Audio Compression Blind Test - test your hearing!

[dZeus]

well I think with music that uses classical instruments it's easier, as you may 'know' how the instruments have to sound (you can more easily hear when they sound 'unnatural'). Of course only if you listen a lot to classical music.

And music where lots of distinct sounds are played at the same time (many layers?). I've got some MP3s that suffer horribly from compression artifacts at 128 Kbps, unfortunately I don't have the original CDDA.

And Az, I'm indeed willing to host the files, just contact me through pm.

[Umfriend]

post content removed by moderator:
stop spamming crabby smurf!

[az]

Maggi, I'd be glad if you could send them

AZ

[Kooldino]

I wouldn't mind participating. I did a test like this on myself once, where I would randomize the playlist. I could blatantly tell the difference between 192 and 256 within 3 seconds of the song starting.

[Maggi]

Originally posted by az
Maggi, I'd be glad if you could send them

AZ

will do, but should I edit them to a certain length or leave 'em as complete songs ?

[az]

As long as the filesize is under 20 MB per mail, I don't care (multipart RAR or whatever)

Do you people want to have complete songs or rather 30 second samples?

Oh, and obviously I didn't have time to do it this weekend, I will opt for next weekend now. Sorry for the delays.

AZ

[Maggi]

complete songs, if it's no problem for you ...

Btw, what's the plan to make it a real blind test ?

Offer URLs for streaming ?

I mean, it will be pretty obvious by the file sizes alone ...

Thanx,
Maggi

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Maggi
complete songs, if it's no problem for you ...

Btw, what's the plan to make it a real blind test ?

Offer URLs for streaming ?

I mean, it will be pretty obvious by the file sizes alone ...

Thanx,
Maggi

This is why I think only part of the song is better because then you can't tell based on the file size anymore.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Helevitia
This is why I think only part of the song is better because then you can't tell based on the file size anymore.

Yes you can. If file sizes are identical, than one clip will be shorter than another.

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Wombat
Yes you can. If file sizes are identical, than one clip will be shorter than another.

oh yeah, duh!

[az]

I will be decoding to WAV so you won't be able to tell at all. And you can burn to Audio-CD and play it back on your standalone player.

AZ

[Jon P. Inghram]

Clips are probably better since we're going to be comparing multiple copies of the same clips (just encoded differently.) How do you intend to host the completed files?

Unless you've got Ãœberbandbreite BitTorrent might be something to look into. I use BitTornado myself for downloading, but Azureus has a built-in tracker so you can host the file and the tracker on one system.

[Taz]

Originally posted by az
I will be decoding to WAV so you won't be able to tell at all. And you can burn to Audio-CD and play it back on your standalone player.

Sounds like a good plan

I guess it would be helpful for people to list what equipment they used for playback.