Re: Quality of CoreAudio SRC
Re: Quality of CoreAudio SRC
- Subject: Re: Quality of CoreAudio SRC
- From: Brian Willoughby <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 06:52:15 -0800
To everyone: Thank you for the excellent answers to my questions!
Mikael,
Your final analogy shows that you're asking for sports cars features
in a standard model, at no extra cost, from a company that already
offers the option you want. This is not really a fair request, and
goes way beyond the question of whether the operation system supports
such features in applications with reasonable programmer effort.
There are, e.g., cars made which offer both automatic and manual
(sequential shift) gearing, but they are all priced well beyond the
typical family car.
The users you cite, audiophiles and professionals alike, should
understand the need and be willing to pay for such esoteric
features. The standard software and hardware system provided with
the purchase of a Mac provides nearly everything you ask at no extra
cost. I think it is unfair to ask Apple to modify iTunes,
considering that iTunes already provides an infinite value when its
capabilities are divided by its cost. I have dreamed up many
features over the years for iTunes, and Apple has added many of them
even before I got around to suggesting them. But at some point we
must accept that additional features will cost money, and must come
in the form of another application.
Everything that you ask for has been possible within CoreAudio since
about 10.1 or 10.2, and I know this for a fact because I wrote a non-
GUI player for FLAC and other lossless formats in those days. I had
the option of setting the interface to match the file sample rate,
and since I did not perform crossfades like iTunes, this was easy.
Since then, CoreAudio has only made this easier. Apple is not
standing in our way. I would release the program if I thought anyone
besides an engineer would be happy using it.
I feel like I was already at the edges of the charter for this
mailing list by asking about outside measurements of SRC quality, and
further that I ventured into hardware design for audio interfaces
that I think might not exist yet. But, frankly, begging Apple for
new iTunes features belongs elsewhere. There are proper channels for
requesting new features. If you want these features, develop them
yourself using the fine support in CoreAudio, which is possible even
within the recommended guidelines if you follow some of the answers
provided in this very thread.
Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting
On Feb 1, 2008, at 04:38, Mikael Hakman wrote:
With all due respect Jeff:
None of the users I know agree with this. This includes people with
personal and in many cases also professional interests in high
quality audio such as artists, music and studio related people,
broadcast folks, audio hard- and software vendors, and many others.
Many of these people work with and personally enjoy high quality
music and other media, which is the reason for their occupation. I'll
guess you could call them studio level audiophiles. This list
includes my customers, suppliers, acquaintances, friends, family, and
me. We do not want to run to the computer every other track to change
sample rate in Preferences and in some cases also in hardware control
panel. We do not even know what sample rate each of our 10 000 tracks
is in. So yes, the hardware setting should be changed by application
based on the actual sample rate of media being reproduced. Then of
course there should be an option to set fix rate and have SRC done.
We do not understand why e.g. iTunes doesn't work this way.
Yes, there are situations when the system has to mix audio from a
number of sources. Then someone has to decide what sample rate to
use. This should be the user. However, there are many situations when
only one source is reproduced, in fact, when the user does not wish
to have anything else reproduced via that particular interface, under
any circumstances whatsoever. When e.g. monitoring a live broadcast,
listening to a final version of some production, or simply listening
to e.g. iTunes at 80 - 90 dB you don't want anything else on that
channel. Therefore there should be an option, which for each
interface would allow the user to decide whether to apply current
hardware sample rate or let application to control the hardware,
based on current media sample rate. This cannot be that difficult to
realize in the software. Having an option would satisfy requirements
in both situations and in both user categories.
We want a car with automatic gear box that could be switched to
manual when the need arise, so to speak.
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