mpc, rest in peace, Note: bumped from 2006 starting with post #78 Options

[skelly831]

I think a good option would be, as guru says, to merge the MPC forum into the Other formats section and also to edit/keep the sticky to maintain at least one correct and updated reference for anyone searching for info about MPC. I do believe there's nothing wrong with keeping at least a small amount of useful relevant info even if nobody is actually looking for it.

[guruboolez]

kwanbis> I don't see where's the problem. If one of the 'other' formats currently present in the dedicated board will one day become more popular inside HA community, then this format and all relevant threads are already bogged down with different formats. The current board is covering: wma, wmapro, atrac, atrac3, atrac3plus, vqf, dualstream, wavpack lossy, mp3pro, real audio, plusV, etc.... Where's the problem of adding a new piece to this museum? It would be as hard for the moderating team to extract all wma (or any other possible mainstream formats) threads from the current potpourri with or without MPC merged into this bazar. And I doubt that someone will one day extract all outdated threads about one format to put them in a freshly created forum. Personaly at least, I wouldn't do it.

I don't get your point.


EDIT: changed "kjoonlee" by "kwanbis" and few other changes.

This post has been edited by guruboolez: Aug 9 2006, 02:41

[kwanbis]

then this format and all relevant threads are already bogged down with different formats. The current board is covering: wma, wmapro, atrac, atrac3, atrac3plus, vqf, dualstream, wavpack lossy, mp3pro, real audio, plusV, etc.... Where's the problem of adding a new piece to this museum? It would be as hard for the moderating team to extract all wma (or any other possible mainstream formats) threads from the current potpourri with or without MPC merged into this bazar.

So, you think that adding more mess is good? I rather leave it alone, or create an "archived" forum.

[guruboolez]

The mess comes from the decision to create an unique forum was created for various minor or uninteresting formats. But it's an organised mess: a cupboard was created to put in a unique place various small subjects that didn't require a dedicated forum for each of them. Now that MPC looks more and more than another minor thingie, it wouldn't add any mess to put it with the other - on the contrary! The mess would only appear on page 10 of this unique forum, when MPC related subjects will become excessively dominant compared to all other threads. But who will notice it? Who's going to browse old pages by hand without using the search engine? Ten people? I would clearly sacrify them to what I consider as the most proper solution to clarify the forum's organisation and to keep at the same time all MPC subjects.

Nobody would be annoyed:
- people interested by MPC will still be able to post into the 'other formats' section
- people interested to enlarge their knowledge about MPC history will still access to all archives
- people interested by flac and/or wavpack will easily find all relevant topics into a dedicated forum
- people interested by OptimFrog, Monkey, YALAC/TAK/ALAC... will have an easiest access to the relevant thread once all flac/wavpack threads will be posted outside
- people won't see more forums than before despite the creation of new WavPack/FLAC ones.



EDIT: an "archive" forum is not a bad idea, but what else would you put in it? If only MPC forums are archived, then it's back to square one with two "MPC" forums renamed as "ARCHIVE"

This post has been edited by guruboolez: Aug 9 2006, 03:14

[kwanbis]

why don't we create a poll?

"What should we do with MPC forums?"

1) Leave alone
2) Merge into others
3) Move to an "abandoned" forum

EDIT: an "archive" forum is not a bad idea, but what else would you put in it? If only MPC forums are archived, then it's back to square one with two "MPC" forums renamed as "ARCHIVE"

jeje ... good point

[guruboolez]

The poll isn't a bad idea, but we must be sure first that admins agree to follow the majority's decision. Otherwise such point would be pointless.

[kjoonlee]

1. Leave alone
2. Merge into "Other codecs"
3. Lock forums, make people use "Other codecs" for new posts

I think this would be a more sensible list. I think I prefer 1 or 3.

The poll isn't a bad idea, but we must be sure first that admins agree to follow the majority's decision. Otherwise such point would be pointless.

They don't have to agree. They're the ones who run the board.

All we can do is point out the pros and cons, and hope we aren't rehashing what the admins are discussing on their own forums.

[guruboolez]

kjoonlee> I also thought about locking current MPC forums, but now there's a real problem: why doing it? The locked forum will still be there and it won't really clarify the forum's structure. There will still be a MPC forum, even more useless than the current one (read-only forum). I'm not sure that this solution could be considered as a progress.
On the other side, kwanbis 3rd choice is not fundamentaly different: it will lead to the creation of a new forum dedicated to MPC's archive when the original intention is precisely to... not have a forum dedicated to MPC...

I would rather propose:

1/ don't change anything
2/ move all mpc related threads into the 'other lossy format' board and then delete the dedicated MPC forum

This post has been edited by guruboolez: Aug 9 2006, 03:40

[bubka]

whats Frank doing with that computer that people bought for him?

[jarsonic]

whats Frank doing with that computer that people bought for him?

While the computer was in some way meant to be a motivator, it was also a "thank-you" present from those that used and loved his creation and the hard work he put into it.

[sony666]

It was an interesting format for geeks until AAC and Vorbis matured, with fast en/decoding, ape tags, high quality etc.

Thanks to all who developed and supported it
It would still be interesting for computer use if the new stream had been ready by 2004 or early 2005, with seek info and error resistance.
Now its too late, I fear.

[Squeller]

While I don't necessarily agree with how the site is currently handled, I also find the current 'anti-mpc' crusade on HA pointless. The codec, if dead, will fade away naturally without all the fuss and drama around. Deleting the forums can't be backed up by any valid argument.

No one is talking about deleting forums or about deleting a forums articles. This is just about forum organisation. Codecs, which are alive, get their own forum. The more alive, the more subforums they may need. Forums which are dead (guru gave us a good definition), don't need subforums or do not need an own forum at all. Their articles get merged into more general ones. It's so simple. There's only the "psychological" problem of "burying" ones own child.

This post has been edited by Squeller: Aug 9 2006, 07:08

[Gabriel]

I think that merging the mpc section into the "misc lossy" could be a bad move, making historical information retrieval more difficult.

Instead I'd suggest:
*create an "archived" section
*post a sticky into the mpc forum explaining the current situation
*set the mpc forum as read-only
*move it into a sub-section of the "archived"

This way, potential new discussions regarding mpc would go into the "misc lossy" section, and previous mpc history would be preserved and easily browsable (which, even if surprising, might still be usefull)

[tgoose]

I don't know how well this would work, but the idea struck me of "Legacy codecs" and "New codecs" (or "development codecs"?) subfora..?

[m00]

I don't post much here, but I do find the forums an invaluable source of information, and the MPC forum, in particular the Tech one, has some very interesting posts hiding in it..

I'd vote for an option to archive the entire of the MPC groups into some legacy archive section as proposed previously..

[Borisz]

Personally I think that Musepack has next to no pros when compared to the progress that LAME or Vorbis made. Since developement seems rather nonexistant, it's probably safe to call it a "dead format".

And this is coming from a guy who had 100+ albums encoded in Musepack on his computer.

This post has been edited by Borisz: Aug 9 2006, 12:12

[Alex B]

The MPC forum history is precious and should be preserved forever (as long as HA exists, hopefully even longer in some form of Internet archive).

A great deal of the current research and reviewing is published only in internet. Serious forums like HA should not hastily delete anything.

In general, I would not like to see any old threads even locked unless a clear TOS violation situation exists. In my opinion HA is a collective effort and all moderation should respect the writers' work. HA's TOS does not say that threads should be re-evaluated later by popularity, age or some other very personal measures.

Actually, just a couple of days ago I searched HA's Musepack forum and found instructions how to use the --scale switch for encoding files that decode without clipping even without using replay gain.

I still encode many of my "Electronic" genre albums in Musepack format (only for "PC to Hifi" use). Previously I've believed that extreme electronic sounds produce fewer artifacts with Musepack than with Vorbis or LAME (two years ago I ABXed this with a couple of samples successfully).

I'll retry to test the current versions of Vorbis, LAME, etc vs. Musepack with problem samples someday, but that is not going to be an easy or pleasant job at normally transparent quality settings (I'll publish the results if I ever get this done).

I just checked that I have 23.4 GB (about 2800 tracks) in Musepack format of my 255 GB archive of lossy files (I keep my lossless disc images in another offline archive).


Edit: grammar

This post has been edited by Alex B: Aug 9 2006, 16:38

[Klyith]

I like MPC, still have 5 gigs of them (20% of my music by bits), and still occasionally encode a cd in mpc. That said, it's a dead or dying format, and I don't think there's much need to keep the forums active or in the prominent position they have now. But deleting them is a bad idea, and merging into another forum is nearly as bad. The posts should be preserved, and moving them into another forum could cause problems for the receiving forum (like pollution of search results).

One preliminary idea that I think almost everyone could agree one: merge MPC General & MPC Tech into a single forum. That would at least make any subsequent move easier to do in a single step....

A question: Can Invision do a subforum without having the parent being a "holder" without posts? Could we put MPC as a subforum of Lossy Codecs without changing how Lossy is? The example I'm thinking of is the hardocp forums where the video cards forum has two subforums for ATI & nvidia specifically, but is still a full forum with posts of its own.

I think that merging the mpc section into the "misc lossy" could be a bad move, making historical information retrieval more difficult.

I like most of Gabriel's ideas.

The MPC forum history is precious and should be preserved forever (as long as HA exists, hopefully even longer in some form of Internet archive).

I agree. And unfortunately, archive.org is pretty horrible when dealing with forums. I'd love to see some of the stuff I posted to the Arstechnica forum way back (heh, pun) in like 1999, but first archive wasn't indexing it back then, and second it is nearly impossible to navigate a forum on archive. Damn, I'd love to reread the 3dfx vs nvidia flamewars I got into.

[DARcode]

I like MPC, still have 5 gigs of them (20% of my music by bits), and still occasionally encode a cd in mpc. That said, it's a dead or dying format, and I don't think there's much need to keep the forums active or in the prominent position they have now. But deleting them is a bad idea, and merging into another forum is nearly as bad. The posts should be preserved, and moving them into another forum could cause problems for the receiving forum (like pollution of search results).

One preliminary idea that I think almost everyone could agree one: merge MPC General & MPC Tech into a single forum. That would at least make any subsequent move easier to do in a single step....

A question: Can Invision do a subforum without having the parent being a "holder" without posts? Could we put MPC as a subforum of Lossy Codecs without changing how Lossy is? The example I'm thinking of is the hardocp forums where the video cards forum has two subforums for ATI & nvidia specifically, but is still a full forum with posts of its own.

I think that merging the mpc section into the "misc lossy" could be a bad move, making historical information retrieval more difficult.

I like most of Gabriel's ideas.

The MPC forum history is precious and should be preserved forever (as long as HA exists, hopefully even longer in some form of Internet archive).

I agree. And unfortunately, archive.org is pretty horrible when dealing with forums. I'd love to see some of the stuff I posted to the Arstechnica forum way back (heh, pun) in like 1999, but first archive wasn't indexing it back then, and second it is nearly impossible to navigate a forum on archive. Damn, I'd love to reread the 3dfx vs nvidia flamewars I got into.

Take a look around, things have already changed since 09/08/06.

[anark]

ok ive tested mp3, wma, aac, ogg, mpc in ~240 bitrate and i achieved almost perfect sound quality with mpc, the rest was distorted or artifacted

[pepoluan]

ok ive tested mp3, wma, aac, ogg, mpc in ~240 bitrate and i achieved almost perfect sound quality with mpc, the rest was distorted or artifacted

Post your ABX results and then we'll believe you.

No ABX result? I'm afraid you're just hearing things.

[Never_Again]

The corpse is only moving by the energy of small worms but that's all.

This should be nominated as both The Most Bizarre Quote and The Funniest Quote of the year.

[anark]

ok ive tested mp3, wma, aac, ogg, mpc in ~240 bitrate and i achieved almost perfect sound quality with mpc, the rest was distorted or artifacted

Post your ABX results and then we'll believe you.

No ABX result? I'm afraid you're just hearing things.

you musnt believe me, its MY opinion

[Gabriel]

you musnt believe me, its MY opinion

"I have tested mp3, wma, aac, ogg, mpc in ~240 bitrate and I achieved almost perfect sound quality with mpc, the rest was distorted or artifacted"
is stated as a fact.

"I have tested mp3, wma, aac, ogg, mpc in ~240 bitrate and I had the feeling that I achieved almost perfect sound quality with mpc, the rest seemed distorted or artifacted"
is stated as an opinion.

There is an important distinction between both. If you want to post about your opinions, you should state clearly that it is only your opinion, and not word it in a way that makes it appear as a fact. Moreover, once you will have stated an opinion regarding quality (and not a fact), you should not expect anyone here to care about it.
We will care once you will have posted a factual result (the easiest would be ABX results).

[Digga]

ok ive tested mp3, wma, aac, ogg, mpc in ~240 bitrate and i achieved almost perfect sound quality with mpc, the rest was distorted or artifacted

Post your ABX results and then we'll believe you.
No ABX result? I'm afraid you're just hearing things.

you musnt believe me, its MY opinion

no we must not believe you but you on your part must adhere to the TOS of this forum (see #8)

edit: spelling
edit 2: outperformed by Gabriel in both speed and quality

This post has been edited by Digga: Aug 24 2006, 10:52