Hear What’s Lost When You Convert to MP3

Ever wondered what audio is removed when you compress to MP3? ’The Ghost in the MP3′ is a track composed exclusively from the remnants of MP3 compression. As it turns out, it’s rather beautiful.
 
Composition and Computer Technologies Ph.D. student Ryan Maguire has made an arty composition using ONLY artifacts removed by MP3 compression.

“moDernisT” was created by salvaging the sounds lost to MP3 compression from the song “Tom’s Diner”, famously used as one of the main controls in the listening tests to develop the MP3 encoding algorithm.

Here we find the form of the song intact, but the details are just remnants of the original. Similarly, the video contains only material which was left behind during MP4 compression.”

MP3 compression removes elements of sound deemed perceptually less important to a song. If you ask, us they’re  rather haunting on their own.

Read more about the project via Ryan’s blog

Hats off to the artists for the concept and video. Very very very cool.

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Rory Seydel is a musician, writer and father who takes pleasure in touring the world and making records. Creative Director at LANDR.

@Rory Seydel