Compression
High fidelity audio hardware became inexpensive faster than data storage media, driving the development of compression techniques.
A popular early variant of pulse-code modulation ("PCM") was a compressed version called adaptive differential pulse-code modulation ("ADPCM").
Sound module files (originally Amiga .MOD files) enabled music to be created and shared via compact files and played back with high quality (using four channels, each at half the sampling rate of audio compact discs). Soon after the release of its Pro AudioSpectrum 16, Media Vision included with it a MOD file player and sample music files.
In the late 1990s, the MP3 format emerged, allowing music to be stored in relatively small files by using high compressions rates through a predictive synthesis technique. Modern computer CD-ROM drives allowed the redbook audio to be read in digital format (versus earlier drives that merely output analog audio), which allows entire volumes of music to be copied and encoded many times faster than normal playback speed.
Read more about this topic: Digital Sound Revolution
Famous quotes containing the word compression:
“Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and that to compress it further can only make it more obscure?”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)