Re: Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool
Nobody wrote... "There is a loss of quality if you go through an analog stage. Real and wannabe audiophiles will prefer the real thing, pure and undiluted by a reconversion phase. These are the people who are already swallowing the marketing line that the CD bandwidth limit of 22KHz is too low for good fidelity, despite being higher than they can hear." I'm in that category. And as someone who basically grew up in Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera, I trust my ears (I saw the opera Wozzeck twice by the time I was 17). There are engineering reasons for this that I'm willing to discuss, though the discussion will be tedious for engineers, and impossible to understand for non-engineers. Far easier will be for you to go and listen to a CD player that can upsample standard CD to 24bits/196kHz. The difference is not by any means subtle. As an audiophile (Krell+Levinson+Thiel gear at home), I definitely don't want to grab an analog signal. Doing that the signal is sure to retain characteristics of the extracting gear. But the vast majority of P2P kids won't care one iota that their file was analog for half a second. -TD
From: Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 08:40:01 +0200 (CEST)
Major Variola writes:
Any human-consumable (analogue) input is readily recordable with a single, one-time ADC, and thereafter is toast. DRM is a fraud perpetrated by engineers on Hollywood suits. Good for employment though.
There is a loss of quality if you go through an analog stage. Real and wannabe audiophiles will prefer the real thing, pure and undiluted by a reconversion phase. These are the people who are already swallowing the marketing line that the CD bandwidth limit of 22KHz is too low for good fidelity, despite being higher than they can hear.
Consider how much more wine from Champagne is worth than that from a village just outside of the appelation limits. People want to feel that they are getting the authentic goods, and they'll pay for them. That's what the RIAA is counting on.
_________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, Tyler came up with this...
Nobody wrote...
"There is a loss of quality if you go through an analog stage. Real and wannabe audiophiles will prefer the real thing, pure and undiluted by a reconversion phase. These are the people who are already swallowing the marketing line that the CD bandwidth limit of 22KHz is too low for good fidelity, despite being higher than they can hear."
characteristics of the extracting gear. But the vast majority of P2P kids won't care one iota that their file was analog for half a second.
But you don't need to go to analog at all. I mean, aren't we using computers here? Using VSound for Linux (which I have used) and Virtual Audio Cable for Windows (which I haven't used) you can tap the signal before it even hits the sound card. I use VSound to make usable sound files from realaudio files. Both sites even say a sound card isn't even necessary. I don't know, I haven't tried that. VSound is archived at http://www.zorg.org/vsound but is no longer maintained by the author, who is Australian and scared of Australia's version of the DMCA, because this tool can obviously be used to circumvent copyright protection. Then again, so can a 3-inch 1/8mm to 1/8mm cable, but audio cable manufacturers are poor targets, while solitary programmers are much better at drawing the ire of anti-copyright circumvention death squads. Now, when DRM gets into windows, I'm sure Virtual Audio Cable will stop working, RealAudio will stop making linux clients (why bother?), RIAA will (try to) make CDs that can only be played with windows clients, etc. Then someone will crack the formats of the audio streams and the CDs, and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. As things are now, it's easy to get the digital signal before it reaches the DAC, you don't need to go to DAC -> ADC, you don't need to plug your line-out to your line-in and degrade your signal. If the RIAA get their content to only work on Windows-type boxes, and if MS gets DRM to work in their Windows, things will become much more difficult. But these are big ifs that can quite possibly be circumvented even if they do come to fruition. There's always high-end sound cards that don't even use analog. DRM is not going to stop file sharing. They're trying to catch smoke with nets. -- stuart Don't put your faith in gods. But you can believe in turtles. -Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)-
On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, stuart wrote:
Now, when DRM gets into windows, I'm sure Virtual Audio Cable will stop working, RealAudio will stop making linux clients (why bother?), RIAA will (try to) make CDs that can only be played with windows clients, etc. Then someone will crack the formats of the audio streams and the CDs, and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.
As things are now, it's easy to get the digital signal before it reaches the DAC, you don't need to go to DAC -> ADC, you don't need to plug your line-out to your line-in and degrade your signal.
If the RIAA get their content to only work on Windows-type boxes, and if MS gets DRM to work in their Windows, things will become much more difficult. But these are big ifs that can quite possibly be circumvented even if they do come to fruition. There's always high-end sound cards that don't even use analog.
DRM is not going to stop file sharing. They're trying to catch smoke with nets.
Yup, check out this dvd unit: http://www.220-electronics.com/dvd/daewoo5800.htm where it says: "Custom modification with code free automatic and manual selection of regions and macrovision disabled. Excellent quality dvd player with all the features." and "Price just reduced by over $100. Was 249.00 Now only $129.00 The Daewoo 5800 custom modification has been designed to make life a lot less complicated. It has superb Audio and video components outperforming major brands such as Sony, Panasonic and Pioneer. " So it won't be long before bypass systems will be commercially available. At least in some parts of the _free_ world. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 10:00 AM, stuart wrote:
On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, Tyler came up with this...
Nobody wrote...
"There is a loss of quality if you go through an analog stage. Real and wannabe audiophiles will prefer the real thing, pure and undiluted by a reconversion phase. These are the people who are already swallowing the marketing line that the CD bandwidth limit of 22KHz is too low for good fidelity, despite being higher than they can hear."
characteristics of the extracting gear. But the vast majority of P2P kids won't care one iota that their file was analog for half a second.
But you don't need to go to analog at all. I mean, aren't we using computers here?
Using VSound for Linux (which I have used) and Virtual Audio Cable for Windows (which I haven't used) you can tap the signal before it even hits the sound card. I use VSound to make usable sound files from realaudio files. Both sites even say a sound card isn't even necessary. I don't know, I haven't tried that.
Agreed, many options for directly grabbing the data. However, most people don't care about minor analog stages. Audiophiles and videophiles are not the primary consumers of this stuff, as evidenced by the mountains of MP3s not even sampled as well as they could be (64 kbps being the norm) and by the DIVX files shipped around the Web. And videos 10x-compressed to fit on CD-Rs. The people bootlegging CDs and DVDs are not usually the people with the 40-inch plasma screens. Video pirates in Asia routinely use covert camcorders to grab weird-ass angles of first-run movies. And their DVD stall customers cheerfully pay them the equivalent of two dollars for their DVDs. Compared to this, sampling from an analog signal is heaven. I have my own collection of about 30 DVD+Rs, each containing 1-2 full-length videos. By the end of this year, I should have several hundred movies added to my collection. The video quality is perfectly fine for me, and I like good quality. Until I move to HDTV and blue ray DVD, the quality is excellent. And even with HDTV and blue ray, so long as component video connections (a la progressive scan cables) are available, nearly perfect sampling will still be easy to do. (Which is why Hollywood would like the HDTV sets to be sealed, with only digital inputs. Except that they tried this trick with twiddling with the specs of past HD generations. A lot of HDTV receivers and monitors are already out there, and changing the spec yet again and making the suckers, er, "early adopters," have to scrap their systems is not going to go over very well.)
DRM is not going to stop file sharing. They're trying to catch smoke with nets.
Indeed. --Tim May (.sig for Everything list background) Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986. Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality, cosmology. Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks Friends, After more than 7 years with my got.net e-mail address, "tcmay@got.net", the amount of unsolicited e-mail I am getting on a daily basis has escalated sharply in recent months. So my new address is "timcmay@got.net" Please make a note of it and change your address books...if you wish to reach me in the future! Mail to my old address will be forwarded to my new adress for a few weeks, but then will start bouncing. P.S. I plan to make strong efforts to stop my new address from being harvested by spammers, such as using "timcmay@got.removethis.net" in Usenet posts. I hope this works. --Tim, timcmay@got.net
participants (4)
-
Mike Rosing -
stuart -
Tim May -
Tyler Durden