Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. This is Jonathan Strickland, writer
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works, and with me is editor and
Speaker 1: percussionists extraordinaire Chris Pullett. Hey there, and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: to you today a little bit about m P three's,
Speaker 1: specifically r MP three's destroying sound quality in the music business,
Speaker 1: in the world at large, and should we all throw
Speaker 1: our iPods in the garbage. Well, it's easy to say
Speaker 1: that the MP three is the number one most used
Speaker 1: audio format because you know, it's it's not everybody's. Well,
Speaker 1: it's easy to say, though there are tons of other ones. Um,
Speaker 1: but MP three is by and large it. But you
Speaker 1: can't say, in my opinion that the MP three by
Speaker 1: itself is destroying music. There are a lot of other
Speaker 1: things that have gone up to this point. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: there's that, um but you know, the c D itself
Speaker 1: is already clipping a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 1: frequencies that we normally hear. Now the human ear can
Speaker 1: hear between twenty and twenty thousand hurts basically, although you
Speaker 1: know there are there's some differences person in person, and
Speaker 1: apparently females can hear a little more frequency than than males.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, the the CD started that because
Speaker 1: to fit a song on a CD or a whole
Speaker 1: album on a c D, artists UM artists and producers
Speaker 1: had to start compressing the music, and basically they're cutting
Speaker 1: out frequencies that we can't hear. Well. An MP three
Speaker 1: D twenty eight, which is the standard kill a bits
Speaker 1: per second uh encoding for MP three's to fit the
Speaker 1: uh you know, the thousands of songs on our MP
Speaker 1: three players and a D kill a bits per second UM,
Speaker 1: and MP three cuts out a lot more frequency. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know that's that's a lot of what's going
Speaker 1: on here. But why would that be destroying music? Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. You see, first of all, what the once
Speaker 1: you get when you compressed down to the MP three
Speaker 1: format is Yes, first of all, you you look at
Speaker 1: the frequencies that humans can't hear at all, and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: let's just throw those out because how could that possibly
Speaker 1: affect sound quality? Well, after that, you start looking at
Speaker 1: frequencies that you could hear, but you're not likely to
Speaker 1: hear because there are other frequencies being played at that
Speaker 1: same moment that would cover it up. So let's say
Speaker 1: it was a really soft guitar part under a really
Speaker 1: loud drum part. You said, well, let's just get rid
Speaker 1: of the guitar part, because who's gonna hear it. And
Speaker 1: you start making more and more compromises like that, and
Speaker 1: that eventually starts to affect sound quality. Well, they also
Speaker 1: start to may being being codex essentially, when you're when
Speaker 1: you're compressing down to MP three format, you start to
Speaker 1: cut out the high end and the low end of
Speaker 1: the frequencies, and so the song, while it may it
Speaker 1: may sound good enough for someone who wants, you know,
Speaker 1: a portable solution to to carrying music around, um, they
Speaker 1: don't sound nearly as good as the original version would have. UM.
Speaker 1: And you can really tell this when you're using high
Speaker 1: end music equipment. If you're using crappy little speakers or headphones,
Speaker 1: you may not be able to tell the difference because
Speaker 1: the output's gonna be pretty lousy across the board. But
Speaker 1: if you're listening on really nice equipment, you'll be able
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between an MP three version of
Speaker 1: a song and an uncompressed version of that song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as as a user, you have some control over
Speaker 1: this if you're if you're taking your CDs or vinyl
Speaker 1: albums or whatever else and encoding them into MP three's
Speaker 1: you can change the the bit rate, which is the
Speaker 1: amount of information essentially that the computer is using to
Speaker 1: uh encode the file. So you could, you know, crank
Speaker 1: it all the way up to u kbps. Now that's
Speaker 1: going to make your MP three files that much more
Speaker 1: you're and take up that much more room on your
Speaker 1: MP three player, but you'll be able to get a
Speaker 1: lot more information in there. And um, you know, MP
Speaker 1: three is a lossy format, which means that you're already
Speaker 1: losing a lot of information in there. You could use
Speaker 1: other formats, uh the one that comes to mind would
Speaker 1: be the Free Lossless Audio codec or flak UM, and
Speaker 1: that is a lossless format, but again, it carries a
Speaker 1: lot bigger file size because it has a lot more
Speaker 1: digital information in the file. And more importantly, to some people,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily compatible with the equipment you have like
Speaker 1: an iPod like an iPod UM. So that's but Apple
Speaker 1: does have its own lossless UH file format as well,
Speaker 1: UM that you can look into. But as for m
Speaker 1: P three's, you're gonna be dealing with a little bit
Speaker 1: of a reduction of sound quality. How much depends mainly
Speaker 1: upon the bit rate. But if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about m P three's, check out our article on
Speaker 1: how MP three's work at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for moralness and thousands of other topics. Does it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com? Let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: Send an email to podcast and how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, are you