1,000 times smaller than MP3 Page: 1

1,000 times smaller than MP3

Some very clever people at the University of Rochester, New York have reproduced audio in a format which is 1000 times smaller than MP3. The final file size for a 20second clip is less than 1kilobyte, this file size was achieved by recreating the physics of a clarinet and the clarinet  player on a computer. The sound itself was not recorded at all, just reproduced.

"This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music," said Mark Bocko, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and co-creator of the technology. "Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn't really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music."

 

A nice new idea for digital audio, but it will be a long time before this comes into our hands. Discuss on our Forums.