Once upon a time, I was a Slashdotter. I always had to check into Slashdot at least every hour to see if there was something new that I needed to know about.

That eventually begin to slow to about once a week, then, about once a month. Now, hardly ever.

It seems like when I first found HA, there was something new and exiting in the audio compression world almost daily. LAME, then R3Mix, then --alt-preset, then Ogg, then GT3.

Well, I afraid to say, for the last few months, that has not been the case. In fact, just the opposite. Dibrom leaves LAME development, JohnV is slipping out, and there has been nothing new to talk about except AAC.

AAC is somehting, and the hardware support it is getting is definitely a good thing, but I can't help but feel the lifeblood is draining out here.

And no, I'm not a troll. Am I the only one that has notice this, or maybe I just need a vacation.

Edit: spelling

No, not dying... we're just in the "slow news season." It happens periodically on any forum; I'd guess things will pick up speed again in a few months, and we'll see another slew of simultaneous releases.

And as with any other forum, when core members change their focus it is a sign of health that others step in to fill the void. (Let's just be sure that those we allow to fill the void are sane and sound, or at least as rational, coherent and ethical as their predecessors. )

- M.

I would say you might be experiencing "checktheforumtoooftenitis"-I know I suffer from the disease myself. I have not posted here too much since joining this past May, and when I do I tend to overcheck the forum to see who is calling me a jerk, a loser, or whatever.

Plus, if you have read up on all the myths concerning compressed audio that have been so well debunked on this forum through carefull abx tests, and are now filled with correct knowledge, there really is not much left to discuss, except for maybe when apps don't work right on someones computer, hardware playback is not quite right, or maybe the ever enticing news about new portable devices that will support your favorite non mp3 codec. Really, if you faithfully asorb all the knowledge in the faqs, critically read abx tests reports by the elite experts (I'm thinking Roberto and his heroic test setups recently) and are now generally enlightened, what else is there? I suppose there will always be the run off the mouth thread started by the noob who does not take the TOS seriously, or reads it at all, which then leads to the classic thread of castigation, and rightfully so. Problem is this can be a point of dubious entertainment for only so long.

I guess maybe we should both take a break from this forum for a couple of weeks to let it refresh again. On the other hand, I am addicted to this forum. It is my relief from the stress of the day. It is healthier than a six pack of beer

I wouldn't say it's this forum that is dying. I would say it's the interest in audio encoding that is dying.

The top of interest in audio compression happened some years ago, and the epicenter of this were the MP3.com and VQF.com forums.

Nowadays, people are mostly interested in video (look at Doom9). Engineers that know a lot about DSP are also going from audio to video, so there is few development going on.

You don't see development discussion going on here either. Lame development slowed down a lot. Monty is working on God-knows-what (Theora? Tremor? Vorbis 1.1?). Ivan is too busy working for Ahead. Klemm slowed down his posting here after I called him an ass.

Anyway, these are just my views...

Perhaps, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the forum's death are greatly exaggerated. I would suggest it is in the summer doldrums and that what rjamorim has suggested is also true.

Maybe we are almost to the point where storage is cheap enough that lossy compression becomes moot. With my collection, we are not there yet.

But maybe we are just close enough that there is not much point in lossy codec development.

I still need it though. Too much music for lossless. The lack of breaking news and new development is somewhat depressing.

Actually, Monty is working on Audacity.

- M.

LOL!!!! I can't believe it.

@Bond (wherever you are): I guess I won't be able to wait for vorbis 1.0.1 for my test

One problem I currently have is the incredible amount of noise (questions answered in the FAQ), which shows up in the Portal and the Active Topics. It makes HA.org harder to browse from me, since it's getting harder and harder picking the few interesting threads out of the bunch just because there are so many which are not.

Don't get me wrong: I do believe newbies should be free to ask (almost) everything not explained somewhere in the FAQ or "Recommended..." threads, but a Newbie forum, which would be excluded from Portal and Active Topics list, could probably improve this.

dev0

I can imagine most of the old-timers wouldn't waste their time visiting the newbie forum. So, it would and up becoming a place where newbies would be left alone until they noticed that nobody is answering their questions. Then they would go and post at General.

I think that would be dangerous. Newbies left to their own devices in their own forum, and especially if they are completely ignored by HA "veterans", instead of going to General to post would often start answering each others questions and end up lowering the quality of information shared at HA by polluting their forum with false claims and "urban legends".

Consider one of our most recent and beloved newbies, xepherys, in this thread. Think about what can happen if all of us newbies are left alone to congregate. What could happen if someone (or worse, several people) like that guy were left to direct other newbies in the "proper" ways (and concepts) of psychoacoustic audio compression.

(OT: Open pool...He's already at 33%...I give him less than a week to hit 100%, or either not return at all. Any counter bets?)

You aren't the only one with similar thoughts. To be honest, I was looking at the threads on the board earlier today, and the thought crossed my mind that this forum is starting to get boring. I've been more involved on head-fi the past week or two (mostly for fun... a lot of wild & wacky threads pop up there in the general chat areas, not just audio subjectivism ) and I've been dipping my toes into quite a few other forums as well. HA just seems pretty dry and stale lately (sorry), and the topics coming up just don't seem to catch or hold my interest as often as they used to.

(shrug)...

I was going to say that maybe we've discussed all there is to discuss?

But then I remembered the great link someone posted in the DAC thread - that's kept me happy for two days!

When you're at the point where only 3 people on the forum can hear the artefacts in the best encoder, it's bound to be a slow job moving forward.


But other things just keep coming along.

Cheers,
David.

I don't find this forum dying. But it must be because I'm more hardware / CD oriented than Compression, exept MPC lately.
There have been some interesting work about bit exact playback of digital audio files through SPDIF out, CDS200 CDs, and vinyl copies recently. And since I went to MPC lately I can't compare with before, but things are going on. For example Guruboolez showed with ABX tests that there were problems that couldn't be solved increasing the quality. Before this, that statement seemed to be rather a transposition of the same fact for MP3, than a verified hypothesis.

For me, things have been pretty boring lately. Before, all of us were falling over each other trying to test out the latest LAME build for --alt-preset standard or the latest Ogg Vorbis version. I remember times where people wouldn't hesitate to test/talk about alpha versions of LAME.

None of that happens now. Name me one interesting development in audio compression in the past few months. Only thing I can think of is Apple using AAC in the iTunes Music Service and in iTunes itself.

yeah, deadness lately..
I hate to complain, since I lack the knowledge to work on anything worth while. I think something will start happening soon... I'm not worried about it..

Exactly what I was going to reply

But I must add - even in the hardware fora, there's less discussion going on than I'd like...

there arn't probably any new questions? everything has already been answered..?!?

I too think that now is not the golden age of HA but...
some thought:

I think the popularity of HA has somewhat lead to the quality going down.
In the beginning the amount of newbies was not very high compared to the high number of really knowledgeable members of this board. Getting a good answer didn't take much time since the people responding all completely knew what they were talking about.
Now a lot of the old regulars don't post as much as they used to and the number of newcommers/newbies has rised dramatically.
The old regulars get frustrated by the amount of questions they have helped people with 1 time to many and start to just not respond or not visit at all.
Though the quality of HA is still high compared to a lot of other places it is impossible to keep the same standard with 8000 members as when there were only 2000.

That said I think there are some nice thinks to look forward to. Without promising a miracle cure I think the so_much_talked_about_upcomming_wiki should get rid of some of the most annoying newbie posts. This of course depends on the members to make a good FAQ using the wiki.

As for the audio scene slowdown. I haven't been in this community for too long so I can't tell what happened before I joined r3mix back in the days but at that time LAME was what was going on as far as I could see. mpc was for freaks, vorbis was in beta stage and aac was something for the future it seemed. In the last couple of years all these things have reached a mature stage and are fully useable.

Maybe things are slowing down.. but from what? the most productive few years in the process of creating high quality sound files?

I don't know if there's a cure or anything wrong at all but I am worried that the hard core of HA members doesn't seem to have grown as quickly as the number of members in general.

Dying, or just going through a waiting period ?

I would imagine most of us have settled on our codec of choice for the moment.
You either go for high quality MPC, Lossless etc (PC use) or use MP3 (LAME) for portables.

Portables, IMHO, will become one of the big areas (mass market) where compression will continue to develop. This area has, up until recently, been quite stale and limited (MP3 or WMA) this is starting to change with the new iPod using AAC and Rio's Ogg playing device.

Invention or development is fueled by need, so once some more companies follow suit (as they invariably do, after one of them does something new) I would imagine things will start to liven up again.
As more portables appear to support varying formats then more people will take those formats and try to sqeeze the best out of them, be it Ogg, AAC or whatever. This also leads to more people, who may be unfamilier with these formats, seeking out information.

Thats just one example, I'm sure there are others. It's just a case of waiting out the quiet periods until something new sparks everybody's interest again.

hmmm, I was wondering myself for some time wheter I just was less interested in music compression et al, or it had become less interesting... guess its the last point, cuz other ppl experience the same

also, development seems to have slowed down on alot codecs. how's mpc? there has been a time when there was a new version every month, even more. lame, and ogg have the same problem. but maybe its indeed because they have matured?!?

if so, at a certain point, i guess it is normal that development slows down.

I'll just wait for new things to come...

esp on the point of support for codecs like mpc and (to a lesser extend) ogg, there are improvements i can think of ;-)

and, btw, look how many responses there have been in 24 hours... quite alot, dont u think?

I guess he is doing some work on Audacity because he is working on Vorbis and needs it's audio editing capabilities.

I don't think it's dying, or that it is slowly dying.

I think it has become "burdened" with alot of questions, like this one example: "CD Extracting Program A: Is it good for audio extraction?"
Sorry but this annoys the hell out of me since most people who have taken the time to read about audio extraction already know that EAC is the first choice, and CDex is the second.
I changed the example name so as to not be seen as belching about a particular individuals post(s).

For me HA seems slow for one reason, and one reason only and that is I finished ripping all my audio CD's in December 2002, therefore there really isn't a whole lot that sparks my interest in general.

I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I am currently re-ripping and re-encoding my entire collection (EAC/Vorbis), and when I'm done, it'll be time to start re-ripping and re-encoding over again.

So far my collection has seen: 128kbps MP3 (FhG), 192kbps MP3 (FhG), 256kbps MP3 (FhG), --alt-preset standard, --alt-preset extreme, FLAC, and currently Vorbis (1.0) -q 4.25. (Odd recent decision, I know...I've got my reasons.)

Two complications that plague the concept of HA as far as I can tell:

-1- Digital audio extraction and encoding (and personal preferences therein) is like a religion to many hardcore enthusiasts. Therefore, bickering matches will often be prevalent, unless you take the approach I did: Quietly read/research, then test (ABX) for yourself, find a best format/quality for yourself, rip/encode, and watch the shouting matches on HA pass you by.

-2- Digital audio extraction and encoding, as in Andavari's example, is a periodic activity for most people. Not something they do continually (unless they're insane like I am), but something they only do once every long period of time. So, for those who don't have the time or resources to participate very often in other ways (public tests, for instance), then activeness as a member of such an online community will rise and ebb like the tides.

The "religious" debates seem to be stagnating at the moment, and maybe people are in a similar period of extraction/encoding activity (or lack thereof), and hence the ebb tide. Give it a few weeks. The tide will be back.

I may not be an 'old-timer' but I certainly can, and would (and in fact do, when they come up), answer most n00bish questions.

edit: to add to another topic on this thread: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I think I am suffering from "checktheforumtoooftenitis" more than anyone right now . . . . I can't help it I'm totally addicted . . . . . this forum is almost as bad as CS (something my friends from University have dubbed digital crack).

Grrr...I think we need to resurrect r3mix. Let the newbies see that 'truth', and the bright ones will move along to HA. Keep the noise level down where things are actually important. After all, newbies have to be cowed so they don't act like idiots in a real discussion, on a real board. All we need is someone really opinionated for them to admire. Well...seeing as JohnV's back, and obviously has more free time than he'd like at the moment (feel for ya guy), maybe we could nominate him? Ya know, a sacrificial lamb...

Then again, maybe I should be the first to sign up for this new board.

Lossy is still and will be important in the future, ok in your's HDD is loosing to lossless but in MobilePlayers or even to run a Hell of songs in my DVD i still use MP3, In my videos I use OGM and OGG for one CD (I always do 1 CD ) and i don't think i will use Lossless or AC3 or Even DTS.

So to me Lossless is important to backup QUALITY
Lossy is important to achieve the best quality with the smallest size.


Regarding the HA i just need to thank all the members that help me out, and the Knowledge i'm gathering with the time i''m here, I never knew something as good as R3Mix, only after i knew HA (The best), SO i don't think HA is dying, like all things in life nothing could be in the sky forever, sometimes comes to the Earth too.


Thanks HA for existing.

I am quite surprised that a newbie's forum that doesn't appear on the portal page is so quickly shot down. I would of hoped for better than "most of the knowledgeable regulars will ignore it" - I am happy to devote a bit of time to helping new people learn the things I was taught a year ago and now take for granted. From some of the helpful & knowledgable replies newbies get here, I would of thought anyone who is serious about the community would do the same?

Well, it should be the job of whoever moderates the newbie forum to answer their questions (or at least point them in the right direction) .

Eh, it's summer, what would you expect People have some time off and only some do not have anything better to do than posting on the forums.

Actually, a newbie forum with lots and lots of stickies (i.e. a copy of the most popular FAQ answers) might help.

Then, just maybe, once a month, someone could actually bother to read it and anwer some of the other questions! ;-)

Cheers,
David.

P.S. the problem is, some "newbie" questions are actually quite good. If there were any, these could be moved to "General" for every to answer. Maybe.

I think this would be a good idea. How about this: every time a couple of users are asked to moderate the newbie forum for, say, a month - thereby devoting themselves to fill in any 0-replies-topics they can answer to. Then, this is rewarded with your username on the fora being shown in silver forever...

I'd do it...

Or maybe just a title of: n00b Herder, or something.

i don't think it's dying but it's boring lately. nothing new, no development going on, although there are a lot of thing that could be done. :-(

maybe i will go to doom9 soon, because i don't know anything about video encoding and it seems to be interessting.

I think the MPC forum is waiting for the SV8 'big bang' - I know theres nothing of interest for me there until then, given the lack of information about SV8s progress.

There has been plenty of MP4 AAC development going on . . . . not enough, though, eh?

Yeah, video is hot. Infact I've been spending quite a lot of time myself at doom9, though also doom9 seems to be less interesting in summer.
I've been wondering that since audio alone is not probably going any "hotter" anymore, should HA extend somehow on the video side also..

Problem is that many people, including me don't see it reasonable to try to compete with doom9 directly although/because we have lots of common members, but I'd really like to see something specific video related featured at HA..
One far fetched idea of mine was that since HA is famous for the blind testings, we'd start rating different video codecs and settings. Rating video codecs visually is not demanding compared to hq audio codecs (need to have very good hearing), so it could attract quite many people.

One possibility would be like having a number of non-copyrighted VOBs offered through torrents, and people could test different video codecs and settings, and send the results (also the actual video stream) in as an attachment which could be served further via torrents.
I don't know, but I'd definitely like to expand HA's coverage towards video and if possible even so that it doesn't directly compete with doom9, rather more like co-operate.

Any thoughts?

I like the idea. I think many of the audio enthusiasts here are interested in video compression (and editing possibly) as well. At least that's what I've gathered from IRC where the topic regularly comes up. I know I am. And I would like to see a video section on HA.

Thumbs up.

Well, I always saw this forum as an audio-related discussion forum. That does of course include serveral sub-categories of audio(compression) such as hardware, apps etc. This would in my view also include audio discussion and compression concerning video, but only in an more or less strict audio-related way!
If I'm intersted in video, I'll defenitly go to the exelent doom9 forum.
Though, as I said, an realy audio-focused video discussion is welcome.
IMHO there should not be any tests of video quality made here, as this is an
a u d i o forum.
1. There already is an exelent forum for that (doom9)
2. The trieing of not compete with doom9 is doomed to failure, either do something right (meaning a full featured video forum) or don't do it.

So, in a nutshell, I definatly wouldn't like the idea of videoquality tests here at ha, though audio related video discussion is more than welcome (I'm a huge gk fan myself by the way )

(edit: typos)

IC, well what if the administrators of this forum become so interested in video that they want to offer something about that to public?

I don't know why anybody wouldn't like an idea of video quality testings.. Nobody has implemented my above idea. What bothers me at doom9 is that people there just share their codec-settings and nobody actually provides any video stream examples, it reminds me of the lame/r3mix era when everybody had their own best Lame settings. Sometimes I wouldn't like to install the millionth xvid or divx alpha build, in order to test myself if there's really some advancement like some person claims...

I don't think adding a video section would be of much use, since Doom9 and HA.org already share a lot of members (inlcuding myself) and a lot of the information would probably be redundant and/or fragment over the two forums.

dev0

lol
You gotta be kidding

i think that more or less we have all come to somekind og high knowledge and dont need to dicuss much, as we all agree, as we have all seen the same proof.

That may go for the forum itself, but somewhere around doom9.org there are some well made tests concerning image quality (two or three realy extensive test plus some minor ones).
This has been done concerning codec comparison and the different abilties of the codec themselfs.
I can't remember where the results actually are, but I'll search and post em here. So there has been (and prob. will be ITF) good quality test, though mainly through still images, not 'streaming'.

Eh.. I have of course seen the codec comparison tests.
Problems are:
- no continuous testing with different settings. Tests tend to be old in few weeks
- no latest codec versions/settings
- still image tests (I'd pretty much compare this to spectral analysis on audio)
- opinions based on one man's subjective opinion

Part I:

uhm... I very humbly apologize then...


AFAIK not true. only xvid is a little out of date...


that's indeed a point if compared to ha blind test tradition...


well, what's so wrong with that? a few well choosen images can well stand for the visual quality of a movie (altough that's not the best way, no doubt about that). and far more important: a whole part of the actual film is more difficult to share.


after all (sorry if I repeat myself) the discussion (if held) should stay on the audio-side of video in my view! (if done here at ha, see above reasons in earlier post)

(edit: some enhancements, add part II)

Part II:
it's not that I would dislike the idea of regular codec comparison and the resulting video quality, I would be very intersted in that!!
but I just don't think that hydrogenAUDIO is the right place for that... sorry, Idon't wanna sound like a dick, I'm just genue concerned...

And what about :
- Divx Kaukura, Manihi, Kauehi.
- Xvid Official, latests: koepi,nic, umaniac, dev-api4.
- Nero Digital
- H264, Rududu, Warp etc. exotic codecs?

Imo there's very much wrong if you just take one position in a video and compare based on that. You aren't doing that in audio either, why in video? Though of course doom9 gives his subjective opinion about the whole stream, but that's just it, subjective, and very soon outdated.
Concerned about what? That there's no reason anymore for threads like "Is this forum dying?"??

Sounds like the folks on doom9 could learn a bit from the way things are run here, but if a lot of our members already frequent domm9, couldn't they just lobby for change there? That would make more sense to me then adding a video section here.

[off-topic]

Your just about to break 2000 posts JohnV!!

[/off-topic]

betas, might not be so intersting. of course, this is just my personal view.


I guess due to bandwith reason, which is for some ppl still a problem (including me )


point taken. but there also was brought up here, that things will be come back to 'normal' in time (although some development things are true...)

and to add a video section to ha is step, that unmoddels the whole forum...not that I'm one of the coremembers or have more insight than others or anything, but I still think that ha should mainly target audio-related things
the idea of something new is a good thing though, IF there's a need for it.



exactly what was I thinking!

Maybe, but I'm not admin there, and I'm interested in the future of Hydrogenaudio more than I'm interested in the future of Doom9...