When compressing with MP3, positive feelings such as 'happiness' and 'romantic' are lost from the sound source

by Oleg Sergeichik

A research paper on the contents that "the sound source is compressed by MP3 , the emotional characteristics of the instrument will change" was announced at Audio Engineering Society (AES), an international organization related to audio by audio engineers and experts . According to this study, MP3 compression deprives viewers of happiness, while on the contrary, sound sources with less influence on emotional characteristics like high resolution sound sources have a positive influence on human happiness.

AES E-Library »The Effects of MP3 Compression on Perceived Emotional Characteristics in Musical Instruments
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18523

MP3s make you less happy, study says | What Hi-Fi?
https://www.whathifi.com/news/mp3s-make-you-less-happy-study-says

According to a paper published by Ronald Mau of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, MP3 and similar low-quality compression format clearly influences the emotional characteristics of the instruments of the instruments being played in the sound source It is clear that it is. The effect of MP3 compression on sound sources is "to strengthen emotional characteristics from neutral to negative, weakening positive ones".

In the survey, we analyze how the emotional characteristics of sound sources change using compressed sound source samples and uncompressed sound source samples with different bit rates of 32 Kbps, 56 Kbps, and 112 Kbps. In the survey, emotional characteristics were classified into ten types of "anger" "embarrassing" "scary" "sad" "happy" "heroic" "romantic" "calm" "comical" "mysterious" It analyzes how it changes for each sound source.

by Tanner Boriack

As a result of the analysis, MP3 compression strengthened negative emotional characteristics such as "mysterious" "embarrassing" "scary" "sad" sound source, positive feelings such as "happiness" "heroism" "romantic" "comical" "calm" It has become clear that weaken the characteristics. On the other hand, it is clear that the emotional characteristics of "anger" are hardly affected by MP3 compression.

Interestingly, it is also clear that the impact of sound source compression depends on instruments. According to the analysis, the instrument most affected by sound source compression is a trumpet, the most unimpacted instrument is horn.

by Robson Hatsukami Morgan

The paper says, "We must emphasize that these results apply to professional headphones at the basic level, and that for higher quality professional headphones, there may be more noticeable difference than the analysis results "I write down. In addition, I guess that jitter caused by envelope amplitude due to MP3 compression reduces positive emotional characteristics and increases negative emotional characteristics. Also, as jitter increases, the spectrum becomes more dynamic, which means non-spectral interference increases.

Especially, it is easy to imagine that if a sound source with bit rate as low as 32 Kbps is compressed by MP3, a beat has been added to the sound, "This will enhance the emotional characteristics of the viewer's" scary "or" mysterious " It is written in the paper.