Full video

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i am sitting in the morning i think i

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listened to tom steiner probably 500

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times a thousand times

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3 000 times i don't recall

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but awful

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tom steiner was important for us in

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creating mp3 because it sounded so bad

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when we first coded it

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[Music]

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this is one of susan vega's most famous

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songs

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tom's diner

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and it helped create the mp3 the audio

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format that basically killed the cd

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but who's better to show us how an

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acapella track led to the rise of online

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music sharing than the guy who created

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it

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my name is carl heinz gruntenberg most

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people know me from my involvement in

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the invention and development of mp3 so

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in fact some people call me the father

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of mp3

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back in the 1980s carl hines was part of

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a team working to develop a way to

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compress music while still keeping its

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high quality something that seemed

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impossible at the time speech coding was

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already well established

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but if you try to code music with such a

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speech coding algorithm it just sounded

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horrible then one day i saw an article

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where they discussed different

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loudspeakers and how they tested them

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they tested it with the acapella piece

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tom steiner from ccd

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so carl hines and his team decided to

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use the same song to test their latest

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compression algorithm but when they did

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we managed to destroy susan vega's voice

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let's see if you notice the difference i

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am sitting in the morning at the diner

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on the corner i am sitting in the

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morning at the diner on the corner

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while their algorithm had worked well

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for most instruments there was one sound

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it hadn't solved yet

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the human voice they soon realized if

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they could maintain audio quality on a

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compressed version of susan's warm

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vocals then they could compress any

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music track

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and turn out to

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for the next i think a year or so to be

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a major headache to us

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after some tweaks here and there they

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tuned up their algorithm and the mp3 was

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born

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for us when mp3 exploded and we found it

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was one of the

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most searched for terms on the internet

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it was great finally we've done it

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[Music]

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and in fact that feeling goes until

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today that sometimes i have to say is

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that really true

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if we look at mp3 and today's world of

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digital audio

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uh we have a simple saying mp3 works

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everywhere

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so the next time you stream a song

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remember to thank susan vega and carl

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hines the mother and father of the mp3

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[Music]

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you