Just spreading the ground beef around rather than keep it in the form of meat patties would’ve yielded something more pizza-like whilst using the exact same ingredients (though it would probably still be an excessive amount for a non-cheese topping).
Nice content-free slogan.
I’m not a Sound Engineer, I’m an Electronics Engineer - we’re the ones who had to find the right balance between fidelity, bit error rates, data rates and even circuit price when designing the digital audio sampling systems that capture from the analog world the digital data which the Sound Engineers use to work their magic: so I’m quite familiar with the limits of analog to digital conversion and that’s what I’m pointing out.
As it so happens I also took Compression and Cryptography in my degree and am quite familiar with where the term “lossless” comes from, especially since I took that elective at the time when the first lossy compression algorithms were starting to come out (specifically wavelet encoding as used in JPEG and MPEG) so people had to start talking about “lossless” compression algorithms with regards to the kind of algorithms what until then had just been called compression algorithms (because until then there were no compression algorithms with loss since the idea of losing anything when compressing data was considered crazy until it turns out you could do it and save tons of space if it was for stuff like image and audio because of the limitations of human senses - essentially in the specific case of things meant to be received by human senses, if you could deceive the human senses then the loss was acceptable, whilst in a general data sense losing data in compression was unacceptable).
My expertise is even higher up the Tech stack than the people who to me sound like Junior Devs making fun of lusers because they were using technical terms to mean something else, even while the Junior Devs themselves have yet to learn enough to understand the scope of usage and full implications for those technical terms (or the simple reality that non-Techies don’t have the same interpretation of technical terms as domain experts and instead interprete those things by analogy)
A PNG is indeed an imperfect representation of reality. Are you claiming that the lossness in the data domain of the compression algorithm in a PNG means its contents are a perfect representation of reality?!
(Funnilly enough, the imperfections in the data contained on a PNG are noticeable for some and the lower the “sampling rate” - i.e. number of pixels, bits per pixel - the easier it is to spot, same as audio)
As I’ve been trying to explain in my last posts, a non-Techie “audophile” when they claim FLAC is not lossless aren’t likely to be talking about it’s technical characteristics in the data domain (i.e. that data that you take out of a FLAC file is exactly the same as it goes in) but that its contents don’t sound the same as the original performance (or, most likely, a recording made via an entirelly analog pathway, such as in an LP).
Is it really that hard to grasp the concept that the word “lossless” means different things for a Technical person with a background in digital audio processing and a non-Technical person who simply compares the results of a full analog recording and reproduction pathway with those of a digital one which include a FLAC file and spots the differences?
This feels like me trying to explain to Junior Developers that the Users are indeed right and so are the Developers - they’re just reading different meanings for the same word and, no, you can’t expect non-Techie people to know the ins and outs of Technical terms and no they’re not lusers because of it. Maybe the “audiphile” was indeed wrong and hence “Confidently Incorrect”, but maybe he was just using lossless in a broader sense of “nothing lost” like a normal person does, whilst the other one was using the technical meaning of it (no data loss) so they were talking past each other - that snippet is too short to make a call on that.
So yeah, I stand by my point that this is the kind of Dunning-Krugger shit junior techies put out before they learn that most people don’t have the very same strictly defined technical terms on their minds as the junior techies do.
They’re deemed “lossless” because there are no data losses - the word actually comes from the broader domain of data handling, specifically Compression were for certain things - like images, audio and video - there are compression algorithms that lose some information (lossy) and those which don’t (lossless), for example JPEG vs PNG.
However data integrity is not at all what your average “audiophile” would be talking about when they say there are audio losses, so when commenting on what an non-techie “audiophile” wrote people here used that “losslessness” from the data domain to make claims in a context which is broader that merelly the area were the problem of data integrity applies and were it’s insuficient to disprove the claims of said “audiophile”.
My point being that unlike the misunderstanding (or maybe just mis-explanation) of many here, even a digital audio format which is technically named “lossless” still has losses compared to the analog original and there is no way around it (you can reduce the losses with a higher sampling rate and more bits per sample, but never eliminate it because the conversion to digital is a quantization of an infinite precision input).
“Losslessness” in a digital audio stream is about the integrity of the digital data itself, not about the digital audio stream being a perfect reproduction of the original soundwaves. With my mobile phone I can produce at home a 16 bit PCM @ 44.7 kHz (same quality as a CD) recording of the ambient sounds and if I store it as an uncompressed raw PCM file (or a Wav file, which is the same data plus some headers for ease of use) it’s technically deemed “lossless” whilst being a shit reproduction of the ambient sounds at my place because the capture process distorted the signal (shitty shit small microphone) and lost information (the quantization by the ADC in the mobile phone, even if it’s a good one, which is doubtful).
So maybe, just maybe, some “audiophiles” do notice the difference. I don’t really know for sure but I certainly won’t dismiss their point about the imperfect results of the end-to-process, with the argument that because after digitalization the digital audio data has been kept stored in a lossless format like FLAC or even raw PCM, then the whole thing is lossless.
One of my backgrounds is Digital Systems in Electronics Engineering, which means I also got to learn (way back in the days of CDs) how the whole process end to end works and why, so most of the comments here talking about the full end-to-end audio capture and reproduction process (which is what a non-techie “audiophile” would be commenting about) not being lossy because the digital audio data handling is “lossless”, just sounds to me like the Dunning-Krugger Effect in action.
People here are being confidently incorrect about the confident incorrection of some guy on the Internet, which is pretty ironic.
PS: Note that with high enough sampling rates and bits per sample you can make it so precise that the quantization error is smaller that the actual noise in the original analog input, which de facto is equivalent to no losses in the amplitude domain and so far into the high frequencies in the time domain that no human could possibly hear it, and if the resulting data is stored in a lossless format you could claim that the end-to-end process is lossless (well, ish - the capture of the audio itself into an analog signal itself has distortions and introduces errors, as does the reproduction at the other end), but that’s something quite different from claiming that merely because the audio data is stored in a “lossless” format it yields a signal as good as the original.
Strictly speaking, as soon as an analog signal is quantized into digital samples there is loss, both in the amplitude domain (a value of infinite precision is turned into a value that must fit in a specific number of bits, hence of finited precision) and on the time domain (digitalization samples the analog input at specific time intervals, whilst the analog input itself is a continuous wave).
That said, whether that is noticeable if the sampling rate and bits per sample are high enough is a whole different thing.
Ultra high frequency sounds might be missing or mangled at a 44.7 kHz sampling rather (a pretty standard one and used in CDs) but that should only be noticeable to people who can hear sounds above 22.35kHz (who are rare since people usually only hear sounds up to around 20kHz, the oldest the person the worse it gets) and maybe a sharp ear can spot the error in sampling at 24 bit, even though its miniscule (1/2^24 of the sampling range assuming the sampling has a linear distribution of values) but its quite unlikely.
That said, some kinds of trickery and processing used to make “more sound” (in the sense of how most people perceive the sound quality rather than strictly measured in Phsysics terms) fit in fewer bits or fewer samples per second in a way that most people don’t notice might be noticeable for some people.
Remember most of what we use now is anchored in work done way back when every byte counted, so a lot of the choices were dictated by things like “fit an LP as unencoded audio files - quite luterallyplain PCM, same as in Wav files - on the available data space of a CD” so it’s not going to be ultra high quality fit for the people at the upper ends of human sound perception.
All this to say that FLAC encoded audio files do have losses versus analog, not because of the encoding itself but because Analog to Digital conversion is by its own nature a process were precision is lost even if done without any extra audio or data handling process that might distort the audio samples even further, plus generally the whole thing is done at sampling rates and data precision’s fit for the average human rather than people at the upper end of the sound perception range.
Make nuke mad enough and nuke blows off.
I’m pretty sure the few survivors in the resulting wasteland would get bored pretty fast of making Non Credible Defense jokes about the waves of cockroaches trying to take over the World from humans.
Best not argue with nuke.
Yeah, but the way things are going soon it will be cheaper to buy a B-52 to live in than a house.
The UK NHI doesn’t work well because the neoliberal parties in successive governments (both the Tories and New Labour) have been defunding it so that they can - like Thatcher did with the railways - once its quality has fallen due to lack of funds claim that it’s bad because of Public management whilst it would be much better if it was Private because the Private Sector is much more competent, and privatise it.
Just like the US has fatcats that are perfectly happy to mass murder people for personal profit, so does the UK (and the British Political System is almost as bad as the American, so it’s definitelly sold to the highest bidder) and plenty of those jhave wet dreams of the country having 13% of its GDP flowing through a Private Healthcare sector like the US were they can make billions of pounds doing exactly the same as the fatcats do in US Healthcare.
Source: I lived in Britain for over a decade.
By the way, you “read that the UK NHI doesn’t work very well” is exactly because the UK media is overwhelmingly owned by tax avoiding billionaires who are part of the above mentioned fatcats who see themselves as profiting massivelly from Britain having a Healthcare System like the US. It’s not by chance that the level of trust of Britons in their Press is one of the lowest in Europe.
The exact same kind of tactics were deployed by Tatcher back when she wanted to privatise the Railways with the result that satisfaction with the Railway system in the UK is now even lower than when there was a public operator even after Thatcher defunded it to claim “Public is Bad, Private is Good” to amass enough public support to privatise it.
From what I’ve seen, treatments not being covered are only the case were those treatments are very expensive and there are other effective treatments (though less effective) which are much cheaper.
There’s also often a delay between a new and very expensive experimental treatment coming out and it becoming covered because it won’t be covered if it doesn’t demonstrate that it’s advantages over the other available treatments are sufficient to justify the additional cost.
Mind you, I’m talking about Public Healthcare Systems, not the so-called Mixed Systems that have mandatory Health Insurance (usually highly regulated and with a Public Insurance option for the less well off) - Mixed Systems have some of the same problems as the US System at least in my experience living in countries with one and with the other kind of system.
I’m talking about Universal Health Care systems (for clarity: totally free healthcare for residents in that country), not Public Health Insurance systems.
Europe is unfortunatelly also riddled with the latter system and having lived in countries with one kind and countries with the other, they’re quite different and the system with Insurance is invariably worse in terms of denials of coverage as well as cost (also because nowadays they all have laws that force every resident to have health insurance, which as result is more costlier than before those laws - as I saw first hand when I lived in a country with such a system when such a law came into effect), whilst UHC tends to have longer waiting lists (think 1 or 2 years of wait for some cirurgical procedures).
Absolutelly, some of the absurdities of the US system are also present in the so-called “Mixed” Systems (i.e. the ones with healtcare insurance but more regulated and with a public option for some) and if you look at the kinds of governments in those countries for the last 3 decades, you’ll notice they’ve been invariably neoliberal mainstream parties (setting up such systems is part of the broader tendency in Europe to privatise just about everything that has been going on since the 80s and was copied from the US).
IMHO, except for the long waiting times, the problems with Healthcare systems in part of Europe are the result of them having been transformed to become more like the US system in the last 3 decades.
In several countries the mainstream party politicians (who are Neoliberals) have been slowly privatising healthcare by forcing the Public Healthcare System to outsource more and more of the work to the Private Sector and using the same technique as Thatcher in the UK used to privatise railroads (of which now, decades later, you can see the horrible results) - defund the Public Service and when the quality falls because of it claim that the Public Sector is always incompetent and the the Private is always competent so that’s why that Public Service had problems hence it needs to be privatised to improve.
On top of that there is the actual genuine problem (rather than artificial meddling with the Public Healthcare System to send more money into the hands of politician’s mates) that populations are aging and older people require much more Healthcare Services in average.
I’ve lived in a couple of countries in Europe and some have Universal Healthcare systems (such as the UK and Portugal) but others such as The Netherlands and Germany have Mixed Systems with Health Insurance but highly regulated and were some people can get Health Insurance from the state.
You’re not going to go bankrupt from the treatment or get treatment denied in countries with UHC.
However if you lose your job or never find a job in the first place due to illness related issues or disabilities you’ll almost certainly end up on benefits which again can be better or worse depending in the country.
I would say things have been getting worse all over Europe (personally I think it’s exactly because there’s been too much copying of shit from the US), especially when it comes to the level of benefits for poor people being sufficient (the house prices bubbles all over the place and the lack of building of social housing have made this a massive problem in most countries), but that’s not the same as simply going bankrupt from medical bills because you’ve had an accident, ended up in an emergency ward and got a life saving surgery.
So it’s literally something that’s not legally supposed to happen, unlike in the US.
Mate, as I’ve said it’s not one but TWO countries I lived in with Universal Healthcare, and you can’t be a Nationalist (as you’re trying to imply) for TWO countries.
If you’re comparing like to like - i.e. the average poor disabled person in both a country with Universal Healthcare and the US - you’re going to get some cases of those having insufficient treatment in countries with UHC (especially in those were neoliberal governments have been defunding their UHC systems to try and privatise Healthcare even against popular will, like the UK), whilst the vast majority of those people will be fucked in the US (unless they’re Veterans).
I’ve lived in several countries and it’s just an enormous peace of mind living in a country were you know that if you’re involved in an accident and end up getting costly treatement in an emergency ward, you’re not going to be ruined.
I think you’re seeing the problems relative to a specific baseline and you think that there are massive problems there (which I’m sure there are) but the thing with the US system is that the baseline itself is way worse and all those problem you see would also be problems there but much worse (or maybe not, as those people would die a lot faster, at which point no problem would be visible) and on top of that in the US there are way more people with even worse problems when it comes to Healthcare than the “poor disabled person” in a country with UHC.
For every case of a disabled persion on benefits having to wait 1.5 years for a non-urgent operation because they can’t afford private healthcare, there are a million of cases of people who get a common problem like Diabetes or Cardio-Vascular problems and get treated for free (down to getting the medicine for free, which for a person below the poverty line will be true even for the worst countries) rather than suddenly being faced with an extra monthly bill for medicine (which would be a massive hit for those poor people you cosplay as caring about for the sake of argument) or a massive bill for urgent surgery.
(Which reminds me: one thing that will NEVER happen in one of those countries, unlike in the US, is when one ends up in the emergency ward and requires an expensive treatment to save their life, they won’t get a massive bill at the end)
Oh, and even if you pay out of pocket for medicine, it’s way cheaper in those countries than the US, as governments have used their leverage to limit what Pharmaceutial companies can charge, unlike in the US.
The healthcare risks for the average individual in countries with Universal Healthcare aren’t even in the same universe as in the US.
Having lived in two countries with universal healthcare, that meme is absolutelly true and you’re the one bullshitting.
The most “extreme” it can get in such systems is that they won’t pay for very expensive treatments (i.e. the kind of stuff that costs a million dollars per shot) if a person can keep going with cheaper ones even if they’re not as good.
Even then, sometimes they will if it’s actually worth it (as in: for something that’s a cure, not for something that just keeps the patiet going and is only 10% better than the next best option whilst costing 1000x more).
That’s “your quality of life won’t be as good if you have a chronic disease that makes your life miserable and the best treatment in the market is insanelly expensive because they’ll only pay for a not as expensive one”, not “death panels”.
People in those countries absolutelly aren’t going bankrupt due to being denied life-saving treatment and having to pay for it from their own pocket.
As for any complains you might have heard from people in countries with universal healthcare, them complaining about it is like people in Scandinavia complaining about public services: relative to what they have there are bad parts, which is something altogether different than it being bad relative to the World and when it comes the healthcare the US is 3rd World when it comes to results delivered relative to the amount spent in it.
PS: For avoidance of confusion, by Universal Healthcare I mean countries were the State provides the Healthcare and you get it without paying, not the so-called “Mixed Systems” that also exist in Europe (for example in Germany and The Netherlands) and which have Mandatory Healthcare Insurance for all residents, though much more regulated than in the US and with a Public Provider for the less well off. Mixed Systems do have some of the problems of the US System and massivelly depend on the strength of local regulations and the seriousness of the Regulator to not decay into the same kind of situation as the US since the Private Insurance Companies there have the very same natural tendency to shaft their clients as the ones in the US and only the local regulations stop them.
Yeah, even though that unit is a thousandth of an inch, it’s called mils rather than milli-inches.
Clearly my point about this being like Junior Devs thinking they know better that the “lusers” whilst not knowing enough to understand the limits of their knowledge hit the mark and hurt.
It’s hilarious that you think a background in game making (by the way, love that hypocrisy of yours of criticizing me for pointing out my background whilst you often do exactly the same on your posts) qualifies you to understand things like the error rates in the time and amplitude domains inherent to the sampling and quantization process which is Analog-to-Digital conversion “FAR” better than a Digital Systems Electronics Engineering Degree - you are literally the User from the point of view of a Digital Systems EE.
Then the mention of Physics too was just delicious because I also have part of a Physics degree that I took before changing to EE half way in my degree, so I studied it at Uni level just about long enough to go all the way to Quantum Mechanics which is a teensy weensy bit more advanced than just “energy” (and then, funnily enough, a great deal of EE was also about “energy”).
Oh, and by the way, if you think others will Shut The Fuck Up just because you tell them to, you’re in for a big disappointment.