compression

A great-sounding recording will sound its best only when it's properly mastered to LP, SACD, DVD-Audio, or a high-resolution file. Those formats will reveal the full glory of the music in ways that lower-resolution formats like MP3 or analog cassette always miss. But if you didn't have access to the high-resolution file to compare it with, a great recording will still sound pretty terrific as an AAC, M4A, or 320kbps MP3 file, because the recording's innate quality would shine through. On the other hand, a heavily compressed, processed and crude recording will always sound heavily compressed, processed … Read more

StuffIt Expander is a file compression and expansion utility that can handle a number of different file archive formats. It's a free app available from the App Store and several other Web sites, and it installs quickly.

StuffIt Expander supports a number of file formats, including ZIP, ZIPX, 7ZX, RAR, and TAR. The StuffIt Expander interface is clean, allowing you to create archives by the usual drag-and-drop method or by menu actions. Clicking on an archive file can unpack that archive. You can add password protection to your ZIP files. There is a registration nag that appears with StuffIt … Read more

RAR Expander for Mac is a utility to create and uncompress files in RAR archives. Supposedly fully compatible with WinRAR, RAR Expander for Mac is a clean, simple app that installs in a few seconds and works flawlessly in the testing we did. Notably, RAR Expander for Mac also supports AppleScript, so you can create shell utilities to handle packing and unpacking RAR files in a larger environment.

RAR Expander for Mac works with both single and multi-part RAR archives. It also supports password-protected RAR files. To use RAR Expander for Mac you can either open the app and provide … Read more

With all the news of Apple Maps' deficiencies and data leaks on iOS 6 devices, is the new iPhone 5 even worth it?

That's the question I try to answer in this edition of Ask Maggie. Apple has pulled the Google Maps app from its latest software, leaving the new iPhone 5 and other iOS devices to use its Apple Maps product, which many complain is inferior to Google Maps.

Also, Apple has issued an update to Verizon iPhone 5 smartphones that fixes a glitch in its Wi-Fi software. Instead of connecting to known Wi-Fi sites, consumers were really … Read more

A new compression technology represents a significant improvement over today's standard, a new study found. The result could help pave the way for video with at least four times the pixels of today's 1080p standard.

The new compression technology, called HEVC or H.265, is significantly better than today's prevailing standard video codec, called AVC or H.264, researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, concluded.

"The test results clearly exhibited a substantial improvement in compression performance, as compared to AVC," the researchers said. "As ultra-high definition television has recently … Read more

A trade show in September will be the coming-out party for video technology called HEVC or H.265, a new arrival in a hotly contested market for the best approach to compression.

HEVC, short for High Efficiency Video Coding, is for encoding and decoding video streams so they can be stored or transmitted more economically than today's dominant H.264, aka AVC or Advanced Video Coding. Specifically, HEVC allies say it can deliver the same quality video as H.264 with half the network bandwidth.

The codec has been in the making for years, but it's now almost … Read more

PNG, a lossless image format, works well for text and graphics, like screenshots. The one drawback to PNG is that the resulting file size can be larger than JPEG files. PNGGauntlet, a free Windows program, can help reduce the size of PNG files and since PNG is lossless, compressing it will have no impact on its quality.

To use PNGGauntlet, first make sure you have Microsoft .NET framework 4.0 installed. When you're ready to start, add the PNG files you want to compress by dragging them over to the screen or clicking on the Add Images button. Next, … Read more

First things first, I'm referring to soft-to-loud dynamic range compression, not MP3 or other types of lossy data compression. Dynamic range compression has been around for almost as long as recorded music has existed, but over the last decade or so the public has demanded ever higher levels of dynamic range compression. The so-called lowest common denominator approach to mixing and mastering music boosts all of the softer/quieter passages to be loud all the time. That process obliterates all of the original details, subtleties, and nuances of the instruments and vocalists. Once the mix has been compressed, it … Read more

WinRAR is a lightweight, flexible, and easy-to-use archiving utility that can unpack most archive formats, as well as compress to both RAR and ZIP. Free to try for 40 days ($29 for single license), WinRAR is a top dog in the compression category.

WinRAR's interface is about as simple as it gets. Start creating (or add to) an archive by dragging and dropping your files into the interface or by browsing through the Folder Tree side panel (when enabled). From there, the most common functions are laid out in the form of colorful, mostly intuitive icons along the top, … Read more