Tweet (#1812383865)

Depressing but true: old Amiga chiptunes often sound better stereo-merged and compressed.http://twitter.com/beschizza/statuses/1812383865

1. [therevengor]

   Wait, were you using your power conditioner?

   How many maple blocks were involved?

2. [JT Montreal]

   Been there, done that. Put recordings from my OctaMED (three cheers for Teijo!) collection onto my iPod, from my A3000 into a Powerbook, then post-processed with Audacity.

   For good results I mixed 20% cross-channel. The fact that compression makes it sound better is not very surprising. Partially the effect is a form of dither: spreading the 8-bit quantization noise (of each channel) into the transform coding noise of AAC or mp3.

   There has also been a shift in what types of noise people are willing to accept these days, and depressingly, the “quantized MDCT” noise is now considered normal. Just like the pop and crackle was once acceptable, then the faint tape hiss.