RE: 64bit v Intel Macs?

Subject: RE: 64bit v Intel Macs?
From: Evan Olcott <email@hidden>
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:52:56 -0600

On Jan 18, 2006, at 1:40 PM, email@hidden wrote:

with the announcement of the Intel machines, it would appear that the G5 is now

something of a dead-end, as the Intel CPUs are still 32bit arhitecture? I will

be starting work on some new plugin projects in a few months time, and had been

planning to get a new G5 iMac for this, which would kill 2 birds with the

proverbial - new Tiger-based machine, and also a 64bit platform, while retaining

my current iMac on Panther. Now, the only future-proof route would seem to be an

Intel iMac, but I then have no Mac 64bit platform, with no indication there ever

will be such a beast in the short/medium term (and presumably Apple will never

indicate such a thing in advance anyway...). I wonder how fully supported the

CAF format is on Intel Macs, for >4GB files - can anyone cast any light on this

point?

Though I'm not on the Apple team, it'd be pretty safe to say that the 32-bit audio stream is what we'll be sticking with for a long time. I don't think the benefits (if there are any, speed-wise) of a 64-bit audio stream versus the potential dynamic range gain of 32-bit vs 64-bit (whose math escapes me currently) is probably not worth the paradigm shift.

I can tell you that the CAF format and the Wave Editor file format (.wedt) (and *perhaps* the SDII format, though it's hard to truly say) are both good for files >4GB in terms of their headers and what they can describe and what not. Generally speaking, both of these file formats will support audio of unlimited length, depth and rate. No audio app worth their salt loads the entire file into memory at once anyway, generally it's done a bit at a time (just enough to read and play without skipping or hogging memory), so the length of the audio file really only impacts disk space, when it comes down to it.

32-bit or 64-bit architecture or not, I'm betting the 32-bit audio stream is what we can expect for awhile.

Technical Knowledge Officer

Head Programmer/Designer

Audiofile Engineering

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/

 _______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Coreaudio-api mailing list      (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:

This email sent to email@hidden

Follow-Ups:
- Re: 64bit v Intel Macs?
  - From: Richard Dobson <email@hidden>

Prev by Date: Please, Need Help to store Quicktime Metadatas in persistent mode...
Next by Date: Re: 64bit v Intel Macs?
Previous by thread: Re: 64bit v Intel Macs?
Next by thread: Re: 64bit v Intel Macs?
Index(es):
- Date
- Thread