fuzzy noise at edges of voices

[VinnieV]

Hello,
Is there a technical term for the "fuzziness" of the voice at the edge of the sound in some of these files? It's not really an echo or a reverb. I'm not sure what it is. Any help explaining or describing or knowing the name of that would be much appreciated!

Thanks.

Vinnie

[davelowe1977]

It's almost certainly due to both distortion from an inexpensive mic caused by breath sounds; or more likely, a result of the high level of compression when the files are converted to mp3s. EMG saves his files as Mpeg layer-3, 32Kbps (Int+MS J-stereo (11025Hz 16Bit Stereo) which is an excellent choice because it is a good compromise between file size and quality. Unfortunately it does mean that a whole top octave of frequency is omitted, but you can still hear the words clearly. If the effect has a specific name, I don't know what it is. I would describe it as "(mp3) compression distortion".

That brings me to one additional thought - there is no reason that i can see why the files (that are not spacially encoded) cannot be mono. They would then be half the size or, which would allow them to be saved with less distortion for the same size. I will suggest this to EMG.

Hope this helps.

[VinnieV]

Actually, if you listen to Goddess Spiral's voice in GS- TrigFreeze, you'll hear what I'm talking about. On some other site, but I don't remember which one, there was an explanation of the hallucinatory quality of the edges of the voice and how it was an effective hypnosis technique. Now, maybe that's not what's happening here - but it sort of sounds like that.

Thanks for the reply.