If they can make 1TB hard disk platters...

[HeXen]

wait. people still use optical discs outside of consoles and redbox movies?
get with the times. Mkv's on flashdrives or streaming. can't even remember the last time i put in an optical disc

 

[Kusnierek]

wait. people still use optical discs outside of consoles and redbox movies?
get with the times. Mkv's on flashdrives or streaming. can't even remember the last time i put in an optical disc

I still buy good old-fashioned compact discs for music. I rip them losslessly to my PC to be managed by an audio program.

 

[HeXen]

losslessly? you mean the years of loud noises from modern society living have not damaged your hearing? well don't stop there, go Super CD and a pair of $100k speakers and amps.
no tube amps right? they have to be tube amps or your not audio god worthy material. cause ya know, gotta hear every little sound of the fake flute behind 10 other digitized instruments right.

 

[Kusnierek]

losslessly? you mean the years of loud noises from modern society living have not damaged your hearing? well don't stop there, go Super CD and a pair of $100k speakers and amps.
no tube amps right? they have to be tube amps or your not audio god worthy material. cause ya know, gotta hear every little sound of the fake flute behind 10 other digitized instruments right.

No, I just don't like the pinched sound of 256kbps Amazon MP3's or what is it now? 192kbps iTunes AAC? And since I have no shortage of hard drive space at the moment, I figured, why not have my music have just as good of quality as the CDs I own? It's easier to convert from a lossless source than between lossy sources.

SACD's are nearly impossible to rip, and DVD-Audio companies generally lie about the quality and just put shitty Dolby Digital compressed music videos with a picture slideshow. Also difficult to rip. So yeah, good old redbox CD's for now. I also like the security of knowing I have the physical media in my actual possession.

 

[Cerb]

Answered incorrectly. I already explained the physics of why using a blue laser has a limit to the storage density obtainable per layer (half-wavelength focusing). The mechanics of the disc has little to do with it, since blu-rays are already at the fundamental limit for 400nm light.

If that's all, why not leapfrog current technology with 50nm discs?

 

[jwilliams4200]

If that's all, why not leapfrog current technology with 50nm discs?

I'm not sure if you are joking. The answer is that there are no practical laser diodes with wavelength below about 405nm.

 

[Cerb]

I'm not sure if you are joking. The answer is that there are no practical laser diodes with wavelength below about 405nm.

50nm, yes--that's damn small. <400nm, in general, no, I was actually curious.

 

[natto fire]

Why don't we have 1TB blu-ray discs yet?

Im guessing that the platters are not any bigger than a standard blu-ray disc.

True, they are smaller.

And I would think that a blu-laser would offer more precision as a reading device over those little mechanical moving heads that they use in hard disk drives.

You would be thinking wrong, for the reasons jwilliams pointed out and you dismissed. Those "little mechanical heads" are creating electromagnetic fields that currently allow more storage density than lasers and pits. Obviously that can change at some point, but it has a long way to catch up.

So my question is, if the platters used in hard disks are no larger than a standard blu-ray bd-r disc and a blu-laser offers more reading precision than a mechanical hard disk, why in the hell don't we have 1TB blu-ray discs?

Again, the blu-laser does not offer more "precision" than a mechanical HDD, because drive makers have figured out how to cram a lot more magnetic "bits" than a blu-rays optical "pits"

What technology is allowing hard disk manufacturers to stuff a terabyte of info on a single platter and how long is it before we can get this to blu-ray? I want it NOW!

Google hard disk drive, or magnetic storage

Edit: Being able to swap-out a terabyte of storage on demand with relative ease in less than 30 seconds would be awesome. Can I get a hell yeah?!?!!!

External drive enclosures? NAS?
I will give you the fact that optical storage has up sides compared to magnetic at this point. Such as immunity to many liquids and electromagnetic pulses.
Hell yeah.

 

[thelastjuju]

losslessly? you mean the years of loud noises from modern society living have not damaged your hearing? well don't stop there, go Super CD and a pair of $100k speakers and amps.
no tube amps right? they have to be tube amps or your not audio god worthy material. cause ya know, gotta hear every little sound of the fake flute behind 10 other digitized instruments right.

You don't need ultra high end equipment to notice the "damage" the compression is doing to the audio track. All you need are ~$500 studio monitors, a source with a good DAC, and quality amplification. You could get that done for about a grand, not 100 grand..

But the optical disk is indeed a thing of the past for me. The latest rig I've assembled doesn't even have one.. and I'm loving the look of the case with no nasty optical drive(s) and just the clean front grill

 

[Phynaz]

You don't need ultra high end equipment to notice the "damage" the compression is doing to the audio track.

I love to see the results of your double blind testing.

 

[exdeath]

To bring optical disk density to HDD density would near require getting bathed in gamma rays...

Why would anybody want a 1 TB+ optical disc anyway? OMFG I'd kill myself out of boredom before it finished the 30 minutes of burning just the lead in track.

 

[exdeath]

Edit: Being able to swap-out a terabyte of storage on demand with relative ease in less than 30 seconds would be awesome. Can I get a hell yeah?!?!!!

Yeah right. With optical drive speeds, a disc with that kind of density would take 30 minutes just to mount the damn disc, let alone do a random search for anything.

Mechanical media is dead, sorry. We've moved on from the kilobytes per second of the 1950s and the megabytes per second of the 1990s. It's 2012 if you weren't aware.

512 GB SSDs are $300 now and dropping like a rock. I imagine 1 TB SSDs are on the way. I'd use a 1+ TB TLC drive as a storage/backup drive where the rewrites don't matter. I don't want an optical drive. I don't even want 5.25" drive bays anymore. Give me a 3.5" bay with a 2.5" hot swap dock running SATA Express and a stack of 1 GB/sec .01 ms access time toggle NAND SSDs thanks.

Not even sure why there is a market for optical media when 32-64 GB SD are getting so cheap now.

Look at thumbnail size Nintendo DS mask ROM cards 2 gigabit+. Why is any media still distributed on mechanical storage? The next DVD/BluRay standard needs to be on 256 GB+ mask rom cards the size of a SD card that mounts and plays instantly.

 

[corkyg]

Would the optical writing process not be significantly slower than that of current HDDs?

 

[KingFatty]

Optical media (ROMs from factory, not rewritables that are burnt) may be pressed very quickly compared to doing a slow electronic programming write, or so I recall. Like pressing a record with one stamping motion, instead of streaming electronic info to a disc burner that writes the ones and zeroes.

 

[Red Squirrel]

To bring optical disk density to HDD density would near require getting bathed in gamma rays...

Why would anybody want a 1 TB+ optical disc anyway? OMFG I'd kill myself out of boredom before it finished the 30 minutes of burning just the lead in track.

Followed by the 8 hour burn time, and an error when it's at 99%.

 

[gevorg]

Why settle for only 1TB?
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/japanese-working-on-a-disk-1000-times-larger-than-blu-ray/

We won't see anything like this in the consumer market for the next decade or two. They'll rather milk us in increments by 100GB, 200GB, 5000GB, etc, rather than releasing a 25000GB media at once.

 

[HeXen]

You don't need ultra high end equipment to notice the "damage" the compression is doing to the audio track. All you need are ~$500 studio monitors, a source with a good DAC, and quality amplification. You could get that done for about a grand, not 100 grand..

then your not an audio snob are you. go debate that in the AVS forums, not me, i really don't give a crap. was just joking anyway.

 

[KingFatty]

I dunno, some of the blind tests where they see if audiophiles can actually tell the difference, are kind of funny. I'm all for preserving quality, but I think some of the preservation ends up preserving audio information that the human ear is not capable of perceiving. But I get very annoyed by the ugly 'ringing' effect on the higher frequencies when poor MP3 compression is used, so I would say you can notice some stuff.

 

[HeXen]

i use 320kbps AAC. lossless is fine n all, but tight space is the modern era. we have small cars, smaller living areas....and well, lets face it, unless your just storing all your music solely on your computer, the space on ipods, flash drives..etc leaves some to be desired.

i only listen to music in my car anyway from an 8 gig flash drive. even with 320 AAC, its hardly enough room.
I think it should be obvious why so many just use MP3. its there, its easy and quick and it takes little room.
and i agree about the blind tests. i make jokes at audio snobs, but in reality, they kinda deserve it, for the most part, it is all kinda silly.

 

[BFG10K]

wait. people still use optical discs outside of consoles and redbox movies?

Yep, sure do. I still buy audio CDs, DVDs and Bluray discs.

Not to mention that most of my gaming library is on retail DVD/CD. Even now I occasionally buy games on DVD when they’re as cheap as digital downloads, like a few weeks ago.

Also installing from DVDs is a lot faster than downloading things, especially big games from Steam.

 

[Kusnierek]

then your not an audio snob are you. go debate that in the AVS forums, not me, i really don't give a crap. was just joking anyway.

You seem to be under the impression that the only reason people use lossless formats is because they are "audio snobs", and the chip on your shoulder on this topic seems very personal. Some people CAN notice the difference, and others have reasons of practicality for maintaining bit-for-bit replication of their audio.

 

[Atreidin]

What's with taking personal offense to lossless audio? I use it because hard drive space is cheap, and there is no other drawback, and there are lots of benefits. For my car I use 192kbps CBR mp3 because the environment doesn't exactly lend itself to distinguishing the difference in audio fidelity (and it has weird issues with incorrectly calculating VBR song lengths), but its nice having a perfect backup of my CDs that I can re-encode at any time without dealing with issues from going from one lossy encode to another.

Also if getting a game on DVD is the same price or cheaper than download-only I always buy the DVD. Some potentially cool extra stuff, plus as has been mentioned it is way faster to install many gigs locally than over the internet. Personally I find it retarded that I can buy physical copies of games for *less* than the digital downloads, but I'm not complaining. They sure aren't passing the savings onto you, and I don't think getting less stuff in exchange for slightly quicker playtime and sometimes more money is worth the premium, especially now with ISPs and their stupid data caps.

 

[Kusnierek]

Also if getting a game on DVD is the same price or cheaper than download-only I always buy the DVD. Some potentially cool extra stuff, plus as has been mentioned it is way faster to install many gigs locally than over the internet. Personally I find it retarded that I can buy physical copies of games for *less* than the digital downloads, but I'm not complaining. They sure aren't passing the savings onto you, and I don't think getting less stuff in exchange for slightly quicker playtime and sometimes more money is worth the premium, especially now with ISPs and their stupid data caps.

Generally if this is the case, the digital version of the game will go down soon afterwards anyway. If you're talking about Steam, I only buy games when they're on mega-sale anyway, unless they're a game I REALLY want now. In that case I just wait for them to be on regular sale.

512 GB SSDs are $300 now and dropping like a rock.

Really? Please find me this drive so that I may buy it. Seriously.

 

[thelastjuju]

then your not an audio snob are you. go debate that in the AVS forums, not me, i really don't give a crap. was just joking anyway.

So what the hell is your point in all of this? Your premise is absolutely a mystery here..

The whole point is you don't have to be a full blown "audio snob" with tens of thousands of dollars invested to notice the benefits of lossless audio.

Some of us actually just enjoy music more than others do, and don't just treat it as something that plays in the background.. so it really comes down to taking advantage of the maximum sound quality we can achieve.

I wonder what your take is on all the "enthusiasts" here who go with tri-sli setups, 64gb ram, 5ghz overclocks, 1500w psu's etc.. funny how none of these guys are ever called snobs, but if you play your music in FLAC you apparently qualify as one.

 

[HeXen]

You seem to be under the impression that the only reason people use lossless formats is because they are "audio snobs", and the chip on your shoulder on this topic seems very personal. Some people CAN notice the difference, and others have reasons of practicality for maintaining bit-for-bit replication of their audio.

chillax man, i was jokin with you and mocking the kinds of things people say on AVS forums...do i need to add joke tags or what?
i said before, i really don't care. i'm not much into audio. i only listen to music in my car and its not that often or for long really.

So what the hell is your point in all of this? Your premise is absolutely a mystery here..

The whole point is you don't have to be a full blown "audio snob" with tens of thousands of dollars invested to notice the benefits of lossless audio.

Some of us actually just enjoy music more than others do, and don't just treat it as something that plays in the background.. so it really comes down to taking advantage of the maximum sound quality we can achieve.

I wonder what your take is on all the "enthusiasts" here who go with tri-sli setups, 64gb ram, 5ghz overclocks, 1500w psu's etc.. funny how none of these guys are ever called snobs, but if you play your music in FLAC you apparently qualify as one.

why so serious