I wished that MP3 sounded as good as jpg looks. The 80-90% that’s being filtered out, is just as much WAV as the rest. MP3 is just a thumbnail of the real thing.
*** Strangley enough, I used that example since my first field out of High school was recording engineering / live sound. I can hear the "artifacts" in the 10-15k range at 44.1 128k, but at higher bitrates, even though I know lots of data has been discarded , it can still sound quite good. It’s all based on psychoacoustics, and the jpeg guys had to make decisions on what goes (in the visual arena) without subconscious objection.
All ‘life’ has been taken out, and you’re left with a flat
line of sound. You won’t find a professional on sound working with MP3, other than mabye using it for a sample to send by mail.
*** EXACTLY!!!! This is my point… but let’s continue with this train of thought.
Engineers in that field knock themselves out using esoteric gear to get the "best quality", everyone wants to do their best, right?
But at the end of the day, any artist will soon find (if not already) that the vast majority of consumers will be ultimately perceiving their expression as an MP3, not the pure file they presented. 80%-90% of the detail is out the window – technically. It should be heartbreaking, but an MP3 CAN sound really good.
Imagine working hard on a painting. Looks great. Want lots of people to see it in a practical way? It goes on your website as a jpeg, carefully prepared by you using judicial compression adjustments. 9 out of 10 fail to understand the adjustments, this is my beef.
Here’s the rub…. In my world, I’d rather listen to great tune on a hissy, worn out cassette tape than any pristine Reason-generated crap that seems to top the charts these days, topped with cop-killing rambling by angry auctioneers with poor grammer.
In the visual world, anyone – everyone – can create content. There are far more weeds than flowers.
To me, a crappy jpeg of a flower is better than a perfectly rendered weed.
JD