Posted by Doug McDonald on 11/29/07 00:07

Eeyore wrote:

>
> ALL audio compression schemes rely on 'throwing away' information to get the
> desired result. Advances in 'technology' will not ever affect that fundamental
> principle.

While that is true, there is a big caveat.

That is that above a certain bitrate, the "error" that remains can sound
just like ordinary noise. If say 128 kbps actually results in an
error signal that sounds allows you to tell what the piece is, 160 kbps
might sound like 1/3 octave noise generators that are tuned with the
frequencies in the piece. 192 could very well sound like pink noise.
I'm not implying that those numbers are meaningful in an absolute sense ...
it could be 128 -> 256 -> 320.
Once you get to that point the effect of throwing away info is the same
as just adding ordinary noise. People, most people, didn't scream
and shout about added noise from tape or LPs. And they didn't talk about
"losing information" even though that indeed was what was happening.



Doug MCDonald

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