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Mopping Up on the ‘Sponge’

The article mentions audible “artifacts” in the files recorded on the unit, and attributes them to the 32 kHz sample rate of the device.

While I don’t wish to berate Paul Kaminski, I feel obliged to correct a mistake in the product Short Take for the MiCorder (“Check Out This ‘Audio Sponge,’” Jan. 1).

The article mentions audible “artifacts” in the files recorded on the unit, and attributes them to the 32 kHz sample rate of the device.

It is likely the artifacts mentioned are due to the MP3 encoding used by the unit. At the 128 kbps rate (for stereo) used by the unit, some coding artifacts would be expected. If this is the case, upping the sample rate to 44.1 kHz would serve to make them worse, since this would increase the bitrate of the raw audio, without increasing the bitrate of the output file, resulting in a higher compression ratio.

In order to reduce coding artifacts, one should reduce the compression ratio. Therefore, I would amend Paul’s recommendation to: “It would be even more useful if there were a way to upgrade the machine’s firmware to it could record at a higher bitrate.”

Rolf Taylor
Cleveland

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