Vibrations and how they get to your ears.
Noise for airports is a blog about culture, sound, music, and technology.
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Updated (sometimes) by Nick Seaver.
Cory Arcangel’s “Iron Maiden’s ‘The Number of the Beast’ compressed over and over as an mp3 666 times”:
If you have ever wondered what Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” would sound like compressed over and over as an mp3 666 times…here’s your chance..and if u r wondering, YES it does lose quality each time it is compressed.
And a few illuminating bits from Jonathan Sterne’s article “The mp3 as cultural artifact” [PDF]:
The mp3 uses a specific form of data compression based on a model of how the human ear works.
In other words, the mp3 is a medium which, in most practical contexts, gives the full experience of listening to a recording while only offering a fraction of the information and allowing listeners’ bodies to do the rest of the work. The mp3 plays its listener.
One could rightly argue that rather than being a cruel exploitation of the limits of auditory perception, the mp3 encoder instrumentalizes and even celebrates the limits of the human ear.
