

A quest by researchers at the University of Rochester resulted in a 20-second clarinet solo being compressed into less than a single kilobyte of data – nearly 1,000 times smaller than a standard MP3 representing the same audio.

We obtained permission to post the results. They're available as WAV files for easy comparison.

Here's the what the clarinet solo sounds like as an MP3.

And here's the Rochester researchers' sub-1KB file of the same sound.

In order to get this done, they created a model of the clarinetitself – essentially replicating each aspect of the sound ratherthan creating thousands of digital samples from a performance of it. The resulting file occupiesless than a kilobyte despite including all of the audio materials. By comparison, the same clarinet sample would occupy 32KB

as a MIDI file.

This just doesn't seem possible. In addition, the timing of thepress release (April 1) left a few people confused about whether the technology is real. But it is, as I confirmed with a representative of the University of Rochester on Friday.

"This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music,"

said professor Mark Bocko (electrical and computer engineering).

"Humans can manipulate their tongue,

breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn't really haveto measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on aCD."

The technique could eventually be used to model the human voice, giving device makers an efficient way to include speech engines. There are countless potential applications for hyper-efficient audio representation, from wireless transmission to talking toys.

It may not be possible to compress a clarinet solo any tighter. Bocko said, "I think we may have found the absolute least amount ofdata needed to reproduce a piece of music."

Bocko believes the technology will continue to improve as acoustic measurement and the resulting algorithms become more accurate.

"Maybe the future of music recording lies in reproducing performers and not recording them," he said.

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