Lossy or lossless, can you tell....FIGHT :)

ICBM

2/6 - Neil Young and Suzanne Vega, possibly unsurprisingly. On my usual background listening system at fairly low volume I not only could barely hear any difference, on 3 of the others I picked the 128 - although I couldn't hear any difference on the Jay-Z one, that was just a guess.

That might be because I usually listen to mp3s at that rate on that system, possibly - I may be somehow 'tuned in' to it. Or at low volume it might actually sound better compressed, perhaps...

If I can be bothered I'll stream it to my proper hi-fi at some point when I've forgotten which answer is which. I'm fairly sure I can tell the difference between CD and mp3 on that.

I tend to find the musical content more important anyway.

Sporky

Rocker said:

You would need to download the test to your computer, feed the output to a decent DAC and listen through your hi-fi or quality headphones.

Why?

The interesting thing about this, to me, is whether you can hear the difference using the system you normally use to listen to music.

And I'll put up 50p and a chunky kitkat that actually you can't reliably tell 320kbps MP3 from WAV or FLAC in a well conducted test.

Clarky

Sporky said:

Rocker said:

You would need to download the test to your computer, feed the output to a decent DAC and listen through your hi-fi or quality headphones.

Why?

The interesting thing about this, to me, is whether you can hear the difference using the system you normally use to listen to music.

And I'll put up 50p and a chunky kitkat that actually you can't reliably tell 320kbps MP3 from WAV or FLAC in a well conducted test.

I reckon you will win the 50p and kitkat

duotone

Got 3/6 this time around.  

Had another go with the iPad and an old pair of Sennheiser HD590 headphones

Suzanne vega , Coldplay & Jay z were the ones I got right

olafgarten

I got 6/6 through my Presonus Eris 4.5, a couple were guesses though. I'd probably do better with headphones. 

With a lot of songs I can't actually tell the difference but I find that quality is most important on Live Recordings. 

littlegreenman

Rocker said:

You would need to download the test to your computer, feed the output to a decent DAC and listen through your hi-fi or quality headphones. If I at 60 going on 61 can easily tell the difference between WAV and FLAC files of the same piece of music... So don't use age as a reason for getting a poor result in that test. If you can hear that a string or two on your guitar is slightly out of tune, your hearing is good enough. The technology is letting you down and not your hearing.

Ah yes, but without being told, can you tell anyone which is which as opposed to merely being able to discern a difference?That part's pretty important.

An ability to hear the difference in pitch between guitar strings is called "playing the guitar and not being deaf".

@Rocker, will you never let it lay down and die? Double blind or it's all me arse and never once do you volunteer...

ThePrettyDamned

The question is, can you still enjoy it if you can tell?  

I think even a moderate quality mp3 is good enough to enjoy the song, although you can tell mp3 files don't sound as good as others. 

With that said, is it because they're not mixed for mp3? Is it possible that we can learn to mix for a format better? 

With higher quality compression formats, I'd imagine they throw away the very high and very low, mostly the very high as we are unable to detect it. So even if there is a difference, I doubt it is anything worth actually worrying about. Your fans will either like your music or they won't. 

TheBigDipper

ThePrettyDamned said:

The question is, can you still enjoy it if you can tell?  

I think even a moderate quality mp3 is good enough to enjoy the song, although you can tell mp3 files don't sound as good as others. 

With that said, is it because they're not mixed for mp3? Is it possible that we can learn to mix for a format better? 

With higher quality compression formats, I'd imagine they throw away the very high and very low, mostly the very high as we are unable to detect it. So even if there is a difference, I doubt it is anything worth actually worrying about. Your fans will either like your music or they won't. 

This. If you can't hear the difference between two different files storing (and maybe compressing the data within to reduce file sizes) the same source recording, but still enjoy either, then surely it doesn't matter. 

That said, a decent hifi is wonderful thing, and brings out all sorts of sounds hidden within the source file that you might never hear on lower quality systems or with lower quality file formats. When you start cutting out data to compress a file you can lose entire instruments or voices that aren't part of the core song but make the listening experience more enjoyable.

If the artist created it, I want to hear it. 

ThePrettyDamned

TheBigDipper said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

The question is, can you still enjoy it if you can tell?  

I think even a moderate quality mp3 is good enough to enjoy the song, although you can tell mp3 files don't sound as good as others. 

With that said, is it because they're not mixed for mp3? Is it possible that we can learn to mix for a format better? 

With higher quality compression formats, I'd imagine they throw away the very high and very low, mostly the very high as we are unable to detect it. So even if there is a difference, I doubt it is anything worth actually worrying about. Your fans will either like your music or they won't. 

This. If you can't hear the difference between two different files storing (and maybe compressing the data within to reduce file sizes) the same source recording, but still enjoy either, then surely it doesn't matter. 

That said, a decent hifi is wonderful thing, and brings out all sorts of sounds hidden within the source file that you might never hear on lower quality systems or with lower quality file formats. When you start cutting out data to compress a file you can lose entire instruments or voices that aren't part of the core song but make the listening experience more enjoyable.

If the artist created it, I want to hear it. 

Then if you want to hear it as it was created, surely flat studio monitors will reveal all? 

I remember listening to a remaster of dark side of the moon and it had more detail and more audible instruments. Sounded wrong to me - I'd heard it on vinyl then cd (which sounded pretty much the same). 

But then maybe lots of people prefer the remaster. So does it actually matter? 

olafgarten

No matter what disagreements we have, I think we can all agree that anything above CD quality (44.1KHz) is a waste and no human can tell the difference. 

ICBM

olafgarten said:

No matter what disagreements we have, I think we can all agree that anything above CD quality (44.1KHz) is a waste and no human can tell the difference. 

Some will disagree!

In fact, it's worse than that - it would be actively counterproductive. This is old but worth reading… by someone who really knows about this stuff:

https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

(NB despite the link title it's not actually *by* Neil Young .)

Deijavoo

4/6 using my phone loudspeakers. Picked 320 on the wrong ones.