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Re: Sound editing & sonogram software on PC

Subject: Re: Sound editing & sonogram software on PC
From: Walter Knapp <>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 18:17:25 -0500
Scott Petersen wrote:
> Walt replied:
> 
>>I would not think this is at all universal. Certainly on macs where 24 
>>bit color has been standard for both OS and apps for some time it's 
>>better to use jpg. Both the sonogram programs I use come out much better 
>>as jpg. They have gradient coloring that bands in gif.
> 
> 
> 24 and even 32 bit color are standard to unixes and windows desktops as well
> as macs, however most applications use only 8 bits to draw menus, text and
> the like.  One of my pet peeves is seeing a jpg screenshot that obviously
> had no more than 256 colors (the maximum for a gif) and thus had smeary text
> and edges.  My suggestion to use gif was simply a reaction to that coupled
> with what seems to be the predominance of limited color palatte in all
> sonograms I have ever seen.  Since I never use sonograms in my line of I
> will defer to your experience here Walt.

When I have done periodic searches for a better sonogram program I have 
found that quite a few use a limited pallet. And have generally been 
worse for it.

But, the two sonogram programs I use now both have full color gradients 
and I'm seeing more and more that do, even in windows programs. And 
there is extra info in having that. What counts to me is the sonogram 
itself. I will use what gives that display the best.

In the standard older mac OS there was a menu manager and a text 
manager. Those worked at full screen color, even antialiased text in the 
smaller sizes to improve it. OS X I'm not as familiar with, but it looks 
to be doing full color with antialias for text as well.

There have always been a few mac programs that would have programmers 
who thought they could do it better, and they usually failed. Most mac 
programs hand tasks like text display off to the OS. Particularly true 
for menus and dialogs. It's part of what makes a mac's look and feel so 
consistent even across applications.

I've got the impression that windows and unix it's much more common for 
each program to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. I suppose that's what 
you are talking about. I'm well aware that windows and unix OS support 
the full color display.

But, don't shortchange a graphic display to make the far less important 
text around it better. Try it both ways with sonogram programs, but use 
the way that gets the graphic best. I'll take blurry text over messing 
up the graphic. The graphic in a sonogram is the information, and can 
give a very detailed story about your recordings. It's not just a pretty 
picture to entertain as someone who did music processing once claimed to me.

Note one of the other tendencies I've seen in many folks is overuse of 
compression in jpgs. A jpg can display text just as well as a gif and be 
a smaller file, if you don't overcompress it. Most graphics programs 
have previews for setting this.

Walt






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