Show HN: Audio plugin for circuit-bent MP3 compression sounds

Post by userbinator » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:00 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #48

xanderlewis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not confusing those; by popular I simply meant… well, popular. It was what everyone used because it’s what there was. My point was that vinyl, as well as being (1) pleasingly retro and (2) physical rather than existing in the cloud somewhere, also has (3) fundamentally desirable traits as an audio format — ‘analogue warmth’, etc. Bad lossy digital compression has (1) but not (2) or (3). You’re right about vinyl’s…

I always thought an interesting format would have been the plastic disc with a physical track similar to vinyl, but read optically so that it could be a disc that was compact like that other digital format. The loss in fidelity would naturally cause the format to have a charm of its own. Sort of like those old films with an optical audio track that have a distinctive sound.

Post by dylan604 » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:16 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #51

dylan604 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought an interesting format would have been the plastic disc with a physical track similar to vinyl, but read optically so that it could be a disc that was compact like that other digital format. The loss in fidelity would naturally cause the format to have a charm of its own. Sort of like those old films with an optical audio track that have a distinctive sound.

Optical turntables exist.

Post by dr_kiszonka » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:32 AM UTC

Post by nlnn » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 6:00 AM UTC

Post by rob74 » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 10:09 AM UTC

Nition wrote: post #38

0xdada wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting Brian Eno: "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking…

I remember first seeing that quote on a Kotaku article, where they had unfortunately misinterpreted "the crap sound of 8-bit" as referring to retro videogame music made on 8-bit CPUs, rather than (what he was actually referring to) 8-bit audio[0]. [0] i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth