Audio compression, lossy or not...

I had a nice little (m-n-kl) argument with someone in an online forum last night about MP3 technology. Let it be known that while I use MP3's in some instances I am not a big fan of the technology. My car, the Kia Rio5's built in MP3 capable radio does NOT support my favorite audio compression and so I am more than a bit upset.

OK, I"m no expert at this, and quite frankly my ears are no more suited to listening to the fine details in music as an elephant is to painting a great artistic masterpiece. But it wouldn't take a genius to notice that there is a distinct problem with the way MP3's store music. Oh sure, they give you a nice small file for storing the music on that new mp3 player you just purchased, but have you ever tried to listen to a great opera singer or Mozart for that matter in mp3 format?

Most of the MP3's available online these days were created by some teenager who's little paper 8 Ohm speakers sitting next to his computer sound like a transistor radio, so he/she had no idea that the actual result was something similar to a yak giving birth in a large hollow glass tube. HORRIBLE!!!

Eventually, we will use MP3's in a higher quality way, a better sounding 24-bit audio format that is not lossless. If anything we will move beyond today's common 16-bit audio.

There are other options though, I personally use the OGG format by a person named "Ogg Vorbis". Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source.
And did you know that most common MP3 players today support this format but don't even advertise this capability on it's package? I sell products such as these for a living and get to test out a lot of cool hardware before it becomes common place in the market. One of the things I have noticed is that about 90% of the mp3 players that I've tested for companies silently supports OGG. I recently sold an Ipod nano like mp3 player to a fella in the states and I was surprised to know that it supported the format. And the playback of the 256Kbps test file I put on it was superb! Yet nowhere on it's packaging did it say that it supported OGG.

Lossy audio compressions such as MP3 will always have advantages such as small file size, but the standard MP3 that is in common use today causes me to stand firm on my decision that MP3's are terrible and I will avoid using them in a world where OGG, WMA and ACC are obviously better sounding alternatives that are supported by almost all MP3 players on the market. The trick really to a great audio file is in how much data is actually stored while balancing the file size. The smaller the file the more data loss there is resulting in noticeable deficiencies in the sound of the file.

Lets quickly consider the famous CDrom disk which replaced magnetic media such as the audio cassette tape. In this uncompressed or "RAW" format there is more data than your brain can process. If two sounds are almost the same frequency your brain will perceive them as the same sound. And more importantly when two sounds are completely different but one has a much higher volume your brain will only hear the louder one. Human hearing though is subject to a much more accurate mathematical model, we can only hear a very limited range of sounds and some sounds are more noticeable. This likely was forged into us during our evolution where the sounds of a running brook in the distance or the slight rustle of a brush could indicate danger. You could then, consider listening to music to be exercise for the mind's ear. The more you listen, the better you become at listening. Not withstanding obvious ear damage caused by environmental noise of course.


The bottom line folks, and I hate to make this so short and to the point. Don't waste your time on MP3's when there are so many other formats out there lossy and non lossy that work a lot better and don't massacre the sounds of Mozart, Debussy and the likes... :)