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Essay about Digital Audio Format Comparison

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INTRODUCTION

Digital media is taking over, literally. It already took over the music industry, and on February 17, 2009 it will conquer broadcast television by congressional mandate. Many digital media consumers are bewildered by an abundance of confusing terms and trapped by digital media’s overwhelming market share. This paper will attempt to shed some light on the inner workings of this enigma by explaining why audio compression is used, and comparing the most common digital audio codecs used in online music sales.

AUDIO COMPRESSION BASICS

Programs that compress are called encoders, and programs that decompress are referred to as decoders. The acronym codec stands for compression and decompression. Almost all audio …show more content…

However, scientific studies must be more rigorous.
The ABX Test

An ABX test is a double-blind test (both the proctor and the examinee do not know which sample is which) used to determine whether the difference between two samples is discernable. Steven Hill and Rod Elliot provide a fairly concise summary:

“An ABX test allows the listener to select either A or B as many times as they like, and ultimately decide which of these is X, where X is randomly selected by the equipment to be either A or B, and the responses are logged for correlation when the test is complete.”

To clarify the quote above, imagine 3 glasses: one has bottled water (A), one has tap water (B), and a third unlabeled one that is either bottled or tap water (X); Your job is to try all three as many times as necessary to determine whether X is A or B. Repeat this with a large, random sample and you have a decent ABX test.

Digital Audio Jargon

Common terms used to describe audio files are:
• Bit rate or Bitrate: the number of bits used to represent the sample per second (there are 8 bits in a byte).
• Sampling rate: indicates the number of times per second original audio data was collected (sampled). Common sampling rates are 44,100 samples per second (Hz) for CD audio, 48,000 Hz for DVD movies and 96,000 to 192,000 Hz for DVD audio (DVDA).
• Digital Rights Management (DRM): Is a method

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