Speex

Speex is an audio compression format designed for speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm. Speex claims to be free of any patent restrictions and is licensed under the revised (3-clause) BSD license. It may be used with the Ogg container format or directly transmitted over UDP/RTP.

The Speex designers see their project as complementary to the Vorbis general-purpose audio compression project.

Speex is a lossy format, meaning quality is permanently degraded to reduce file size.

The Speex project was created on February 13, 2002. The first development versions of Speex were released under LGPL license, but as of version 1.0 beta 1, Speex is released under Xiph's version of the (revised) BSD license. Speex 1.0 was announced on March 24, 2003, after a year of development. The last stable version of Speex encoder and decoder is 1.1.12.

Xiph.Org now considers Speex obsolete; its successor is the more modern Opus codec, which surpasses its performance in all areas.

Mossberg 930

The Mossberg 930 is a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun designed by O.F. Mossberg & Sons.

The Mossberg 930 is one of the most popular automatic shotguns, used by hunters and skeet-shooters often.

Design

The Mossberg 930 is gas operated, which means that some of the hot gases from the burning gunpowder are used to push a piston that operates the action, ejecting the spent hull and chambering a fresh shell. This gas action reduces the recoil felt by the shooter. Like other Mossberg shotguns, this shotgun has an ambidextrous safety that is located on the rear of the receiver. The Mossberg 930 takes 2¾" or 3" shells and can be accessorized with shell catchers, Picatinny rails, special muzzle brakes for door breaching, etc.

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SPX

SPX can refer to:

Toccata

Toccata (from Italian toccare, "to touch") is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments (the opening of Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo being a notable example).

History

Renaissance

The form first appeared in the late Renaissance period. It originated in northern Italy. Several publications of the 1590s include toccatas, by composers such as Girolamo Diruta, Adriano Banchieri, Claudio Merulo, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, and Luzzasco Luzzaschi. These are keyboard compositions in which one hand, and then the other, performs virtuosic runs and brilliant cascading passages against a chordal accompaniment in the other hand. Among the composers working in Venice at this time was the young Hans Leo Hassler, who studied with the Gabrielis; he brought the form back with him to Germany. It was in Germany where it underwent its highest development, culminating in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach more than a hundred years later.

Toccata (Prokofiev)

The Toccata in D minor, Op. 11 is a piece for solo piano, written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1912 and debuted by the composer on December 10, 1916 in Petrograd. It is a further development of the toccata form, which has been used by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Robert Schumann. Other composers of well-known toccatas include Maurice Ravel, Dmitri Kabalevsky and Aram Khachaturian.

Prokofiev's Toccata starts off with a persistent repetition of the note D, interchanged between the right hand (which plays the single note) and the left hand (which plays the same note but with the lower octave as well). After a brief development, there are chromatic leaps in the left hand while the right hand plays a repeated figuration. The two hands soon switch positions, although the leaps still continue for a while.

A series of split chromatic thirds leads upwards until a descending melody (in A) with chromatic third accompaniments begins, with the left hand traveling in contrary motion upwards. This leads back to the main repetition 'theme' before a very short pause. Both hands soon play a weaving series of the right hand's repeated figuration from the start, before the split chromatic thirds pattern reappears. This leads more violently to the descending melody pattern, but this time in D, before the D repetition 'theme' reappears, this time in alternating octaves in both hands. The Toccata slows down and halts temporarily before a chromatic rising scale leads to octave exhortations, followed by a glissando sweep up the keyboard to end on the top D.

Toccata (Schumann)

The Toccata in C major, Op. 7 by Robert Schumann, was completed in 1836. The piece is in sonata-allegro form.

When the work was completed in 1836, Schumann believed it was the "hardest piece ever written. A series of chords introduce the main theme, which is believed to be the passage that Schumann injured his hands trying to master. The development features rapid unison octaves.

A typical performance of this piece lasts about six minutes.

Schumann dedicated the work to his friend Ludwig Schuncke, who had dedicated his Grande Sonata in G minor, Op. 3, to Schumann.

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