[chrisfromalbany]

What if someone put five "30" second pieces of the same music on here. Each being recorded at 5 different bitrates. Lossless.. 320.. 192.. 128.. 92.. something like that. Then put them all in lossless and people could guess which ones are which. Depending on there headphones and the quality of there equipment they could see if they could really see the difference. You would need a piece of music that is pretty complex and is going to be limited by the bitrates.

Not sure if this would work. I have compressed and the blown up music files and sometimes they make funny sounds. I just thought it would be interesting to see how many people here would pick which file is which bitrate and how many would pick the wrong ones. Espeically in the 320 to lossless formats.

Just an idea...

 

[crazyfrenchman27]

This has already been done before, and the software exists.

I just need to find the link to it.

Does anyone have it?

-Matt

 

[chrisfromalbany]

Well what if you did it now.. Had everyone post what they thought was the correct order. keep the formats a secert for two weeks, so everyone on the site could take part, and post what they THOUGHT were the correct order and then show the results. Some people with right systems and good ears will get the order correct and some wont. And be interesting to see what the percentages are.

It is less of a test for my own good, as it is a test to see how many others can tell the difference. The posting could have a poll at the top to pick the order.. 23% think track 1 is lossless.. ect..

Just need to come up with something that isn't copyrighted that everyone can test and is musically complex.. not sure 30 seconds of a copywritten material is a violation anyways.. I am guessing it is.

 

[ogewo]

I found this listening guide by Zemo to be pretty helpful -

http://www.fix-it.org/thread418.html

 

[plato]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ogewo I found this listening guide by Zemo to be pretty helpful - http://www.fix-it.org/thread418.html

You bet! All the tracks and comments are taken from "The Ultimate Demonstration Disc" -- Chesky Record's Guide to Critical Listening ....

 

[jefemeister]

I tried starting an experiement along these lines ahwile ago but no one seemed interested. I can't find the thread now, but basically I wanted to take a couple songs from different genres, encode them a bunch of different ways, decode them back to wavs, and randomly burn them to a bunch of CDs. The task was to get a CD in the mail, live with it for a few weeks, and rank the tracks in order of preference. Since the track numbers on each disc were different (I would have the master list) there would be no contamination from people discussing it. I even offered to pay for all expenses (CDs + shipping.) I'm still willing to do this if people are interested.

 

[dmb367]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister I even offered to pay for all expenses (CDs + shipping.) I'm still willing to do this if people are interested.

I'd give it a whirl

I like to experiment myself. I have a bunch of test cds that I like to try and play / encode as many ways as possible.

 

[jefemeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dmb367 I'd give it a whirl I like to experiment myself. I have a bunch of test cds that I like to try and play / encode as many ways as possible.

cool. I'll see if I can locate that old thread or start a new one on the matter.

 

[wolfen68]

I would participate and cover my own shipping expense.

 

[Jahn]

I'll be the first to admit that I can't hear much of a diff tween lossless and AAC 320, if at all. Therefore I gave up the lossless ghost and converted everything on my ipod that was lossless down to 320 AAC. I rediscovered 20 more gigs in the process lol - thanks, crappy undistinguishing ears!

 

[mektarus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister ...I'm still willing to do this if people are interested.

Sounds like fun! Count me in!!

 

[dmb367]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn I'll be the first to admit that I can't hear much of a diff tween lossless and AAC 320, if at all. Therefore I gave up the lossless ghost and converted everything on my ipod that was lossless down to 320 AAC. I rediscovered 20 more gigs in the process lol - thanks, crappy undistinguishing ears!

I actually read your post similar to this yesterday and ended up encoding some CDs last night at 320 AAC to compare: The verdict after a trial of 3 or 4 songs - nada - can't tell a difference. Although it would be very easy for me to pretend and say I can hear the degradation, IMHO I think you'd have to be a few grand down the hole with a very, very nice rig to hear the difference.
Let ye be known that one track for comparison was Pink Floyd, from an OLD cd and one was a Tupac song, which was just crappy both ways. (you like that variation in music??)

 

[chrisfromalbany]

Granted I don't have the best setup with only a portible amp, A900s, Ipod line-out, E5s, but I couldn't tell the difference between AAC 320 and lossless. The time skipping though lossess files or just loading one is longer. And forget trying to run and listen to a lossless file.

I am getting some better headphones but I have this feeling I am not going to be able to tell the difference between 320 and lossless. I can bearly tell the difference between a well recorded 192 and 320. But I have played it safe and put all new records in 320 format.

So if you send the cd around, can you post the results from the people after they take the test. This way get some feedback on what the people are using to listen to the tracks and what the results are. I am totally down for this though. I paid the shipping of a single cd.. lol. I might be alittle embarrassed if I choose a 128 to be lossless. lol.

 

[Silfer]

I thought there wasn't a problem with copyright if you keep the music clips under 30 sec.? If I'm right then someone could make some clips, encode them in different bitrates and convert them to wav again and upload those files so every headfier can download them and we'll get much broader results. I know a simular test has been done a couple of years ago on another board but that wasn't a hi-fi community.
I for one would be interested to see the results of head-fi listeners!

 

[Silfer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister cool. I'll see if I can locate that old thread or start a new one on the matter.

here
It's easy to find your own threads by going to your profile and click on 'find all threads started by jefemeister'