This site is meant to be a reference guide for various types of audio artifacts that are created as part of the data compression process for audio files. Coming to light alongside the invention of MP3, perceptual encoding can sometimes create audible artifacts and distortions in an audio stream that manifest in different ways. Learning to identify what these different artifacts sound like is crucial to identifying how to alter your compression settings to improve fidelity.
The goal here is to provide a clean audio stream in wav format, a clean & compressed audio stream in mp3, and an mp3 audio stream with the artifact in question. We will also provide screenshots from iZotope RX to give a visual reference for what is occurring. Lastly, we will offer suggestions on how to fix these issues with your encoding settings.
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