Why is D unpopular?

[Guillaume Piolat]

On Monday, 2 May 2022 at 08:52:06 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
>
>  (But as I said, by the late 90s, such artifacts was becoming 
> the norm in commercial music. House music pushed the sound of 
> popular music in a that direction throughout the 90s.)

Sometimes artifacts sound "good", be it for cultural or 
"objective" reason.

Many small delays can help a voice "fit in the mix", and spectral 
leakage in a phase vocoder do just that. So some may want to come 
through a STFT process just for the sound of leakage, that makes 
a voice sound "processed" (even without pitch change). Why? 
Because in a live performance, you would have those delays 
because of mic leakage.

It is also true of the artifacts that leads to reduced dynamics 
(such as phase misalignment in a phase vocoder). Didn't like 
those annoying vocal dynamics? Here is less of them, as a 
side-effect.

The phase-shift in oversampling? It can make drums sound more 
processed by delaying the basses, again. To the point people use 
oversampling for processors that only add minimal aliasing.

Plus in the 2020s, anything with the sound of a popular codec is 
going to sound "good" because it's the sound of streaming.