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The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

theghostinthemp3.com

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Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#61

Post by nayuki »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #38
nayuki wrote: post #14

The author posts clips like "Example 1. White, Pink, and Brown Noise - Uncompressed", but the audio files are hosted on SoundCloud. My experience on SoundCloud is that no matter what format you upload as, they always stream it down to you as a 128 kb/s MP3 or something like that. I think the author is better off self-hosting the WAV files? > Listening tests, primarily designed by and for western-european men, and usi…

This isn't "racial bias" and has nothing do with race, but the types of music MP3 developers, who were western men, decided to use as a reference. Famously, Karlheinz Brandenburg focused on making 'Tom's Diner' sound good, which suggests the mp3 model is strongly optimized to rock music and, as others have claimed, sounds sub-optimal when encoding non-Western music. Your comment was good until you got into an unfound…

I read somewhere that Tom's Diner is used for lossy audio codec evaluations because it is a clear, strong a capella voice. It's been said that humans are sensitive to even minor distortions in vocal quality. You can sing a capella in any language, and it is not limited to western music. Sorry, I don't have references to offer.

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#62

Post by h0l0cube »

nayuki wrote: post #14

The author posts clips like "Example 1. White, Pink, and Brown Noise - Uncompressed", but the audio files are hosted on SoundCloud. My experience on SoundCloud is that no matter what format you upload as, they always stream it down to you as a 128 kb/s MP3 or something like that. I think the author is better off self-hosting the WAV files? > Listening tests, primarily designed by and for western-european men, and usi…

> Through a simple accusation of racial bias, the author seeks to undermine the technical work that went into the development of the MP3 codec

Even at the time of writing of the article, MP3 was being replaced with much better codecs. It could be said that when the codec was being developed in the 90s, they chose a limited set of music to make the problem easier to solve - which is fair given that decoding was at the limits of processing power at the time. But it's likely they stuck with music on the chromatic scale, and instruments with unusual timbres and microtonal variations, where exceptions to this were usually outside the western canon, though I think that has changed since the 90s with the advent of more sophisticated electronic music and more experimental artists.

I found the report on the listening test, but I could not find a list of the 20-second excerpts they used:

https://sound.media.mit.edu/resources/mpeg4/audio/public/w14...

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#63

Post by toast0 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #31
Malic wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that Apple chose to develop ALAC because it was less CPU/battery intensive to decode. This is going back to iPod Rev.1 days, mind you. Processing power for simply decoding audio CODECs hasn’t been a challenge for some time now.

ALAC (and Sony's ATRAC) can be decoded using only integer math, which makes them very power efficient. It's the reason they exist in the first place. MP3, FLAC (and I assume AAC) requires floating point math to decode.

mp3 doesn't require floating point to decode. In the before times, I used mpg321 on an underpowered system because it used the MAD library to decode with only integers, and was able to play my files at only 80% cpu instead of 95% with a floating point decoder. I seem to recall there being a windows player that was faster than winamp, possible because of integer decoding, might have been K-Jofol

https://www.underbit.com/products/mad/

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#64

Post by magicalhippo »

tomcooks wrote: post #21

There's a music album, Most Beautiful Design by Bienoise (cited in the PHD of the author of the site as a great example of how to work with MP3 compression artifacts and glitches) that is made of heavily compressed mp3s so that it sounds great while still fitting in a standard 1.44mb floppy. https://forceincmilleplateaux.bandcamp.com/album/most-beauti...

Fun experiment, but I'd rather have a floppy full of tracker chiptunes...

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#65

Post by dbatten »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #36
dbatten wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implication was that, once mp3 is no longer a household format, there will be a certain type of person who feels a nostalgia for the "sound" of mp3s, maybe even advocating that it was "better" in some way than the sound of whatever comes next... This is basically what's happened with vinyl records at this point, right? People have a nostalgia for their sound, even though by any scientific or technical mea…

but we're drawn to "analog warmth" for whatever reason. We see it in guitars obviously with tube amps and analog effects pedals preferred over their digital counterparts. Vinyl has that messy analog-ish sound that we find pleasing in a similar way. Shrill low-bitrate, lower-fidelity digital sound just doesn't evoke that feeling in us. The same way no one is asking for RealMedia videos on their home theater system, bu…

Are we actually inherently drawn to analog artifacts including things like film grain? Or are we accustomed to seeing/hearing it? If you plucked a member of an un-contacted tribe out of the Amazon, would they prefer film grain and vinyl? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to hear the evidence presented.

I remember the first time I saw 60hz video on a flat screen TV. I thought the motion looked so incredibly unnatural it was almost unwatchable. Now, it just seems normal. It had nothing to do with 60hz video itself - it had to do with the expectations built up by years of watching 29.97hz interlaced NTSC video...

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#66

Post by niftich »

nayuki wrote: post #61
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't "racial bias" and has nothing do with race, but the types of music MP3 developers, who were western men, decided to use as a reference. Famously, Karlheinz Brandenburg focused on making 'Tom's Diner' sound good, which suggests the mp3 model is strongly optimized to rock music and, as others have claimed, sounds sub-optimal when encoding non-Western music. Your comment was good until you got into an unfound…

I read somewhere that Tom's Diner is used for lossy audio codec evaluations because it is a clear, strong a capella voice. It's been said that humans are sensitive to even minor distortions in vocal quality. You can sing a capella in any language, and it is not limited to western music. Sorry, I don't have references to offer.

The line "I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice", a quote from MP3 author Karlheinz Brandenburg, first appeared in the article 'Ich Bin Ein Paradigm Shifter' [1] by Hilmar Schmundt, published June 2000 in the magazine eCompany Now, a year before that magazine merged with its rival Business 2.0.

(The Wikipedia article on Tom's Diner says anachronistically that the quote appeared in Business 2.0 magazine. This has been present on the page since the very first revision [2].)

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20001003052745/http://www.ecompan...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom%27s_Diner&old...

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#67

Post by fao_ »

bonoboTP wrote: post #54
fao_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Through a simple accusation of racial bias, the author seeks to undermine the technical work that went into the development of the MP3 codec. I'm always surprised when pointing out that something has design limits, and often limits imposed by racial bias in testing, is seen as such an evil thing. Acknowledging the limits is the first part of making use of something properly, wouldn't you say? Understanding that MP3…

> non-white artforms You Americans (I'm assuming) are really strange. Dividing the world into white and non-white art forms, white and non-white "ways of knowing" etc. is exactly how the Nazis and fascists thought here in Europe. You are going right back into the same divisive state of affairs.

First thing is, I am not an American. I am a White Welsh person. That said, there is significant systemic inequality in western countries, that is often racially biased. This is what is meant by "intersectionality". The other response talks in terms of "class warfare" and it is important to note that the whole reason Intersectionality arose as a concept was because "upholding women" often meant "upholding white women", and "upholding lower class workers" often led to measures that did not consider people of colour, and therefore led to them being more disadvantaged. You cannot view oppression purely in terms of class, when you do, voices are unheard and lost.

Because of the cultural split, enforced by said systemic inequality, there is a cultural difference. It would be foolish and ignorant to ignore that difference and claim that it doesn't exist. Indeed, "Colour Blindness" as you are proposing, has been outed as racist ideology for over half a century (Jane Elliot explains this rather well). By ignoring the fact that people have different skin tone, and have been disadvantaged by it, you are choosing to ignore their very existence. If the entire human race were "homogenized" there would be much of value that is lost. Likewise, when we talk in terms of "white people" and "people of colour", we are simply recognizing and acknowledging the split that comes from that disadvantage that still exists -- in terms of the original argument, we are recognizing that this specific encoding of sound information is likely biased to encode white culture, white art, better. That is a difference that should be corrected, and to correct it we need to acknowledge it first.

In summary, I'm simply following the terminology given to me by people of colour, who often talk in these terms. The best I can do is follow their example and speak out in the manner that they have taught, or (better still) promote their voices on these matters.

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#68

Post by jzer0cool »

These sounds are fascinating. Curious to know if these sounds mimic or has a representation of something in the real world.

For example:

Audio Clip 1 - this is what I might first think of as random noise.

Audio Clip 2 - is this also random noise or is there some kind of pattern to this?

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#69

Post by fao_ »

all2 wrote: post #59
bonoboTP wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-white artforms You Americans (I'm assuming) are really strange. Dividing the world into white and non-white art forms, white and non-white "ways of knowing" etc. is exactly how the Nazis and fascists thought here in Europe. You are going right back into the same divisive state of affairs.

Don't assume we all do it. Identity politics is used to get people to ignore class politics. It is driven primarily by the left-leaning political factions. > exactly how the Nazis and fascists thought here in Europe Yes, we know. That's why we wound up with an orange man who didn't really care about race. > You are going right back into the same divisive state of affairs. Division allows the elites to control the mas…

> Identity politics is used to get people to ignore class politics. It is driven primarily by the left-leaning political factions.

That's amusing, because most of the people of colour I follow on the Fediverse give class-based intersectional analyses of political happenings. In most leftist circles, identity politics has been seamlessly merged with class politics in an effort to ensure that class politics serves the purpose of uplifting all lower class people, rather than just the white lower classes, and in an effort to eliminate discrimination and mistreatment of all kinds. This is the purpose of any form of left-wing ideology.

Indeed, Tony Cliff wrote on the topic of class and intersectionality back in the 1970s*, it isn't a new thing -- certainly not new to academic socialist circles. It is simply only recently that it has entered the majority consciousness. One can see that intersectional analysis does not conflict with class analysis, but compliments it and allows one better lenses by which to view the various conflicts and struggles in the modern world (or indeed, many of the struggles of the 20th century). See the unity he seeks by adding the lense of intersectionality, and see the error in your assessment that "Intersectional Analysis" is somehow adverse to and conflicts with "Class Analysis", I beg of you.

* - https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/08/gays.ht...

Re: The Ghost in the MP3 (2014)

#70

Post by dang »

kruxigt wrote: post #35
apostacy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one find the idea that there is a "white" way to hear music to be pretty offensive. Does he have any evidence for his race-realist perspective? I wish we could move past these outdated ideas. Of course mp3 is limited by the people who made it, everything is. It certainly wasn't done with any bad intentions.

Personally Im quite offended that blacks haven't contributed with almost any technical invention.

Race war is not allowed on this site and we've banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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