C.A.R. 4000 (English)
13
The function.
An introduction.
Less is more.
As the name 'Compressed Audio Recorder' indicates, one of the advantages of
the C.A.R. 4000 is that it can process compressed audio data. As we all know now, compress-
ing audio data can be very advantageous. A 40 GB hard disk can hold as much as 680 hours
of music of virtually CD quality. This means a compression ratio of
1 to 10
, thus
1 minute of
music
compressed requires around
1 MB
of memory, while the same piece uncompressed will
take up 10 MB.
You can't have everything—but almost.
“Near-CD quality” indicates that the compression
process does not operate entirely without loss. Although complex mathematical methods
make it virtually impossible for the “average ear” to distinguish “near-CD quality” from genu-
ine CD quality, there are ways to adapt the compression to the material at hand. The quality
levels are referred to as the bit rate (kbps). Thus MP3s with a bit rate of 128 kbps offer this
“near-CD quality” with a small file size, while at 192 kbps the quality is significantly higher but
the files are much larger. The trick is to change the bit rate as required when creating a com-
pressed audio file. For example, voice recordings and radio plays can be enjoyed at a bit rate
of 56 kbps—but classics and other demanding types of music only sound good at 192 kbps or
better.
Fact:
the higher the bit rate, the higher the quality but also the higher the memory require-
ment.
As a beginner, you really don't have to deal with these numbers; you only need to remember
three words instead of lots of numbers: low is 64 kbps, standard is 128 kbps and high is 192
kbps.
As you like it.
In any case you are in the right place with the C.A.R. 4000, because it supports
any bit rate during playback, including variable rates, and fixed bit rates from 48 to 320 kbps
during recording. If you don't need to save space, you can record and playback without com-
pression and thus without loss of quality. See “More Input.” on page 35 for more exciting de-
tails.
Tree. Forest. Jungle.
As you can well imagine from the impressive figure of 680 hours of
sound, depending on your tastes this can be a wide variety of different musicians, albums
and titles. We have tried to make it as easy as possible for you to manage such a huge
amount of data by basing the entire user interface on a powerful database. This means that
when you view your sound collection, you don't see directories, folders or file names—only
database entries. In addition to the unified and easily understandable treatment of the data,
this allows more complex database actions. We deal with them in more detail in “The Filters.”
on page 49. But be careful, this is not easy for beginners. It is intended more for advanced
users and pros.
