Thursday, August 4, 2011

What’s missing?

In the late 1980s, Karlheinz Brandenburg and the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) invented the mp3 format. Dr. Brandenburg estimated that eventually one million users would listen to an mp3. Since then, from iPod users to broadcast radio, orders of magnitude more people now use the format than he had predicted.

Most people, including me, have no problem with mp3 files. They sound good, take very little file space, and are playable on almost every computer and audio device. However, be aware that there can be issues with mp3s.

Try this test if you have the time and available audio software. Listen to a stereo mp3 in mono with the phase of one channel inverted. You’ll hear the strange-sounding “audio pixilation” caused by the mp3 data compression.

Fortunately, people don’t listen to mp3s that way. However, it does make you wonder, “What else am I not hearing when listening to an mp3?”

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