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A text by Audio Empire From http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/d4c8480e2ada3c21?hl=en

“At a presentation he gave at the recent Audio Engineering Society Convention held in London earlier this year, Massenburg wondered why, with bandwidth so plentiful, and storage so cheap why people still sell compressed music online?

"These systems (compressed music formats) take something essential from the music, and lop it off. With so much bandwidth and memory now available, the question is not how to make a better Codec, but why we are bothering to use codecs at all..."

In his presentation, Massenburg showed where he took 24-bit/96 KHz recordings of  Phil Collins and Diana Krall and ran them through different Codecs.  He used MP3 at 128kbps, and AAC at 256kbps and showed the results on the screen. These graphics showed how the compression/expansion cycle destroyed the dynamic range of the original recording.

"These are standard systems and they are not good enough for us to use. By coding the hell out of the music, and slashing the sound, we are missing a market."

Massenburg then used a demonstration to drive his point home. He electronically subtracted the MP3 compressed music from the original 24-bit/96 KHz recording and then played ONLY the difference signal which was comprised solely of the information lost by the compression.

"These are distortion levels of 15 ­ 20 percent! ", he said as he played the difference signal for all to hear. The distortion amazed everyone in attendance because it was a grotesquely, but very recognizable version of the original recoding! “

What I found the most amassing in this story is that the presentation was made for Audio Engineering Society Convention and those Morons were AMAZED!!! Can you imagine: the member of Audio Engineering Society…. kind of … did not know it!

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