from the that's-gotta-lose-some-quality dept
There's a report going around about some researchers who created a music file that's apparently
1,000 times smaller than MP3s. However, what's really interesting is how it's done. Rather than actually record the sound, it's designed to recreate the sound itself. As the article notes, it's more like the way a player piano plays music from a roll of punched paper than a recording of the original piano. Of course, that's got to make you wonder about the quality, and whether it comes out sounding mechanical, losing the actual nuances of how the music was played -- but the researchers insist their system captures exactly how the music was played as well. Don't expect to hear much out of this research for a while, though. Right now, the system is rather limited. It can only work with certain types of music (clarinet music from the sound of it), because they had to program in the specifics of how a clarinet is played (such as fingering, breath pressure, and lip pressure). Considering that they would then need to do that with every single instrument, somehow this doesn't seem likely to be in practical use any time soon.
Filed Under: clarinets, mp3, recording
