MP3 and its related data reduction schemes use the discrete cosine transform rather then the fast fourier transform but it amounts to very much the same thing, some of the more modern schemes use wavelet transforms instead which are conceptually more complex but can manage better compression before the artefacts become objectionable.
The chapter on the Wavelet transform in "Numerical recipes" is quite a good introduction.

PCM audio generally compresses poorly using run of the mill Huffman or LZ schemes, but you can get 2:1 or so using audio specific data compression routines, I doubt that the sandforce part will implement these.
Besides a disk controller that advertises numbers assuming compressible data is cheating in my view.

No DAW will be compressing its internal data, it is too computationally expensive, but storing sample libs lossless compressed is reasonable (Decompression is typically **MUCH** cheaper then compression, and some of those datasets are huge).

Regards, Dan.

--------------------
Audiophiles use phono leads because they are unbalanced people!

Post Extras