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How well can you hear audio quality?


Guest petesasqwax

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Guest petesasqwax

 

 

Many listeners cannot hear the difference between uncompressed audio files and MP3s, but when it comes to audio quality, the size of the file isn't (ahem) everything. There are plenty of other ingredients to consider, from the quality of your headphones to the size of the room you're sitting in to, well, your own ears.

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality

 

damn, I only got 2 right!

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I don't think this particular test is very scientific, because "quality" means "the one that sounds best to me" in this case, which isn't a good way to test audio codecs.

 

I picked out the WAV on 3 out of 5 occasions. I skipped the Neil Young one as sample 3 wouldn't play for me. I wouldn't claim that my result was anything more than luck though. In a proper test I would be shocked if anyone from DV could achieve a statistically significant result.

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I got 2 too, though statistically you should get that through chance anyway! I didn't break out the good headphones but I really couldn't tell any difference between them. A long time ago I did something similar for my own amusement with the ogg codec. I felt like once it got below about 128kbps (Q4 I think it was) I might be able to notice, but above that I really couldn't. I'd still rather have 16-bit full wav files though (or lossless equivalent). That might be stupid based on my inability to tell the difference but FUCK Y'ALL.

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That might be stupid based on my inability to tell the difference but FUCK Y'ALL.

Haha. I also have all of my music ripped to FLAC files, even though I'm not claiming that I can hear a difference between FLAC and, say, MP3 at V0. I have ample hard drive space to go lossless, so why not?

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Guest petesasqwax

Hehe - I have loads of music in FLAC but I clearly can't tell the difference either. 320 mp3s is fine for me, really

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even though we can't detect the difference in quality, I think it becomes important when you are producing music and processing the audio. The better the quality, the less shitty the results of lots of processing. I'm sure you all know that already but just in case

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Guest rasteri

I once did a blind test in a club using DnB tracks in 320K mp3 and wav format. You can feel more than hear the difference - we found that on many tracks, the subbass would disappear every time the snare hit in the mp3 version but was constant in the wav version.

 

None of us could tell the difference between 320Ks and wavs in Hiphop or Techno, though.

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I always thought an mp3 just had the bits removed we cant hear as in dog whistles n that???

Also as we age our range of hearable sound diminishes so wen im 65+ ill be hearing everything in 129kbps anyways :)

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i got 4/6 but I was using monster headphones turned up really loud. I feel it was pretty much a lucky guess between the 320k and the highest quality.

 

 

***I just clicked on the link and randomly chose a square for each song and got 6/6, so I guess it is a guessing game.

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