Re: GNOME GSoC 09 question

[Adam Schreiber <sadam clemson edu>]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 5:44 AM, Easwar Hariharan <meindian523 gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I received this email address for you from a friend on IRC,and he
> mentioned that you are the GNOME admin for GSoC 09 and queries whether
> ideas could be a valid GSoC project could be directed to you.Please
> correct me if I'm mistaken,while I expound my idea.
>
> IDEA:
> A plug-in for Rhythmbox to preferentially play a track from hard disk
> than from a Last.FM stream using the bitrate metadata as a parameter
> to determine which audio is of better quality in Python,and add it to
> the play queue while removing it from the stream,or,in an alternative
> idea,to allow the user to see that he has the same track on disk,and
> decide which to play.
>
> BENEFITS:
> This would ensure
> 1]Conservation of bandwidth and

Wouldn't you still be downloading the stream, but playing the file on
disk for the duration of the song?  How would you tell Last.FM to hold
the streaming and then later to start again with the next song?

> 2]Deliver (almost always) a better listening experience because in
> general,IMO,tracks ripped to disk will have a higher bitrate than a
> stream.
> I know the audio quality would change depending on whether the track
> was encoded using CBR,VBR or ABR algorithms and also whether it was
> ripped using lossy or lossless algorithms,but I guess my approximation
> is valid for quite a large number of users except the true
> audiophiles.
>
> I would like to have your guidance regarding whether the idea outlined
> above is good enough for a complete SoC,and whether I need to change
> something to make it big enough for a SoC project,because some GSoC 08
> friends have advised me that it sounds a bit too small,or if it's ok
> as it is,I would be quite glad.
> Awaiting your opinion,

I think it's possible that this project is large enough, but am not
familiar enough with the internals of Rhythmbox to be sure.  CC'ing
the list for additional comments.  In any case, this idea needs to be
fleshed out before proposing because we need to be able to determine
if you are capable of doing the proposed work.

Cheers,

Adam

> Regards,
> Easwar
> Registered Linux user #442065
>