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Old 2007-10-30, 09:08 AM
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paddington paddington is offline
crumpet-stuffer
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: UK
Re: mp3/lossless question for audiophiles...

^^ you are assuming the only thing that happens with MP3 (or any other lossy compression) is that the high freqs are rolled off above 16kHz.. that is incorrect. There are MANY chunks of audio data discarded over the ENTIRE spectrum, which is easily heard (and confrimed in a spectrum analysis).

but - even if it WAS just the high end (which it certainly is not), the fact that it rolls off the high freqs IN the audible range for humans means we get to hear the atrifacts of the ugly digital LPF that is used.. and it makes the complicated high frequencies sound 'shimmery' or 'glassy' or 'watery'. What you are hearing there is "aliasing" - course stairstepping at the roll-off shelf created by the lossy encoder's LPF (low-pass filter).
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