Zune HD Leaked

[Madman0]

touchscreen != automatically better. The Zune squircle is probably one of the best if not the best PMP control schemes. It would be too bad if they ditch it for the 'wow' factor of touchscreen which can quickly grow tiresome. Also, a 240GB model would be nice

 

[no2censorship]

Windows Media Lossless if you're that insistent on lossless.

+1, and I'm no lover of MS = )

I'm not starting to use and convert to some MS codecs, evein if lossless, when FLAC is available.

Purchased track in FLAC, play it in winamp, play all my digital music purchases (which are WMA lossless) from music giants in WMP11; what's the difference? there isn't one in quality. Let me know=)

Well, you can 100% absolutely forget ever seeing FLAC support on a product from Microsoft. That would be about as likely as Apple adding Windows Media support to iPods and the iPhone, it just ain't gonna happen.

Correct=)

MP3 works for 99% of the people out there just fine. I know I don't have the ear to tell between an MP3 and a lossless file.

depends upon the quality of the mp3, the dynamic range of the original recording, and even then you can tell a difference, just not always which one is the original until you're told. However, once you're told which the original is, you don't want to listen to the others.

Which is the reason as to why/how double blind tests to see if people notice a difference are useless for those who use them to think they've tricked someone into being unable to tell the difference.

Kind of like some dude at BeyondBanning3d. He said I was embarassed. I was anything but. I hope he believed me when I told him one man can't read another's mind, as Ayn Rand pointed out with her Objectivism Law, and that his failed attempt to trick me, only made me care about lossless more. I surrendered my "crusade" for them, but only because they proved to me that I knew the difference.

2x blind test backfired on him; the dude helped me realize that I was right all along--that most people appreciate the original, even if they have to be told sometimes. I say that 2x blind tests are for people to realize that once they hear it 4 different lossy, and 1 lossless, and are told which one is the original, are to prove that everyone will indeed realize lossless is superior. However, I'm in the minority opinion on that, as I am with everything

and I'm sure you could easily tell the difference, if I can=)

Honestly, after dealing with psychoacoustic modeling and audio production for nearly 20 years, I can count on both hands the number of people I've met that can consistently AB test between original pure digital uncompressed audio and a LAME-encoded mp3 file using the Insane preset (320Kbps Constant Bit Rate).

I think people tell themselves enough they can hear a difference and it skips from being psychoacoustic to psychosomatic... I mean, we're not talking about 13 years ago when mp3 encoding first "appeared" and became popular, and the rather shitty mp3 encoders that existed at the time. The old 128 Kbps encoders that were so popular are absolutely generations upon generations behind what LAME can do nowadays, it's simply the best there is, and I doubt things will get much better...

Well, I don't know that games today even use that. And 128kbps formats are many times more common than LAME 320kbps.

+1, FLAC is great. It's foolish to rely on MS for anything.

Difference(s)? I agree with the latter sentence though=)

Most people can't.

I can tell the difference (I hear above what the average human can), but honestly, it's not enough of a difference for me to care.
MP3 is still a ton better than radio. So Sirius and MP3s are about the only thing I listen to anymore. I get into someone else's car with standard radio and I'm reminded how much like dog crap the standard radio sounds like.


If you're playing pre-event music or something, MP3 is just peachy fine, too. Like I said, I can tell, but when 95% of the people listening to it can't tell, and the other 5% don't care, what's the use?

-1.

I tend not to bother trying to tell the difference cos the reason I'm listening to the music it to enjoy listening to it.

Too many folks are listening to the hardware and technology...not the music.

I wish I could live life like that. OtOH, I'm glad I don't and hopefully, I'll never be able to.

Keep in mind, in most games we're dealing with 128kbps ultra lossy MP3's 16bit res/48khz sampling rate. That's 12x theoretical loss compared vs. lossless quality.

 

[daglesj]

I wish I could live life like that. OtOH, I'm glad I don't and hopefully, I'll never be able to.

So you prefer to listen to and sweat the hardware rather than just relax and enjoy the music for what it is?

If so that is so very sad on so many levels. You poor thing.