[joe-frank-list] Yet another format discussion

suricata.suricatta suricatta at rcn.com
Tue Jun 10 19:56:23 PDT 2003


>>Speculation is fine, but have you ABX'ed 192K VBR
>>JS MP3's against anything?

*I* have. I have also directly compared Sony's much esteemed ATRAC compression format against the 44.1khz uncompressed DAT format. The difference, mainly a gigantic loss of high frequency detail is not subtle. I am willing to admit that you may not notice the difference unless you  ABX them on sufficiently good audio equipment. I highly recommend that anyone listening to MP3s for their music also listen to an uncompressed version of the tracks on a sufficiently good audio system to hear how lossy compression sucks the life right out of the music, leaving just the bare skeleton of what some computer program decided was "enough". Voice is a bit different and much less sensitive, but Joe's programs are often a mix of voice and music.

In any case, it is unlikely that anyone satisfied with the quality of a 128kbps or lower MP3 is going to bother spending the $14 for the CD when a 32kpbs RealAudio version is often available for free. Also, anyone who cannot hear the difference is free to compress the files themselves and leave those of us who can easily hear the difference the freedom to purchase the uncompressed audio.



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