Do you like being able to carry an entire library of music on your phone? There's a price to pay for that convenience in sound quality, say engineers, and a new study has identified just what characteristics of music you miss out on by listening to compressed music files.
In a nutshell, moody, mysterious and negative tones persist, while positive, "happier" tones are the ones that get trimmed.
"According to our results, MP3 compression strengthened neutral and negative emotional characteristics, and weakened positive emotional characteristics in musical instrument sounds," Ron Mo of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology told Seeker in an email....Read More