Re: A hot street recorder

[tom@swirly.com]

> Re: A hot street recorder>These things seem great--but is mp3 really
> equivalent to CD sound quality?
> 
> Yes -- or better (or worse) based on sampling rate and quality of input
> (i.e. audio source, gear, audio-digital conversion etc.)

What?!  While adaptive CODECs like MP3 and its cousin ATRAC 
(used in MDs and the late unlamented CD-I) are very impressive 
for the fidelity of their reproduction, I have yet to hear an
MP3 that's equal in quality to uncompressed CD sound quality.

A classic gotcha.  You record a concert on MD and one of
the instruments is too low.  But when you try to use 
EQ to bring the instrument out, all sorts of nasties 
occur (usually, the instrument is "muddy" because the
perceptual encoding has taken away all its bandwidth).

"Rooms" and tails of natural reverbs also take a nasty
hit with these compression methods, particularly if
there is a loud sound while the tail of a previous
sound is still echoing.


Now, if you started with a much better quality of uncompressed
recording, say 24-bit/96K, and didn't compress too much,
then it's perfectly conceivable that you would get something
as good, perhaps even better.  But I have yet to hear this
and I've listened to a LOT of compressed audio (and I'm not
THAT picky...)

If you start with 16/44 audio, it's absolutely impossible
for the compressed sound to be better than the original
and mathematically it's impossible for it to be the same
(though for a lot of applications it's impossible for me
to tell the difference at a low compression ratio, which
makes it "the same" as far as I'm concerned...)

Back to lurking now.

        /t

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