once on my way to becoming an audiophile, then I realized it was bunk because a true audiophile would think the current sound system technology sucks one way or another. When one can't tell the difference between real sound and speaker sound, all around, then I will think about being picky. Till then I'll just enjoy the noise