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November 16, 2004
The Audion Story
LAME. That's why I bought Audion 3 after toying with the lil' app back in the 2.x days.
For those of you who aren't audio geeks, LAME used to be the MP3 codec with the best compression/quality tradeoff out there (better: it was open source). iTunes, though, didn't support it, and so since I was embarking on converting 200+ cds into digital form, I settled for the best. I didn't care that iTunes really didn't support true VBR like in LAME, nor that the track times were wack (can anybody explain to me just what the heck iTunes is doing with LAME VBR files? My guess is that it guesses the track time based on the first sample size it sees and divides that into the size of the file (eg 5mb file / 32kbs in the first second = 2:40:00 total track time or something)). I converted all my cds to glorious LAME VBR files using Audion, and reveled in their pristine sound. Snappy app, that Audion, and I'm sad to see it go. I've been using AAC @ 192kbs in iTunes for a while now, even though LAME is still superior in the compression/quality tradeoff. Half my music library is still housed in Audion-encoded LAME.
The sacrifices I make for convenience (now) and excellence (then) :(
The story of Audion is worth a read, both as geek entertainment (complete with non-sequiteur popups!) and for education about the mindset of good developers. Best wishes to the Panic crew. I might go and register Transmit soon so that they can receive some dog food money and I can upload large files.
Bonus: Audion developer Cabel references my masthead Marx quote in reference to his software efforts.
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Posted by Noel at 10:25 AM
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