Altmann Tera Player - Page 120  

It would be utterly ridiculous to do that as a means of saving space, but the Tera Player wont play it unless it's 16/44.1 minimum, so their's your answer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by goodvibes 

Makes me wonder what the lowest bit rate is that it can play. You could probably transscode MP3 to below 16/44. Meh, probably not worth saving the space.

You sure are good with the strong statements, especially for someone with issues about file conversion in general.  In theory, a MP3 128 could be accurately reproduced with a 12/32 wav file. That relates to bandwidth(32k/2) and noise floor (12bit). That's just over 1/2 the size of 16/44. It wasn't a suggestion, just a curiosity. I know it's not spec'd for lower res but that may simply be because it's not common. The DACs input shift registor may work with lower res but like I said before you did so rudely, probably not worth the effort and clearly not important.

No one would want to use that quality on a player like a Tera but like Chucky said, it's about music and if that's your only access to a certain piece of music, it becomes more important than quality. Lower res would mean being able to carry almost twice as much of it on board. Oh wait, I forgot, that's a bad thing.

Tera can play 44.1 / 48 / 88.2 / 96 / 176.4 / 192 kHz wav files.

If Tera finds another frequency stated in the wav's header, the file will be ignored.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenman345 

It has a random play feature. It's not great though when you don't have a large selection of music on the card. It will repeat often if you have only 1 album in an artist and then that artist. It basically generates a random number between 1 and the amount of folders you have at root (so Artists). It then goes into that folder it picked and generates a number between 1 and the amount of Folders in there (so Albums) and then the same thing for the songs. If you have only 1 album from an artist it means you are losing a step in the process of randomization and thus makes it less random.

 

WAV is actually quite nice. I've begun to notice the nuances of FLAC and AIFF and ALAC that are different from WAV with the same music. My preference lies with WAV for neutrality. 

I have some folders with a lot of wavs in them, and I realized that this could interfere with the randomness if this is the method the software uses. To illustrate: if I have 10 folders with 10 wavs each then each folder would have a 1 in 10 chance and each wav would have a 1 in 100 chance of playing. However if one folder had only 1 wav, then that song would play on average 1 in 10 times while the other songs in the folders with 10 wavs would still play 1 in 100 times.

So it seems to get truly random play, all folders with wavs should have roughly the same number of songs in them. And also all of the wavs should only be in "album" folders at the same level of the folder tree, and also each "artist" would need to have the same number of album folders. Some folks on here have noted that their random play on the Tera did not seem random, and so if they had single songs stuck in the root folder, or one artist with 10 albums and another with only 1 album, then there is going to be a definite non-randomness to the random play feature. I am rearranging my music so that there are the same number of "album" folders under each "artist" folder and also so that there are roughly the same number of songs in each "album" folder. I only listen to random play as I like to be surprised by what song comes on next, so it is important to me that it truly be random. I am not concerned with keeping each artist or album separate and easy to find, so that means I can just throw songs together to get the correct and equal number of songs in each folder.

Note: the manual states that each level is limited to 128 items. So you can only have a maximum of 128 artists on each SD card, and each artist can only have a maximum of 128 albums and each album can only have a max of 128 WAVs. Not typically a problem given the current capacity of SD cards that work with the Tera, but I did have some folders with more than 128 wavs, so I am having to correct that also.

Kind of a pain, but it gives me something to do while waiting for my Tera which is supposed to ship this week :)

I think you understand it the best out of all of us. Logically, that seems about right, but you have no idea how random it really is. I've gotten the same song to play twice in a row before. I just throw on some albums, throw on some songs at root, throw in any singles i like into the artist folders and hit random when I'm making a playlist type card. It does a good job relatively. I've had it be really bad and then i've had it never repeat once in a 3 hour car ride. It's literally like rolling the dice, but your probabilities are probably spot on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nirmalanow 

I have some folders with a lot of wavs in them, and I realized that this could interfere with the randomness if this is the method the software uses. To illustrate: if I have 10 folders with 10 wavs each then each folder would have a 1 in 10 chance and each wav would have a 1 in 100 chance of playing. However if one folder had only 1 wav, then that song would play on average 1 in 10 times while the other songs in the folders with 10 wavs would still play 1 in 100 times.

 

So it seems to get truly random play, all folders with wavs should have roughly the same number of songs in them. And also all of the wavs should only be in "album" folders at the same level of the folder tree, and also each "artist" would need to have the same number of album folders. Some folks on here have noted that their random play on the Tera did not seem random, and so if they had single songs stuck in the root folder, or one artist with 10 albums and another with only 1 album, then there is going to be a definite non-randomness to the random play feature. I am rearranging my music so that there are the same number of "album" folders under each "artist" folder and also so that there are roughly the same number of songs in each "album" folder. I only listen to random play as I like to be surprised by what song comes on next, so it is important to me that it truly be random. I am not concerned with keeping each artist or album separate and easy to find, so that means I can just throw songs together to get the correct and equal number of songs in each folder.

 

Kind of a pain, but it gives me something to do while waiting for my Tera which is supposed to ship this week :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenman345 

I think you understand it the best out of all of us. Logically, that seems about right, but you have no idea how random it really is. I've gotten the same song to play twice in a row before. I just throw on some albums, throw on some songs at root, throw in any singles i like into the artist folders and hit random when I'm making a playlist type card. It does a good job relatively. I've had it be really bad and then i've had it never repeat once in a 3 hour car ride. It's literally like rolling the dice, but your probabilities are probably spot on.

Yes, there will always still be a lot of randomness to the process, and the figures I quoted would only be true in the sense of  probabilities, meaning that if you listened to a million songs these averages would be pretty accurate. However, in a single short listening session, you could have a completely "wrong" file arrangement and still never hear the same song twice, or you could have everything exactly equal and still have the same song play twice in a row. Kind of like the very small but real possibility that you get the same hand in blackjack two times in a row.

That being said, even if I might never consciously notice that some of my music almost never plays,  it is worth it to me to arrange things so that is not happening. Again I have the time while waiting, and I will probably buy a 128G SD card at some point so I can put a lot of music on one card. So true randomness will matter more in that scenario also than when making a small "playlist" card with only a handful of songs on it.

Remember you can only put 127 files in root with 127 folders, with 127 files inside that and 127 folders with 127 files.....

I think this is how it goes:

Root:

127 Files

127 Folders

|

-->127 Files per folder

-->127 Folders per folder

  |

---->127 Files per folder

While that still gives you a lot of potential storage, you might need to organize your music a little different to maintain the structure and not have 128 folders or more for artists.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nirmalanow 

Yes, there will always still be some randomness to the process, and the figures I quoted would only be true in the sense of  probabilities, meaning that if you listened to a million songs these averages would be pretty accurate. However, in a single short listening session, you could have a completely "wrong" file arrangement and still never hear the same song twice, or you could have everything exactly equal and still have the same song play twice in a row. Kind of like the very small but real possibility that you get the same hand in blackjack two times in a row.

 

That being said, even if I might never consciously notice that some of my music almost never plays,  it is worth it to me to arrange things so that is not happening. Again I have the time while waiting, and I will probably buy a 128G SD card at some point so I can put a lot of music on one card. So true randomness will matter more in that scenario also than when making a small "playlist" card with only a handful of songs on it.

Yes,

the Tera can access over 2 million wav files per SDHC card, but it can neither scan nor make a list of 2 million files, however - even if it could - it would not make sense.

Tera does randomly select a top-level folder, then a sub folder and then a file.

If your organization uses top-level folders as artist folders and i.e. you have 50 artists on a card, each with one album but you have one artist with 50 albums. 

A normal shuffle-mode would overexaggerate the artist with many albums (many tracks) and the result would not be random at all.

On the other hand the Tera-Player will treat each artist-folder equally, so your random mix will be a mix of artists.

If you decide to use the top-level folders as genre-folders, then the Tera's random play will treat all genres alike, regardless of the number of tracks in each genre-folder.

Charles :)

There has been interesting research concerning the nature of randomness.

Many years ago I saw a documentary about the experiments of Helmut Schmidt (no, not the german chancellor).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Schmidt_(parapsychologist)

Schmidt built a random machine with a circular arrangement of light bulbs. Only one bulb would be switched on at a time, and then within a period of one second the next light would come on either in clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. The results were stored (printed) and people were put in a room with this machine and told to try to influence the direction that the light would go:

http://archived.parapsych.org/psiexplorer/psychokinesis.htm

When I worked in the university lab, learning assembler, I built a pocket size version of this machine with 8 green LEDs. As there was no way to invent true randomness from a deterministic machine, I had a simple idea: On my pocket random machine the lights would not change second-wise, the operator (subject) had to press a small button in order for the light to move. Inside the microchip a timer was running at full speed (several MHz) and when the button-command reached the chip the timer would stop either with an odd or even value which determined clockwise or anti-clockwise move.

As there was no way for the subject to control such a fast running timer, the result was random. I added a small dummy antenna to the device and told people that my pocket machine would receive their brainwaves and they could test their mental strength ;)

Later I made a similar machine where lights were arranged in a line and 2 people could compete against each other. Each operator had his own switch. At the beginning of the game the center light would come on and then each player would sequentially try to move the light into his opponents goal by mental focus. Really cool ...

This whole random issue is still under research, however ... inside the Tera-Player ... there is this 32-bit counter running at about 70 MHz. The least significant (fastest changing) byte controls the artist or top-level folder, which means that the artist folder changes about every 14 nano-seconds. Since the variance of the SDHC card protocol timing is magnitudes higher, we get true random. When you press the 'next' button it is your very input that creates the random number that determines the next track.

So in one way it is random, in another way you are doing it :)

---

You know that you own a Tera-Player, when its random-play gives you the same track 3 times in a row, and all you think is  ... "What a great song ..."

But again, if one folder had only 2 songs, and all of the other folders at the same level had 10 or 100 songs, then those 2 songs would be played a lot more often over time.

I do have a question: are folders and wav files treated the same? If I had 1 wav (not in a folder) and 10 folders all in the root directory of a card, would the random play select that one song as often as it selects a folder (and then a song within that folder)? In a sense I am asking if it is correct that for the maximum amount of randomness, that all wav files should be located at the same level within a folder tree. i.e. should all wav files be stored at say the "album" level so that they all have equal significance in the random selection process? It seems that if some wavs are at the root level or "artist" level, that they would be selected more often.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chucky-X 
Many years ago I saw a documentary about the experiments of Helmut Schmidt (no, not the german chancellor).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Schmidt_(parapsychologist)

 

Schmidt built a random machine with a circular arrangement of light bulbs. Only one bulb would be switched on at a time, and then within a period of one second the next light would come on either in clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. The results were stored (printed) and people were put in a room with this machine and told to try to influence the direction that the light would go:

http://archived.parapsych.org/psiexplorer/psychokinesis.htm

 

When I worked in the university lab, learning assembler, I built a pocket size version of this machine with 8 green LEDs. As there was no way to invent true randomness from a deterministic machine, I had a simple idea: On my pocket random machine the lights would not change second-wise, the operator (subject) had to press a small button in order for the light to move. Inside the microchip a timer was running at full speed (several MHz) and when the button-command reached the chip the timer would stop either with an odd or even value which determined clockwise or anti-clockwise move.

 

As there was no way for the subject to control such a fast running timer, the result was random. I added a small dummy antenna to the device and told people that my pocket machine would receive their brainwaves and they could test their mental strength ;)

 

Later I made a similar machine where lights were arranged in a line and 2 people could compete against each other. Each operator had his own switch. At the beginning of the game the center light would come on and then each player would sequentially try to move the light into his opponents goal by mental focus. Really cool ...

Great links! Thanks for sharing them. I will try not to mess up the randomness of my Tera with my consciousness, but then again, maybe it would be a fun experiment!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nirmalanow 

But again, if one folder had only 2 songs, and all of the other folders at the same level had 10 or 100 songs, then those 2 songs would be played a lot more often over time.

 

I do have a question: are folders and wav files treated the same? If I had 1 wav (not in a folder) and 10 folders all in the root directory of a card, would the random play select that one song as often as it selects a folder (and then a song within that folder)? In a sense I am asking if it is correct that for the maximum amount of randomness, that all wav files should be located at the same level within a folder tree. i.e. should all wav files be stored at say the "album" level so that they all have equal significance in the random selection process? It seems that if some wavs are at the root level or "artist" level, that they would be selected more often.

Yes, and ...

yes, the base level is treated like a folder itself. If you put one wav file on base level, it is treated as if it were one wav file in a folder.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nirmalanow 

I will try not to mess up the randomness of my Tera with my consciousness, but then again, maybe it would be a fun experiment!

Hi Nirmala, 

...in a way you cannot avoid, you'll see ...  :)

I wonder if it is like the brainwave biofeedback I did a long time ago, where if I tried to increase the amount of a particular brainwave frequency to get more positive feedback, the amount of feedback would actually decrease. It seemed like simply directing my attention at the feedback signal without "trying" to make anything happen, would actually result gradually in an increase in the desired brainwave pattern. Interestingly, some practitioners had success in training the brainwaves of people with severe brain damage that were basically in a coma. They just hooked up the machine and after a while a person with severe brain damage would create more positive feedback. In addition, their condition sometimes improved and they started being more responsive in general.

So maybe the best way to win in your competition would be to not try!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chucky-X 

Hi Nirmala, 

 

...in a way you cannot avoid, you'll see ...  :)

Yes consciousness is always affecting everything.....even if we are not conscious of it