[ARSCLIST] Lossy compression losing quality (was Re: [ARSCLIST] Pristine Audio and the Milllennials . . .)

[Mike Richter <mrichter@xxxxxxx>]

Howard Friedman wrote:

> If anyone would care to send me their Email address, i would be glad to send you any number of MP3 files ripped from audio CDs, and then tell me if there's a loss of quality!  Take your choice, Chaliapin, Galli-Curci, Ponselle, the list goes on.

In this sort of discussion, I believe we'd do well to keep track of the 
different meanings of "quality". There is the abstract sense in which 
MP3 and other lossy compressors always lose information, as shown by the 
inabiilty to reconstruct the original PCM signal from the compressed 
file. In that sense, Don is correct in suggesting staying with lossless 
formats if file size is unimportant. For example, if one is ripping 
tracks from multiple CDs to make a compilation CD, there is no reason to 
spend the time and accept the penalty in quality of using lossy compression.

Then there is the sense in which the loss of quality does not 
significantly affect either the content or the esthetics of the 
recording. I believe that is the situation to which Howard refers.

Finally, there is the sense in which the loss may be acceptable for the 
application. I use low bitrates at my WWW site so that those on dialup 
can still have the experience without inordinate effort. For many 
reasons, most of my CD-ROMs are also at low bitrate so that the subject 
can be covered efficiently. In both cases, the loss of audio quality is 
noticeable, but in context well worth tolerating.

Note that I pay the penalty for that low bitrate. I wanted to post 
something in recognizing the death of Karlheinz Stockhausen, but it 
became apparent on first examining the candidates that 32 Kbps monaural 
would be worse than nothing at all and that a reasonable sample at a 
tolerable rate (say, 256 Kbps stereo) would exclude many visitors. So I 
will leave celebration of the life of that seminal composer to others.

Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/