Reddit reviews Principles of Digital Audio, Sixth Edition (Digital Video/Audio)

The article reflects a fundamental misunderstanding on the author's part of how perceptual coding works.

The author talks about compression, but compression is different from how formats like ADPCM work (by throttling word length to correspond with relative changes in amplitude) or AAC which uses a variety of perceptual coding techniques to both truncate data and eliminate unnecessary data that represents imperceptible audio, with improved decoding algorithms that can reconstruct the perceptible portion of the analogue waveform during playback.

To date, no battery of controlled, double-blinded tests published in peer reviewed studies have yielded statistically significant results showing a common ability to distinguish between, say 256 Kbps AAC and 16-bit stereo LPCM (CD Digital Audio "Red Book" spec).

Anyone interested in the technical aspects of digital audio encoding/transcoding should read Ken Pohlmann's Principles of Digital Audio, arguably the audio engineer's bible on this subject.

This is typically something one goes to school for. Most skilled mastering engineers studied music production on some level.

I've done some audio production work myself, including a couple professional mastering credits. I'd be glad to kind of one-on-one if you want to PM me... Outside of getting a degree in music production/audio engineering, this is still more than a "here's some links and you're good" kind of discussion.

That said, a starting point in today's world would be at the very beginning... understanding the fundamentals of digital audio. There I would encourage reading what's widely regarded as the Bible of digital audio, Pohlmann's Principles of Digital Audio.

It's got little if anything to do with mastering, but it's a very important primer in gaining a stronger understanding of the medium you'd be working in, and from there you can build a foundation to learning proper mastering technique.

The quick and dirty

A more in depth look

I had a professor in college write the book we used for one of our courses. Near the end of a semester, he warned us all that the syllabus for next semester was going to recomend the just-released version but that if we happened to already have the current one (cough cough) he would just email us the revisions.

Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlman. Worth every penny.
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Digital-Audio-Sixth-Edition/dp/0071663460/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398261513&sr=8-1&keywords=Principles+of+digital+audio

EDIT: Not a partner link. I don't make money if you click.

P.S. This book changed my life.