Prior to the digital audio revolution, digitally encoded audio music did not exist. Audio was recorded and frequencies transferred into the audio media through a physical process. Electrical pulses were generated through a recording device and captured onto a recording media. Eventually, magnetic tape was used and remained the primary storage device for decades. From that tape, masters were created and the music was pressed and formed into vinyl. Music was mechanical.
Once the digital revolution occurred, music became a series of 1s and 0s. Determining the number of 1s and 0s necessary to capture audio was a matter of major discussion. After reflection and a number of bitter arguments, the decision of 44,100 samples of a 16bit value over both left and right channels was decided as sufficient to capture the very essence of music. That means for each second of music recorded, the media must store 176.4KB of data. That was an enormous amount of information back in the early 1980s. What was needed was a distribution model that could easily store, move, and playback that data. Compact disks (CDs) with their ability to store massive amounts of data were selected to distribute this music and the digital music revolution was born.
While digital music was being invented, another technology not associated to it at all was already thriving. Initially paid for by the US government, the internet provided universities the ability to communicate information between staff, students, and each other. While slow and technical, data traveled reliably between groups. During the 1990s, the untapped capability of the internet was harnessed. With that, people began to use this technology by the thousands. E-mail, HTML, and FTP became the buzz words of industry and spawned its own revolution: the Information age. Everyone wanted the internet and wanted to push its limits even further.
During the early 1990s, these two technologies were stable and available to the masses. What happened next formed the internet music revolution. By thispoint, music had been sold commercially on CDs for approximately 10 years and the ability to play them on their computer was now becoming available. With music now accessible as data on their computers, industrious programmers began to tear data from the CDs and place it onto their computers like any other data device. The problem became what to do with all this data?
Sharing data was core to the internet. People wanted the ability to share this data over the internet (like other data) but bandwidth limitations and excessively large file sizes deterred them from this ability. The last essential piece to spark the revolution was a compression algorithm. Different lossless compression algorithms already existed and were attempted but they couldn’t compress the data enough. Lossy compression algorithms (compression algorithms that attempt to remove data that does not affect the overall object) were necessary. It was the application of lossy compression algorithms to digital music that reduced the file sizes enough to make transference possible. That final piece sparked file sharing and with it, the internet music revolution came into being. And with that revolution, the proliferation of music has been rampant.
Today, lossy compressed music is everywhere. People can now encode their CDs with any number of lossy formats. People have lossy music libraries on their computers that total over 1,000 songs. New portable playing devices have been created to download these files and play these formats everywhere. Even radio stations currently broadcast their content using lossy compression over the internet for the world to hear. This revolution has caused one major effect: the proliferation of lower-quality music.
Today, consumers are recognizing that high fidelity was the price they paid for portability and are looking for ways to improve their music. They are unwilling to go back to their CDs and recreate their lossy library. They simply want better music without more data and they want it now: what they want is SoundXciter. The patent-pending engine is capable to increasing the fidelity by re-inserting information lost during the lossy encoding process giving the user better sound without more data. SoundXciter breaks the rules and solves the problem. And with that, the internet music revolution may never be the same.
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