Posted by Kevin McMurtrie on 11/29/07 05:01

In article <474D3333.71A76AAB@hotmail.com>,
Eeyore <rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
>
> > 128Kbps is highly lossy with today's technology.
>
> 'Today's technology' has eff all to do with it.
>
> ALL audio compression schemes rely on 'throwing away' information to get the
> desired result. Advances in 'technology' will not ever affect that
> fundamental
> principle.

Technology makes all the difference. It's a matter of how well the
digital data can describe the original audio signal given a limited
bandwidth. Remember the early ADPCM encoders? They produced hissy
audio with 350Kbps because the adaptive delta technique has all of its
loss concentrated in the high frequencies. Lower ADPCM bitrates were
mostly unusable. MP3 did much better but it couldn't adapt to some
situations. AAC does better still and there's no chance that it's the
last codec to be invented.


> Provided that all compression schemes were *coded competently*, the trade-off
> in
> perceived audio performance vs bit rate would be virtually identical. And it
> is
> indeed quite close to that. Some methods of perceptual encoding may favour
> perceived better results with certain styles of music than others at the
> usual
> cost of performing worse with other types.
>
> Mark my words, audio compression will be almost non-existent in 10 years
> time.
> The genuine advances in technology that DO exist in respect of ever higher
> network speeds and ever lower cost mass storage will render audio compression
> almost superfluous.
>
> Graham


Audio compression will stay around for some uses. CPUs and algorithms
will always be much cheaper than long distance bandwidth and wireless
bandwidth. Regardless of how fast the internet gets, 10x compression
still means 10x customer capacity. 10x compression on your mobile
player means 10x the room for music.

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