Audiophile or Audio-Fooled? How Good Are Your Ears? 

The reason why audiophiles prefer high-resolution audio up to 24bit, 192kHz, is because of the *loudness war.*

@The Turd Reich of Mar-A-Lago Exactly 24bit will give you more headroom, and it seems like it's necessary now, because the loudness war or volume radio standards will NOT go back to 80s volume standards anymore, and the loudness war will always be a never ending quest, this is life, i'm sorry... I'm so sick of people saying that 24bit is placebo when in the first place they're listening with a INCORRECT headphones and equipment, or unfortunately people may be unhealthy and/or uneducated, or unable to hear/see *real* world subtle details. But high resolution audio definitely benefits on loud recordings, not to loudness war but loud enough like Daft Punk's last album. But this is WHY Hi-Res audio exist, because musicians refuse to lower the volume or stop overcompressing it's music, in favor of quality. Humans cannot hear over 48khz, but it will remove the harshness and the distortion of the recordings.

@The Turd Reich of Mar-A-Lago And finally, the MASTER matters at 95%

@MF Nickster So Hi-fi is dead in that case... Since 1995

@MF Nickster 24bit straight from studio or bought from Qobuz it does... If it was all like you said in the first place Hi-Res and DRM won't be a business in the first place.

dosduros work smarter not harder

LOL well played :D

lol

I came to that same conclusion (longest DL= the uncompressed WAV), but Rick is right. Is there any sonic difference between the samples? I didn't hear any.

@@hellbent1567 I heard differences in 4 out of the 6 tracks, but even then I had to not only use the best gear I had but also focus so hard on the individual sounds there was no way i was enjoying the music at the same time.

That's very true. If you're lucky the inner sleeve has photos or lyrics.

love vinyl too

Yeah, good for 50+ eyes 👀 😉

i like download music file for free

@@sandechoir and look at the pictures on a 1440p screen

firecloud77 true. Speakers, the room you're in, the positioning of the speakers in the room, your positioning regarding to the speakers in the room, even the lighting or your general mood... all much more important than the actual audio format.

in my experience, most people can't hear the audible difference between lossy and lossless audio files either, many don't care or don't have high-quality music systems ... they just want to hear their music and that's fine

​@janminor1172 so is level of sobriety

Yes, that is probably the reason why they used puny headphones, to make their test irrelevant.

Even the slightest difference in the crossover performance of the two speakers has far more influence on the sound than all other characteristics of the system put together, due to comb filtering. That is why you have never seen a graph of a stereo system performance. Only a single channel.

and then there are electrical engineers who actually understand the theories and applications of a component. "Audio-fool" actually was invented by engineers. Oh and also there are scientists who agree with engineers.

@@ragilmalik By the way they are the same people who make 10k+ power cables lubed with snake oil.

I think a better one was, "Normal people use equipment to listen to artist's music. Audiophiles use artist's music to listen to their equipment."

@@a_lonely_moderate8449 Probably the best comment i've seen on this subject yet..... 👍👍 Some people listen to SOUND, others listen to MUSIC!! 😉

@@conan5885 some listen to both...

Good video Rick. Very interesting. When I was a teenager (45 years ago😢) I found the same thing you described was true with speakers. You even touched on that. My advice to people - Buy speakers that sound good to you! Knowing the specs are nice and use them as a guide but ultimately buy speakers that YOU like!

Vinyl compresses the audio dramatically as the needle radius becomes less. The best way for a consumer to listen to recorded must is open reel tape.

My vote goes to the inconvenience. That little ritual does something, builds expectations, commitment, it's like signing a contract. The two of us for the next 20-25 minutes, then I'll flip you over for another round. Makes me a better listener. :D

I love vinyl because of the snaps, crackles and pops -- takes me back to my favorite childhood breakfast cereal.

@Abe Froman Hopefully you'll get over the naive nostalgia for a pain in the ass. Just to let you know: the "warmth" of vinlk is DISTORTION. What we DON'T want in fidelity is DISTORTION.

Bless your tinnitus, made me chuckle hard

@Dio Dio you don't?

I have tinnitus as well, but maybe not as bad as yours. The differences were subtle to my ears. I had the hardest time with the voice (I think I got it right just from guessing . 😂).

I also have tinnitus, with some WEEKS of spikes. :( Very bad situation. Still, in a good day, I can spot the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps. Very rare, only in a very good days. Anyway, if I not pay attention, I cannot say which is which. (as the guy say)

@@cristic767 hey dont feel so bad. Half of Daft Punk had tinnitus too, and that...makes it...uhh Yea i hope y'all recover soon

But your voice could be...

Ha funny.

ArgoBeats I have never been impressed by any headphones or speakers but today my sound system impressed me

audiophile

you call me an audiophile I think I am different all the speakers I use is cheap car speakers if my cheap car speakers is better then the most high end speakers then that means all you guys are not smart

Yes, dynamics is what is missing. Not frequencies we cant hear (higher than 44.1 sampling frequencies), or dynamics that will cause permanent hearing damage (bitrate of 24... although in a soundproofed room, 16db of dynamics, will only make the strongest sounds strong, but in a normal listening situation, with background noise, using the full dynamics of CD and adjusting the volume to hear the weakest sounds will cause pain...). Some hi rez files are based on better mixed sources, and some vinyls are as well compared to the CD version, and therefor might sound better. But CD has all the technical capabilities we need.

+Jon Holstein Quit spamming the comments Jon

hell yes, dynamic FTW i'm sick with these new mastering. why on earth todays vinyl has more dynamic than CD in fact technology wise it should be the other way around

Absolutely. Perhaps that is my main reason not to listen to the crap played on most radios these days.

Yes! Everything after 96' is compressed to shreds. And even today's indy bands, first record always has great dynamics, but as soon as they get a little popular, second record is compressed much more.

Trash uncompressed is still trash! Seriously though it depends on a few things, many artists make the songs for lossy formats ahead of time since 99% will be listening in a lossy format, top 40 and popular music are simple and made for sales have no artistic value, older songs arnt made on computers so a wav would make no difference, type of music: rock tends to the same on everything because sounds is heavy blended on the other hand electronic type music is really noticable, lastly Balanced armature iem's is were you really notice quality . Ironically most audiophiles are hipsters with overpriced equipment that is lower quality then some $50 iems.

Perhaps you can side by side, but can you walk into a high end audio store and be able to tell what bit rate a random song is just by listening to it all by itself, with nothing to compare it to? Or even if it's digital at all?

@FireLion you should be able to hear it any sound device provide it isnt a mp3 or flac in a . Wav container. Wav PCM16, 24,32 have their full dynamic range, encoded music(mp3 or lossless) do not. Just turn the song up

@@Thanatos4655 and dynamic range is better on old recordings

I got 5/6 correct. Got all correct except Neil Young's ‘There’s A World’ in which I could hear imperfections in the sample which were jarring. Not a good studio. I chose the 320k sample. I've always had annoyingly good hearing (not so god at listening). I hate CRT monitors and glad they're gone; they produced an ultrasonic whine that nobody else could hear. I also have $200 BGVP DM6 headphones and an MPOW filter, but didn't use an amp. The 128k samples were all awful to my ears.

Damn you Wall of Sound!

Wanted to write the same with coldplay....from the 6 I had only 1 correct LOL

She probably recognized the poor quality version as best since that sounded the most familiar. Radios and streaming services hardly try with quality

@@MiDnYTe25 Bingo! ...and just to add another point that brings in the OP's mentionings, because of the loudness war at play, the higher frequencies would sound less harsh due to the filtering out @ 128kb mp3. Thus, consequently pushing forward the midtones around 1kHz-3kHz tones where our ears are most sensitive and usually, the louder these sound, the clearer due to just how our ears work.

Yup. In *many* instances it doesn't matter; garbage in, garbage out. But in the instances that it *does* matter, it matter a *lot*.

Agreed but 128 I can hear distorted Cybols and the Sax sound suffers. but yeah 320k and Wav, I cannot tell, even with a superior system and specialized listening room. it is still about 4 to 1 compression. best compromise

I can hear from 14Hz to about 15.5kHz, my ears are freaking old, like Beato old and I've sat behind a drum kit for 40+ years. I'm totally with you regarding 128k and 320k, the difference is noticeable with all genres but electronica. But I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between 320 and FLAC.

@@Darrylizer1 wow 14hz is low! You need a big sub tuned low to hear that! Could it be you're hearing/feeling resonances?

@@sionevans8370 No I could hear the tone, anything under that though I really couldn't hear. I did the test with Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro headphones which have a frequency response from 5 Hz - 35000 Hz.

When CD Rom Will be dead they will sell cd at higher prices telling us that is vintage technology 👺🥴🤏

@@napomania i seriously wouldn’t doubt it. Look how damn obsessed people are with vinyls.

I've spent a lotta $ on CDs. Still have all my vinyl, too. That stuff BETTER work.

You'll take my cds from my cold, dead hands!!!

I still have my CD's too vinyl is the new holy grail and that's why they're not cheap anymore it's almost like jazz music for the nerds when i bought lps in the 80s they all were at a reasonable price so i sometimes went home with 3 lps being a happy man what really killed music old and modern was the death of the record store so you could no longer have a chat with people you didn't even know but the passion for music made it easy to communicate with a lot of people and maybe they would recommend you a band you've never heard of to expand your knowledge it was just more simple times back then and the artist got percent of the record sale and that was more fair cause artists use their time and energy to create something we all can enjoy it's better to get out and meet people cause it's very isolating to sit behind the computer and just streaming

Good point. The best way I could describe the difference between 128 and 320 is to make a comparison using color. It's like having the same picture with the same colors but in the 128 version the colors are muted or faded compared to the 320.

To Rick's point, you still have good hearing. Congratulations.

Poorly made point, you have the visual analogy backward, the white noise is analogous to white walls. In jpg compression it is the smooth areas of constant tone where you see problems first because the jpg noise is discernable against that continuous tone, the high detail areas in fact hide the artifacts, they are lost in it. When you what to check picture quality you examine a smooth area like the sky.

Bartonovich52 - EXACTLY!!

@@johnsmith1474 This guy knows whats up.

@@wpgspecb - Yes I do, thanks.

Would love to hear some stories from that era, mastering the first CDs in the eighties 👍

A bit like listening to some classic rock recordings from the 1970-1980’s on Spotify - what on earth have they done with it? I have vinyl records and know them well.

$900,000 to listen to MP3 quality music...what a travesty! I'm trying to conceive what those cardboard-crap files must've sounded like. Horrendous I'm sure! .

The guy bought one Ferrari to use as a sofa!!!

@@Marcus_C51 900,000 to listen to anything!!! It's very selfish of him.............I could have used that money to spend on nonsense and gobldygook

Timothy Reeves - All very good points.

Appie Demir by hearing people asking him about tinnitus he developed it through his subconscious .🤣

goofyfoot2001 wrong thread

goofyfoot2001 it’s tinnitus not tittitus. ;-)

Timothy Reeves Humans can certainly hear well below ONE Hertz. Otherwise tuning musical instruments would be impossible. So you need to add four or five octaves to your nine. And the claim in this video that MP3 encoding is inaudible rests entirely on the original research, which was done on the usual pool of 20-yo psychology students being paid five bucks a time to participate in random experiments, which incidentally invalidates most of the psych experiments of the 20th century,. Not on musicians, recording engineers, audio guys of any kind. While at university I had dozens of opportunities to participate in psych experiments, and I turned them all down, as did nearly all of my friends. So hardly random samples, let alone expert samples. Few things in hifi have less basis than MP3.

same holds true for decoders

@@jimkerrigan1888 The same is not true for decoders. All mp3 decoders will produce the same output with the slight caveat that there may be rounding differences which are negligible.

Mp3,flac,lossy/lossless are the same at any bitrate, they arint the original. bitrate isnt the same a bits . uncompressed wav playback is 1440MBps( 1400 MBps = 1400 Megabytes =11200000 Kbps flac/mp3 you need this bitrate to match the original) quality is pointless a 900kps lossless compressed flac has 1% of the songs data, they the bit upscale(litteraly fake bits) at decoding attempting to predict what the original sounds like, this is impossible since 99% is gone. Audio quality is unmeasurable since it is software decoding.

@@Thanatos4655 Well even wav file can vary in quality depending on the sample rate and bit depth. But a lossless compression algorithm can be set to reproduce the original signal.

@ThanatosXRS You made a little mistake man. The standard audio CD format is 16-bit, 44.1KHz 44.1 kHz = 44100 Hz (44100 16-bit samples for second) 44100 * 16 = 705 600 bps (bits per second) For 2 channels (stereo): 2 * 705 600 = 1 411 200 bps 1 411 200 bps / 1000 = 1 411.2 kbps = 1.4112 mbps (mbits per second, not MBytes per second!) 1.4112 mbps / 8 = 0.1764 MBytes per second, but not 1400 MBytes per second. You are wrong with about 7 936 times ;) Audio CD contains about 74 min audio: 74 min * 60 sec = 4 440 sec 4 440 sec * 0.1764 MBps = 783.216 MB on a CD If you were right, one CD would fit: 783 MB / 1400 MBps ~ 0.56 seconds of music :) :) 320 Kbps bitrate is exactly 4.41 times less than uncompressed CD audio, or in fact there are 22.68% of original data. Respectively, 900 Kbps are 63.78% of original data. Please, be more careful with bits(b) and Bytes(B) - mathematics can be a two-blade knife if misused.

Isn't this the same technique as the comment above?

I have 1 gbps fiber connection :( they already loaded before fully pressing the play button.

lol so true

I dont know what those things are, but I guessed 128 on coldplay, and got 4/6 on the rest. Your innocuous comment here might be the reason I upgrade from my m40x, I am curious how much better headphones get

@@Ckwon117 Honestly, not all that much... Really, the main two factors that make a headphone good are sound signature and the actual comfort. There's going to be some qualities that aren't picked up by the sound signature, since they're not perfectly linear systems, as well as because of the quirks measuring rigs still have, however, they do get it mostly right.

@@Ckwon117 If you want different, get a Hifiman, I recommend the hifiman he400se, in my opinion it's more friendly than the Sundara, definitely has better bass.

I got 5/6 right, the coldplay song was the one I got wrong, chose it too quickly. Also I only had 356 kbps max, cuz I was using my iPad.

I just found this today, but I took that same audio test a few months ago. I got 3 or 4 right, one of the wrongs was a 128k... And it was the classical piece. All three of the classical pieces sounded virtually the same to me. I also have super sharp hearing, as the tester here does. It has to come down to some experience with the material. I don't listen to much classical, and I don't remember the last time I would have heard it live. I notice none of the examples where any kind of hard rock or metal though. I would imagine the differences there are even more difficult to pick up due to the inherent distortion in the styles. I'm guessing cleaner audio makes more of a difference in the perception. The dirtier the sound, the more difficult.

@@NeoRichardBlake the reason why you couldn't hear the difference in the classical piece is you don't listen to classical music and you don't love it so you it won't even occur to you what the clarinet is subtly but magically doing in the background when it plays, you probably will barely even notice it. Sorry but that super sharp ear is wasted on you if you're not even listening to classical music.

@@motherofallemails That's a pretty pretentious opinion that my sharp hearing is wasted if I'm not listening to classical. I enjoy classical. I just don't listen to it much. And when I do listen to it, I enjoy the complex pieces more. I pick up more nuances when I listen to it more. And that's what I meant when I said it has to do with experience with the material. Study and familiarity makes nuance easier to find. I also listen to a lot of metal and hard rock, and I can hear more nuance there than people who don't normally listen to it. My poorly worded point was that the video is right. Sharp hearing doesn't necessarily make you an expert listener. Getting depth from music is more about familiarity and study than with specific hearing. I constantly notice things others don't in sight as well. Most of it has to do with one's attention to detail, and sadly many people don't pay very much attention to things. Music is background for a lot of people. That's why simple sounds with a catchy beat become the most popular. Pieces that require study to fully appreciate fall by the wayside of society.

@@motherofallemails Yea... that was pretty pretentious. You are not better by listening to classical music and it's definitely not a "waste" of any sort by not listening to classical music. This is coming from a big fan of classical music... Let's not form any hierarchy of taste

I strongly disagree. It absolutely depends on the production and quality of the music, regardless of the genre. From that audio test, the only song that I got consistently right was the Jay Z track because it utilized a lot of different frequencies, and I never listen to hip-hop. I listen to a lot of jazz and classical and I can tell you, for older recordings and poorly engineered recordings that dont have a wide range of frequencies anyway, it is extremely difficult to tell the compression. But that's just my opinion, I could be completely wrong. I dont wanna come across as thinking I'm definitely right :)

So true. That's awesome!

Because it can sound more pleasant and can color the sound to your liking.

@@Mr.Manson No, it doesn't, that's complete and utter nonsense. The ONLY thing about a speaker cable that CAN have an effect on how the Audio sounds is if the cable is insanely poorly shielded against interference from other speaker- or power cables you might have running alongside them. And it is very hard to even find such poor cables. I bet you that in a blind test you couldn't tell the difference between a stupidly expensive cable, the cheap stuff you can get at Home Depot or even a metal coat hanger used instead of a cable. Next thing you are probably trying to tell me that Gold plated contacts on a HDMI or Optical cable will make any difference beyond how they look.

@@Soonjai If the speaker cable is long it will affect the quality of the sound, and if it is thin (unless of course it is very short). Speaker cables aren't typically shielded.

@@corybarnes2341 What the hell are you blabbering about? If you get Speaker cable on a roll to cut it yourself to length you need it will be shielded the same regardless of length. And I hope you know you are fooling yourself with your statement about the cable length thing. A couple of years ago I work at a company that installed car Hi-Fi Systems, and the Speaker cables, regardless of length where NEVER the reason why the systems picked up unwanted noise. Most of the time it came from the Power cables for the Amps because the Generators of some, especially older, cars didn't have filters build in to cut out RPM depended noise. Simple In-Line Filters where able to remove those noises in above 98% of the cases. In some rarer cases we got unwanted noise from the Antennas when the Radio was used, but that was usually eliminated by simply using a different Antenna. TL;DR: The Speaker cable is, from own experience, never the issue, power- and / or Antenna can be.

Now repeat the experiment with a few other audiophiles, and we'll see. Science is all about repeatable experiments

invalid conclusion. Anyone repeating the test will finally get 100% correct since you need only concentrate on the samples you failed in the previous trial and you have a 33% chance of simply guessing with each listening.

I believe you but hey...you are probably talking to people listening to music from downloaded files through their computer speakers... And they will tell you you're wrong. Ignorance is a bliss.

@@WeWereYoungandCrazy No. Rushed dismissal on your part though. The test reorders the samples so if you repet it you always start from scratch.

Frequency range says zero about the quality of the system. My best system (Altec 515C, AER BD2, dht amps) would only hit 40Hz-18kHz, yet my pc speakers say they can do 25Hz-25kHz and sound like total crap.

I have the odd FLAC on my mobile, but most of my audio is 500kbps OGGs - a bit over the top, but my main music source gives me OPUS files, which I love and would use save for the fact that support for metadata is abysmal - it can do it, but few music tagging softwares will recognise it. As I don't want to end up double-compressing I crank up the quality on the OGGs. Still get a decent filesize nonetheless

Same for me. I can only tell If I really know the song and then its a very small difference between the two. The WAV just sounds a bit more full and slightly clear. I have a tidal subscription and I download what I can find in Masters and the rest is 320. I have a really quality sound system and I just want to get the best out of it and I want to hear it how the artist intended.

The artifact that drives me most crazy is the "shimmer" in mids and highs with poor-quality encoding.

@DADOU OMÉGA you guys are liars nobody other than musicians and people in the recording studio's music business can tell by listening?

@DADOU OMÉGA nope I didn't know it was a joke.

@@marksantucci4230 Stop drooling on yourself.

The secret is how long the files take to start playing, assuming your internet speed is slow or you click them really fast, there's way of cheating without listening. I think that's what Jose meant.

Stage B Very well explained. Thank you.

And not always so either. You may find you prefer how it sounds on system X rather than what the audio engineers ears were listening to

That's why when I used to make my own instrumental hip hop beats I would tour my friends houses to listen to whatever I made on their set ups before releasing lol from those having top tier audiophile equipment to those having regular speakers.

But the key part is " when he decided that the song was ready" Another engineer would have a different standard. Which means the hardware and format don't matter. Its just what that 1 fool things is ready

@@RennieAsh True. A good portion of what separates a good mix from a bad mix is just personal tastes.

Not necessarily, an audio engineer’s job is to mix a song to sound well on the lowest common denominator (Bluetooth speakers, phone speakers, gas station earbuds, etc.). They likely use headphones/speakers that prioritize neutrality as a reference so that they can accurately tweak the EQ of the song to sound good on the majority of playback devices. The problem with these headphones is they often times sound “boring” and “analytical”, because they have to be, and they aren’t enjoyable to listen to music on for most people. That’s why the majority of playback devices emphasize the lows and highs to make whatever audio is playing through them more exciting. So you probably won’t enjoy music on a pair of Phillips SHP-9500s as much as a pair of Beats by Dre

Back in the day, I could hear up to 23KHz, but more importantly, I could hear detail. I was literally a "golden ears" consultant to high end audio stores. It was less about frequency range and more about a natural, three dimensional soundstage. If the trumpet player takes a step forward (and the recording and playback are good enough) you can hear it. OTOH, if blindfolded, I shouldn’t be able to tell where the speakers are. Obviously, rating sound quality in that regard through headphones is pretty much impossible. But I bet I could still tell the difference between uncompressed CD sound and its MP3 counterpart with audio levels matched to

@@EdHorch what amp/speaker do you use?

@@sionevans8370 AR turntable with a Linn Basik arm and a Signet something-or-other cartridge, feeding the preamp section of an NAD 730 receiver, into an Adcom 555 amp. That all goes into a pair of Theil 02 bookshelf speakers and whatever I feel like hooking up as a sub. It's above mid-fi, and anything better would be beyond what I can hear any more.

I’m in the same boat I’m good with soundstage, separation and definition to a degree. But the wife has to tell me the coffee pot beeped. And I’ve had Hyperacusis hit about the same time as the pandemic. With my tinnitus I find protecting my ears from wind helps as well as less caffeine and try to envision faders to try to bring it down in my heads mix. Some days are good, some nights can be hell.

Well said. I think audiophile "critical listening" isn't strictly a function of frequency response. To me, after years of listening to audio both analog and digital, I can spot lossy formats and tell readily what's missing. To the average listener it could be analogous to listening to mono car speakers then getting a 5.1 mix on SACD. I have access to an Anthem unit out to Paradigms and it's quite clear, but even with beyerdynamic headphones and an xduoo amp, I can hear it. Rick is correct about frequency response, mostly, (some do hear outside 20-20k) but what intake issue with is that lossy formats do compress in very dicernible ways, even at higher bitrates.

Transients *are* in the high frequencies.... Well actually, the sharper the transient, the wider the spread ... but definitely extending into the high end.

@@RogerBarraud In order to avoid confusing the issues, I specifically had said: "...the presence of steady-state high frequencies, which is what the specifications measure." Namely, I meant the notion of bandwidth which comes from usual long-term estimates of frequency response. Sure, broad frequency bandwidth is necessary for good transient response. An AM radio does not preserve sharp transients since it has less bandwidth that high fidelity systems. But since usual long term bandwidth estimates do not directly measure transient response, broad frequency bandwidth is not sufficient for good transient response. Which means: 1) Frequency bandwidth is not the only thing which is important for fidelity and quality of sound preservation. This has been known for decades. It's why, for example, some people are careful about phase alignment, where usual phase misalignment does not reduce a systems frequency bandwidth, but it does distort transients. 2) Transient response is hard to capture as a single specification. There is no agreed upon measure of transient response, which is why it is not seen much. Yet there are systems, including human ears, which can recognize quality differences between different systems with the same frequency bandwidth. Sometimes big differences.

Remember when sampling audio it has to be apple to apples. That said, the tape was obviously at a higher quality that exceeded the CD capability. Nevertheless, its biggest negative is that like vinyl, it will deteriorate in quality with every pass.

You had bad ears also back in the 80s. The first cd players sounded horrible since the manufacturers didn’t know about jitter and the importance of an accurate clock.

FLAC is not "good enough", it is a lossless format. Lossless means that every single bit of data in the wav file is preserved and if you convert it back into a wav you'll get a file that is binary identical to the wav. It is like compressing files in a zip file, they come out identical to the way they come in. The other formats you mention are not compression, they use reduction -> some data is lost. There are arguments whether 44.1 KHZ / 16 bit is good enough, but that has nothing to do with FLAC, as you can encode higher sample rates and bit resolutions in FLAC just fine too.

And 256 kbps can sound better than 320 kbps if the encoding was better, so that stereo image and instrument positioning has been maintained better.

you fool

Yes I would agree, frequency response is extremely important, however; the other part is what I'd call the sound stage. There has to be dimension to the sound. In other words, if you're listening to an orchestra or a band, using stereo you should be able to figure out by using bidirectional stereoscopic hearing, where that instrument is on the bandstand. However, the low frequencies are omnipresent, they are everywhere. They are the ones that can pass through walls. But the higher frequencies cannot and must bounce off of other surfaces. So there is a dimension that must be ascertained, otherwise all you get is just this big wall of sound. I personally used to sell high end stereo equipment back in the 70s, and phono pick-up cartridges had the same characteristics as headphones or speakers. To me it all started with the phono pick-up cartridge. And actually, in the recording studio, it all started with the microphone. Anytime there is a transducer involved, that was one of the crucial and important links in the chain. Every link had to be just as important or integral as every other link. The ability to tell the difference, that is what makes an audiophile.

A good example is go back and listen to a Sheffield Lab recording or a TELARC recording. Those were the vinyl records that are used to sell high end audio.

Tidal butchers audio files. A RU-vidr called Golden Sound made an excellent video exposing the massive scam that is MQA. He also shows that Tidal doesn’t even offer the CD quality that they are advertising.

Probably a vote for Qobuz…

Danke, super aufschlussreich, und schmerzlich zu sehen, dass selbst die 128 kb mitunter besser als die CD eingeschätzt wurde!

TAILORmoves gerne. Ich vermeide mittlerweile Diskussionen zum Thema. Ist halt zu viel 'Glauben' und 'Coolness' dabei.

+Doggy I'd be able to tell the difference between a Kemper and my Engl SE in a second: the Kemper wouldn't shriek past 3 gain because of (probably) old tubes going microphonic ^^

lol .. okay, that way ... ;) But one of my guitarrists has a Kemper with the very same Profile of the amp he has ( I think it is MesaBoogie Mark V). And it is hard to tell the difference ;)

It depends. Look for archimogos blog. He conducted a similar test, which was more lossless vs lossy, including different formats of each using quite a few test subjects with varying backgrounds. It turned out the "audiophiles" who claimed to hear a difference had the greatest number of people who could tell between lossless and lossy. It's understandable, given that a lot of them have trained themselves to discern between subtle differences as a hobby would be the group which has more people which figured out what differences there are. From what I have heard, it's not a tone or timbre difference (meaning pitch perfect doesn't matter). They have said that it's the decays which differ. It's more obvious with tube amps where decay is typically longer due to the harmonic characteristics and it's a bit easier with headphones. I can't comment because I haven't actively tried to do this myself. My guess is that the algorithms which do lossy compression pick up some of the aspects of sound related to decay as noise, but again that's just an assumption as I don't have the Knowledge to tell

who, or what is Coldplay?

Early Coldplay is good

@@atticustay1 no it isn't

@@greatfelixo X&Y is meh in my opinion, but Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head are fantastic. Hating on Coldplay is pretty low hanging fruit

Pretty sure it's always compressed

I didn't even find any difference between 128kbps and the wav 44.1kHz. I guess all those teenage years listening to loud music on my cellphone's screwed my ears.

@@j.lucasdecastroaraujo761 I found that the high frequencies were what gave it away. Have you tested to see what the highest frequencies are that you can hear? I can hear 15kHz but nothing beyond that.

@@NickChase Yes, good points. I was using a Universal Audio Apollo X6 and Beyerdynamic DT880 Pros.

@@j.lucasdecastroaraujo761 I'm a senior citizen with hearing loss in both ears , and I can tell the difference between those two...on a good system.

You can subtract the wav file from mp3 to get the error signal. Ideally this error signal should be a stochastic noise with no deterministic information.

There are good phones though. Like the LG V60. F***ing 130dB SNR!! better than most PC sound cards!!!

Well, good produced record still sounds better in mp3 320 then bad produced record in wav 24 bit

I listen to them on my phone with my nice headphones, basically using my phone as my portable music player, and I can definitely tell the difference between 320MP3 and M4A vs FLAC/WAV, not just on my phone but my PC. I apparently have pretty good hearing, and as much as it can annoy me, I'm thankful I get to enjoy music in high quality while live concerts aren't a thing.

Yeah, but before that, it was AM radio, cheap BSR record decks and super bad quality pre-recorded cassette tapes! And don't get me started on the compression with FM radio!

@@sassuki True. I own a LGV20 as my DAP and It rivals my friend's $1000+ desktop dac amp setup lol

@@pablopacca9458 Absolutely. A prior negative response will have her second guessing an initial response on a new track.

One thing you’ll learn in those tests refers to your own definition of a good sounding record. I made wrong guesses because the real sound belonged to a style that I didn’t like. After I realized how this music was meant to sound I spotted the better sound quality. Sonic tastes play a huge part in this and not just frequencies.

Also she may have been influenced by previous listens of "Speed of Sound".

@user name What do you think recorded those songs?

Yes, just been doing interval / note etc testing and I would prefer to find out how badly or how well (unlikely) I have done and not during the test itself. Like doing an exam and getting it marked as you go along .. would totally sway the result. Still, listening to the tests on RU-vid, they sounded exactly the same (strange that)

I would blame at least 25% of those 30% due to this "wife talking". :) But seriously, i am not surprised, that you got 70% correct with actual decent speakers instead of their headphones.

if you are listening to terrible music it is your own fault.

less complain and more make please

it really does matter, some mastering engineers use compression that sounds beautiful which can be totally ruined by a lossy format :( maybe that because of the less dynamic range the frequencies are much more prominent - making the loss of frequencies sound worse in the lossy format ?

Well, not all music needs wide DR, but when it`s lower than 10, just about anything sounds worse. My best are movies soundtracks, they usualy have 14-15. That`s enough.

Well this did occur to me with the choice of test tracks, in my experience, Coldplay recordings are a harsh, garbled mess, and as for Katy Perry.🤣😂 She got the other ones right.

I don't think that one can re- produce faithfully music through a hifi system having heard live music is not the same experience.

Or you've just never heard a decent high end sound system, so there is that...

@@1wibble230 A live recording can never match a live event.The physics of the event are radically different.The best systems do a great job of fooling you but if you were present at the actual recording session you would always be disappointed with the outcome.Reality trumps recording technology.Thats why the argument that it's better to spend thousands of dollars over many years on attending live concerts rather than spending tens of thousands on audio gear makes sense.

@@brucegelman5582 As someone who has attented many live shows from orchestras to rock and dance bands, and also has very high end system, I can tell you technology gets amazing close! And indeed when it comes to rock/dance stuff I'd argue studio recording listening at home is by far the more pleasurable experience. Very rarely do such venues have a good well balanced sound that isn't ripping your ears off. For classical/jazz/small indie band stuff sure, live sounds beautiful, but with really high end speakers it is very close to actually being there :)

@@1wibble230 I agree.I have a wonderful and expensive system of my own.But I had the good fortune of working at Benaroya Hall in Seattle and listening to hundreds of live classical performances and spending time with the audio engineers helping them record and lending my mic placement expertise.Schoeps,Neuman, and Royer.I also had the luck of listening to rehearsals of YoYo Ma and Marc Andre Hamelin to name but two.I am really talking about orchestral works when I say it cant be reproduced on a home system.I should have clarified that.Nice to talk with you.If you like we can carry on.

yes, he should have run the test more than once. 2/6 is what you'd expect on average by mere guessing, so it's likely you can't hear the difference (with your setup).

also we should take intro consideration the guessing. She said "yes!" for couple of time, so she was guessing, she wasn't sure. ;)

@@-morrow one file was of a much lower quality so she could discount that straight away, so it was a 50/50 choice and you would expect 50% by guessing, as other commenters have said there is no reason not to run the test 10 times and if you wanted more statistical accuracy you would also use multiple subjects.

plus-he said TOO MUCH about the qualities of sounds she would be hearing!

6/6 on a 70$ usb gaming headset.

3/6 using a sennheiser HD25 out of a focusrite audio interface.

6 out of 6 using the laptop speakers.

6/6 using cellphone speaker while driving my hot rod!

6/6 pressing f12 and reading the correct answer

Don't even get me started about Monster-Cable!

"... because they can NEVER prove it [to you]." There are many reasons why live music sounds different from recorded music but one of those reasons is that the overtones are cut off. And even when they are not, in say properly recorded 96khz, people still can not hear it because 99% of tweeters are poor and / or do not go past about 20khz. If you compare a very high note on a violin on CD and the same note they will sound different. In part because of the extra information. The limit of hearing may be 14khz to 20khz but the frequencies above the limit of hearing go towards shaping the sound below. I believe this is true because it is the overtones that actually give the timbre to the instrument.

For what it's worth I'm forty nine. For me there is an audible difference in sample rates. It seems to be a phase difference that affects the stereo field. I've noticed that the difference is emphasised if the speakers are wired out of phase. Try it and see, maybe you'll hear it.

Nobody has to 'prove' anything to you. Either you hear it or you don't. I've auditioned high end DAC's playing 44.1k files vs 192k files and yes there is a sonic difference. Unfortunately you need very expensive gear to make that difference audible. For 99% of folks out there, they aren't going to detect the difference. Most folks are listening to Katy Perry on their laptops or iPhones - so none of this is relevant. Their gear is garbage so 128 or 320 will make not a lot of difference. I just replaced a low end Cambridge DACMagic with a damn expensive Bryston DAC. even my wife, who has shitty hearing, can detect the difference. One costs 10 times more than the other - is it 10 times 'better' ? No. Of course not. And the Cambridge will destroy any of the cheap 1$ DAC's in anyone's laptop or iPhone. So it's a case of diminishing returns for the amount of $$$ spent.

Great advertising. So-so product.

So do I and there's some bloody good remastered stuff out there, where you can hear the difference between the crappy transfer versions that first came out around '84.

Me too

I am 50 and buy more CD's (and vinyl) than I did back in the "day."

add me to that list, i also buy CD-R and DVD-R for various purposes (usually for backing up my data since it will stay in a environmentally stable area)

@@sceiron1 There are many lousy remasters as well making the older CDs sound better than those remasters.

Archive purposes is really the only reason to download in lossless 👍

Exactly, I primarily download FLAC/WAV if it is available, or buy the CD to rip to FLAC in case it isn't for precisely this reason. Not offering it in 2018 because "you can't hear the difference anyways" is silly, when bandwidth and storage space is ever so expanding.

Education is as important as natural talent. We may both see the same painting but the educated artist will be able to point out what make it so special or so mediocre.

Excellent post. I have a trained ear but not great hearing...I listen deeply and carefully to instrumentation and then lock on to a particular instrument and "mimic" it in my head ("pa-tingggg!") As if I'm going to imitate it vocally--i know it doesn't make sense but I really focus on isolating and memorizing a specific part of the mix, then A/B against that, then another part, etc. Recently I compared two universal disc players with a SACD. I heard a percussion instrument using the newer player that was simply absent in the older (but more expensive) player. Then I compared a DVD-A of a different album and could not discern any difference. My conclusion was that the newer player probably had a better implementation of the SACD decoding chip, which wasn't applicable to the DVD-A. Is that correct? I don't know, but the SACD difference was very clear to me while the DVD-A was identical to me. Just sharing some personal, non scientific experience about some of the factors that can affect my listening experience. Great discussion.

Well said.

Tim Hall SACD and DVD-Audio are criminally under appreciated formats, what a lost opportunity for the music business, I was set to repurchase hundreds of albums, if not a thousand in high-resolution before the future turned cloudy and they lost support. Educated listeners here presumably have had the phenomenal engagement with 3 particular high-res must-hear discs: Fleetwood Mac Rumors (DVD-A), Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (both) and Pink Floyd DSOM (SACD) in 2-ch and surround mixes. Unbelievably emotional experience. Acoustic Sounds is a great place to buy now that big box guys no longer carry for $12-$15. Does anyone else know of high-res disc sites?

That is precisely what makes Yes, Yes... Same thing with Rush. People often do not appreciate complex music because it is overwhelming

Exactly. Your audio setup is only as good as its weakest link.

Which mp3 vs flac? Because 128 kbps - OK. That's poor. But I doubt you can statistically significantly tell the difference between 320 kbps and flac.

Only way to tell if you can notice the difference or not is to do a blind test with a big pool of songs.

@Tweed Penguin No, if a blind test is done.

youtube can only do 256 kbps if you get true CD quality thats 1,411.2 kbps and if most of you havent noticed the only difference is that hi hats and cymbals sound a lot crispier and clear, theres more instrument separation as well, even if you only have mono audio its insane because you can even hear the singers lip hitting close together and you can most certainly hear sounds like "shh" a lot clearer, another thing that ive noticed is that the music tends to be louder in CD rather then mp3 320 kbps, now this may be due to the fact that its not just louder for the sake of being louder, i think its louder because the frequencies we were missing are suddendly being added back in suddendly the singer (if mastered correctly) feels like is in the room with you, not 1 room away behind a wall in the same position, and i think thats something most people miss when they first hear a WAV vs MP3 file

Neal Jones Maybe for producing commercial musical ‘product’ but not for truly reproducing the artistic intent. Sad testimony.

@@gregolsen4048 i smell a cork sniffer

@@gregolsen4048 No, he was right. You need different audio sources for mixing. Doing it on a 6k a peace monitor set in a studio is nice, but most people don't have that. You need to mix it for car radios, high end stereos, BT speakers etc, etc. It has to atleast sound good on any of them.

@@gregolsen4048 Several well-known producers agree with Atkins.

but did hendrix actually call chet and ask him that? I have my doubts.

I agree it would make a difference. I would add that it might depend on the quality of the mix and on the mastering. Because when choosing better quality, you would go for what sounds better to you, and when there is far too much at the high end and you have good ears, it will sound unpleasant to you in high quality and the mp3, with the high end reduced, might actually sound more pleasing! I always prefer wav - but there is an album by an independent musician I know that sounds better to me from mp3s because the wavs are far too sharp, it's all highs.

Thats very true. A symphony with many instruments or heavy metal the data in the mp3 can start to fall a part and you hear losses and holes in the highs mainly. Its also a matter of what people listen on. A pair of $150 Audio Technica's plugged into an on-board computer or phone is going to have a bottle-necked signal versus a great dac, amplifier and better speaker or headphone. I bet 90% of people taking that test are doing it on smart phones or motherboard audio outputs with a cheap set of headphones or speakers and they just can't hear the difference because of the system. I had a stereo receiver and some big box store bookshelf speakers a decade ago and they sounded great to me with my mp3s. I upgraded my stereo and know I have Onkyo A9010 and Q acoustics Concept 20 speakers playing from the ASUS Xonar STXII soundcard/dac and I had to get rid of all the mp3s and re-rip all my CD's to FLAC because of the compression I could now hear in the mp3s.

Guy Hawke Or may be listening through a computer and headphones is not as revealing as good gear and totally eliminates imaging capabilities. Tests like this one are worthless even though she scored 66% correct.

I love how many thumbs up this comment got, it's so pertinent to the whole thing. It never even occurred to me, but it was quite a selection they chose.

right, but at the same time it doesn't help much to use recordings that the absolute majority of people don't usually listen to. Or in other words, doesn't really make very much difference if the recording sounds so different with acoustic instruments, when "99%" of music recorded and listened by people is NOT of acoustic instruments only.

No it doesnt. Good equipment doesnt reveal what the human ear cant hear. 256, 320 mp3s will sound identical to Flac, but all of them will sound much better then on crap equipment. But good equipment will not reveal what's lost on lossy formats. It's simply won't, the human ear cant hear it. And thats been shown by ABX testing over and over.

MrAhuraMazda187 Get or of here with your logic

@@MrAhuraMazda Hold on, you're forgetting the original question. It's not "can you hear 'missing' things in the music that you can't on other file formats". It's which file format sounds better. Higher resolution doesn't reveal "hidden" sounds, it makes the sounds in the music more realistic by making an acoustic bass sound more like a vibrating string, or a symbol sounds more like a stick hitting a piece of metal. A better system of audio gear will allow the higher resolution file to sound more real, whereas it will all sound like crap when a listener plugs in a pair of headphones directly into a computer, as was apparently demonstrated.

@@peterf1 thank you. Perfectly explained

Good comment Peter Franz, but you are perfectly describing the "missing things" lost in the music between formats. Higher resolution absolutely reveals the hidden sounds that make music sound "better".These are phase and positioning cues, inner details, reverb tails, echoes ; low level information that is greatly reduced by algorithm/media to varying extents. Not necessarily audible comissions, just missing information. The trouble always with these (sometimes believable) comparisons is exactly what you said about equipment specification. The vast majority of people have no exposure to good audio reproduction, but this is no deterrent to many of the self named experts. I have a great respect for Rick, but he is wrong here. It might make no detectable difference on his equipment, or could be the Berkeley chick is tin eared. I can't argue against people who genuinely cannot tell any difference, to them it truly does make no difference. These kinds of arguments about audio quality are akin to saying an F1 car performs no differently than a Hyundai because you tested it by hiring an automotive engineer to go to the store, and there was no difference in transit time. There it is, I proved it made no difference! Double blind! Its a real frustration.

Exactly! I wrote this in my comment too. In this case, I also think she chose the version she had heard before and was used to the most. Also, it was close to the end of the test, and her ears (and brain!) were already a little tired. The test would be more reliable if there were longer breaks in between.

i don't think that anyone (except maybe an 'audiophile') would suggest that such a casual test as is demonstrated here allows us to reach any firm conclusions.

Somehow, that song sound really bad. I don't like the mix / mastering at all. I actually thought that it sounded better at 128 because less crap was reproduced by the mp3. There is some crakles noises in 320 and wav that I didn't ear at 128.

StoufSto yes, best is often what is familiar.

Yes her judgement was affected by the emotion that she expresses before listening that particular song. Probably she was influenced by her memory...

Totally! I remember my first experience DJing with Mp3's and uncompressed files. After that night I deleted all the Mp3's in my stack. Uncompressed good quality audio just feels more relaxed. It's effortless, the same way a master musician makes his playing seem effortless.

So a higher overall range will be better behaved within the audible range?

@@krane15 yes, but only for speakers and headphones. A source with 44.1 kHz is fine.

@@Chopper153 So what do i do with all of my 24/96 tracks? lol

Nothing new here. A music CD ripped into a PC becomes an uncompressed WAV file. Both are 44.1/16 bit.

@@thequarrymen58 you can keep them and enjoy them. Unless you can’t afford the spce to store them

lol I remember if it's not black it's wacked! but back in the day JVC was killing it in silver lol

Um, the phrase was "crack is whacked". Good ole Whitney Houston. Always going with the good white stuff.

Silver looks better.

That's ridiculous. The only important difference is the cost.

80s stereos were trash,especially late 80s. Top end audio from the 70s...best ever made!!

+1

Thank you, I am so tired of music fans not talking about music.

The music needs to be analyzed else we will fail to recognize good music when it presents itself, and be stuck forever with mix tracks of mix tracks of drum synths over faux piano played by computer programs and automated processes and tone generators playing slightly adjusted versions of the same basic chord changes over and over and over again. All the life of music is fading, and much has already faded - see Rick's rant on adjusting recordings in post-production just to produce records with perfect timing and perfect pitch. In the end, it's robot music, not a lot different from a toy wind-up monkey playing his little cymbals.

you're a wise man

Those two things aren't mutually-exclusive; you'll enjoy the music you enjoy more, and understand why you enjoy it, by analyzing it.

CDs are lossless. If you burn them fully, each song is like 40 mgs at 1400kbps, about 7 times more data than an iTunes file. I cant tell the difference between 320 and 1400 on good equipment, but yeah, CDs are a great way to get cheap high quality music

You, me and millions of others.

Me too, i love cd's. I actually bought a brand new player last year. Also cd's are cheap to buy used.

I still in 44.1/16

Me too. Still have a turntable, too.

Yep! I have a vintage Philips CD614, sounds so much better than the modern digital crap! ;-)

Yes of course I have over 3000 CD's and even if I could find it all on spotify the soundquality they deliver is not as good as CD's.

Eyy! I listened to Steve Miller Band on the way home, (and for the past week), on the old greatest hits album as a matter of fact - Good music never dies!!

You riding a dinosaur to work too? x)

Maybe because mp3 cuts off higher frequencies which is generally where sibilance occurs?

The tonal response takes a toll with compressed files so YES - although it's not something obvious, it doesn't mean it's not there. It's more obvious with hi-notes so that's why you can hear it. The info in this video is total crap and the statements are pretty idiotic.

Yeah, especially between 128kbit/s and lossless. I can hear subtle differences in the highs, as well with my AKG Q-701 headphones. In pop/rock records. The precision of the cymbal attack suffers from low bit rates. More so at ~99kbit/s WMA.

@@Oesterreicher94 Yeah, and you can tell how WMA and MP3 sounds in different ways. One flutters more, and the other sounds more "ditigal", as I remember it. (Haven't used WMA for a long time.)

Yeah you need to distinguish the overall tone from individual instruments. Some suffer much more than others.

Acoustic guitars also sound really nice when played in higher quality.

@@Oesterreicher94 Opus is damn good for encoding at low bit rates. I've gotten away with good audio quality even down to ~70kbps trying to fit albums on obsolete media like the Floptical (20.88MB). Its 128kbps is pretty much equivalent to 192kbps MP3.

I guess it's the low SNR on most integrated sound cards. May be a dedicated sound card is needed to grasp the full quality from a CD?

Try Tidal Master Quality and you change the standard of music streaming😂

tidal runs in circles around amazon's service

Especially the 24-bit versions, even at 44,1KHz. I could detect that an ULTRA HD file is playing blindly most of the time. Sound feels more "alive" I would say. Kinda breathes. Hard to explain. The same feeling I get only with very few "normal" CD-quality songs.

ryanhaart so was the difference big enough to care about

@@fredriksvard2603 yes if you love music enough no if you just casual listen nothing wrong with either.

That is because u are so used to hearing 128bit mp3's for so long the your ears are accustomed to it. We dont get wav on radio, youtube or streaming sites. so u picked 128 cos it was familiar to u. That is a positive test that u could hear the difference and picked the one u liked and have heard the most.

I got 5 of 6, at the lat one the Katy Perry song i pick the 128kbps, and i thing because of that artefacts s in the wav one, or i m just luky

@@satyajeet8686 but that's the thing: i the test you're supposed to be picking the one that sounds better from a technical perspective, the one that has less interference and background noise, that lacks audio corruption and all that, not the one that sounds more like what you're used to listen and to what you personally like, at that point the test loses any meaning.

Go on: what are "Timing staging depth harmonics" individually?

@@rollmop99 I won't speak for 'harmonics' but timing usually refers to the system's ability to keep low frequencies aligned with higher frequencies. This is most obvious in a really bad system with tons of bass, where long-throw woofers take so long to extend, overshoot inward, and return to neutral. The time it takes cause the sound of the bass to not be as on the beat as say, the snare drum, or other instruments. Stage and depth are always missing from these audio discussions. The biggest difference between 320kbs and 44.1, is not the frequencies or 'sound' so much as the presentation. This is more obvious when recording analog instruments, and how they're placed in the stereo field. Stage refers to the amount of left/right separation of the various performers. Where is each instrument located w.r.t the stage? Depth refers to how sound is reproduced in near/far positions in that sound stage. Most modern music doesn't really consider true soundstage, in either left/front position or front/rear position of the players, but some does. It's really great when you get a good recording, and everything's done right, and you don't just hear the sound, but you close your eyes, and the musicians are all in front of you, with decent 3-d placement in the sound field. This sort of placement is also more obvious when listening to a system that's well set up in a room, and harder to discern with headphones, where everything feels compressed into a tiny space. When you compress down to 320kbs, you tend to lose some of that spatial information (when it's there in the first place).

Very informative comment. I really never gave it much thought, except when I close my eyes, I can hear the front to rear dimension come forth in a very pleasant way. Warpspeed's insight on a very good, uncomplex mix of acoustic instruments would be the real true challenge

@@JamesLaframboise Harmonics may be (slightly) negatively affected by this level of compression, but there is essentially no way with modern algorithms, that any kind of timing (which is the thing that creates "depth" and "staging" in audio-woo terms) is affected in a way you can hear. These are just terms used by salesmen. It _is_ however, likely that these are affected negatively by poor quality reproduction equipment, since as you point out, speakers are never perfect transducers (and amplifiers of all kinds will introduce a range of distortions).

@@rollmop99 Sorry, I wasn't implying that timing is affected by compression. I was only explaining what timing means in the audiophile world is in terms of reproduction. Bad stereos (particularly in cars) and too much bass can actually cause the bass drum to fall out of time/sync with the rest of the music. However, often, soundstage is affected. I hear this all the time when comparing tracks on Spotify (320kbs) and Tidal (CD or Master). More precisely, think of timing as the wave's phase. Moving a speaker just a little forward or reverse from the ideal position can totally ruin the stereo effect and change the tone of instruments because of the way the waves from the left and right speakers arrive at your ears. Running a 1k or 4k sine wave through your system, and moving around the room, you can usually find that one spot that almost perfectly cancels the sound out altogether. Stereo imaging is just our ear's ability to discern really small differences in the time it takes sound to reach one ear vs the other. It may sound like woo, but the effect is real. The NPR example of Tom's Diner is a great example of just the small stuff getting a bit lost with compression. Suzanne's voice sounds good in all three formats (although there is some noticeable sibilance in the 128kbs, but if you're so inclined, listen really closely with some reasonably good headphones to the reverb used on her voice. It's noticeably less present in the 128kbs version. Does it affect the overall quality of her voice? Not really. But there is a difference. The difference is less pronounced between 320kbs and WAV, but it's still there. Again, if you're so inclined, pay close attention to when her voice fades away, and the reverb still lingers. That's when it's most obvious. However, doing the same test with Neil Young will yield you nothing. His decidedly low-fi style of recording, and the quality of the equipment he used, I can't reliably hear a difference between the 320 and the WAV. Only noticeable difference with the 128kbs is a little bit of the attack and tone of the orchestral bells. It's less apparent that whoever's playing them is using hard resin mallets.

If you used AirPods you didn’t hear the wav file. The AirPods are Bluetooth headphones and can not transmit wav files. You just guessed.

4/6 isn't much better than random chance. She may have gotten lucky.

Continuous waveforms??? My understanding is that the worst codec quality the more continuous the waveforms are... they are blunt, but for sure are continuous.. Regarding the ability to spot the difference, considering you can only ear up to 15K.. or any other human by the way... its very questionable, to say the least.

Done any ABX testing?

Why would you streak when playing music. I sit back & just listen. I was around when the streak was in the charts & it's not music for audiophiles.

@@ENGLISHISBEST 😆 oops

we don't care lil bro

Schepp, or whatever you call him (the one who looks like Gandalf), certainly was one. I've also heard later remixes of "classic" tracks, ELP, Purple, Yes, and so on, where everything is slamming against the stops and sound terrible.

Normally it's the demands of the label they are working for. If, however, they're doing it all by themselves then to utterly destroy all dynamics in the song is a serious crime of their art.

That was Spector

@@thequarrymen58 Wall of Sound != brickwalled

So true! and applicable to pretty much all the good things in life!

It is called luxury but those highest tier shenanigan are bs

Oh man is this true. I started with some cheapie Onkyo speakers. Bumped up to Mission speakers... and effectively fell off a cliff. I've now got over $2k invested in my system and have only stopped because My wallet died. ;) (Note, that I actually sank very little money into this, by purchasing and reselling nice used speakers from garage sales. Get a $300 set of speakers for $20, sell it to somebody at the great deal of $200 and still make buttloads of money.) ;)

Just like supermodels, Once you taste... oh... well...

@@chaosme1ster lol

Humans can't hear below 20 Hz but we can feel it. Does that count?

if you can ear the difference you can describe it to us !

cymbals dont sound as crisp at 128 compared to 320. took me long enough to spot it but my brother pointed it out to me one time and i couldnt unhear it lol. its not always easy though. ive listened to stuff at 128 and been fine with it. i dont mind listening to stuff if its just streaming on bandcamp at 128...as long as i can get my mitts on the 320 version lol

Sometimes, high frequencies are clearer and more detailed

@@RaveyDavey He's got no reason to lie or make it up and it makes sense, even high end audiophiles are normally listening at home not rock concerts and at low nitrates, i.e. 128kbps or lower, you can hear that lack of punch on a home Hifi.

I've heard this, no pun intended, from other DJs, and I've experienced it myself. At high volume, club and festival volumes, the lack of frequencies above 16KHz is noticeable, and it's noticeable even to my old ears. It's like there's a blanket over the speakers when the MP3 file is playing compared to the uncompressed file playing. As for lower bit rate MP3 files, even I can hear the difference at normal volumes. And my ears are old and abused by a lifetime of club listening without ear plugs. Wear your ear plugs!!

@@RaveyDavey he's not mistaken. I tested it out on my dance rig, and the difference is obvious when the volume is up even just to the point where you start to feel the mids. I switched to only ever using lossless .flac immediately after hearing it

If the difference was night and day, you'd expect her to get 100% correct. Bearing in mind she's comparing them back to back, listening closely for any difference, I'd say MP3s are totally fine for music.

Michael Kelly MP3 at 320 kbps is just fine for your average Joe's pop music consumption needs. It is NOT ok for other genres with characteristically deeper and wider soundfields and more dynamic range, if you listen to them on mid or high-end systems in lossless formats, you get such a better experience than on mp3 on the same systems. Most importantly, mp3 is NOT GOOD for music professionals, and the fact that music professionals don't realize this is one of the most important causes of the high volume of poor sounding records being published nowadays. But really, believe what you will, I'll just keep on making records that kick the assess of shitty mp3 sounding little tunes, you're just making my life easier ;-P

If it's your job to look for the difference, I feel you. However, not a single person I know listens to music in this way and for that reason I can't see it really mattering to anyone but HI-FI enthusiasts. I have a pretty decent system at home (Tannoy DC6Ts coupled with a Marantz PM6005), but I couldn't care less about whether I'm listening to a 320Kb/s MP3 or something technically better - it's incredibly tiresome to listen to music in this way!

That's what I though, she did better than chance alone so surely she demonstrated that she could tell the difference. By the way I did not take the test, I'm too old.

Electroturi, spot on! Dynamic range is a big one along with scaling on better systems. Once you listen to something well designed you can't go back! You can't "unhear" the flaws. I found having listened to classical helps you find what sounds real and what doesn't.

With respect, you didn't mention what bitrate of mp3s you and your students were listening. That's quite important.

@@FinSynthMusic Hi, for clarification of my comment, the details of the practical exercise my students and I used to do each year is as follows; • 4 units of passive Electro Voice X5 at 4 ohms generating a potential 1100w each side. • And 2 units of 15inch Wharfedale passive subs powered by a similar amp. • Then we faced the 4 stage monitors which were the Powered JBL 15’’ Eons directly at the mixing desk as well, as there was no band playing it was specifically a listening exercise during a double class-time in the hall. • The Desk was Allen and Heath MixWizard 16:2 with a multicore rolled out to about 20 metres. • Some MXR EQ units were plugged in but were bypassed for the exercise. • No mics were open. • No effects were engaged. • Essentially, we made a big-boy’s or girls’ hi fi system. • The speakers were set up on the floor in front of the stage. • There was no audience just about 12 or 15 students. I did the same exercise every year for 6 years. • We used my Rotel RCD 1072 Cd player that I had bought from home, the school’s Tascam Cd player that was rack mountable with a speed variation knob that we didn’t use, sorry I can’t remember the model number and my little Sony Cd layer (kind of Walkman type) that I used to take to gigs to play music in the breaks. • I had my copy of Yes 90125 and the remastered version of the Who Live at Leeds Cd (Because I’m old and it’s the best) then I had 300k bps and 128kbps versions of the test tracks as mp3’s that I’d made in Steinberg Wave Lab that were played from my iPod player. • Then I asked the students to down load or use their cell phones or iPod’s (which were still popular at the time), to call up the same example tracks. • The point was agreed upon unequivocally. We cranked the system up like at a gig. • I had given fair warning the days prior any student could then produce a comparison examples of their own CD music and Mp3’s for comparison. • Their examples crossed a wide range of bit rates; however, I don’t believe any students had 300kbps mp3’s • The whole point, which is only a simple one, was to prove that there is a difference between Cd quality and Mp’3s and that if you ‘’crank it up’’ you can tell. Kind regards Peter Bennett (Melbourne Australia)

@@peterbennett4783 An iPod and most phones dont have digital outputs. So you were probably comparing the analog signal output of an IPOD/phone DAC+headphone amplifier to the signal output from your 1000+$ CD player (however that one was connected). If you noticed any difference between 300k mps and CD with that setup, I would fist look at the obvious difference in hardware used to play the music as a cause. For a fair comparisson, you would have to put a CD quality music-file onto the iPod/phone and play it from there.

There would have to be something like frequency quantization too in mp3s, and the 10-20 cent difference would end up being something different...

"high frequencies also create sub-harmonics well into the audible spectrum" yes but filtering out the high frequencies does not remove those audible portions.

Phantom sub-harmonics? Something from nothing? Seems to contradict a basic law of thermodynamics. In any case, as I said 66% is proof enough for me. Also consider the fact that DSD technology was created in order to archive magnetic media. In blind tests audio engineers could still differentiate between magtapes and digital streams up to 192kz. DSD was to be the final solution and all other formats to be derived from it. But DSD64 was not perfect so...DSD128, DSD256, DSD512, etc.

I think so!

It was! Suzanne Vega is the Mother of the MP3.

@@puremercury Doodoo doo do doo doo

Shelly Yakus!!!

@@yrmthr Who?

Personally I can.. I actually can even tell it's vinyl when it was recorded on digital, and it's not because of cracks and noise. :)

vinyl is also lossy!

Many would be surprised (or shocked) to learn how many vinyl releases came from digital sources, and/or via a digital delay during cutting.

Well actually yes it does, the reference frame just shifts along. And besides, the examples used are not "poorly" mastered.

Yuri Billones also the crap Audio-Technica headphones... the test on this video sucks hard.

yea, there are notes in Hendrix songs that just don't stand out on anything other then a proper receiver with 12" speakers, modern music is mastered for skullcandy earbuds so its not going to sound any better on a good system but compare Pink Floyd on 1" tape to a 320kbps mp3 and you'll know right away.

Oh yes it does - you can always process the crappy wav file yourself, working on a raw, lossless format instead of lossy (in a heavy way) mp3 file. Especially when it comes to balancing certain frequencies that someone had messed up or modifying stereo image.

I have a solution- turn the volume down

Nope - "everything's so loud" is because of the 'loudness war'. Labels DEMAND the majority of their releases are at least as loud, if not louder than the competition. Throwback from purchasing music in music stores.

Just so you know, noise cancelling only cancels noise that is of a steady frequency. In other words, it will cancel a generator, but not the sporadic sounds at a construction site. On the other hand, any sealed headphone can reduce those sounds.

Krane a combination will probably do best, as low frequency noise will still pass through so called sealed headphones

@@krane15 not true. It depends on the headphones.

To start with, Bluetooth headphones lossly further (re)compress audio. Furthermore, those crappy headphones you mentioned only use SBC as transmission/compression codec, which is the oldest, crappiest and more innefficient of them all, with a maximum bitrate of 320 kbps but much less efficiently that an MP3 at the same bitrate. So basically you are badly recompressing already compressed music in the case of the MP3 versions, which are going to sound awful, specially in the case of 128 kbps, and probably more than noticeably in the 320 kbps one. The uncompressed WAV files are going to sound, at best, like 256 kbps MP3 or so (to make a quick comparison). So that helps a lot to help find much good sounding the "uncompressed" files. To be honest, it's a shame that you didn't identify them all xD

@@krane15 my dude, your bluetooth headphone literally cannot even up to 320kbps