I have recently started a blog and my first topic was whether I can tell the difference between lossy and lossless music. So I did three posts on the topic and just finished typing up my discussion today.
I found seven good samples from head-fi to use and made them into various bit rates of mp3s and then did an ABX test on all the mp3s versus the lossless copy.
My results? I was able to successfully differentiate all the way up to 320 kbps for two of the samples, up to 192 kbps for one of the samples, up to 128 kbps for one of the samples and finally just to 96 kbps for three of the samples. This is all with statistical significance (p < 0.05).
I was very surprised by the fact I could differentiate 320 kbps from lossless as I had previously though people who said they could were talking out of their ass. It is possible, and anyone can do it (seeing as I have no special talents or abilities with music and am relatively new to audiophilia). The only thing which may have helped are my HD 650's.
So anyway, this may be a blatant advertisement, but you can find all the details of my experiment at my blog (links below). My first post was an introduction to lossless vs lossy in which I went into great detail with how lossless audio is encoded (which may interest some people), then I did a materials and methods post (how I would do it and what would I would use) and finally a results and discussion post. I have included all the raw output from Foobar for those that are interested along with graphs of my results.
Introduction
Materials and Methods
Results and Discussion
Let me know what you think!
I found seven good samples from head-fi to use and made them into various bit rates of mp3s and then did an ABX test on all the mp3s versus the lossless copy.
My results? I was able to successfully differentiate all the way up to 320 kbps for two of the samples, up to 192 kbps for one of the samples, up to 128 kbps for one of the samples and finally just to 96 kbps for three of the samples. This is all with statistical significance (p < 0.05).
I was very surprised by the fact I could differentiate 320 kbps from lossless as I had previously though people who said they could were talking out of their ass. It is possible, and anyone can do it (seeing as I have no special talents or abilities with music and am relatively new to audiophilia). The only thing which may have helped are my HD 650's.
So anyway, this may be a blatant advertisement, but you can find all the details of my experiment at my blog (links below). My first post was an introduction to lossless vs lossy in which I went into great detail with how lossless audio is encoded (which may interest some people), then I did a materials and methods post (how I would do it and what would I would use) and finally a results and discussion post. I have included all the raw output from Foobar for those that are interested along with graphs of my results.
Introduction
Materials and Methods
Results and Discussion
Let me know what you think!
D'oh!
(heh, just my opinion), especially the "WelcomeToDrexciya 2 second in easy" which as the name suggest was easy to test (think you've mentioned that).
