While Microsoft publishes changelogs and notes about the improvements and changes it announces in new builds and OS updates, sometimes there are many unannounced changes as well. And on rare occasions, these changes actually reduce the quality of some things rather than increase them.
In July last year, it was revealed that Microsoft had quietly lowered the quality of the startup sound on Windows 11 22H2. Depending on the compression algorithm used, be it Huffman or Arithmetic or something else, the difference may or may not be noticeable even though it was a substantial reduction in bit rate.
Similarly, around the same time, Microsoft also seems to have tweaked and toned down the Windows 11 Out of Box Experience (OOBE) animation. This time, unlike the startup sound, the difference is probably noticeable as the animation’s frame rate has dropped from 60 fps to just 30 fps.
As you can see in the image above, apart from the framerate, the data rate has also been reduced by almost two and a half times from 1914 Kbps to 741 Kbps. The overall bit rate has been reduced from 2235 Kbps to 1063 Kbps. There is no change in audio fidelity though.
Source: Xeno (Twitter)
