"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
Being curious about this whole .mp3, can you or can't you tell issue,
and to lay to rest my own piece of mind, I decided to head downtown
and talk to one of the engineers of my acquaintance at the recording
studio there. They do a lot of work for local artists and the
occasional big name folkie who cruises through town for one reason or
another.

I took along a Acoustic Alchemy CD I have that I'm particularly fond
of just to test a couple of things.

First, depending on the sampling rate, you can hear a difference
between the CD and the .mp3. However, it becomes harder as the
sampling rate is increased and in truth, at around 250 kbps it became
harder to discern. At the max 320 kbps it was almost impossible and
to be totally honest, I'm not sure I could tell in terms of what I was
looking for.

The reason I used this particular CD is because there is a mistake in
oen of the songs, about two seconds long, in which there is a chording
mistake. My theory went this way - at the higher compression rates,
the mistake could and would be more noticeable and at lower rates the
mistake would be less noticeable.

It turned out that it didn't make a difference - probably because I
knew it was there and was looking for it.

However, I could notice a difference in the whole song at 128 kbps and
at 192 kbps - at 256 kbps it really was hard to tell the difference.

Just as an experiment, we went lower to 64 kbps and artifacts crept in
at that point which kind of proves a point about compression.

So I guess we're all right in a way - what it really depends on is (1)
the format being used to compress the file and (2) the sampling rate.

I feel better anyway.

Nice job and good information. I admit I haven't followed the progression
of mp3 technology based on the early low sampling rates that were used and
the resultant losses. I was unaware that sampling rates of 256kbps were
even possible. Maybe there's hope. I wonder, for the Ipod fans, what the
file size becomes if sampled at these higher rates.

RCE