How well can you tell audio quality.

[Captaincranky]

Originally Posted by Psalad

I'm aware of not a single double blind abx test that showed anyone could reliably pick out the difference between 44/16 and 96/24 or even 192/24. The AES did one for a year and nobody got it.

There's at least as much smug subjectivity which passes for truth in the audiophile community, as there is among we guitarists.

Originally Posted by Psalad

The ear can't hear above 20khz and that is the ONLY difference higher sampling rate gives you. Your dog can hear the difference, as their hearing extends. Ours doesn't. Especially when we get older.

The person who can actually hear 20K would be very rare. Men don't even have to be 20 before they start losing HF hearing.

Originally Posted by Psalad

,,,[ ]...That is the difference in bit depth... More Dynamic range. But the CD actually puts out more dynamic range than us humans are capable of detecting when listening at listenable levels.

Not quite true. I believe CDA dynamic range is advertised at about 90DB. If we miss something it would be on the quite end of the spectrum. I think most cheapo hand held SPL meters, start at about 20DB. We can hear much louder than 90Db, but for how long is the question.

That was an issue at rock concerts, the very limited dynamic range of the canned music. When confronted with a live band, the tape at intermission sounded horrible by comparison. You just wanted the intermission to be over, and have the really loud guys on stage.

Originally Posted by Psalad

Pono is snake oil, unless the go back to the original recordings and remove all the brick wall peak limiting and completely remaster to bring back the real dynamics.

You would have to retrain virtually all of the recording engineers of today before that could happen. They're not only peak limiting, but compressing the quiet stuff up as well. I would swear that CDs during the 90's, sounded way better than those of today. All you get now is a big blast of compressed loud. It's virtually the same effect as when the commercials come on your TV.

Originally Posted by Psalad

Funny how people say Pono sounds more like vinyl but vinyl has much less dynamic range and restricted frequency response, low end has to be cut off so the needle stays in the groove.

Vinyl has to sound better than CD, simply by virtue of the fact you've paid 2 1/2 times as much as a CD is worth for it. Like I said, lotsa BS in the audiophile world. Somebody posted this, "hey, this is the internet, people will claim they can hear different types of solder in an amplifier".

[JohnW63]

I think this shows I need a better sound card in my computer. I thought I would here more separation in the first one, and got it right. After that it was SOOOO close. All my errors were selecting the higher compression, so I can take some solace in that. I just guessed on Jay Z. I really don't think his stuff matters what you listen to it on.

I only got 50% right.

[MrMartyr]

I got 4 out of 6 with headphones plugged into my computer. I missed Katy Perry and Mozart. Classical records are tough. You never know if what your hearing is the recording quality (or lack thereof), or if your hearing the ambiance of the space the piece is being performed in. As for Katy Perry...hard for me to make a call on a genre of music that I don't listen to.

[RustNeverSleeps]

Originally Posted by Pitar

I got 2 out of 4. I refused to listen to Jay Z and Katy Perry. It's a matter of principle. I have acute tinnitus, too.

Originally Posted by Captaincranky

If taking the test requires listening to Jay-Z, me and my assessment of my hearing are going to plod forward in blissful ignorance.

Originally Posted by JohnW63

I think this shows I need a better sound card in my computer. I thought I would here more separation in the first one, and got it right. After that it was SOOOO close. All my errors were selecting the higher compression, so I can take some solace in that. I just guessed on Jay Z. I really don't think his stuff matters what you listen to it on.

I only got 50% right.

It's strange how, having presumably read the thread title and the OP's post, you have all failed to realise that this test has absolutely nothing to do with the artists and everything to do with your hearing.

You don't have to like the music to distinguish a difference in sound quality. Nor are you endorsing an artist by listening to his or her sample on that website. So I really don't understand the need to advance some position of moral objection to Jay-Z.

Get down from your high horses and simply address the question - can you hear a difference?

[RedJoker]

I got most of them right but I just don't think it matters. I rarely listen to music with perfect equipment, in a perfect setting. If I were to listen to this in the car, I would never be able to tell a difference. While running? Nope. While working in the garage? Mowing? At a party? While I'm trying to strum along and learn a song? Nope, no, huh-uh, nada....

In a vast majority of the cases when I listen to music, these are all good enough. But I'm kind of like that with guitars. I don't chase tone, once it is "good enough". After a point, if I or my audience is concentrating on that last 10% (or whatever ) of tone, then i/they aren't paying attention to the music and the goal is lost anyway. Maybe if I was better, I would care more.

[Phelonious Ponk]

I've done this a few times on audiophile forums. I can consistently tell the difference between 128kbps and uncompressed. I can only differentiate 256kbps from full resolution on certain material. 320? May as well be CD. Listeners trained to listen for specific artifacts, repeatedly A/B-ing short, revealing passages can hear the difference. Middle-aged audiophiles who tell you the difference is night and day (on their highly-resolving systems...sniff!) are deluding themselves, usually will not submit to blind listening, and when they do will question the test's validity/methodology to the end of time when they inevitably fail. Those forums make the navel-gazing over bridge pin material we see here look like scientific scrutiny.

P

[ZealotsRUs]

Hmmm

Ok, I got 5/6 but I kept getting the JayZ one wrong..

Maybe I'm just too disconnected from the style?

I couldn't hear the difference on that one at all, it was odd, most of the others I could pick out things that gave it away, Suzannah's breathing, the snare sound on the Coldplay track, you could almost feel the compression on the classical one it was so obvious and even though Harvest sounded awful, one was better than the rest. I could even hear the Katy Perry.

But not the JayZ

Thanks for posting, that was fascinating

[jwayne]

Picked either the 320K or the WAV with focused listening using headphones. In an everyday listening environment without carefully paying attention, I'm sure I wouldn't notice the difference with a 128K MP3 especially because of normal age related loss of high frequencies.

[mercy]

I didnt get any right though I could hear differences they werent great differences.

[JohnW63]

Get down from your high horses and simply address the question - can you hear a difference?

As I said, Jay Z's stuff had nothing in the sample that needed better sampling. No depth of instruments or wide dynamic range. It's not a style that needs high def audio. Can you understand him and hear the bass ? If so, job done. I listed to all three of his tracks multiple times with two different headphones and could here no difference.

[Lacks Focus]

Originally Posted by donh

Stuff like this has only the resolution of the signal chain you are feeding it through.

This is absolutely right, and I'm surprised it hasn't popped up in more responses. I would expect the differences would be more pronounced on a better system. That doesn't mean that the differences would be immediately obvious, just more discernible than they tend to be on consumer-grade personal computer equipment, even with headphones attached.

It reminds me of an early system test LP I had that had three tracks of a piano recording, all identical except for increasing amounts of wow and flutter deliberately introduced into the tracks. It wasn't intended to be a test of your ears as much as a test of your equipment. The worse your turntable's wow and flutter, the less different the three tracks would sound when played on it.

The vagaries of the signal chain, from start to finish, are why I never trust the sound of acoustic guitar recordings that I hear on the internet. Way too many possible variables between the plucking of the string and the sound reaching my ears, and way too many opportunities for the signal to be degraded.

[TOCS]

You'd need decent speakers to tell the difference. I don't.

[gfsark]

Fun test. To me it proves that unless you have hi-fi equipment, high quality sound recording doesn't make much of a difference. I listened to the samples with cheap ear-buds on my ipad.

I got 3/6 and would have gotten 4/6 except for the Katy Perry sample. To me the raw sample had way too much bass, and if I had a choice, I would pay more to listen to the lower quality sample with her pop music (which I don't like). I'd pay even more to not listen to any of her music.

[Dwight]

I got two right using pro grade headphones, I got two right listening on my high end stereo. Looks like I maybe spent to much on this stuff.

[Captaincranky]

Originally Posted by Dwight

I got two right using pro grade headphones, I got two right listening on my high end stereo. Looks like I maybe spent to much on this stuff.

Dude, you're in denial. It's never equipment failure, it's your ears.

So, even if your equipment fails to impress you, it will likely impress audio testing equipment, somewhere in the basement of Bell Labs.

Although, electronics gear has a code, "never snitch", as it attaches to hi-fi stuff not meeting spec.