Stegno and DAT and digital music...

[Peter Wayner <pcw@access.digex.net>]

In this week's Sunday NYT, Hans Fantel, their music guy, writes
at length about the new "dithered" CD's and how the guys have
improved the sound. He says that the original CD format was
limited to 16 bits of sound because of costs. But many audiophiles
reacted very negatively to the tinny, metalic quality to the music.
For this reason, the companies have developed 20 bit DAT recording
tape and then come up with ways to "dither" this into 16 bits. 

I am curious if anyone knows the details of these algorithms. 

Also, his point suggests that flipping the least significant 
bit of 16 bit music may not be imperceptable to some ears. If
the classical music starts to sound tinny then there might be
something subversive in the least significant bits. 

-Peter Wayner