RE: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music

[James Lowe]

Hello,

)-----Original Message-----
)From: address@hidden
)[mailto:address@hidden On
)Behalf Of Kieren MacMillan
)Sent: 18 March 2011 11:15
)To: Graham Percival
)Cc: address@hidden
)Subject: Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
)
) ...  -- and recent studies on youth support my belief with
)evidence. On the music side, consider the fact that recent studies have
)shown a majority of young people prefer the sound of compressed audio
)(e.g., low- to medium-bitrate MP3s) to uncompressed audio. [Pause here
)to fully appreciate the horror of that statement.]

do you have any reference to those recent studies?

Not being inflammatory but am genuinely interested. My own anecdotal evidence 
is that it depends on the 'depth' and how much you 'study' music as a 
profession or significant hobby (i.e. amateur conductor/composer) about the 
quality of the output vs the construction of the melody/music itself. That is 
it doesn't matter if the music is buzzing out of a tinny radio or £5,000 pound 
speakers to them, let alone worry about bit rates./compression and whatever it 
is they do to make everything loud (equalize?).

Anyway my point is that I think psychologically in this case it DOES matter 
what the content is and the fact is some types of music suffer far less with 
compression than others - to generalise, music that has a lot of quiet parts 
'suffers' far more from the music that has a constant volume where overall 
volume/dynamics are less important.

Also I expect that you'd notice less compression in a piece of music if you 
were very familiar with it simply because your brain would 'fill in' the 'gaps' 
and compensate for the compression 'failings'.

James