I have just realised that MiniDisc transfer speeds wouldn't be enough to listen to CD quality (44kHz/16bit) audio without pre-buffering

Even when using FLAC, MD's 1.25Mbps speed would barely be enough. My dream of re-creating the early 2000s music listening aesthetics is ruined by another imperfection.

@newt
Wat is wrong with buffering? Without it you're fucked in a lot of cases: network delays, physical media spun down on detecting vibrations to prevent damage, physical media having to be re-read due to errors, etc…
And 1.25 seems to be just right to be reading FLACs on average — studio recordings are often heavily compressed/filtered and use even lower bandwidth.

@m0xee buffering is gay and lame. Buffering is one of two main reasons why Bluetooth audio is garbage.

@newt @m0xee bt audio is pretty ok when you can select aptx-ll

@mischievoustomato @m0xee no, it's not. First of all, you still get delay due to buffering. There is no way around this. You probably don't notice it when listening to music, but it's there when you watch movies. Seriously, try adding 50ms A-V delay in VLC next time you watch a movie. Much better experience!

But it all goes to shit when you do something really time-sensitive, like playing an instrument. I can't use my synth with BT audio at all, the delay is just really THAT noticeable.

@newt @mischievoustomato
Now that is a valid point indeed, I don't use wireless headphones at all, but I suspect it to be pretty much unusable.
I just don't see why you attempt to apply the same principle to audio *consumption*, I didn't even get it at first — what you were talking about and why buffering might be bad.

@newt @mischievoustomato
Making music and video games are relatively niche use cases compared to what most people use wireless audio peripherals for. In both of these cases wired would probably always be better. No need to apply some kind of universal solution for everything: you know me — I *despise* USB audio, but if it's a tiny machine hooked up to my amp that I can listen my digital collection on and that I can control remotely — why would I care?

@newt @mischievoustomato
As much as it is embarrassing to admit, but until recently it was even using PulseAudio to work around the bug that at certain sample formats and sampling rates its audio interface was producing silence. Luckily I've found a workaround that allows me using bare ALSA last week. Point is, I wasn't even so much worried about about Pulse in this case — I just came up with an idea of fix and it worked, other than that — let corner cases be corner cases.

@m0xee @mischievoustomato
>Luckily I've found a workaround that allows me using bare ALSA last week.

You're delusional.

@newt @mischievoustomato
Why is that? 🤔