Audio DesignLine Blog
Video interview with MP3 co-inventor
Rich Pell
1/27/2010 12:41 PM EST
I've been listening to a lot of MP3s recently (mostly ripped from 128-kbps Internet Radio streams) and have been suprised at just how good many of them sound. Sure, they may suffer when compared directly with the original lossless files, but certainly as a portable format MP3 - despite getting a bad rap from many audiophiles - is a vast improvement over something like the cassette tape.
So I was especially interested when I ran across a recent CNET video interview (below, approx. 17 min.) at CES with Karlheinz Brandenburg, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, one of the original co-inventors of MP3:
Here are some of the topics Brandenburg addresses in the interview:
- Origins of MP3 - what was it trying to solve, how was it named, file extension?
- Reasons for its success
- Problems with MP3 (e.g., pre echo issue with percussive material)
- MP3 vs. AAC ("AAC is what MP3 should have been from the beginning")
- How does it work? (Psychoacoustics, masking, quantization noise)
- Audiophiles and MP3s
- What's the best encoding bitrate?
- The "warm" sound of vinyl LPs and tubes
- "Placebo" effect and blind testing
- What's next? (e.g., MP3 Surround, MP3 metadata databases, immersive sound for theme parks, server-based processing)
Comments, questions or suggestions? Email me at rich.pell@verizon.net.
Related links:
Video: MP3 creator on digital media
MP3: Audio boon or bane?
Happy birthday to the MP3 player
Rolling Stone: Hi-Fi not dead after all
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