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Posted by Richard Crowley on 11/30/07 16:03
"Don Pearce" wrote ...
> "Richard Crowley" wrote:
>>I take it that you aren't a programmer, either.
>
> I have been. So tell me, what do you think is the difference
> between data and data stream? In other words, what does
> the word stream mean in this context?
A data stream is information that is linked together and
must be taken in sequence to be understood. (vs. random-
access data).
Take a book for example. The *story* is a data-stream
because it must be taken in sequence. But the words
and paragraphs and chapters can be taken as random-
access blocks of data, but if you take it that way you
lose the sense of the story / data-stream. Novels are
generally treated as a data-stream. OTOH dictionaries
are generally treated as random-access data.
In the context of the function of a codec, the sense is
the same. No codec (MP3 or ZIP, etc.) can properly
decode the data unles it is taken in sequence (i.e. a
"data stream"). But there is no implication of WHEN
this must happen. It doesn't matter whether you
decode MP3 in real-time (as you listen) or whether
you batch decode it to a PCM sequence and them
just feed those bytes into an ADC after the fact.
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