All the World's a Soundstage as Audio Formats Evolve

Grok Headline matches for All the World's a Soundstage as Audio Formats Evolve

New Digital Audio Formats

New Digital Audio Formats 06/13/2004 12:16 PM

On the benefits of competing audio
formats...

On the benefits of competing audio
formats... 01/27/2004 06:28 PM

There's a fascinating clump of posts going around the place at the moment about the various DRM-based digital audio solutions that you can buy at the moment. The one that kicked stuff off initially was a post on The Sobleizer (A challenge for webloggers: handling organizational difficulties) which included a chunk of stuff about why it's best for people who are going to buy music files with DRM to buy them in Windows Media format. Here's the main chunk of the argument:

When you hear DRM think "lockin." So, when you buy music off of Napster or Apple's iTunes, you're locked into the DRM systems that those applications decided on. Really you are choosing between two competing lockin schemes.

But, not all lockin schemes are alike, I learned on Friday. First, there are two major systems. The first is Apple's AAC/Fairtunes based DRM. The second is Microsoft's WMA

Let's say it's 2006. You have 500 songs you've bought on iTunes for your iPod. But, you are about to buy a car with a digital music player built into it. Oh, but wait, Apple doesn't make a system that plays its AAC format in a car stereo. So, now you can't buy a real digital music player in your car.

(I should mention at this point that Scoble works for Microsoft, but I'll say straightaway that I don't think that's particularly relevant to the argument at hand. Nonetheless, cards on the table.)

So the argument at this point is if you choose lock-in with Microsoft, then your music files will work on a wider variety of media than if you choose lock-in with Apple. Therefore you should choose lock-in with Microsoft. At which point BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow weighs in:

In this world where we have consumer choices to make, Scoble argues that our best buy is to pick the lock-in company that will have the largest number of licensees.

That's just about the worst choice you can make.

If I'm going to protect my investment in digital music, my best choice is clearly to invest in buying music in a format that anyone can make a player for. I should buy films, not kinetoscopes. I should buy VHS, not Betamax. I should buy analog tape, not DAT.

Because Scoble's right. If you buy Apple Music or if you buy Microsoft Music, you're screwed if you want to do something with that music that Apple or Microsoft doesn't like.

Cory's argument then is the fairly commercially radical proposition that we should buy only open music files, that companies should sell open music files (there is a precedent here - Bleep sells DRM-free songs from Warp Records), and even that companies like Microsoft should be using their substantial legal power to fight the record companies to be able to sell DRM-free songs online.

Now I'm not going to argue with that, although - to be fair - I think the current climate makes it pretty unlikely to happen. The various companies concerned are too neurotic about it, and frankly Microsoft has too much to lose from the proposition that intellectual property should be distributed without arcane DRM attached to it. Instead I'm going to argue that even if we're only given the choice between two DRM schemes, we should still not just automatically go for the one that plays on the most devices. Because what does this mean in the end? No more or less than yet another monopoly at the operating system level - the musical infrastructure ends up belonging to Microsoft.

The fact is we shouldn't think in those terms at this stage. We should be trying to create miscegenated musical libraries that we expect digital music manufacturers to support all of, not just some as it suits them or as it suits whichever company ends up dominating the market. We've been down this parth before - the company that owns the monopoly has the least to gain from a rapid pace of innovation, the least to gain from being standards compliant. We've seen it at the level of operating systems, internet browsers and now we're seeing attempts to own and define the one successful format in which music files could sit for the next few decades. These things are too important to be left in the hands of one company. We need to have consumer choice at the level of which DRM (or lack of DRM) we're comfortable with buying, we need variety so that different types of audio file can be released via a variety of business models, we need variety - fundamentally - because otherwise we all lose.

The examples that people cite about competing formats no longer hold true for music. It's not like VHS and Betamax - we're not talking about hardware with different sized slots that you can only fit one kind of music delivery system into. No - with music we mostly have applications on our desktop that can play dozens of different formats - whether we notice it or not. Just the other day, RealOne announced that it could now play Apple-encoded AAC files, and the rumour is that HP's deal with Apple required that the iPod should have its ability to play WMP files restored. These things can play more than one type of file and we should be doing our damnedest to make sure that continues to be the case. It should be obvious to car audio manufacturers that they should be able to play AAC tracks - that there are hundreds of thousands of people across America (and soon Europe) who are going to want to be able to do more things with their bought songs. And it should be obvious to all of us that we want a world in which new formats can be integrated into our listening without any particular effort, or at least without us having to rebuy all our old tracks to work on non-mutually functioning players.

So in the meantime, buy, steal or rip whichever tracks suit you best in whatever format you want and make it your mission to put pressure on all the players (both business players and audio players) concerned to support as many of them as possible as soon as possible. And don't listen to anyone who says that having one organisation controlling the musical infrastructure will result in greater choice. That's never been the case in the past, and I very much doubt it will be so in the future either.

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Don't Change, Evolve!

Don't Change, Evolve! 09/06/2004 09:16 AM
TechTree Sep 6 2004 12:49PM GMT

Resellers must evolve or die

Resellers must evolve or die 04/03/2005 09:38 PM
Computer Weekly Apr 4 2005 12:19AM GMT

Evolve Custom Controls in ASP.NET

Evolve Custom Controls in ASP.NET 12/17/2003 12:18 AM
ASP.NET's support for Web controls provides an excellent way to package up commonly used behaviors and deploy them to other developers. But when should you build a control, and when should you just add the behavior to a Web form directly? This article examines this issue, and steps through the evolution of a control from behavior on a Web form to full-fledged control.

Computer mice evolve

Computer mice evolve 09/24/2004 12:06 PM
USA Today Sep 24 2004 2:57PM GMT

IKP - Evolve Student Project

IKP - Evolve Student Project 07/06/2004 01:45 AM
Evolve - A Student Project in Mechatronics in Collaboration with Volvo Cars

ikp.liu.se/evolve
track this site | 2 links

How Do Diverse Species Evolve the Same
Way?

How Do Diverse Species Evolve the Same
Way? 03/26/2005 01:00 PM
Technocrat.net Mar 26 2005 5:26PM GMT

Evolve! Mutate! Specialize!

Evolve! Mutate! Specialize! 01/16/2004 11:33 AM

The internet is relatively young and the web is even younger, barely getting to ten years of popular usage.

It's fun to watch it age though. I remember when Match.com was the only dating service and no one thought they'd ever last or figure out a way to make money. Apparently they did as it seems a formerly foreign concept like "I met her on the internet" is increasingly normal among my friends. Also worth noting is the extreme specialization taking place in the space, here's a random sample of specific dating communities: Liberal Hearts. Indian Dating. Equestrian Singles.

Equestrian Singles?! You mean to tell me there are enough single people both male and female all around the country that own horses and are looking for that special someone to support a venture like this? That there are enough to support at least two more of these?!

I always knew one of the powerful aspects of the internet was that it could allow people with very specific and unique tastes to join up and eventually form larger groups spread throughout the world. But I didn't think it'd work so well or so fast that in less than ten years a dating scene would blossom online to the point at which it took three full sites to connect all the people that owned a horse and were looking to date. Like I said, it's fun to watch it age.

History Flow Shows How Wiki Articles
Evolve

History Flow Shows How Wiki Articles
Evolve 03/28/2005 01:08 AM

Massively multiplayer online games
evolve with dragon-loving masses

Massively multiplayer online games
evolve with dragon-loving masses 05/31/2004 08:13 PM
Nwanews.com - Mon May 31, 05:46 am GMT

Sound Audio Systems Announces Huge Sale
on Selected Professional Audio Products

Sound Audio Systems Announces Huge Sale
on Selected Professional Audio Products 03/14/2005 05:26 PM
Sound Audio Systems announced today that the company will have a huge sale on selected items. [PRWEB Mar 1, 2005]

Elemental Audio offers Neodynium audio
compressor

Elemental Audio offers Neodynium audio
compressor 09/14/2004 07:23 AM
Elemental Audio Systems on Tuesday introduced Neo dynium, a plug-in for RTAS, Audio Unit and VST-compatible audio software designed for compression and dynamics processing. It uses an "I/O Map" visual interface that helps audio pros optimize and direct their efforts, rather than relying on more common transfer curves and displays. Neodynium costs US$159 (and is available for $139 for a limited time). It works with Digidesign Pro Tools, Emagic Logic and other software. System requirements call for a G3 or faster with Mac OS X v10.2 or newer and a compatible host application.

Westec InterActive Selects the Voice
Tracker™ Array Microphone for Enhanced
Audio in Retail and Restaurant
Audio/Video Surveillance and Operations
Audit

Westec InterActive Selects the Voice
Tracker™ Array Microphone for Enhanced
Audio in Retail and Restaurant
Audio/Video Surveillance and Operations
Audit 03/17/2005 03:36 AM
Westec InterActive, the leader in interactive remote security monitoring for convenience store, retail, restaurant and other business applications, selected Acoustic Magic’s Voice Tracker™ array microphone to be used for enhanced audio for audio/video monitoring. Enhanced audio is especially important for Operational Audits, enabling clear reception of conversations between employees and customers. [PRWEB Mar 17, 2005]

Audio controller promises next gen audio
systems

Audio controller promises next gen audio
systems 06/25/2004 11:57 AM
The latest version of Oxford Semiconductor's OXFW970 FireWire audio controller IC allows next generation audio systems to be easily added to desktop and notebook systems on the Mac and PC platforms, reports electropages in an article noted at MacSurfer...

Enhancing all audio output via Audio
Hijack

Enhancing all audio output via Audio
Hijack 09/03/2004 08:46 AM
This is kind of a followup to this previous hint regarding an iTunes equalizer setting. Something I do as a matter of course is configure Audio Hijack Pro to enhance the sound that iTunes (and DVD Player, Real Player, you na...

M-Audio introduces Revolution 5.1 audio
card

M-Audio introduces Revolution 5.1 audio
card 08/04/2004 10:03 AM
M-Audio on Wednesday introduced the Revolution 5.1, a surround sound audio card compatible with both Macs and PCs. The PCI card comes bundled with Aspyr Media's Wakeboarding Unleashed featuring Shaun Murray, billed as the first Mac game optimized for surround sound. The Revolution 5.1 is available for US$99.95.

AAC Audio Format Selected for DVD Audio

AAC Audio Format Selected for DVD Audio 04/09/2004 04:10 PM
Tony Smith writes for the Register, “The AAC (Advanced Audio Codec), the audio format supported by Apple’s iTunes Music Store, has been chosen as a key future DVD Audio disc technology by the standard’s governing body, the DVD Forum.” [Mar 25]

Take Along the Music in All Its Many
Formats

Take Along the Music in All Its Many
Formats 09/15/2004 10:58 PM
New York Times Sep 16 2004 2:44AM GMT

Mac Office 12 to Get XML Formats, Too

Mac Office 12 to Get XML Formats, Too 06/05/2005 11:59 PM
Rick Shaut, a member of the Macintosh Office team, wrote in his Web log that the Macintosh version of Office 12 will also support the Office Open XML format announced Thursday for its Windows counterpart. He also admitted Microsoft Mac Business Unit had fallen behind on XML support within the Office Suite.

Understanding HD Formats

Understanding HD Formats 01/19/2004 08:29 AM
High-definition television (HDTV) first arrived on the national stage in the late 1980s, but even today only a minority of consumers in the United States and a much smaller minority in other industrialized nations have HDTV systems. However, high-definition (HD) production for video and film is increasing rapidly, as is the installed base of high-definition-capable displays. Consumers are demanding higher-quality content that takes advantage of these better displays. In addition to the content delivered over the airwaves, a significant amount of content will be delivered to the displays through computers. This demand will help to further drive the increasing availability of HD content.

Versioning and extensibility in XML
formats

Versioning and extensibility in XML
formats 09/20/2004 12:26 PM

On the Atom-Syntax list they're talking about versioning and extensibility, two problems that are very easily solved in XML.

For versioning, define a required version attribute on the feed element, a string in the form x.y, where x and y are two numbers. X is the major version, and y is the minor version. So a version 0.3 feed would have a version attribute whose value is "0.3". A version 1.0 feed would have a version attribute of "1.0".

For extensibility, allow the format to be extended through namespaces and trust the W3C, who is the owner of the namespaces spec to tell you how to do it. Build on the works of others.

For extra credit, the format should evolve by adding new elements. A processor can tell whether it should expect the new elements or not by checking the top-level version attribute.

I honestly don't think there's another way to do it, so all the arguing and fussing is just going to end up there, so you might as well just do it. Of course this is just my opinion, I have no position re the Atom working group, or the RSS advisory board.

Microsoft on Patenting XML Formats

Microsoft on Patenting XML Formats 01/27/2004 11:30 AM
I recently asked whether Microsoft's moves to patent the XML formats it's using in new versions of Office were, once again, a customer lock-in ploy. Here's a (slightely edited) reply from Mark Martin, who's employed by the Microsoft's PR company:

Office 12 to Get New File Formats

Office 12 to Get New File Formats 06/05/2005 10:58 PM
Microsoft is making XML-based file formats the default in its next-generation Office suite. Will users bite or take flight?

Open document formats

Open document formats 06/17/2004 11:33 AM
Last week Tim Bray wrote about his (and Sun's) involvement in the European Commission's investigation into the OpenOffice and Microsoft flavors of XML office documents. The upshot:

You can find the Committee's conclusions here; they're short, readable, and defy summarization. [ongoing]

The conclusions are indeed concise, and the bulleted recommendations even more so. I'll quote them here, changing only <ul> to <ol> for ease of reference:

Therefore, it is recommended that:

1. The OASIS Technical Committee considers whether there is a need and opportunity for extending the emerging OASIS Open Document Format to allow for custom-defined schemas;
2. Industry actors not currently involved with the OASIS Open Document Format consider participating in the standardisation process in order to encourage a wider industry consensus around the format;
3. Submission of the emerging OASIS Open Document Format to an official standardisation organisation such as ISO is considered;
4. Microsoft considers issuing a public commitment to publish and provide non-discriminatory access to future versions of its WordML specifications;
5. Microsoft should consider the merits of submitting XML formats to an international standards body of their choice;
6. Microsoft assesses the possibility of excluding non-XML formatted components from WordML documents;
7. Industry is encouraged to provide filters that allow documents based on the WordML specifications and the emerging OASIS Open Document Format to be read and written to other applications whilst maintaining a maximum degree of faithfulness to content, structure and presentation. These filters should be made available for all products;
8. Industry is encouraged to provide the appropriate tools and services to allow the public sector to consider feasibility and costs of a transformation of its documents to XML-based formats;
9. The public sector is encouraged to provide its information through several formats. Where by choice or circumstance only a single revisable document format can be used this should be for a format around which there is industry consensus, as demonstrated by the format's adoption as a standard.

...

Speaking of Image Formats

Speaking of Image Formats 07/22/2004 03:06 PM

The lame UNISYS LZW patent has kept GIF support out of free software for some time. The patent has now expired worldwide, so the popular GD Graphics Library now has GIF support again, after a very long absence.

gd 2.0.28 has been released. gd 2.0.28 restores support for reading and writing GIF images.

So now you can fire up PHP and render your on-the-fly 'Punch The Monkey' animated banner ads.

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Re-ripping CDs to new formats in iTunes

Re-ripping CDs to new formats in iTunes 06/24/2004 11:26 AM
If you want to rip a CD in AAC format, but have already ripped it in MP3 format, insert the CD in your Mac and click Import in iTunes 4. It will tell you that some songs are already in the library, and will give an option to ...

Tired of being locked into formats?
Well then don't!

Tired of being locked into formats?
Well then don't! 01/18/2004 01:39 PM

I'm not a fan of OPML, I think it's a truly awful (and unnecessary) format - other people have found < FONT color=#333366>it problematic too - but I did think Dave Winer's Share Your OPML! site looked interesting, especially when there was a little SDK available. But then yesterday I read Eric's post pointing to the floater Dave had left in the pool :
If you wish to use the data for a different kind of application, or convert the data into a format other than OPML, for redistribution, it's likely we'll say yes, but you must ask first.

Anyone that's had dealings with Dave in the past will know what this means. Leigh asked (in comments) but had his request deleted. Basically Dave wants control, and he believes the formats will give him that control (remember the RSS patent application?).

I'm all for republishing, but not with strings attached. I don't want material under my copyright abused in this way. So I politely asked Dave to remove references to sites I maintain from his data. Anyhow, Dave's response was:
Do you want to make a legal case out of this?

Personally I thought that was pretty sad, but that might in part be cultural bias - being English I tend to think of etiquette before litigation. Whatever, unfortunately for Dave, and fortunately for the rest of us, formats aren't such a lever any more because the web will either ignore or work around attempts at lock-in.

I think the most sensible thing is to simply ignore Dave's site, but for purposes of demonstration, here's a workaround. The key obstacle is that Dave insists that you can't republish his data unless it's in OPML format. If it is OPML, you don't even have to ask. Ok, here is another version of the index file that points to all the others at "Share Your OPML!". This is still OPML format. Please do with it what you like. Incidentally, this new file is also valid RDF/XML.

Given that OPML is as thinly specified as it gets, and RDF/XML is designed to make it easy to make XML formats RDF compatible, it wasn't particularly difficult. Here's what RDF-compatible OPML looks like:

<opml opml:version="2.0"
xmlns="http://opml.scripting.com"
xmlns:opml="http://opml.scripting.com"
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
< ;head/>
<body rdf:parseType="Resource">
<outline opml:text="John Blog" opml:ctUpdates="8" opml:type="link" opml:url="http://example.org" opml:whenLastUpdate="Wed, 14 Jan 2004 03:28:00 GMT" />
</body>
</opml>


I first had to add some attributes to the <opml> element to give the XML namespace support. That top element becomes a resource in the (stripey) RDF interpretation, with head and body as properties, their contents being other resources. To keep things simple I just ignored the contents of the <head> element, so that gets interpreted as a triple with an empty object (I must check on the semantics of that). The element itself is mandatory in OPML, so that has to stay.
The <body> in effect contains a set of resources of type outline, which is easy to express by adding the rdf:parseType="Resource" attribute on the parent. The attributes of the <outline> elements all slip neatly into being RDF properties with literal values.

Couple of points that probably need explanation - since the spec update there's been no need to include a root <rdf:RDF> element. If the consumer knows it's RDF, that's good enough (the W3C's validator has check box: "RDF is NOT enclosed in <RDF>...</RDF> tags"). Also the use of unqualified attributes has been deprecated, so it should be opml:text="..." rather than just text="...". This makes the code look a bit uglier, but if you're using a lot of namespaces it does make mistakes much less likely.

I made the changes using search and replace, but this could easily be automated using XSLT. But if you are planning on using Userland format data from anywhere else, it's probably a better bet to use something a little less generic than the approach above (stylesheets for OPML to OCS and Userland RSS to RSS 1.0 are linked in the comments here).[Raw]

A survey of playlist formats

A survey of playlist formats 04/26/2004 01:14 PM
the great thing about standards is that there's so many of them to choose from.

Web Page Date Formats

Web Page Date Formats 07/12/2002 10:44 AM
A general survey on date format usage.

Free Culture formats

Free Culture formats 04/09/2004 04:06 PM
The free Free Culture was released as a pdf under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. Some complained about the format. Others, relying upon the freedom granted, created derivative works in other formats. So far, 36 hours after the book was released, I know of 9 versions available, including: MS-re ader, Rocke t e-Book, zippe d, iSilo , Mobip ocket, EasyR ead, PostScri pt, Pl ain Text, html. Most of these are from Blackmask, but thanks to Firas, Mike and Josh as well.

Binary data formats? Just say NO!
(XML.org)

Binary data formats? Just say NO!
(XML.org) 06/26/2002 01:00 PM

Bridgewater Formats GPRS

Bridgewater Formats GPRS 05/05/2004 08:28 AM
Unstrung.com May 5 2004 12:38PM GMT

Office 12 to use XML for file formats

Office 12 to use XML for file formats 06/05/2005 10:53 PM
Microsoft is embracing XML as the default file format for the next version of Microsoft Office. Is that good news for competing office apps?

Rogue Amoeba Updates Audio Hijack Pro,
Audio Hijack, and Nicecast

Rogue Amoeba Updates Audio Hijack Pro,
Audio Hijack, and Nicecast 04/09/2004 04:11 PM
Rogue Amoeba Software has released a flurry of free updates for its products. A moderate update to Audio Hijack Pro, the company's feature-rich application for recording any audio, has bumped it to version 1.3. This update includes a fix for recording iTunes when crossfades are on, as well as other small improvements. Audio Hijack Pro 2 is in heavy development, and is expected to be released sometime this summer.

Like Pixels? Check out MacDesign

Corporate Email Address Formats

Corporate Email Address Formats 06/13/2004 05:03 PM
"While there is no standard for the formatting of email addresses, there are suggested e-mail name formats that are more professional in presentation. I'm going to list a few of those here along with the pros and cons of each one."

KnowledgeTank 1.1 opens more file
formats

KnowledgeTank 1.1 opens more file
formats 05/04/2004 07:55 AM
Memsculpt today announced the release of Knowledgetank 1.1 for Mac OS X, an information management utility that helps users keep track of information such as URLs, files, projects, recipes, books, DVDs, CDs, sourcecode, and more...

Opening Open Formats with XSLT

Opening Open Formats with XSLT 02/10/2004 02:49 AM
In Bob DuCharme's latest Transforming XML column he finds that four-year old XSLT 1.0 is solving more and more problems as more data becomes available in XML.

Microsoft Office Formats Not Really
Being Opened

Microsoft Office Formats Not Really
Being Opened 02/01/2005 09:39 PM
Slashdot Feb 1 2005 1:14PM GMT
Grok Description matches for All the World's a Soundstage as Audio Formats Evolve
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All the World's a Soundstage as Audio Formats Evolve

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