Where the name comes from

In 2005 MBC aired a special called “The Sound of Life” about the difference between compressed audio and the original recording. MamaTalk’s subtitle, Sound of Life, comes from there.

We do not quote the numbers from that programme

The question it raised moved us, but the measurements shown in it are not peer-reviewed research. Neither the sample size nor a control group was published, and reading a fetus’s expression by eye tends to produce the expected result once you know which recording is playing.

So we do not use those numbers in our marketing. We say only what is certain instead.

What we can say for certain

1. Lossy compression discards part of the original. That is what the word means.
2. YouTube re-compresses the audio no matter what file you upload.
3. MamaTalk sends the uncompressed original as it is. 44.1kHz · 16-bit · uncompressed WAV.
4. Discarded data does not come back.

All four are definitions, facts, or product specifications. They claim no effect, so nothing needs proving. Instead of saying “this is better”, we say “nothing is thrown away”.

Five minutes of jeongak after the story

When the story ends, five minutes of jeongak (正樂) play. It is the music of the court and the scholars — little change in tempo, a narrow dynamic range, an even breath. Playback speed does not apply here. The performance always runs at its recorded speed. To hear only this part, without the narration, press court music only on the player screen.

Which of these sounds we made ourselves

It is all jeongak, but two different things are mixed in. The 30-second intro and the music behind the story were built note by note from single notes and phrases the National Gugak Center released openly, following the rhythmic cycles, scales, and instrumentation of jeongak. No melody of any particular piece was copied.

The three jeongak pieces in the outro are not ours — they are recordings of performances, used as they are. Four minutes 24 seconds of the five are the pieces below; only the remaining 40 seconds were made the way described above.

1. Suyeonjang-jigok · geomungo (1 min 11 s)
2. Taryeong from Yeongsanhoesang · gayageum (2 min 6 s)
3. Taryeong from Junggwang-jigok · daegeum (1 min 12 s)

Source — openly licensed recordings from the National Gugak Center. Either way, they are sent losslessly, with no compression.

We make no claim about what listening does. We only tell you which sounds we send, and in what condition.