Can you hear the difference?

I got 4/6 with a pair of ATH M50 headphones straight to my HP laptop. I don't think that's statistically significant.

Interestingly, I never missed by guessing the lowest quality (128 kbps).

drumminman wrote: »

Haven't done that test, but I can easily hear the difference between a CD recorded as an MPS and one recorded lossless from a redbook.

Same here.....though I'm not as picky for just background music.

steveinaz wrote: »

Why would anyone compress with hard drive realestate so cheap? I didn't get into "Hi-Fi" 37yrs ago to listen to compressed music.

Agree 100%. You can get a 2TB portable external drive for like 50 bucks now.

falconcry72 wrote: »

steveinaz wrote: »

Why would anyone compress with hard drive realestate so cheap? I didn't get into "Hi-Fi" 37yrs ago to listen to compressed music.

Agree 100%. You can get a 2TB portable external drive for like 50 bucks now.

True, but you can't carry it around with you.

Lets face it, the going trend is portable and portable has it's space limits. Add to that the need for people to, god knows why too, to have thousands of songs on their portables and you can understand the need for compression.

Other than that, for serious listening, I see no reason to compress anything except the Panini I'm going to chow down on.

I took the test three times and never got more than three right. I used my Polk Buckle headphones through my pc first, then from the onkyo integrated streamed from airfoil using using its Wolfson DAC, and finally from the pc's line out straight to the Onkyo bypassing it's DAC. During the final test, however, the right channel of my Polk Buckles give up the ghost. Only nine months old too, poor thing

BlueFox wrote: »

steveinaz wrote: »

Why would anyone compress with hard drive realestate so cheap? I didn't get into "Hi-Fi" 37yrs ago to listen to compressed music.

There is nothing wrong with compression as long as it is lossless. Waste not, want not, is my feeling. With FLAC and ALAC I turn my 500GB into almost 1TB, and my 1TB into almost 2TB. The extra space allows me to have more songs on each drive, which is especially nice when downloading DSD files which cannot be compressed.

+1. I bet Steve was referencing lossy compression methods. I remember when SHN (shorten) first came out... it was revolutionary. FLAC is of course better though.

oooh, good stuff. I've been wanting to try some "blind tests".

took a quick stab at this at my office computer with Bose TP-1A headphones, which I typically enjoy overall, connected to 3.5mm headphone port on the computer with SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio, a Dell workstation standard, I think.

I got 4 out of 6. almost had 5, but changed my mind on one.

with some of these pieces, I was able to more confidently detect what I thought sounded better. others were more difficult. I have to admit, the differences were pretty subtle in most cases, and I feel like I was guessing, mostly. I have to acknowledge my hardware limitations here, and wonder how it would be with a DAC/headphone amp, and more revealing headphones. I listened for fullness, mostly, to try to ID better the better quality samples, and for crunchy emptiness, mostly, to try to ID the lower quality streams.

on my home gear, I can tell a difference a bit more readily sometimes. Almost all of my listening is through streaming services. some are lower quality streams - 128K, while others are higher quality, up to 320K. I think these are all either VBR or CBR. as noted above, for background listening, I don't really pay much attention. for relax music sessions, though, I do prefer a more moderate/relaxed volume and fuller sound, and I enjoy what is, for me currently, a somewhat subtle to noticeable improvement in quality that makes the session just that much more of an enjoyable experience.

one of the other things that sucks about streaming services is the apparent dB cut sometimes? with the Squeezebox, once can view the stream statistics, and sometimes, say with Pandora for example, there can be upto a 5dB cut in a track; I'm not really sure how accurate this is, though, or what it really means aside from a "levels" drop, or normalization. it's annoying though.

good stuff, fun post!

I would be careful, taking that test killed my Buckles. I am pretty sure it was Katy Perry that did them in.

My mistake, "compressed" meaning lossy codecs.

There's a youtube video (wish i could remember it) where they did a null between the original track and a lossy codec version; then they playback the "difference" so what you hear is the distortion/hash after being converted to lossy. One listen to those tracks, and you'll never utter the word mp3 again.

Tried twice just using my Logitech Z-Cinema computer speakers. First try got 5 out of 6, second try 4 out of 6. Missed Katy Perry on both tries, and Mozart on the second.

Don't have any way to send it to my main system. I think they could have probably found better material to demonstrate the differences.

Over Airplay I got 4 out of 6 right.
I still picked the 320 track on Jay Z and Coldplay which to me where the hardest to hear differences.
The other 4 where more noticeable.

Eh, we all enjoy what we like. 320 for me is good for background music, partys and such, but when I really want to listen nothing short of a good lossless track will work for me.

Like we always say, the more revealing your system becomes, the more these differences become apparent.