Huh?

John Derbyshire is kind of a refreshing throwback.

I mean, he used to call those online columns he wrote for NRO "blogs." And that was kind of funny, since he obviously couldn't tell a blog from his ass.

And today, he figures out that mp3s sound better than wavs:

A wise reader instructs me that an MP3 file gives FAR better sound reproduction than a WAV file. I tried it out and he is right. So now you can hear my rendition of "Where are the zeros of zeta of s?" in high fidelity. "'Tis said that swans sing before they die. / 'Twere better that some died before they sang."

Sorry, dude, but your columns were not blogs, and you've got the whole wav (1411 kbps) versus mp3 (some fraction of the last number) quality issue precisely backwards.

Here's a thought: it's no shame being technologically inept (lots of people are), but why broadcast it by writing as if you know what you are talking about?

(06-27-03 Update) Stu Greene emails me that Derb meant that mp3 would be of better quality than wave if the duration and filesize were the same. That's fair. He didn't say that in that post, but I presume that was covered in prior posts. Ah, context. In any case, may we recommend the LAME encoder for all Mr. Derbyshire's mp3 needs. :)

[Posted at 15:40 CST on 06/26/03] [Link]