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Squeezebox (network Music Player)
Squeezebox is a family of network music players. The original device was the SliMP3, introduced in 2001 by Slim Devices. It had an Ethernet interface and played MP3 music files from a media server. The first Squeezebox was released two years later and was followed by several more models. Slim Devices was acquired by Logitech in 2006. History Slim Devices was established in 2000, and was first known for its SlimServer used for streaming music, but launched a hardware player named SliMP3 able to play these streams in 2001. Although the first player was fairly simple only supporting wired Ethernet and MP3 natively, it was followed two years later by a slightly more advanced player which was renamed to Squeezebox. Other versions followed, gradually adding native support for additional file formats, Wi-Fi-support, gradually adding larger and more advanced displays as well as a version targeting audiophile users. Support for playing music from external streaming platforms such as P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logitech
Logitech International S.A. ( ) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the company has offices throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. It is a component of the Swiss Market Index, and is listed on the Nasdaq. The company develops and markets personal peripherals for PC navigation, video communication and collaboration, music and smart homes. This includes products like keyboards, mice, tablet accessories, headphones and headsets, webcams, Bluetooth speakers, universal remotes and more. Its name is derived from ''logiciel'' (the French word for software) and 'tech'. History Logitech was founded in Apples, Vaud, Switzerland, in 1981, by Daniel "Bobo" Borel, Pierluigi Zappacosta, and former Olivetti engineer Giacomo Marini. Swiss-born Borel and Italian-born Zappacosta had met in California while taking electrical engineering classes in the late 1970s at Stanford University, under p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Network-attached Storage
Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both the technology and systems involved, or a specialized computer appliance device unit built for such functionality – a ''NAS appliance'' or ''NAS box''. NAS contrasts with block-level storage, block-level storage area networks (SAN). Overview A NAS device is optimised for file server, serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration. It is often manufactured as a computer appliance a purpose-built specialized computer. NAS systems are networked appliances that contain one or more hard disk drive, storage drives, often arranged into logical disk, logical, redundant storage containers or RAID. Network-attached storage typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such as Network File System (protocol), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coaxial
In geometry, coaxial means that several three-dimensional linear or planar forms share a common axis. The two-dimensional analog is ''concentric''. Common examples: A coaxial cable has a wire conductor in the centre (D), a circumferential outer conductor (B), and an insulating medium called the dielectric (C) separating these two conductors. The outer conductor is usually sheathed in a protective PVC outer jacket (A). All these have a common axis. The dimension and material of the conductors and insulation determine the cable's characteristic impedance and attenuation at various frequencies. Coaxial rotors are a three-dimensional planar structure: a pair of helicopter rotors (wings) mounted one above the other on concentric shafts, with the same axis of rotation (but turning in opposite directions). In loudspeaker design, coaxial speakers are a loudspeaker system in which the individual drivers are mounted close to one another on the same axis, and thus radiate sound along t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. Audio encoded in WMA is stored in a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format (ASF). WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as ''WMA'', was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs. ''WMA Pro'', a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high-resolution audio. A lossless codec, ''WMA Lossless'', compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity (the regular WMA format is lossy). ''WMA Voice'', targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates. Development history The first WMA codec was based on earlier work by Henrique Malvar and his team which was transferred to the Windows Media team at Microsoft. Malvar was a senior researcher and manager of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Lossless Audio Codec
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software package that includes a codec implementation. Digital audio compressed by FLAC's algorithm can typically be reduced to between 50 and 70 percent of its original size and decompresses to an identical copy of the original audio data. FLAC is an open format with royalty-free licensing and a reference implementation which is free software. FLAC supports metadata tagging, album cover art, and fast seeking. History Development was started in 2000 by Josh Coalson. The bitstream format was frozen with the release of version 0.9 of the reference implementation on 31 March 2001. Version 1.0 was released on 20 July 2001. On 29 January 2003, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the FLAC project announced the incorporation of FLAC under the Xiph.org ban ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vacuum Fluorescent Display
A vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) is a display device once commonly used on consumer electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car audio, car radios, and microwave ovens. A VFD operates on the principle of cathodoluminescence, roughly similar to a cathode-ray tube, but operating at much lower voltages. Each tube in a VFD has a phosphor-coated carbon anode that is bombarded by electrons emitted from the thermionic cathode, cathode filament.Chen, J., Cranton, W., & Fihn, M. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of Visual Display Technology. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-14346-0 page 1610 onwards In fact, each tube in a VFD is a triode vacuum tube because it also has a mesh control grid. Unlike liquid crystal displays (LCDs), a VFD emits very bright light with high contrast and can support display elements of various colors. Standard illumination figures for VFDs are around 640 Candela per square metre, cd/m2 with high-brightness VFDs operating at 4,000 cd/m2, and experimental un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S/PDIF
S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) is a type of digital audio interface used in consumer audio equipment to output audio over relatively short distances. The signal is transmitted over either a coaxial cable using RCA connector, RCA or BNC connector, BNC connectors, or a fibre-optic cable using TOSLINK connectors. S/PDIF interconnects components in home theaters and other digital high-fidelity systems. S/PDIF is based on the AES3 interconnect Technical standard, standard. S/PDIF can carry two channels of uncompressed PCM audio or Audio compression (data), compressed 5.1 surround sound; it cannot support lossless surround formats that require greater bandwidth (computing), bandwidth. S/PDIF is a data link layer protocol as well as a set of physical layer specifications for carrying digital audio signals over either optical or electrical cable. The name stands for Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format but is also known as Sony/Philips Digital Interface. Sony and Philips ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audio Interchange File Format
Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 based on Electronic Arts' Interchange File Format (IFF, widely used on Amiga systems) and is most commonly used on Apple Macintosh computer systems. The audio data in most AIFF files is uncompressed pulse-code modulation (PCM). This type of AIFF file uses much more disk space than lossy formats like MP3—about 10 MB for one minute of stereo audio at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz and a bit depth of 16 bits. There is also a compressed variant of AIFF known as AIFF-C or AIFC, with various defined compression codecs. In addition to audio data, AIFF can include loop point data and the musical note of a sample, for use by hardware samplers and musical applications. The file extension for the standard AIFF format is .aiff or .aif. For the compressed format the preferred suffi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulse-code Modulation
Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitude of the analog signal is sampled at uniform intervals, and each sample is quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps. Alec Reeves, Claude Shannon, Barney Oliver and John R. Pierce are credited with its invention. Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) is a specific type of PCM in which the quantization levels are linearly uniform. This is in contrast to PCM encodings in which quantization levels vary as a function of amplitude (as with the A-law algorithm or the μ-law algorithm). Though ''PCM'' is a more general term, it is often used to describe data encoded as LPCM. A PCM stream has two basic properties that determine the stream's fidelity to the original analog signal: the sampling rate, which is the number of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LAME
LAME is a software encoder that converts digital audio into the MP3 audio coding format. LAME is a free software project that was first released in 1998 and has incorporated many improvements since then, including an improved psychoacoustic model. The LAME encoder outperforms early encoders like L3enc and possibly the "gold standard encoder" MP3enc, both marketed by Fraunhofer. LAME was required by some programs released as free software in which LAME was linked for MP3 support. This avoided including LAME itself, which used patented techniques, and so required patent licenses in some countries. All relevant patents have since expired, and LAME is now bundled with Audacity. History The name LAME is a recursive acronym for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder". Around mid-1998, Mike Cheng created LAME 1.0 as a set of modifications against the 8Hz-MP3 encoder source code. After some quality concerns were raised by others, he decided to start again from scratch based on the dist10 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transcode
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target device (or workflow) does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size, "Advancements in Compression and Transcoding: 2008 and Beyond", Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), 2008, webpageSMPTE-spm or to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a better-supported or modern format. In the analog video world, transcoding can be performed just while files are being searched, as well as for presentation. For example, Cineon and DPX files have been widely used as a common format for digital cinema, but the data size of a two-hour movie is about 8 terabytes (TB). That large size can increase the cost and difficulty of handling movie files. However, transcoding into a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program.Selling Free Software (GNU) Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users (not just the developer) ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices. The right to study and modify a computer program entails that the source code—the preferred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
