If texting has taught us anything, it’s that people can quickly figure out abbreviated, misspelled, or otherwise mutilated words pretty quickly. But more impressively, our brains automatically fill in the gaps and omissions, which is also what happens when we listen to compressed music.  Because in order to shrink a file, you need to throw things out, which was exactly the breakthrough of the MP3.

Or, “breakthrough,” according to many sound engineers who feel we’ve lost a great deal in digital.  Here’s a presentation given Saturday morning by Andrew Scheps at the Grammy futureNOW symposium in Los Angeles.  Scheps has engineered and mixed for bands like Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, and U2, among others.

The first is a visual representation of what a high-quality, master recording might look like, if expressed in written form.

See the rest after the jump!-Digital Music News