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I read somewhere that Tom's Diner is used for lossy audio codec evaluations because it is a clear, strong a capella voice. It's been said that humans are sensitive to even minor distortions in vocal quality. You can sing a capella in any language, and it is not limited to western music. Sorry, I don't have references to offer.

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The line "I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice", a quote from MP3 author Karlheinz Brandenburg, first appeared in the article 'Ich Bin Ein Paradigm Shifter' [1] by Hilmar Schmundt, published June 2000 in the magazine eCompany Now, a year before that magazine merged with its rival Business 2.0.

(The Wikipedia article on Tom's Diner says anachronistically that the quote appeared in Business 2.0 magazine. This has been present on the page since the very first revision [2].)

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20001003052745/http://www.ecompan...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tom%27s_Diner&old...

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