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Comment by muricula | Hacker News Reader

I think the audio quality gives this recording character. What could be more cyberpunk than hearing the quirky artifacts resulting from ripping an obsolete recording medium?

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No I know but I mean it has actual mp3 encoding errors because the files are getting corrupted over time lol, like it's an issue in the storage medium not the original analog-to-digital conversion :(

Examples in the following file http://bearcave.com/bookrev/neuromancer/Tape1a.mp3 :

0:40, 1:04, 1:13, 1:21, 2:18 ... I mean.. the files are basically ruined :\

A little embarrassing when the 1970s technology is better than the 1990s.

‘Worse is better’ in effect. MP3 trades quality for convenience.

Edit: I read above that these particular MP3s are corrupted, so they have a serious enjoyability issue.

That's the point. CDs have error correction to handle corruption. MP3 has nothing. A complete downgrade in robustness.

With an advantage in compactness that makes them easier to distribute. That trade off is their point.

That wasn't the MPEG design goal. It was to stream video through a distribution network where dropouts would be tolerated as part of doing business. People were accustomed to snowy analog broadcast video. That is more disruptive when listening to purely audio. This is incidentally why CDs had their error handling significantly improved over Phillips' original prototype which would have been much more susceptible to scratches if commercialized.

I was about to say, feels more of its time...

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