#310322 - 20/05/2008 07:45
Someone has invented the Central, again
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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But this time they have gone all the way and complete left out any network connectivity. http://www.3ga.org.uk/features/overview/So updates to the CD track info database have to be done via a quarterly CD update. How odd.
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#310334 - 20/05/2008 13:49
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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Here's a neat trick if you buy a second JB7 for another room. You don't have to load the CDs again just load them from your backup hard disk. Neater would be network connectivity as you said...
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#310335 - 20/05/2008 13:53
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: tman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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JB7 is about convenience and accessibility so we tend not to focus on compression types and bit rates – I design the low level software that deals with inverse cosine transforms, Huffman codes, psycho acoustic masking and all that kind of stuff but when I listen to music I don’t want to deal with all that – I just want my music easy to get to.
JB7 uses MP3 compression so it can fit more CDs on a hard disk – but MP3 is a lossy compression technique and must result in a loss of quality. For some people and/or for some music this is undesireable so JB7 provides the option to enable/disable MP3 compression on a CD by CD basis.
This is lossless storage of the original CD but it is not compressed so it is there is no lossless compression format like FLAC involved.
We do have a simple in-house high speed lossless compression algorithm that provides a modest level of lossless compression that can be performed on-the-fly as CDs are loaded. We decided against using it in this product because it wouldn't deliver any real benefit to the majority of our customers. Err, right.
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#310342 - 20/05/2008 15:17
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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Wow. It is too complicated and we don't like to deal with it so therefore we'll leave it out...
I was going to suggest that maybe they're using one of those MP3 codec chips and therefore it can't do encoding in anything apart from MP3 but they've got a combo CPU/DSP chip running it...
The box is aimed at the "I want to spend <blah> amount of money and get a box that just does what its supposed to" which I guess it does. Insert CD, rip, play and repeat as necessary.
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#310343 - 20/05/2008 15:21
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: tman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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I have the feeling that he is a very clever guy and he probably opted to code everything from scratch himself, rather than using a load of existing open source code. I'm just not sure he "gets" "it".
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#310344 - 20/05/2008 15:29
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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I have the feeling that he is a very clever guy and he probably opted to code everything from scratch himself, rather than using a load of existing open source code. I'm just not sure he "gets" "it". Hrmm maybe. You'd want to get optimised versions of the libraries you need which might be ruling out FLAC. Still a lot of work to reinvent the wheel if you can avoid it.
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#310345 - 20/05/2008 15:32
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: tman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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I design the low level software that deals with inverse cosine transforms, Huffman codes, psycho acoustic masking and all that kind of stuff but when I listen to music I don’t want to deal with all that – I just want my music easy to get to. This is the conflicting part though. How does the designer not having to deal with algorithms have anything to do with making it easy for the listener to get to their music? Set the default for FLAC/whatever to a reasonable compromise. Option somewhere to say whether you want compression or not. Default that to yes as well. Easy no?
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#310346 - 20/05/2008 15:41
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: tman]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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Like I say, he just doesn't "get" "it".
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#312129 - 12/07/2008 17:32
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
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Done locally here in Cambridge, all by one guy (Sinclair's hardware man) and - no lie - inspired by empeg!
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#312133 - 12/07/2008 20:20
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: schofiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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Done locally here in Cambridge, all by one guy (Sinclair's hardware man) Oh, that explains a lot 
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#334245 - 19/06/2010 15:52
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: andy]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 16/04/2002
Posts: 2011
Loc: Yorkshire UK
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I just came across this in an idle moment, this guy must have a heck of a lot of brass backing him: Full page, full colour most weekends in the Daily Telegraph ain't cheap, I don't know about elsewhere. If this was a duff idea 2/3 years ago, it certainly is now.
The website says that there's a waiting list because of demand but, as some American put it: You can't fool all of the people all of thr time!
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Politics and Ideology: Not my bag
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#334591 - 29/06/2010 12:57
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: boxer]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 16/04/2002
Posts: 2011
Loc: Yorkshire UK
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The Times, as well (referring to a post higher up) why advertise heavily, if you: "Can't meet the demand".
Get a Squeezebox and get real! - Network, album covers and internet radio (Including catch-up on a week's BBC) for about the same price.
If you can go to the Brennan site, you must have a PC, so, you can equally well - and for free - use it to rip your albums, so why buy another, stand alone, box to do it, if you follow my logic.
If you want to throw money at it, go for the Sonos, which I see is now stocked at Richer Sounds.
All he had to do was stick a DAB tuner in the box and he's got complete obsolescence!
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#334628 - 30/06/2010 07:00
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: boxer]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 16/04/2002
Posts: 2011
Loc: Yorkshire UK
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I'm becoming obsessed, he's got a whole page, full colour in the Radio Times today - is there no stopping the man!
The one plus point is that, like the Rio Receiver, it's got an internal amp. I wish the Squeezebox touch had one.
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#337376 - 21/09/2010 11:19
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: boxer]
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member
Registered: 11/08/2002
Posts: 188
Loc: Champaign, IL
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wow. No networking? Can't tap into CDDb? Non-starter for me.
Edited by benjammin (21/09/2010 11:19)
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#337802 - 01/10/2010 19:29
Re: Someone has invented the Central, again
[Re: benjammin]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 16/04/2002
Posts: 2011
Loc: Yorkshire UK
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I just have a feeling that those people who respond to Bose's ads might go for this, without thinking through the practicality!
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