Well, I managed to ABX lossless / vbr v0 after memorizing/learning the artifact from the 128 kps version.
However it's not trivial , I need repeated listen before I make choices on ABX test, and I made few mistakes.
Took me twice your time, for 15 attempts (18 min vs 9 min):
...
From what I've understood , the "drums" (for lack of better name) are echo-ed, and I must focus my attention on the echo only.
The "echo" sound less tight in vbr v0 version, but the "main non-echoed impact" is just too distracting for me.
Off course with 128kps bitrate, it's much easier to abx.
Anyways I don't have "bionic ears", and when I listen to music, I focus my attention on melody not isolated sounds.
I realized also that artist often use lossy samples in their compositions, and unfortunately some compilations such like buddha bar are using more and more lossy tracks.
Nevertheless, I'm a kind a lossless freak myself , but if someone doesn't have everything in lossless, it shouldn't ruin his enjoyment.
Hi extrabigmehdi
Thats an informative and interesting test and description. Sounds like you enjoy abx about as much as I do
I didn't focus on the echoes, I focused on the actual impacts becoming smeared. Assuming we're choosing our descriptive words fairly well then I think this shows there are at least two problems with the lossy version.
If you do a little listening training you will hit 15/15 or 20/20 on a sample like that every time. I hadn't done an abx for several months, and find it really boring and quite annoying, and also I don't like that kind of music at all. If I paid attention I suspect I could do that test with little or no repeat listening and that 9 minutes would go down to next to nothing. I'd be surprised if you couldn't do the same.
I don't have bionic ears. I'm 45 and my hearing is, as far as I can tell, in the normal range. I had a quite involved hearing test for employment about 10 years ago (in a job where a hearing defect is not allowed) and they didn't congratulate me or open any champagne, they just said "Your hearing is normal." and I went through to the interview stage.
This eig sample is quite interesting. It is unusually easy to abx at very high bitrate, at least in mp3 and ogg vorbis (and I think opus but not sure) because lossy encoders tend to have terrible trouble with transients, resulting in smearing and pre-echo. You had some trouble at first and hadn't noticed a quite severe error that you now know to be present and audible. You and I noticed different errors. It would hardly be a surprise if there were some difference neither of us noticed.
This is a very simple piece and there are no sounds which might mask the errors. Most music is
far more complex but does also contain plenty of transients (though not usually so well defined). I think you can see how likely it is that we listen to lots of lossy audio that
does differ audibly from source but which we assume is "transparent" or "non-different" but
is hard enough to abx that for many people an abx produces a null. Now you know what that artefact sounds like you can hear it every time in good old normal listening btw, try for yourself.
eig is also easy because the compression
adds obvious noises. You can easily hear "the problems". Now consider that other compression artefacts don't add noise or distortion, but do more subtle stuff like
reduce stereo separation or
shorten the decay of notes or very slightly change relative apparent loudness of different tones differently ("bass is less weighty" is something people say) and so on. How do you rate your chances of picking up on that in normal listening while believing your mp3 is as good as the original? If you know the music in lossless form you will probably occasionally notice things or more likely respond to things without quite being able to pin it down. It's easy to put it down to bias, especially if abx gives you nothing but a headache and stronge urge to do something else.
Imagine if that piece was something you really knew, that you had listened to the CD tens or hundreds of times. Then you listened to the "transparent" -V 0 mp3. Chances are that you would then notice it sounded like crap. But what if the only version you ever knew was the mp3? You might never realise how crappy it was.
btw a modern codec like aac does a much better job than lame or vorbis with a sample like eig. Last year I also tried the Fraunhofer mp3 encoder with eig and that stank as well. If you need lossy compression and your hardware supports it then aac is far less likely to fail quite so badly. Just don't expect perfection.
Uncomfortable parting thought:
Think about how being accustomed to compression affects your ability in the long term to even be able to tell what is good quality and what is bad, what is music, what is unwanted distortion, and what is missing.
