MP3 Research

Note, I did this research during the later half of 1999, and did not take it beyond the pilot stage, however the results are worth presenting, as they challenge the common wisdom on MP3 quality. This HTML version in particular does not make a good translation from the original document, though the final link below does include the illustrations.

Audio Bitrate Reduction: On its psychological basis, the technological implementations, and an empirical test of quality of the MP3 standard.

In this study I examine the psychoacoustic theories which guide the design of lossy sound compression; and the technological underpinnings of lossy bitrate reduction, with specific attention paid to the MP3 standard. I also present the methods and results of two pilot experiments that judge the effectiveness of MP3 technology at compressing audio without perceptible quality loss.

Or, The Whole Thing as one big file (With Illustrations) Looks best in IE, as it was created from a MS-WORD document.

Also, other links about the technical basis of MP3s and lossy audio compression.

Update: it has come to light that there are several typo's in the version that made it up online. I'm planning to convert the entire document into native/native HTML, at which point a smoothed over version of the text will be presented.