How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality? -

[RichardMongler]

It's not every day I would link to NPR, but this is an interesting article from a few years back:

How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?

A hi-def test for your ears (and your audio equipment): Listen to these songs and see if you can tell the difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed audio file.

www.npr.org

Do you have audiophile headphones or a setup built for quality audio? Can you earnestly distinguish between lossless (flac) / uncompressed audio (wav) and 320kpbs (mp3 / m4a)? Are you still young enough for your ears to detect it?

Even with audiophile headphones, I only got the first one right and that might've been beginner's luck. The rest I kept fucking up. Obviously, 128kbps and lower sound much worse than anything with a higher bitrate mp3, but depending on the music, I really can't hear the difference between lossless and a high bitrate mp3 / m4a.

As a guy who listens to a lot of aggressive heavy music with quite a collection of lossless audio kicking around, I find the guitars don't sound much different at higher bitrates, but the biggest audible difference for me is the "fullness" of the bass for lack of better word. Bass at uncompressed audio or 320kbps sounds much more palpable whereas lower bitrates sound considerably flatter.

 

[mr.moon1488]

I honestly can hardly tell the difference, but then again my hearing is awful.

 

[Shroom King]

The reason to use lossless audio is to ensure gapless playback. While you might not be able to tell the difference between FLAC and mp3, you will notice the split-second pause between tracks if you are playing the mp3 version of an album where all the songs run together like The Wall.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

This is kind of a gimmicky quiz since 320 kbps MP3 is statistically transparent to uncompressed WAV or lossless. It's also hard to tell the difference even between 128 kbps and WAV with certain types of music, or when you're listening to songs you aren't familiar with or you aren't paying much attention because you're distracted by how much you hate the song (fuck Coldplay)

The reason to use lossless audio is to ensure gapless playback. While you might not be able to tell the difference between FLAC and mp3, you will notice the split-second pause between tracks if you are playing the mp3 version of an album where all the songs run together like The Wall.

Lossless compression makes it easier to support gapless playback but it's not impossible to do with lossy compression. The Lame MP3 encoder has had support for gapless encoding for a while. Vorbis and Opus can do it as well.

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

I find it's more noticeable with genres full of smug assholes: jazz and classical music, when there's more "stuff" going on in the background.

 

[Toolbox]

The real issue is when there's terrible audio mixing. Otherwise you can't tell.

 

[jditer1987]

Depends on how well the audio was produced. If it's complex / layered in design then yes a subtle difference is noticeable, as if it sounds "more detailed" at higher qualities.

 

[All Cops Are Based]

Maybe a little bit (although it may or may not be placebo, I can never really tell for sure). But not enough to rip all my stuff high quality and only be able to carry a fraction of what I have on my flash drive in the car.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

A little yes, sometimes I can hear things that I otherwise wouldn't be able to at lower bitrates and qualities.

 

[Henry Bemis]

I honestly can hardly tell the difference, but then again my hearing is awful.

What?

 

[qu_rahn]

It's not every day I would link to NPR, but this is an interesting article from a few years back:

How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?

A hi-def test for your ears (and your audio equipment): Listen to these songs and see if you can tell the difference between an MP3 and an uncompressed audio file.

www.npr.org

>Using There's a World for a Neil Young sample

Literally his worst song haha. Journalists are fuckin retards. I would put the whole Landing on Water album on repeat over listening to that track even once

 

[Shroom King]

Lossless compression makes it easier to support gapless playback but it's not impossible to do with lossy compression. The Lame MP3 encoder has had support for gapless encoding for a while. Vorbis and Opus can do it as well.

Gapless playback with lossy formats has been extremely hit-and-miss for me. For example:

Pink Floyd the Wall in mp3 ran gaplessly in Windows Media Player yet had gaps in Itunes.
Led Zeppelin's Song Remains the Same in mp3 ran gaplessly in Itunes but had gaps in Windows Media Player.