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Unintended Aural Consequences of MP3 Compression
zenst writes "A rather interesting read about possible damage to your hearing due to the way most audio compression techneques work. They mainly work by presenting a signal that the brain perceives to be the same as the original and it is this assumption that could effect our hearing and the way we hear."
I'm downloading 512kbps version songs of my entire library right now to avoid this!
I thought my hearing was going from turing my speakers all the way up.
Mess Stuff Up
Knowing them... they might try giving money to help the military research sonic based weapons and get something to fight those pesky pirates!
Then again I suppose it will also depend on the quality of the speakers, and what frequency range they can properly output (as well as the soundcard and encoded track).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I listen to punk and hardcore music, so I don't think it matters what kinda compression is on my music, my hearing is gonna be lost either way!
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
Tv ruins your brain, mobiles give you cancer, junk food makes you fat, computer monitors ruin your eyes and now they say mp3s cause hearing loss.
Is there anything left that wont slowly kill or mame you over time? They wont be happy until I'm sitting in a darkened padded room eating a liquid only diet.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
The author of the article seems to lack any relevant qualifications, any proof of his ideas, or indeed basic proofreading abilities.
He does say that CDs are overpriced though, so it must be worth posting on Slashdot.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
As a healthcare provider and someone that works at Mayo clinic, this article does not even merit the cursory speed read.
can you hear me now?
It just takes a while...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
The article used jpeg compression on the pictures, I'll never be able to see properly again!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Even a Janitor there would be like an expert on what is or is not quackery.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I believe when MPEG decoders process an MPEG stream they recreate approximations of the sound (rather than leave them out, which is what the author seems to believe). Therefore, listening to MPEG-encoded audio is like listening to a CD with bad speakers. So by this reasoning, Dell and Gateway are slowing killing us all with those horrible speakers they ship with their PCs ;]
Well with all those pictures us geeks are sterotyped as always looking at, we're heading for blindness anyway (along with hairy palms) ;-)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Is this a joke or something? Look at the guy's homepage. He has no real knowledge on the subject of hearing (loss). It's like reading an article by some Linux user on how to pick up women: Totally useless and made up.
This guy is a flake.
Since he used pretty little graphics in the article.
I'm a researcher in the neuromechanomy field, and I have found similar results in my studies. While I am not an expect in neuronomy, my research indicates that people get irritated when you place large pink sunglasses on them. I have found that requiring them to wear pink shoes also leads to irritability. Therefore, I have concluded that the color pink should be banned from all public places, much like smoking is beginning to be.
As a side-note, my neuromechanomy studies have led me to a potentially disastrous discovery: gravity is the leading cause of death. Preliminary studies involving rodents support my theory -- many died within minutes of being placed in a centrifuge. Therefore, I propose that mankind be fitted with antigravity suits, so that life will not be hindered by the harmful effects of gravity. It's amazing how long the human race has survived with a daily, constant exposure of this magnitude.
Really!!
:)
I SWEAR
I'm NOT just pulling this out of my butt. I PROMISE!!!!
...then before electronic sound systems were invented, everyone was deaf. Therefore Beethoven wasn't the only deaf composer, the history books just say he is to make him look good!
...then everybody only heard mono before stereo was invented.
...then there was no math before the Babbage machine. Thus, Pythagoras, Archimedes and Newton are frauds.
...then video game players couldn't hear human voices before the mid 1990s because games didn't have much speech before CD-ROM.
...there is no such thing as depth perception because TV is still 2D. Thus no one is qualified to drive a car, or at least the people who watch TV aren't. Nor are Slashdot readers, I'm afraid.
Calvin and Hobbes has evidence that the same thing happened to color vision:
Calvin: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?
Dad: They sure did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It's just the world was black and white then.
Calvin: Really?
Dad: Yap. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while there, too.
Calvin: That's really weird.
Dad: Well, truth is stranger than fiction.
Calvin: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted it that way?
Dad: Not necessarily, a lot of great artists were insane.
Calvin: But... but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn't their paints have been shades of gray back then?
Dad: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s.
Calvin: So why didn't old black and white photos turn color too?
Dad: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
[Calvin leaves, meets Hobbes]
Calvin: The world is a complicated place, Hobbes.
Hobbes: Whenever it seems that way, I like to nap in a tree and wait for dinner.
That's the masturbation making you go blind, not the jpegs themselves.
You must have missed the bits about the RIAA death squads.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Warning: Pink can be dangerous for health!
I dunno, her last album was okay, the title was a little hard to pronounce but I haven't felt sick yet.
*rimshot*
This effect seems magnified if subjects have been sitting in front of CRT all day reading headline websites and not generally excercising their physical body in any way.
(BTW-Tongue firmly in cheek, no offense meant to these researchers in any way.)
From the webpage cited in the parent post:
When the man artificially gets exposed to a pink viewfield,the same waking archprogram gets executed and sets free stress hormons.If the exposure lasts for a too long time,lots of stress hormons are setted free,causing a similar effect as consuming too much coffee,cigarettes or any other wakening drugs;the man doesn't get waker anymore but feels exhausted and even more weak and ti- red,because this maladjustment of his body cybernetics hinders his brain from cleaning up itself.An exposure to a red viewfield starts a similar,but weaker program,because red appears in the daylight sequence at morning and evening too,but for a longer time.
Just think of the money you'll save! I am still trying to perfect the process of "artificial exposure" to the color pink. Maybe if I change the backgroung color of my code editor from white to pink that will be "artificial exposure". I am not sure what the effects of natural exposure to pink are. Since they are still unknown I suggest that you all avoid any natural pink for now.
Lasers Controlled Games!
This article is obviously written by someone working for the RIAA trying to get people to start listening to CDs and stop listening to MP3s any more.
In fact, the newer formats, such as DSM (SACD), have so many more frequenceis, that listening to these formats will, in fact, improve your hearing. So, everyone, listen to SACDs instead of normal CDs. beecause even CDs may cause brain damage.
Never mind the fact that SACDs are copy-protected 15 different ways, and that our methods for copy-protecting normal CDs have been shown to be ineffective. We want people to listen to SACDs for, well, their hearing.
Again: Do not listen to MP3s! they only damage your hearing (and promote bands which are not approved by us).
- the RIAA
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
By this logic jpegs damage your eyes.. You'll go BLIND... BLIND...BLIND I sez..
Maybe only because what your doing while veiwing those jpegs..
So it must be the author's contention that glaring irony doesn't compress well and so intensive consumption of his infotrash is juuuuust fine.
Scientists have discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
So let me get this straight. It is wrong, evil, BAAAAD, to make copies.
The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. The problem is that I want to make copies. CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V CTRL+V
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Use crappy headphones or speakers and you're guaranteed to get lots of that precious extra noice...
So what if mp3's and HDTV signals are missing some "natural" frequencies from the real world. What percentage of our lives do we spend listening to these signals? I would take this article seriously if people wore soundproof boxes around there heads 100% of the time, and these artificial signals were pumped into their ears constantly. This is not the case, so I have a hard time taking research like this seriously.
Someone should check this guy's funding - I would bet it's from the RIAA!