Adam Hill wrote:

> Before people jump on Steven for the negativity of his post. Remember, he is
> the Squeak sound guy.
>
> Musicians *in general* have better hearing than the rest of us. They can
> hear things us no-earplug-wearing-mowing-our yard-for-X-years can hear.
>

As one of the "tin-eared" (I wear a hearing aid in my right ear), I have to
agree that there is more on heaven and earth than I can hear; nvertheless, even
I can hear some of the artifacts in compressed audio.  As a one-time video
production professional, and developer of computer graphics and video systems,
I would like to point out that MPEG video compression techniques have similar
problems.  You just cannot get that kind of compression without losing some
quality (that's why they call it "lossy").

Of course, broadcast video, where we get most of the technology, has been a
continual tradeoff battle from the get-go.  System designers have attempted to
play off the strengths and weaknesses of various encoding schemes against the
trengths and weaknesses of the human visual system (clearly there's a lot more
room for maneuvering with vision than with hearing: more dimensions, greater
tolerance for nonlinearity).  But the artifacts are still objectionable to
someone who wants to have the visual quality of film.
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Engineering is never having to say you're finished.
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Bruce Cohen,                               |  email: cohenb at gemstone.com
GemStone Systems, Inc.                     |  phone: (503)533-3602
20575 NW Von Neumann Drive                 |  fax:   (503)629-8556
Beaverton, OR USA 97006                    |  web:   http://www.gemstone.com