How many songs can you fit in your pocket?

Here's a fascinating advance for the digital world...

Researchers at the University of Rochester have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than the conventional MP3 file.

The research team of Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-creator of the technology, along with doctoral students Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling, encoded a 20-second clarinet solo in less than a single kilobyte.

In doing so, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling worked with Bocko to measure every aspect of a clarinet that affects its sound—mouthpiece, fingering, how the sound radiates from the instrument, and so on, and then they built a computer model of the clarinet.

You can decide for yourself as to how good a job they did by comparing this human performance recorded using MP3 format with this virtual performance using Bocko's new compression.

So far, their method supports only a single instrument, but the engineering team is collaborating with musicians to extend the format.

It's just a matter of time before we can carry a complete set of encyclopedias in our pocket—I spoke too late. We can do that already!