I bought an Acura RDX a few months back. It came with a true DVD-Audio disk changer in the dash. Very cool, I thought. It wasn't because it could reproduce the 5.1 surround channels that DVD-A can support. It was for the other end of the standard - lots and lots of 16/44.1 2-channel tracks. The DVD-A standard can support 16/44.1 all the way up to 24/192, all in PCM unlike SACD, which is a harder to deal with DSD (through which A/D process is superior would be difficult to discern at the consumer level). So on a single layer DVD+R, I should be able to get 6-8 CD's onto a single disk. Cool.
So I brought up Toast on my G5 Mac and put a bunch of PCM tracks onto a virtual disk and had it burn it. Problem is it kept coming up as a DVD-V with the audio embedded into the MPEG-2 video. The DVD-A drive in the car wouldn't read it. So I played around a lot more, eventually succumbing to the reality that I would need to read the manual for this one. But Toast can't do DVD-A. Looking at its docs and looking through various web forums, the reality is that its not supported.
So then I journeyed through the Apple universe of iMovie and iDVD. Nope, those build DVD-V disks. I could put the disks into my DVD player in the living room and 2-channel PCM would come out the digital audio cable into the pre-pro. But it wasn't a DVD-A (which the Oppo can read too). So in frustration I cast about on the net to learn how to build a proper DVD-A.
I found Minnetonka Audio Software, specifically their Disc Welder package. I learned that special audio packages are required to build a DVD-A. After reading through their literature, I bought a copy of the Bronze package. I don't need anything special, just the engine that can take the 2-channel PCM tracks and generate the proper Audio files. One may say $99 for this simple ability is a lot, but its quite inexpensive for two reasons. One is their full out Chrome II package is $2500 and two, it plus a stack of DVD+R's is a lot cheaper than plugging an iPod into the car. 6 x 4.7GB gets me pretty close to 30GB of data, which is more than my 4th gen iPod can hold. All on disks that are cheap to replace.
It also helps that there is a Mac version of Bronze. The interface is a bit clunky. Maybe this is its PC heritage or just the outcome of taking a few of their top line features and putting them into a bite sized package. There doesn't seem to be a way to name the disks produced in a way the car DVD-A drive can read. But it does one thing really well - take several CD's worth of 16/44.1 PCM tracks and put them together on a single DVD-A disk.
The software only supports one session and 99 tracks per physical disk. I use iTunes to generate the PCM tracks from the Apple Lossless files sitting on the jukebox. Easy enough for the G5 to do. Create the pointers to the files within Disc Welder Bronze and hit the button. It takes about an hour or so for my G5 to build the proper DVD-A files and burn them out to a blank DVD+R (8x). The bottleneck seems to be the speed of my hard drives, as the CPU monitor doesn't move north of 15-20% at any one time.
The disks work wonderfully in the car's DVD-A drive. Clean, uncompressed sound. Yea. I haven't changed a disk in the changer for quite some time. On our trip up here, I think we got a bit more than half way through one disk.
One note about the Disc Welder software. It gets locked down to one machine through a set of keys. Make as many copies of the application you want, it'll only work on one machine at a time. So when I change Macs in the future, I'll need to contact them for a new set of keys. Not a big deal. As long as I can pump out DVD-A's of my CD collection for the car, I'm happy.
-Mike M.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Books on the nightstand
Its good to be on vacation. Away from work. Away from the Valley. Up here in the Sierra Foothills, where the deer and coyote roam. The nights are cold, with the temperature dropping below freezing. Which always makes for a good time to curl up with a book under a blanket, flanked by both dogs, trying to stay warm.
I started the month out with something a little different than the normal fair of history and sci-fi that I usually read. This is a book I picked up some time ago and saw it sitting on the lower shelf of my "on-deck" circle. The upper shelf is fiction, the lower, non-fiction. The book is _Fabric of the Cosmos_ by Brian Greene. He writes in the same vein as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking - trying to bring the arcane and sometimes difficult to understand advances in modern physics to a level most of us can understand.
Its very cool to travel along the origins of the equations that define our modern universe. Thankfully the author doesn't do any deep dives into the actual math - that would make me snooze rather than absorb what is being said. My wife, on the other hand, would love the math Brian Greene alludes to. Starting with Sir Issac Newton and coming up to string theory, a lot is covered. But I have to admit that about half way through I had to put it down and let my head unwind.
I was good through Einstein's Special and General Relativity. I understand the relationship of spacetime much better. Their interactions make a lot more sense than my old physics books from college. Love thermodynamics and entropy (that was a cool class for me). Then came quantum mechanics. Maybe I like the big physics of gravity and large body interaction. But quantum mechanics twists my brain around in ways like my wife's abstract algebra book did. Its so complex and layered, yet simple. Multiple dimensions outside our own perception. Or that two particles that are quantum entangled can reflect the other's spin or state instantaneously across spacetime, breaking the speed of light barrier. I know of one sci-fi author that has tapped this idea for real time communication across the expanse of space (many, many light years). But I couldn't get how that work in the same universe as gravity (which behaves as a wave and runs at the speed of light).
I haven't gotten to string theory yet. That's the next set of chapters. I grok the basics - the basic building blocks of matter vibrate at different rates which determine what they are in the larger universe. More discussions of higher dimensions and how this bodes for understanding the universe, both big and small. I'm not sure if I'm getting quantum mechanics, but I am very interested in large body gravity wells. ie Black holes. I've put a couple books on my Amazon list. I have read that the formation of large galaxies require a black hole at their center to create the engine of creation. Amazing formations of nature - millions of solar masses in a space smaller than our solar system. Spinning, waiting for another star to come by so it can feed and pull the mass in. Cool stuff.
In the meantime, I devoured a couple Andrew Vachss novels, _Only Child_ & _Down Here_. These are the latest Burke novels I had on my shelf. Andrew Vachss writes in a gritty, hyper-realistic fashion that gives us citizens a small glimpse into the underworld of New York. I have read all of the Burke novels over the past 15 years or so. A friend in college introduced me to _Flood_, his first Burke novel. Amazing stuff. These are career criminals, but those that feed on other criminals. A lot of what Burke sees in his New York, Vachss has seen. The novels support his law practice. He represents children exclusively. Pro Bono. A lot of what Burke tries to make right or at least tip the scales away from the freaks is the rescuing of children from the bad places they have found themselves or remove the freaks from the gene pool.
Vachss's books are all worthy reads and show that there is no black and white. Its all gray. Start with _Flood_ to see that its all about. Then tell me you can't but fill a shelf in a bookcase with the rest of Burke's life adventures.
Here up in the mountains I've taken up a tome, _Judas Unchained_ by Peter F. Hamilton. It is the second part of the story started in _Pandora's Star_. The first couple of pages is a list of the major characters involved in the story. One line per character, which gives you a sense of how massive his fictional universe is. He could have easily done a trilogy with all the material, but instead wrote 2 800 page novels. A bloody brick, but a wonderful story which pulls you in, for his worlds are dynamic and feel real.
After _Judas Unchained_ I will return to the real universe of Brian Greene. See if my head can take a dose of what math shows us is the true reality, even if our senses just can't seem to describe it.
Merry Christmas.
-Mike M.
Only Child & Down Here - Burke by Andrew Vachss
I started the month out with something a little different than the normal fair of history and sci-fi that I usually read. This is a book I picked up some time ago and saw it sitting on the lower shelf of my "on-deck" circle. The upper shelf is fiction, the lower, non-fiction. The book is _Fabric of the Cosmos_ by Brian Greene. He writes in the same vein as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking - trying to bring the arcane and sometimes difficult to understand advances in modern physics to a level most of us can understand.
Its very cool to travel along the origins of the equations that define our modern universe. Thankfully the author doesn't do any deep dives into the actual math - that would make me snooze rather than absorb what is being said. My wife, on the other hand, would love the math Brian Greene alludes to. Starting with Sir Issac Newton and coming up to string theory, a lot is covered. But I have to admit that about half way through I had to put it down and let my head unwind.
I was good through Einstein's Special and General Relativity. I understand the relationship of spacetime much better. Their interactions make a lot more sense than my old physics books from college. Love thermodynamics and entropy (that was a cool class for me). Then came quantum mechanics. Maybe I like the big physics of gravity and large body interaction. But quantum mechanics twists my brain around in ways like my wife's abstract algebra book did. Its so complex and layered, yet simple. Multiple dimensions outside our own perception. Or that two particles that are quantum entangled can reflect the other's spin or state instantaneously across spacetime, breaking the speed of light barrier. I know of one sci-fi author that has tapped this idea for real time communication across the expanse of space (many, many light years). But I couldn't get how that work in the same universe as gravity (which behaves as a wave and runs at the speed of light).
I haven't gotten to string theory yet. That's the next set of chapters. I grok the basics - the basic building blocks of matter vibrate at different rates which determine what they are in the larger universe. More discussions of higher dimensions and how this bodes for understanding the universe, both big and small. I'm not sure if I'm getting quantum mechanics, but I am very interested in large body gravity wells. ie Black holes. I've put a couple books on my Amazon list. I have read that the formation of large galaxies require a black hole at their center to create the engine of creation. Amazing formations of nature - millions of solar masses in a space smaller than our solar system. Spinning, waiting for another star to come by so it can feed and pull the mass in. Cool stuff.
In the meantime, I devoured a couple Andrew Vachss novels, _Only Child_ & _Down Here_. These are the latest Burke novels I had on my shelf. Andrew Vachss writes in a gritty, hyper-realistic fashion that gives us citizens a small glimpse into the underworld of New York. I have read all of the Burke novels over the past 15 years or so. A friend in college introduced me to _Flood_, his first Burke novel. Amazing stuff. These are career criminals, but those that feed on other criminals. A lot of what Burke sees in his New York, Vachss has seen. The novels support his law practice. He represents children exclusively. Pro Bono. A lot of what Burke tries to make right or at least tip the scales away from the freaks is the rescuing of children from the bad places they have found themselves or remove the freaks from the gene pool.
Vachss's books are all worthy reads and show that there is no black and white. Its all gray. Start with _Flood_ to see that its all about. Then tell me you can't but fill a shelf in a bookcase with the rest of Burke's life adventures.
Here up in the mountains I've taken up a tome, _Judas Unchained_ by Peter F. Hamilton. It is the second part of the story started in _Pandora's Star_. The first couple of pages is a list of the major characters involved in the story. One line per character, which gives you a sense of how massive his fictional universe is. He could have easily done a trilogy with all the material, but instead wrote 2 800 page novels. A bloody brick, but a wonderful story which pulls you in, for his worlds are dynamic and feel real.
After _Judas Unchained_ I will return to the real universe of Brian Greene. See if my head can take a dose of what math shows us is the true reality, even if our senses just can't seem to describe it.
Merry Christmas.
-Mike M.
Only Child & Down Here - Burke by Andrew Vachss
Monday, December 11, 2006
Really cool discussion on using DVD's to archive data
I came across this pointer from slashdot about a discussion on what's good and not good for archiving data on data DVD's. The author makes a good argument for +R and a particular dye type. Very interesting (I didn't know that -R & +R had different error correction formats burned into the data layer).
Archiving data on DVD's.
I've always taken an interest on how the formats work in general. I have a reference version of the Red Book audio CD standard in my bookcase. But I didn't know that the DVD standard, at the physical layer is so chaotic. I was under the impression that such things were well regulated and adhered to. Guess not.
I have always used +R & +RW media for their inherent stability of a session. The specification says that the drive needs to complete the session before being ejected. This makes sure that the author of the disk doesn't forget to do this, as can be done with -R, -RW media. I like specs that watch out for my blunders, so I went with the + side of things.
Data integrity opens a big can of worms. Ever since my friend Alex turned me onto Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to read the music track at the far edge of a classical CD that iTunes barfed on. It took EAC about 20 minutes to pull out about 5 minutes of audio data of Beethoven. While EAC was attempting to pull the bits off of the physical layer, it displays a neat graph of what is really going on. A lot of errors were produced, which caused EAC to read it over and over again. The funny thing is I never noticed a sound quality problem when playing the CD in a purpose made CD player. One thing that differentiates a lot of high end CD players is their ability to smooth over the areas where the error correction needs to interpolate the data. Which I can understand. But I don't understand is how can computer data optical disks operate in this same, somewhat harsh environment, and give out perfect data each and every time. Can't have your MS Word file change characters randomly due to read errors off the disk. A topic for another time. My head is starting to hurt.
-Mike M.
Archiving data on DVD's.
I've always taken an interest on how the formats work in general. I have a reference version of the Red Book audio CD standard in my bookcase. But I didn't know that the DVD standard, at the physical layer is so chaotic. I was under the impression that such things were well regulated and adhered to. Guess not.
I have always used +R & +RW media for their inherent stability of a session. The specification says that the drive needs to complete the session before being ejected. This makes sure that the author of the disk doesn't forget to do this, as can be done with -R, -RW media. I like specs that watch out for my blunders, so I went with the + side of things.
Data integrity opens a big can of worms. Ever since my friend Alex turned me onto Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to read the music track at the far edge of a classical CD that iTunes barfed on. It took EAC about 20 minutes to pull out about 5 minutes of audio data of Beethoven. While EAC was attempting to pull the bits off of the physical layer, it displays a neat graph of what is really going on. A lot of errors were produced, which caused EAC to read it over and over again. The funny thing is I never noticed a sound quality problem when playing the CD in a purpose made CD player. One thing that differentiates a lot of high end CD players is their ability to smooth over the areas where the error correction needs to interpolate the data. Which I can understand. But I don't understand is how can computer data optical disks operate in this same, somewhat harsh environment, and give out perfect data each and every time. Can't have your MS Word file change characters randomly due to read errors off the disk. A topic for another time. My head is starting to hurt.
-Mike M.
Squish the bits
My headaches have been moving around. Now they are in the early evening, which is better (bend with the wind, not try to stop something that can't be stopped, at least for now). This allows me to sleep through the night and get a bunch done during the day. Then I can just read through the worst of it come the evening.
Something over at Engadget caught my eye today. Its an announcement from Fujitsu for a 300GB 2.5in 4200rpm notebook hard drive. I thought 160GB was tops. But Fujitsu is the first to come out with one double the capacity. This gets very interesting for me as a storage solution for the jukebox.
One may piss and moan about the 4200rpm spindle speed or its general lack of performance edge. But I like its 1.6 watt power requirement and probably super quiet (in terms of 3.5" 7200rpm drives). I don't need speed for the jukebox. For music, all it needs is at most 1MB/sec and that's being generous. This is something that would fit the bill wonderfully - even could be run off bus power, USB or FW.
This wouldn't work for me yet, unless I got two. My current library of 1200 CD's in the jukebox comes out to be about 350GB these days. That's with all 14,000+ tracks encoded with Apple Lossless (like FLAC or MLP). If someone could take this perpendicular method to 500GB in a 2.5" drive, I'd be game. I'd still use 3.5" drives to back up the main jukebox repository, as they are cheap and plentiful. But for a quieter solution in the living room, it would be very cool.
After the new year, now that I've almost cleared a path through the boxes to the G5, I'll replace its two small HD's with two Seagate 7200.10 500GB drives. That should help with the space crunch I'm feeling. Lots and lots of pictures, as that is my main machine for photo and video editing. Newegg runs good deals at $230 or so a drive. Cheap for the amount of speed and space you are getting.
I can regale you of days gone past where a 10MB drive came as two chassis, one the drive with 5 1/4" platters and the other the power supply. These were no small boxes that could fit in your hand. They were much heavier and bigger than the Apple //e we plugged it into. Made a wondrous sound, though after a few minutes you'd want ear plugs. 10MB was a lot of space in the early '80's. Especially when working with 140KB 5 1/4" floppy disks. But I digress, as usual.
I'm waiting for the petabyte disk farms to sprout up. And who gets to back it up?
-Mike M.
Something over at Engadget caught my eye today. Its an announcement from Fujitsu for a 300GB 2.5in 4200rpm notebook hard drive. I thought 160GB was tops. But Fujitsu is the first to come out with one double the capacity. This gets very interesting for me as a storage solution for the jukebox.
One may piss and moan about the 4200rpm spindle speed or its general lack of performance edge. But I like its 1.6 watt power requirement and probably super quiet (in terms of 3.5" 7200rpm drives). I don't need speed for the jukebox. For music, all it needs is at most 1MB/sec and that's being generous. This is something that would fit the bill wonderfully - even could be run off bus power, USB or FW.
This wouldn't work for me yet, unless I got two. My current library of 1200 CD's in the jukebox comes out to be about 350GB these days. That's with all 14,000+ tracks encoded with Apple Lossless (like FLAC or MLP). If someone could take this perpendicular method to 500GB in a 2.5" drive, I'd be game. I'd still use 3.5" drives to back up the main jukebox repository, as they are cheap and plentiful. But for a quieter solution in the living room, it would be very cool.
After the new year, now that I've almost cleared a path through the boxes to the G5, I'll replace its two small HD's with two Seagate 7200.10 500GB drives. That should help with the space crunch I'm feeling. Lots and lots of pictures, as that is my main machine for photo and video editing. Newegg runs good deals at $230 or so a drive. Cheap for the amount of speed and space you are getting.
I can regale you of days gone past where a 10MB drive came as two chassis, one the drive with 5 1/4" platters and the other the power supply. These were no small boxes that could fit in your hand. They were much heavier and bigger than the Apple //e we plugged it into. Made a wondrous sound, though after a few minutes you'd want ear plugs. 10MB was a lot of space in the early '80's. Especially when working with 140KB 5 1/4" floppy disks. But I digress, as usual.
I'm waiting for the petabyte disk farms to sprout up. And who gets to back it up?
-Mike M.
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