Do Minidiscs and CDs sound better than VQFs or MP3s?
Yes they do! CDs store sound in uncompressed PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) format in 16 bit 44.1 kHz. This means that 44100 samples of sound are taken per second, each of which can have 2 (to the 16) values = 65536. The new Super CD format made by Sony use a technique called DSM (Direct Sound Modulation), to record sound. I don’t know whether this sounds better but reports say it far better! The rival DVD Audio format stores sound in 24 bit 96 kHz. This results in far superior dynamics, so you can hear very quiet and very loud instruments very well. Most soundcards function say they can record and play audio at 16 bit 44.1 kHz. In practise however, they will usually be recording audio at 13 or 14 bits. Minidiscs are smaller than CDs. It is therefore necessary for them to use compression to store sound in this smaller space. The compression used by Minidiscs is known as ATRAC and is currently in its fifth generation (the sixth generation is on its way). The early forms of ATRAC were very
