For those non-musicians that have written to me you can donate to my channel through this link on my website rickbeato.com/pages/donate Or you can become a member of the Beato Club. My Beato Club is exactly like Patreon.

@JnL_SSBM

2 жыл бұрын

The reason why audiophiles prefer high-resolution audio up to 24bit, 192kHz, is because of the *loudness war.*

@JnL_SSBM

2 жыл бұрын

@The Turd Reich of Mar-A-Lago Exactly 24bit will give you more headroom, and it seems like it's necessary now, because the loudness war or volume radio standards will NOT go back to 80s volume standards anymore, and the loudness war will always be a never ending quest, this is life, i'm sorry... I'm so sick of people saying that 24bit is placebo when in the first place they're listening with a INCORRECT headphones and equipment, or unfortunately people may be unhealthy and/or uneducated, or unable to hear/see *real* world subtle details. But high resolution audio definitely benefits on loud recordings, not to loudness war but loud enough like Daft Punk's last album. But this is WHY Hi-Res audio exist, because musicians refuse to lower the volume or stop overcompressing it's music, in favor of quality. Humans cannot hear over 48khz, but it will remove the harshness and the distortion of the recordings.

@JnL_SSBM

2 жыл бұрын

@The Turd Reich of Mar-A-Lago And finally, the MASTER matters at 95%

@JnL_SSBM

2 жыл бұрын

@MF Nickster So Hi-fi is dead in that case... Since 1995

@JnL_SSBM

2 жыл бұрын

@MF Nickster 24bit straight from studio or bought from Qobuz it does... If it was all like you said in the first place Hi-Res and DRM won't be a business in the first place.

I got 6 out of 6 cus I figured that if you cycle very fast between the songs, the one that takes the longest to load is the uncompressed song :D.

@gunderson1005

4 жыл бұрын

dosduros work smarter not harder

@kozmaz87

4 жыл бұрын

LOL well played :D

@robn.7426

4 жыл бұрын

lol

@hellbent1567

4 жыл бұрын

I came to that same conclusion (longest DL= the uncompressed WAV), but Rick is right. Is there any sonic difference between the samples? I didn't hear any.

@lrmcatspaw1

4 жыл бұрын

@@hellbent1567 I heard differences in 4 out of the 6 tracks, but even then I had to not only use the best gear I had but also focus so hard on the individual sounds there was no way i was enjoying the music at the same time.

As a speaker builder I can say that the audible difference between various SPEAKERS is MUCH greater than the audible difference between lossy and lossless audio files.

@janminor1172

6 жыл бұрын

firecloud77 true. Speakers, the room you're in, the positioning of the speakers in the room, your positioning regarding to the speakers in the room, even the lighting or your general mood... all much more important than the actual audio format.

@MrJueKa

2 жыл бұрын

in my experience, most people can't hear the audible difference between lossy and lossless audio files either, many don't care or don't have high-quality music systems ... they just want to hear their music and that's fine

@ericschulze5641

11 ай бұрын

​@janminor1172 so is level of sobriety

@silence8806

6 ай бұрын

Yes, that is probably the reason why they used puny headphones, to make their test irrelevant.

@PaulRandle-sc8qk

Ай бұрын

Even the slightest difference in the crossover performance of the two speakers has far more influence on the sound than all other characteristics of the system put together, due to comb filtering. That is why you have never seen a graph of a stereo system performance. Only a single channel.

I loved Steve Guttenerg’s definition of an audiophile...”An audiophile is someone who listens to music without multitasking”. Just listen!

@ragilmalik

3 жыл бұрын

and then there are electrical engineers who actually understand the theories and applications of a component. "Audio-fool" actually was invented by engineers. Oh and also there are scientists who agree with engineers.

@zaxmaxlax

3 жыл бұрын

@@ragilmalik By the way they are the same people who make 10k+ power cables lubed with snake oil.

@a_lonely_moderate8449

3 жыл бұрын

I think a better one was, "Normal people use equipment to listen to artist's music. Audiophiles use artist's music to listen to their equipment."

@conan5885

3 жыл бұрын

@@a_lonely_moderate8449 Probably the best comment i've seen on this subject yet..... 👍👍 Some people listen to SOUND, others listen to MUSIC!! 😉

@teacherfromthejungles6671

3 жыл бұрын

@@conan5885 some listen to both...

I can’t remember who said "Musicians use their stereo to listen to music. Audiophiles use music to listen to their stereo."

I like vinyl because the art is bigger.

@gooney0

4 жыл бұрын

That's very true. If you're lucky the inner sleeve has photos or lyrics.

@KamiKaZeJeremy

4 жыл бұрын

love vinyl too

@Sadowsky46

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, good for 50+ eyes 👀 😉

@sandechoir

4 жыл бұрын

i like download music file for free

@ashleycollard8968

4 жыл бұрын

@@sandechoir and look at the pictures on a 1440p screen

I like vinyl because of the expense and the inconvenience.

@bobthesuper1

4 жыл бұрын

Good video Rick. Very interesting. When I was a teenager (45 years ago😢) I found the same thing you described was true with speakers. You even touched on that. My advice to people - Buy speakers that sound good to you! Knowing the specs are nice and use them as a guide but ultimately buy speakers that YOU like!

@TomFord-uh1to

4 жыл бұрын

Vinyl compresses the audio dramatically as the needle radius becomes less. The best way for a consumer to listen to recorded must is open reel tape.

@thomaslutro5560

4 жыл бұрын

My vote goes to the inconvenience. That little ritual does something, builds expectations, commitment, it's like signing a contract. The two of us for the next 20-25 minutes, then I'll flip you over for another round. Makes me a better listener. :D

@jnagarya519

4 жыл бұрын

I love vinyl because of the snaps, crackles and pops -- takes me back to my favorite childhood breakfast cereal.

@jnagarya519

4 жыл бұрын

@Abe Froman Hopefully you'll get over the naive nostalgia for a pain in the ass. Just to let you know: the "warmth" of vinlk is DISTORTION. What we DON'T want in fidelity is DISTORTION.

I'm an about to retire audio/video engineer who worked worked for Philips mastering the first CDs in the early 80s, and took great pride in making the best possible sound we could produce. I recently met a wealthy gentleman in California that bought amplifiers for his home theater for $900,000 (I'm not joking) to listen to MP3 quality music. I could almost cry when I think about the care we used to take to make such high quality recordings when I see what has become "good enough" today. In my opinion audio quality improved from Emil Berliner in the late1800s until the 1990s when it peaked, and has gone downhill since then.

@Automobiliana

3 жыл бұрын

Would love to hear some stories from that era, mastering the first CDs in the eighties 👍

@normanfreund

3 жыл бұрын

A bit like listening to some classic rock recordings from the 1970-1980’s on Spotify - what on earth have they done with it? I have vinyl records and know them well.

@Marcus_C51

3 жыл бұрын

$900,000 to listen to MP3 quality music...what a travesty! I'm trying to conceive what those cardboard-crap files must've sounded like. Horrendous I'm sure! .

@caveguerra

3 жыл бұрын

The guy bought one Ferrari to use as a sofa!!!

@kevindoran9389

3 жыл бұрын

@@Marcus_C51 900,000 to listen to anything!!! It's very selfish of him.............I could have used that money to spend on nonsense and gobldygook

As a 52 year old drummer/live sound tech I know my hearing has been compromised. As much as I love hi rez audio I'd happily trade all the hi rez in the world for music that has dynamics again.

@TheJonHolstein

6 жыл бұрын

Yes, dynamics is what is missing. Not frequencies we cant hear (higher than 44.1 sampling frequencies), or dynamics that will cause permanent hearing damage (bitrate of 24... although in a soundproofed room, 16db of dynamics, will only make the strongest sounds strong, but in a normal listening situation, with background noise, using the full dynamics of CD and adjusting the volume to hear the weakest sounds will cause pain...). Some hi rez files are based on better mixed sources, and some vinyls are as well compared to the CD version, and therefor might sound better. But CD has all the technical capabilities we need.

@RickBeato

6 жыл бұрын

+Jon Holstein Quit spamming the comments Jon

@RizkhyDestatama

6 жыл бұрын

hell yes, dynamic FTW i'm sick with these new mastering. why on earth todays vinyl has more dynamic than CD in fact technology wise it should be the other way around

@Yu2beFool

6 жыл бұрын

Absolutely. Perhaps that is my main reason not to listen to the crap played on most radios these days.

@PaulGPixelBike

6 жыл бұрын

Yes! Everything after 96' is compressed to shreds. And even today's indy bands, first record always has great dynamics, but as soon as they get a little popular, second record is compressed much more.

I have tinnitus. Everything sounds like crap

@billykranberry6077

4 жыл бұрын

Bless your tinnitus, made me chuckle hard

@billykranberry6077

4 жыл бұрын

@Dio Dio you don't?

@elysepatrice

4 жыл бұрын

I have tinnitus as well, but maybe not as bad as yours. The differences were subtle to my ears. I had the hardest time with the voice (I think I got it right just from guessing . 😂).

@cristic767

4 жыл бұрын

I also have tinnitus, with some WEEKS of spikes. :( Very bad situation. Still, in a good day, I can spot the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps. Very rare, only in a very good days. Anyway, if I not pay attention, I cannot say which is which. (as the guy say)

@billykranberry6077

4 жыл бұрын

@@cristic767 hey dont feel so bad. Half of Daft Punk had tinnitus too, and that...makes it...uhh Yea i hope y'all recover soon

I guess I can hear 20k (I can say that 18k I hear 100%), but in music, I can’t hear difference between 320 and flac. 128 and 320 - yes, sometimes music lost “air” and “freshness” in high and punch on bass and kicks. Main question is - it’s worth it? If you really hear difference in blind test and you ready to spend money for this - it’s for you. Once my friend can’t hear difference between Gibson Custom Shop and Chinese copy, but still want to have original. When I asked him:”maybe, you just want to know, that you guitar is expensive and see the Gibson logo on a headstock?” He said:”yes, it’s just warm my soul”. Be honest for yourself.

@fordjc11

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed but 128 I can hear distorted Cybols and the Sax sound suffers. but yeah 320k and Wav, I cannot tell, even with a superior system and specialized listening room. it is still about 4 to 1 compression. best compromise

@Darrylizer1

3 жыл бұрын

I can hear from 14Hz to about 15.5kHz, my ears are freaking old, like Beato old and I've sat behind a drum kit for 40+ years. I'm totally with you regarding 128k and 320k, the difference is noticeable with all genres but electronica. But I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between 320 and FLAC.

@sionevans8370

3 жыл бұрын

@@Darrylizer1 wow 14hz is low! You need a big sub tuned low to hear that! Could it be you're hearing/feeling resonances?

@Darrylizer1

3 жыл бұрын

@@sionevans8370 No I could hear the tone, anything under that though I really couldn't hear. I did the test with Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro headphones which have a frequency response from 5 Hz - 35000 Hz.

An audio engineer once gave me the best advice you can get about enjoying music: The technical specifications of your setup don't matter. What matters is how close they are to the gear the audio producer was using when he decided that the song was ready.

@RennieAsh

3 жыл бұрын

And not always so either. You may find you prefer how it sounds on system X rather than what the audio engineers ears were listening to

@aw2584

2 жыл бұрын

That's why when I used to make my own instrumental hip hop beats I would tour my friends houses to listen to whatever I made on their set ups before releasing lol from those having top tier audiophile equipment to those having regular speakers.

@gtxoiltastebad

2 жыл бұрын

But the key part is " when he decided that the song was ready" Another engineer would have a different standard. Which means the hardware and format don't matter. Its just what that 1 fool things is ready

@SupaKoopaTroopa64

2 жыл бұрын

@@RennieAsh True. A good portion of what separates a good mix from a bad mix is just personal tastes.

@MrEvan1932

Жыл бұрын

Not necessarily, an audio engineer’s job is to mix a song to sound well on the lowest common denominator (Bluetooth speakers, phone speakers, gas station earbuds, etc.). They likely use headphones/speakers that prioritize neutrality as a reference so that they can accurately tweak the EQ of the song to sound good on the majority of playback devices. The problem with these headphones is they often times sound “boring” and “analytical”, because they have to be, and they aren’t enjoyable to listen to music on for most people. That’s why the majority of playback devices emphasize the lows and highs to make whatever audio is playing through them more exciting. So you probably won’t enjoy music on a pair of Phillips SHP-9500s as much as a pair of Beats by Dre

I'm not an audio file.

@stopthrm

6 жыл бұрын

But your voice could be...

@oscarkorlowsky4938

6 жыл бұрын

Ha funny.

@patk2225

6 жыл бұрын

ArgoBeats I have never been impressed by any headphones or speakers but today my sound system impressed me

@user-rr7yj2ho5k

6 жыл бұрын

audiophile

@patk2225

6 жыл бұрын

you call me an audiophile I think I am different all the speakers I use is cheap car speakers if my cheap car speakers is better then the most high end speakers then that means all you guys are not smart

I got all of them, My secret: very bad internet speed

@marksantucci4230

5 жыл бұрын

@DADOU OMÉGA you guys are liars nobody other than musicians and people in the recording studio's music business can tell by listening?

@marksantucci4230

5 жыл бұрын

@DADOU OMÉGA nope I didn't know it was a joke.

@fivefingerfullprice3403

4 жыл бұрын

@@marksantucci4230 Stop drooling on yourself.

@FatalBlow113

4 жыл бұрын

The secret is how long the files take to start playing, assuming your internet speed is slow or you click them really fast, there's way of cheating without listening. I think that's what Jose meant.

To defend a bit the audiophiles, some streaming services that call themselfs Hifi, actually don't only offer high frequency files but often different masterings of the same record. And then you DO hear a difference. Is not about the frequencies though, it's about the mastering. Also, some fancy high end speakers not only go very high on frequency, but also very low. You will certainly hear a difference between a speaker with a lower frequency of say 55Hz (bookshelf)and another with 25Hz (columns). Maybe even feel the difference depending on the volume you're playing.

@SixDasher

3 жыл бұрын

Frequency range says zero about the quality of the system. My best system (Altec 515C, AER BD2, dht amps) would only hit 40Hz-18kHz, yet my pc speakers say they can do 25Hz-25kHz and sound like total crap.

I remember making that same "mistake" with the Coldplay song / files first when I took this test. The lossy files (or was it only the 128 kbps one...) had actually removed some burned in (clipping) distortion (mostly in the high frequencies) that were present in the WAV file. So judging it better was kind of obvious the first time around.

@Ckwon117

2 жыл бұрын

I dont know what those things are, but I guessed 128 on coldplay, and got 4/6 on the rest. Your innocuous comment here might be the reason I upgrade from my m40x, I am curious how much better headphones get

@benhur2806

2 жыл бұрын

@@Ckwon117 Honestly, not all that much... Really, the main two factors that make a headphone good are sound signature and the actual comfort. There's going to be some qualities that aren't picked up by the sound signature, since they're not perfectly linear systems, as well as because of the quirks measuring rigs still have, however, they do get it mostly right.

@Akirilus

2 жыл бұрын

@@Ckwon117 If you want different, get a Hifiman, I recommend the hifiman he400se, in my opinion it's more friendly than the Sundara, definitely has better bass.

@abir5814

Жыл бұрын

I got 5/6 right, the coldplay song was the one I got wrong, chose it too quickly. Also I only had 356 kbps max, cuz I was using my iPad.

I can spot differences between 128kbps and 320kbps most of time. But 320kbps and .wav sounds the same for me..

@Thanatos4655

5 жыл бұрын

Trash uncompressed is still trash! Seriously though it depends on a few things, many artists make the songs for lossy formats ahead of time since 99% will be listening in a lossy format, top 40 and popular music are simple and made for sales have no artistic value, older songs arnt made on computers so a wav would make no difference, type of music: rock tends to the same on everything because sounds is heavy blended on the other hand electronic type music is really noticable, lastly Balanced armature iem's is were you really notice quality . Ironically most audiophiles are hipsters with overpriced equipment that is lower quality then some $50 iems.

@d.e.b.b5788

5 жыл бұрын

Perhaps you can side by side, but can you walk into a high end audio store and be able to tell what bit rate a random song is just by listening to it all by itself, with nothing to compare it to? Or even if it's digital at all?

@Thanatos4655

5 жыл бұрын

@FireLion you should be able to hear it any sound device provide it isnt a mp3 or flac in a . Wav container. Wav PCM16, 24,32 have their full dynamic range, encoded music(mp3 or lossless) do not. Just turn the song up

@james-xf1ox

5 жыл бұрын

@@Thanatos4655 and dynamic range is better on old recordings

@The_Ballo

5 жыл бұрын

I got 5/6 correct. Got all correct except Neil Young's ‘There’s A World’ in which I could hear imperfections in the sample which were jarring. Not a good studio. I chose the 320k sample. I've always had annoyingly good hearing (not so god at listening). I hate CRT monitors and glad they're gone; they produced an ultrasonic whine that nobody else could hear. I also have $200 BGVP DM6 headphones and an MPOW filter, but didn't use an amp. The 128k samples were all awful to my ears.

"I can't tell the difference between an 320MP3 and a FLAC file, yet I paid $10,000 for a 10ft speaker cable." -Audiophiles

@unrein65

4 жыл бұрын

So true. That's awesome!

@Mr.Manson

4 жыл бұрын

Because it can sound more pleasant and can color the sound to your liking.

@Soonjai

4 жыл бұрын

@@Mr.Manson No, it doesn't, that's complete and utter nonsense. The ONLY thing about a speaker cable that CAN have an effect on how the Audio sounds is if the cable is insanely poorly shielded against interference from other speaker- or power cables you might have running alongside them. And it is very hard to even find such poor cables. I bet you that in a blind test you couldn't tell the difference between a stupidly expensive cable, the cheap stuff you can get at Home Depot or even a metal coat hanger used instead of a cable. Next thing you are probably trying to tell me that Gold plated contacts on a HDMI or Optical cable will make any difference beyond how they look.

@corybarnes2341

4 жыл бұрын

@@Soonjai If the speaker cable is long it will affect the quality of the sound, and if it is thin (unless of course it is very short). Speaker cables aren't typically shielded.

@Soonjai

4 жыл бұрын

@@corybarnes2341 What the hell are you blabbering about? If you get Speaker cable on a roll to cut it yourself to length you need it will be shielded the same regardless of length. And I hope you know you are fooling yourself with your statement about the cable length thing. A couple of years ago I work at a company that installed car Hi-Fi Systems, and the Speaker cables, regardless of length where NEVER the reason why the systems picked up unwanted noise. Most of the time it came from the Power cables for the Amps because the Generators of some, especially older, cars didn't have filters build in to cut out RPM depended noise. Simple In-Line Filters where able to remove those noises in above 98% of the cases. In some rarer cases we got unwanted noise from the Antennas when the Radio was used, but that was usually eliminated by simply using a different Antenna. TL;DR: The Speaker cable is, from own experience, never the issue, power- and / or Antenna can be.

Sound quality isn't only about frequencies. To me, the easiest way to distinguish uncompressed audio is to listen to clarity in stereo image, and listen to dynamics. This made the NPR test somewhat easy to me. Only challenge was Suzanne Vega's acapella singing, because that clip didn't really have much stereo image nor dynamics.

@Koeffe

3 жыл бұрын

And 256 kbps can sound better than 320 kbps if the encoding was better, so that stereo image and instrument positioning has been maintained better.

@Phoenix_of_the

6 ай бұрын

you fool

@doctorquestian

18 күн бұрын

Yes I would agree, frequency response is extremely important, however; the other part is what I'd call the sound stage. There has to be dimension to the sound. In other words, if you're listening to an orchestra or a band, using stereo you should be able to figure out by using bidirectional stereoscopic hearing, where that instrument is on the bandstand. However, the low frequencies are omnipresent, they are everywhere. They are the ones that can pass through walls. But the higher frequencies cannot and must bounce off of other surfaces. So there is a dimension that must be ascertained, otherwise all you get is just this big wall of sound. I personally used to sell high end stereo equipment back in the 70s, and phono pick-up cartridges had the same characteristics as headphones or speakers. To me it all started with the phono pick-up cartridge. And actually, in the recording studio, it all started with the microphone. Anytime there is a transducer involved, that was one of the crucial and important links in the chain. Every link had to be just as important or integral as every other link. The ability to tell the difference, that is what makes an audiophile.

@doctorquestian

18 күн бұрын

A good example is go back and listen to a Sheffield Lab recording or a TELARC recording. Those were the vinyl records that are used to sell high end audio.

I love the conclusion. Ultimately music pleasure comes fro feeling it rather than being a purely physical matter. Let’s not forget that Beethoven composed most of his best music when virtually deaf. I bet he enjoyed listening to it

That Coldplay album is compressed to hell (brick wall amplitude compressed) and sounds dreadful on a good system. I'm not surprised she couldn't tell which version was MP3 compressed on top of that. You need to use good dynamic recordings to notice the differences. It's a pity that it's getting harder and harder to find good recordings among main stream artists.

@MaddieFrankX

4 жыл бұрын

Damn you Wall of Sound!

@UsoundsGermany

4 жыл бұрын

Wanted to write the same with coldplay....from the 6 I had only 1 correct LOL

@MiDnYTe25

4 жыл бұрын

She probably recognized the poor quality version as best since that sounded the most familiar. Radios and streaming services hardly try with quality

@Sanjinator1

4 жыл бұрын

@@MiDnYTe25 Bingo! ...and just to add another point that brings in the OP's mentionings, because of the loudness war at play, the higher frequencies would sound less harsh due to the filtering out @ 128kb mp3. Thus, consequently pushing forward the midtones around 1kHz-3kHz tones where our ears are most sensitive and usually, the louder these sound, the clearer due to just how our ears work.

@therealchickentender

4 жыл бұрын

Yup. In *many* instances it doesn't matter; garbage in, garbage out. But in the instances that it *does* matter, it matter a *lot*.

We spend so much effort to make a song sound good and then people listen to it on their phone.

@sassuki

3 жыл бұрын

There are good phones though. Like the LG V60. F***ing 130dB SNR!! better than most PC sound cards!!!

@bontea5545

3 жыл бұрын

Well, good produced record still sounds better in mp3 320 then bad produced record in wav 24 bit

@Skellotronix

3 жыл бұрын

I listen to them on my phone with my nice headphones, basically using my phone as my portable music player, and I can definitely tell the difference between 320MP3 and M4A vs FLAC/WAV, not just on my phone but my PC. I apparently have pretty good hearing, and as much as it can annoy me, I'm thankful I get to enjoy music in high quality while live concerts aren't a thing.

@BarcelonasHotCrowd

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, but before that, it was AM radio, cheap BSR record decks and super bad quality pre-recorded cassette tapes! And don't get me started on the compression with FM radio!

@jamirvillarosa7924

3 жыл бұрын

@@sassuki True. I own a LGV20 as my DAP and It rivals my friend's $1000+ desktop dac amp setup lol

Watching this was a great relief for me. I have been working with audio my entire life. I'm now 74. When I was young I could hear somewhere in the range of 16 KHz and above. Many years of loud music with headphones, and speakers loud enough to walk the crockery off the shelves, my hearing has deteriorated to where 8 KHz is now my highest limit. In the last decade or so I have been working a lot with filmmaking, which involves not only editing images, but sound as well. I was beginning to get a little worried that my hearing deficiencies could seriously affect my ability to work with sound effectively. Your final remarks here have shown that maybe it really doesn't matter. Thank you so much for your experienced and invaluable opinions.

I was listening through my studio monitors through my computer. You got 1 out of 6 correct! But I am almost 70 and spent a lot of years in front of huge amplifier stacks in the 60's & 70's. I do have a documented >25% hearing loss of high frequency and wife talking!

@silence8806

6 ай бұрын

I would blame at least 25% of those 30% due to this "wife talking". :) But seriously, i am not surprised, that you got 70% correct with actual decent speakers instead of their headphones.

I still play CDs. When CDs are outlawed, only outlaws will have CDs!

@napomania

3 жыл бұрын

When CD Rom Will be dead they will sell cd at higher prices telling us that is vintage technology 👺🥴🤏

@seffers4788

3 жыл бұрын

@@napomania i seriously wouldn’t doubt it. Look how damn obsessed people are with vinyls.

@helenkusek2297

3 жыл бұрын

I've spent a lotta $ on CDs. Still have all my vinyl, too. That stuff BETTER work.

@Darrylizer1

3 жыл бұрын

You'll take my cds from my cold, dead hands!!!

@martinkristensen8398

3 жыл бұрын

I still have my CD's too vinyl is the new holy grail and that's why they're not cheap anymore it's almost like jazz music for the nerds when i bought lps in the 80s they all were at a reasonable price so i sometimes went home with 3 lps being a happy man what really killed music old and modern was the death of the record store so you could no longer have a chat with people you didn't even know but the passion for music made it easy to communicate with a lot of people and maybe they would recommend you a band you've never heard of to expand your knowledge it was just more simple times back then and the artist got percent of the record sale and that was more fair cause artists use their time and energy to create something we all can enjoy it's better to get out and meet people cause it's very isolating to sit behind the computer and just streaming

I took the test, got it all right. The slowest loading one always had the best quality. heh

@THEMATT222

3 жыл бұрын

Isn't this the same technique as the comment above?

@RaduRadonys

3 жыл бұрын

I have 1 gbps fiber connection :( they already loaded before fully pressing the play button.

@Caranor

2 жыл бұрын

lol so true

Audiophiles may play music but they are listening to their hardware.

The problem is the majority of listeners targets is some headphones with extreme bass plus compressed streaming audio, not someone who spend some money and effort to get the best sound quality, personally I love to hear that crisp and mid well balanced. Am I an audiophile? IDK ✌️😁

A small point worth adding, especially for anyone claiming audible difference or lack of it, is that mp3 encoders are not created equal (the same applies for newer popular compression formats). Mp3 specifies how to format the data, but not how to encode it. Encoders have to make "choices" about what to filter out or even transform, and some are better than others. Unless you have a good mathematical background (in which case you might as well understand formulas by yourself), here's a fairly simple analogy: there is a yellow post-it on a table (the music to encode) that a few people (encoders) are asked to describe in as much details as possible (encode), using either 128 or 320 "english words" (format, mp3). You then read them. 320 words descriptions will probably give you a better (and near-perfect) idea of the object than 128-word versions, yet some will be better than others even among the 320-word versions, simply because some people are better at writing descriptive sentences using fewer but better words (which obviously I am not).

@jimkerrigan1888

5 жыл бұрын

same holds true for decoders

@joshhoover1202

5 жыл бұрын

@@jimkerrigan1888 The same is not true for decoders. All mp3 decoders will produce the same output with the slight caveat that there may be rounding differences which are negligible.

@Thanatos4655

5 жыл бұрын

Mp3,flac,lossy/lossless are the same at any bitrate, they arint the original. bitrate isnt the same a bits . uncompressed wav playback is 1440MBps( 1400 MBps = 1400 Megabytes =11200000 Kbps flac/mp3 you need this bitrate to match the original) quality is pointless a 900kps lossless compressed flac has 1% of the songs data, they the bit upscale(litteraly fake bits) at decoding attempting to predict what the original sounds like, this is impossible since 99% is gone. Audio quality is unmeasurable since it is software decoding.

@joshhoover1202

5 жыл бұрын

@@Thanatos4655 Well even wav file can vary in quality depending on the sample rate and bit depth. But a lossless compression algorithm can be set to reproduce the original signal.

@byddles

5 жыл бұрын

@ThanatosXRS You made a little mistake man. The standard audio CD format is 16-bit, 44.1KHz 44.1 kHz = 44100 Hz (44100 16-bit samples for second) 44100 * 16 = 705 600 bps (bits per second) For 2 channels (stereo): 2 * 705 600 = 1 411 200 bps 1 411 200 bps / 1000 = 1 411.2 kbps = 1.4112 mbps (mbits per second, not MBytes per second!) 1.4112 mbps / 8 = 0.1764 MBytes per second, but not 1400 MBytes per second. You are wrong with about 7 936 times ;) Audio CD contains about 74 min audio: 74 min * 60 sec = 4 440 sec 4 440 sec * 0.1764 MBps = 783.216 MB on a CD If you were right, one CD would fit: 783 MB / 1400 MBps ~ 0.56 seconds of music :) :) 320 Kbps bitrate is exactly 4.41 times less than uncompressed CD audio, or in fact there are 22.68% of original data. Respectively, 900 Kbps are 63.78% of original data. Please, be more careful with bits(b) and Bytes(B) - mathematics can be a two-blade knife if misused.

Late to the party here. Hard to tell the 320 from the uncompressed but there's a big difference between those and the 128s. It's not just the sonic range, it's more the way they communicate the ambience of rooms, the timbre of voices and instruments...all these make the experience more immersive, whether people are aware of them or not. When I'm listening to a song I love and I get distracted, it's usually because the playback quality is in some way degraded or subtly dissonant.

@timothycannata

Жыл бұрын

Good point. The best way I could describe the difference between 128 and 320 is to make a comparison using color. It's like having the same picture with the same colors but in the 128 version the colors are muted or faded compared to the 320.

I didn't notice a difference between Mp3 and Flac with regular headphones, but as soon as I got audiophile headphones and a/b tested between them I could definitely tell the difference.

@vangledosh

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly. Your audio setup is only as good as its weakest link.

@eposz2

2 жыл бұрын

Which mp3 vs flac? Because 128 kbps - OK. That's poor. But I doubt you can statistically significantly tell the difference between 320 kbps and flac.

@ea-do2pw

2 жыл бұрын

Only way to tell if you can notice the difference or not is to do a blind test with a big pool of songs.

@eposz2

2 жыл бұрын

@Tweed Penguin No, if a blind test is done.

@ernestochang1744

2 жыл бұрын

youtube can only do 256 kbps if you get true CD quality thats 1,411.2 kbps and if most of you havent noticed the only difference is that hi hats and cymbals sound a lot crispier and clear, theres more instrument separation as well, even if you only have mono audio its insane because you can even hear the singers lip hitting close together and you can most certainly hear sounds like "shh" a lot clearer, another thing that ive noticed is that the music tends to be louder in CD rather then mp3 320 kbps, now this may be due to the fact that its not just louder for the sake of being louder, i think its louder because the frequencies we were missing are suddendly being added back in suddendly the singer (if mastered correctly) feels like is in the room with you, not 1 room away behind a wall in the same position, and i think thats something most people miss when they first hear a WAV vs MP3 file

A score of 6/6. A few years ago I was able to get a score of 5/6. Only with the jay-z track did I have to guess, because the stylized 8bit synth in the background sounds too lo-fi on its own. The amount of stylized digital distortion effectively masks the conversion artifacts. Other recordings can be identified accurately without guessing, although with some you first have to teach your ears what exactly the difference is. The exception is the coldplay track, where the difference is obvious. Clipping on the master for both mp3 samples is significantly smoothed and sounds not as harsh as on wav. Still want that printscreen for confirmation?

@Vodkanir

Жыл бұрын

we don't care lil bro

On a low quality MP3 you can usually hear the difference in white noise like cymbal crashes or applause. This is because the bitrate quickly becomes saturated because there is no place to duplicate the multiple different frequencies. It’s like a low quality JPEG. Blue sky or white walls looks fine but fine details like trees and hair etc often get chunky. But a good codec and higher bit rate makes them all but disappear.

@sporopeza

4 жыл бұрын

To Rick's point, you still have good hearing. Congratulations.

@johnsmith1474

4 жыл бұрын

Poorly made point, you have the visual analogy backward, the white noise is analogous to white walls. In jpg compression it is the smooth areas of constant tone where you see problems first because the jpg noise is discernable against that continuous tone, the high detail areas in fact hide the artifacts, they are lost in it. When you what to check picture quality you examine a smooth area like the sky.

4 жыл бұрын

Bartonovich52 - EXACTLY!!

@wpgspecb

4 жыл бұрын

@@johnsmith1474 This guy knows whats up.

@johnsmith1474

4 жыл бұрын

@@wpgspecb - Yes I do, thanks.

You're right Rick. Dude I am one of those snotty dudes who wants everything to sound as good as possible, born in 1971 and went to music school in the 80s. My entire music collection is in FLAC, but all the mobile stuff is 320 because I'm not crazy, I am just like your assistant, I can only tell the difference about half the time. And that's normally when I'm remembering exactly how something specific went in a track. Anything lower drives me nuts with artifacts but at 320 were pretty golden.

@ICTman

4 жыл бұрын

I have the odd FLAC on my mobile, but most of my audio is 500kbps OGGs - a bit over the top, but my main music source gives me OPUS files, which I love and would use save for the fact that support for metadata is abysmal - it can do it, but few music tagging softwares will recognise it. As I don't want to end up double-compressing I crank up the quality on the OGGs. Still get a decent filesize nonetheless

@marksbeats3053

4 жыл бұрын

Same for me. I can only tell If I really know the song and then its a very small difference between the two. The WAV just sounds a bit more full and slightly clear. I have a tidal subscription and I download what I can find in Masters and the rest is 320. I have a really quality sound system and I just want to get the best out of it and I want to hear it how the artist intended.

@gregoryjunker3914

4 жыл бұрын

The artifact that drives me most crazy is the "shimmer" in mids and highs with poor-quality encoding.

6 out of 6 using Sennheiser HD560s, directly from on-board Realtek HD sound card.

@sindrerb

3 жыл бұрын

6/6 on a 70$ usb gaming headset.

@zaxmaxlax

3 жыл бұрын

3/6 using a sennheiser HD25 out of a focusrite audio interface.

@MrFloyd-te1nh

3 жыл бұрын

6 out of 6 using the laptop speakers.

@Schmiddelwutz2000

3 жыл бұрын

6/6 using cellphone speaker while driving my hot rod!

@taton5

3 жыл бұрын

6/6 pressing f12 and reading the correct answer

It’s the combination of experience, training, hearing and God given music discernment ability that makes a great producer/mixer

I can confidently say I won't hear much different on rap or pop song,but when it come to ochestra or jazz it's easy to spot on the compressed or uncompressed.

@NeoRichardBlake

5 жыл бұрын

I just found this today, but I took that same audio test a few months ago. I got 3 or 4 right, one of the wrongs was a 128k... And it was the classical piece. All three of the classical pieces sounded virtually the same to me. I also have super sharp hearing, as the tester here does. It has to come down to some experience with the material. I don't listen to much classical, and I don't remember the last time I would have heard it live. I notice none of the examples where any kind of hard rock or metal though. I would imagine the differences there are even more difficult to pick up due to the inherent distortion in the styles. I'm guessing cleaner audio makes more of a difference in the perception. The dirtier the sound, the more difficult.

@motherofallemails

5 жыл бұрын

@@NeoRichardBlake the reason why you couldn't hear the difference in the classical piece is you don't listen to classical music and you don't love it so you it won't even occur to you what the clarinet is subtly but magically doing in the background when it plays, you probably will barely even notice it. Sorry but that super sharp ear is wasted on you if you're not even listening to classical music.

@NeoRichardBlake

5 жыл бұрын

@@motherofallemails That's a pretty pretentious opinion that my sharp hearing is wasted if I'm not listening to classical. I enjoy classical. I just don't listen to it much. And when I do listen to it, I enjoy the complex pieces more. I pick up more nuances when I listen to it more. And that's what I meant when I said it has to do with experience with the material. Study and familiarity makes nuance easier to find. I also listen to a lot of metal and hard rock, and I can hear more nuance there than people who don't normally listen to it. My poorly worded point was that the video is right. Sharp hearing doesn't necessarily make you an expert listener. Getting depth from music is more about familiarity and study than with specific hearing. I constantly notice things others don't in sight as well. Most of it has to do with one's attention to detail, and sadly many people don't pay very much attention to things. Music is background for a lot of people. That's why simple sounds with a catchy beat become the most popular. Pieces that require study to fully appreciate fall by the wayside of society.

@owenhu9465

5 жыл бұрын

@@motherofallemails Yea... that was pretty pretentious. You are not better by listening to classical music and it's definitely not a "waste" of any sort by not listening to classical music. This is coming from a big fan of classical music... Let's not form any hierarchy of taste

@owenhu9465

5 жыл бұрын

I strongly disagree. It absolutely depends on the production and quality of the music, regardless of the genre. From that audio test, the only song that I got consistently right was the Jay Z track because it utilized a lot of different frequencies, and I never listen to hip-hop. I listen to a lot of jazz and classical and I can tell you, for older recordings and poorly engineered recordings that dont have a wide range of frequencies anyway, it is extremely difficult to tell the compression. But that's just my opinion, I could be completely wrong. I dont wanna come across as thinking I'm definitely right :)

I'm almost 67 years old. I'm old enough to recall hearing CD's for the first time in 1984. I especially recall the superbly mastered Beatles White Album which I picked up in Tokyo, since there weren't any CDs available in the US yet. I was amazed by the lack of vinyl noise, like dust pops and other artifacts. But the best sound I ever heard was top-quality analog well before then; it was 2 inch analog first generation tape, through Stax headphones while sitting on a Paradigm subwoofer. I could even hear every bass drum pedal squeak and the click of the keys of the sax. It was like I was right in the recording studio with my ears simultaneously placed where where all the mics were. It's an amazing memory. Sure I more recently listened to a lot of MP3 compressed stuff, even worked with Karlheinz and Juergen at Fraunhofer IIS for a while. But by then my hearing was not so good, due to congenital loss and dead hair cells from too many loud concerts when I was young. I don't agree with is the emphasis on bandwidth. Sure high frequencies help the sound a bit. But duplicating natural transients and having lots of dynamic range also matter, maybe even more than the presence of steady-state high frequencies, which is what the specifications measure. Nevertheless, nice video, Rick. Your explanations were impressively clear and more accurate than most.

@lmt7816

4 жыл бұрын

Well said. I think audiophile "critical listening" isn't strictly a function of frequency response. To me, after years of listening to audio both analog and digital, I can spot lossy formats and tell readily what's missing. To the average listener it could be analogous to listening to mono car speakers then getting a 5.1 mix on SACD. I have access to an Anthem unit out to Paradigms and it's quite clear, but even with beyerdynamic headphones and an xduoo amp, I can hear it. Rick is correct about frequency response, mostly, (some do hear outside 20-20k) but what intake issue with is that lossy formats do compress in very dicernible ways, even at higher bitrates.

@RogerBarraud

4 жыл бұрын

Transients *are* in the high frequencies.... Well actually, the sharper the transient, the wider the spread ... but definitely extending into the high end.

@LesAtlas

4 жыл бұрын

@@RogerBarraud In order to avoid confusing the issues, I specifically had said: "...the presence of steady-state high frequencies, which is what the specifications measure." Namely, I meant the notion of bandwidth which comes from usual long-term estimates of frequency response. Sure, broad frequency bandwidth is necessary for good transient response. An AM radio does not preserve sharp transients since it has less bandwidth that high fidelity systems. But since usual long term bandwidth estimates do not directly measure transient response, broad frequency bandwidth is not sufficient for good transient response. Which means: 1) Frequency bandwidth is not the only thing which is important for fidelity and quality of sound preservation. This has been known for decades. It's why, for example, some people are careful about phase alignment, where usual phase misalignment does not reduce a systems frequency bandwidth, but it does distort transients. 2) Transient response is hard to capture as a single specification. There is no agreed upon measure of transient response, which is why it is not seen much. Yet there are systems, including human ears, which can recognize quality differences between different systems with the same frequency bandwidth. Sometimes big differences.

@krane15

3 жыл бұрын

Remember when sampling audio it has to be apple to apples. That said, the tape was obviously at a higher quality that exceeded the CD capability. Nevertheless, its biggest negative is that like vinyl, it will deteriorate in quality with every pass.

@AlbertKel

3 жыл бұрын

You had bad ears also back in the 80s. The first cd players sounded horrible since the manufacturers didn’t know about jitter and the importance of an accurate clock.

I think you can tell the difference most when the track is really loud such as through a massive sound system. Like when you're at a party and one DJ plays mp3's and then the one after plays wav and you go oooo yeah thats really gooooood

@itaiazerad5595

Жыл бұрын

Totally! I remember my first experience DJing with Mp3's and uncompressed files. After that night I deleted all the Mp3's in my stack. Uncompressed good quality audio just feels more relaxed. It's effortless, the same way a master musician makes his playing seem effortless.

If you brought the various files and came and played them on my dad’s audiophile stereo, you will be able to hear the difference. And is isn’t just down to the quality of the speakers, it is the whole system that is important. The lossless formats have a tinny quality. The human ear may not be able to hear particular frequencies singled out, but they may play a supporting role on the frequencies you can. Just like in a recipe where one ingredient you may not be able to taste individually, adds something to the whole, that if omitted you know tastes different but can’t put your finger on it.

@ridley68

2 күн бұрын

Lossless files are exactly that, the data sent to the DAC would be the exactly the same if the stored file was an uncompressed WAV file or a lossless FLAC. There cannot be any difference in the sound.

Hearing loss above 10kHz is not a loss of 50%. There’s only one octave from 10kHz to 20kHz. You’re only losing some of the sizzle in the cymbals and upper harmonics of a few instruments. The other (approximately) NINE octaves humans can hear lie between 20Hz and 10kHz, so I’m not too bothered not being able to hear above about 12kHz. The tinnitus can be annoying at times though.

@stevemiller9480

5 жыл бұрын

Timothy Reeves - All very good points.

@Eleventhearlofmars

5 жыл бұрын

Appie Demir by hearing people asking him about tinnitus he developed it through his subconscious .🤣

@Eleventhearlofmars

5 жыл бұрын

goofyfoot2001 wrong thread

@Eleventhearlofmars

5 жыл бұрын

goofyfoot2001 it’s tinnitus not tittitus. ;-)

@EJP286CRSKW

5 жыл бұрын

Timothy Reeves Humans can certainly hear well below ONE Hertz. Otherwise tuning musical instruments would be impossible. So you need to add four or five octaves to your nine. And the claim in this video that MP3 encoding is inaudible rests entirely on the original research, which was done on the usual pool of 20-yo psychology students being paid five bucks a time to participate in random experiments, which incidentally invalidates most of the psych experiments of the 20th century,. Not on musicians, recording engineers, audio guys of any kind. While at university I had dozens of opportunities to participate in psych experiments, and I turned them all down, as did nearly all of my friends. So hardly random samples, let alone expert samples. Few things in hifi have less basis than MP3.

I took the test and got the same result as Michelle. I took the test again using better headphones and a high quality DAC on my computer and got a perfect score. And I'm 59. Hearing matters, but so does quality equipment.

@thatunnamedredshirt

5 жыл бұрын

Now repeat the experiment with a few other audiophiles, and we'll see. Science is all about repeatable experiments

@WeWereYoungandCrazy

4 жыл бұрын

invalid conclusion. Anyone repeating the test will finally get 100% correct since you need only concentrate on the samples you failed in the previous trial and you have a 33% chance of simply guessing with each listening.

@warpspeed9877

4 жыл бұрын

I believe you but hey...you are probably talking to people listening to music from downloaded files through their computer speakers... And they will tell you you're wrong. Ignorance is a bliss.

@entity279

4 жыл бұрын

@@WeWereYoungandCrazy No. Rushed dismissal on your part though. The test reorders the samples so if you repet it you always start from scratch.

I suspect that those "old guys" with huge mixing and production experience, are hearing their productions as Beethoven heard his later symphonies... in their heads ... to some extent: The stuff they *can* physically hear, clues them in to more critical facets like relative volumes, soundstage spread and positioning, reverberation, delay etc... ...and because they know the characteristics of their signal chain so well, they remember what instruments and voices will sound like at the top end from memory of when they were physically able to hear the 10kHz++ stuff.

On all 6 I could consistently hear a difference, however identifying which one of the different sounds was "better" was very inconsistent on the first go around. After taking notes on the differences and repeating the test (they re-randomize the order when you refresh the page) I could use the previously identified differences to consistently identify the correct answer

None of this matters when everything is compressed to hell with no dynamic range

@spinnenente

6 жыл бұрын

if you are listening to terrible music it is your own fault.

@BecomingEugen

6 жыл бұрын

less complain and more make please

@DjemGuitar

6 жыл бұрын

it really does matter, some mastering engineers use compression that sounds beautiful which can be totally ruined by a lossy format :( maybe that because of the less dynamic range the frequencies are much more prominent - making the loss of frequencies sound worse in the lossy format ?

@MACTEP_CHOB

6 жыл бұрын

Well, not all music needs wide DR, but when it`s lower than 10, just about anything sounds worse. My best are movies soundtracks, they usualy have 14-15. That`s enough.

@Si1983h

5 жыл бұрын

Well this did occur to me with the choice of test tracks, in my experience, Coldplay recordings are a harsh, garbled mess, and as for Katy Perry.🤣😂 She got the other ones right.

At the end of the day listening to Coldplay uncompressed is equally as unpleasant an experience as listening to it at 128kbps

@tomamyx3980

3 жыл бұрын

who, or what is Coldplay?

@atticustay1

3 жыл бұрын

Early Coldplay is good

@greatfelixo

3 жыл бұрын

@@atticustay1 no it isn't

@DaveBits

3 жыл бұрын

@@greatfelixo X&Y is meh in my opinion, but Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head are fantastic. Hating on Coldplay is pretty low hanging fruit

@redanwrong

3 жыл бұрын

Pretty sure it's always compressed

Actually it depends on the program content more than anything else. If you listen to a good piano recording, its much easier to hear the losses of MP3. The problem is for most of us, all we here is MP3, so we get accustomed to it. Secondly it depends on the filtering. Most of the time, the filters are going to hack off the HF anyway, so it won't matter. Rupert Neve built a console specifically designed for vocals. There was a knob he labeled"air" which had a 15 db boost at 30kHz. No one can hear 30k. Tape machines don't reproduce 30k. But it made a difference in how vocals sounded. This was back in the 70s. Back in the 80s, I was working on an Amek Angela. The engineer had always complained the console never sounded open. I discovered the main output stage was designed incorrectly, resulting in a 2 db loss at 20kHz. Once I changed the design, the engineer said the high frequencies sounded much smoother and open. We informed Amek regarding their design error, which kind of raised some eyebrows across the pond - especially coming from a 26 year old tech with no real credits to his name.

Got 4/6 correct with Apple AirPods. The two songs I got wrong were the low sounding songs with less clarity in them. I do believe WAV uncompressed has a noticeable feeling compared to the rest. When music is a big part of your life, than you want to hear the best sound quality you can get.

@troykm

7 ай бұрын

If you used AirPods you didn’t hear the wav file. The AirPods are Bluetooth headphones and can not transmit wav files. You just guessed.

Several years ago, I was riding an escalator up a floor in a hotel, enjoying a funky background music system's instrumental rendition of 'The Windmills Of Your Mind'. The higher I got, the better the music sounded, and by the top I was thinking, 'Damn, this system is amazing! How did they do it?' I was blown away by the exquisite fidelity! Then I arrived at the top, looked down the corridor and there, at the far end, was a live combo, all acoustic: drums, accordion and double bass. Since then, I have come to realize that no matter how good our technology, from mic'd performance, through the recording (analog or digital,) encoding and distribution, to the end user and their equipment, we'll almost never fool anyone into thinking they're hearing a live performance. I, at 75, can still tell that I'm hearing someone play a live acoustic piano, through an open window two stories up, while walking on a noisy street! We still have a long way to go, and I's suggest that all this discussion about encoding protocol comparisons does little or nothing to address the problems we have in recreating an original binaural experience, with young or old ears! But please keep trying!

@dambuster6387

5 жыл бұрын

I don't think that one can re- produce faithfully music through a hifi system having heard live music is not the same experience.

@1wibble230

5 жыл бұрын

Or you've just never heard a decent high end sound system, so there is that...

@brucegelman5582

5 жыл бұрын

@@1wibble230 A live recording can never match a live event.The physics of the event are radically different.The best systems do a great job of fooling you but if you were present at the actual recording session you would always be disappointed with the outcome.Reality trumps recording technology.Thats why the argument that it's better to spend thousands of dollars over many years on attending live concerts rather than spending tens of thousands on audio gear makes sense.

@1wibble230

5 жыл бұрын

@@brucegelman5582 As someone who has attented many live shows from orchestras to rock and dance bands, and also has very high end system, I can tell you technology gets amazing close! And indeed when it comes to rock/dance stuff I'd argue studio recording listening at home is by far the more pleasurable experience. Very rarely do such venues have a good well balanced sound that isn't ripping your ears off. For classical/jazz/small indie band stuff sure, live sounds beautiful, but with really high end speakers it is very close to actually being there :)

@brucegelman5582

5 жыл бұрын

@@1wibble230 I agree.I have a wonderful and expensive system of my own.But I had the good fortune of working at Benaroya Hall in Seattle and listening to hundreds of live classical performances and spending time with the audio engineers helping them record and lending my mic placement expertise.Schoeps,Neuman, and Royer.I also had the luck of listening to rehearsals of YoYo Ma and Marc Andre Hamelin to name but two.I am really talking about orchestral works when I say it cant be reproduced on a home system.I should have clarified that.Nice to talk with you.If you like we can carry on.

Interesting test! I found that I can usually find the 128kbps, but couldn't tell the difference between 320kbps mp3 and 44.1kHz wav. And great point re: the difference between physical hearing and ability to mix.

@j.lucasdecastroaraujo761

5 жыл бұрын

I didn't even find any difference between 128kbps and the wav 44.1kHz. I guess all those teenage years listening to loud music on my cellphone's screwed my ears.

@curtisjudd

5 жыл бұрын

@@j.lucasdecastroaraujo761 I found that the high frequencies were what gave it away. Have you tested to see what the highest frequencies are that you can hear? I can hear 15kHz but nothing beyond that.

@curtisjudd

5 жыл бұрын

@@NickChase Yes, good points. I was using a Universal Audio Apollo X6 and Beyerdynamic DT880 Pros.

@Will-Max

5 жыл бұрын

@@j.lucasdecastroaraujo761 I'm a senior citizen with hearing loss in both ears , and I can tell the difference between those two...on a good system.

@Chopper153

3 жыл бұрын

You can subtract the wav file from mp3 to get the error signal. Ideally this error signal should be a stochastic noise with no deterministic information.

"So much in listening is based on what you train your ears to hear" - that is the pinnacle thought!

I agree with all you've said that it's on on your ability to hear. What's amazing is I'm 57 years old and I "hear" mp3s as lass bass rather than less highs (I'm an electric bass player of 43 years). Time to subscribe to the Beato Ear Training course 🙂

At 71, after 50 plus years of playing and recording, my left and right ears have totally different response curves, in some cases there are frequencies missing from one or the other. My audiologist told me that the brain would compensate but I haven’t found that to be the case. Add to that my tinnitus is so loud that I have to crank the volume up to get over the noise that it becomes a vicious circle, adding to the damage. I’ve just recently accepted that I can no longer do a good mix. While I can still track well everything else is off the table. I guess it’s time to find a good mixing house.

@EdHorch

3 жыл бұрын

Back in the day, I could hear up to 23KHz, but more importantly, I could hear detail. I was literally a "golden ears" consultant to high end audio stores. It was less about frequency range and more about a natural, three dimensional soundstage. If the trumpet player takes a step forward (and the recording and playback are good enough) you can hear it. OTOH, if blindfolded, I shouldn’t be able to tell where the speakers are. Obviously, rating sound quality in that regard through headphones is pretty much impossible. But I bet I could still tell the difference between uncompressed CD sound and its MP3 counterpart with audio levels matched to

@sionevans8370

3 жыл бұрын

@@EdHorch what amp/speaker do you use?

@EdHorch

3 жыл бұрын

@@sionevans8370 AR turntable with a Linn Basik arm and a Signet something-or-other cartridge, feeding the preamp section of an NAD 730 receiver, into an Adcom 555 amp. That all goes into a pair of Theil 02 bookshelf speakers and whatever I feel like hooking up as a sub. It's above mid-fi, and anything better would be beyond what I can hear any more.

@Oldcrow77

2 жыл бұрын

I’m in the same boat I’m good with soundstage, separation and definition to a degree. But the wife has to tell me the coffee pot beeped. And I’ve had Hyperacusis hit about the same time as the pandemic. With my tinnitus I find protecting my ears from wind helps as well as less caffeine and try to envision faders to try to bring it down in my heads mix. Some days are good, some nights can be hell.

From my experience, it doesn't matter about the files the music is put to (FLAC, WAV, or MP3), it's all about the mastering and how the music was mixed in the studio. If you want your music to sound clear and open, it needs to be mastered as such. My favorite example to name is Electric Light Orchestra's Time. I've listened to the album on both Tidal and Qobuz, and it sounds so compressed regardless if it's at 16 bit/144hz or 24 bit/96hz. HOWEVER, my 1990 CD copy sounds clear and crisp, and I was shocked to find that it had such a noticable difference.

@SteelyEyedMissileDan

2 жыл бұрын

Tidal butchers audio files. A KZreadr called Golden Sound made an excellent video exposing the massive scam that is MQA. He also shows that Tidal doesn’t even offer the CD quality that they are advertising.

@westend117

7 ай бұрын

Probably a vote for Qobuz…

5/6 which is good. I just couldn't for the life of me tell the difference in that jay-z song (even from 128kbps) and the katy perry song was also extremely tough but I did get it. The others though there was a very minor trailing echo that you couldn't hear at all on 128kbps and it was very quiet on 320kbps. It's quite noticeable on Tom's Diner and also the classical piece (it was noticeable only the high piano notes). It's just a little bit of extra detail in vocals or high instrument notes which sounds very nice. Keep in mind I do have HD660S which are pretty high end, and I couldn't tell on other previous headphones. It is more beneficial in songs with real instruments, since synths do not have such a "trailing echo".

@Woodsaras

Жыл бұрын

Stop pretending. This test is a toy. A proper test would have more variety and way more songs, 6 is a joke.

When it comes to buying music, CDs are the way to go. They're inexpensive (nowadays anyway), they were engineered with the peak of human hearing in mind, you can extract lossless WAV/FLAC files from them, or good quality MP3 files depending on your needs. Anyone who favours vinyl as a superior sound doesn't know what they're talking about. Vinyl records sound "nice," but that "warmth" and "niceness" is simply distortion at the end of the day.

@DroopusTunes

3 жыл бұрын

Red Book CD audio has a hard shelf at 22k. The ultraharmonics which affect lower frequencies are removed. Compare a Red Book CD to DSD and you'll hear a huge difference.

@hazardousjazzgasm129

3 жыл бұрын

I get the appeal in collecting vinyl, but I do not get the appeal of listening to vinyl

@teckertime

2 жыл бұрын

@DEEJMASTER 333 Well Said!

@teckertime

2 жыл бұрын

And DACs were game changers for CDs when they came out.

The test will be much more accurate if the result was shown to her after all tracks were completed. Because the immediate feedback will actually either reinforce positively or negatively on the next answer

@SinnerSince1962

3 жыл бұрын

@@pablopacca9458 Absolutely. A prior negative response will have her second guessing an initial response on a new track.

@herbstfluten

3 жыл бұрын

One thing you’ll learn in those tests refers to your own definition of a good sounding record. I made wrong guesses because the real sound belonged to a style that I didn’t like. After I realized how this music was meant to sound I spotted the better sound quality. Sonic tastes play a huge part in this and not just frequencies.

@methuselah4091

3 жыл бұрын

Also she may have been influenced by previous listens of "Speed of Sound".

@soundman1402

3 жыл бұрын

@user name What do you think recorded those songs?

@Graphicxtras1

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, just been doing interval / note etc testing and I would prefer to find out how badly or how well (unlikely) I have done and not during the test itself. Like doing an exam and getting it marked as you go along .. would totally sway the result. Still, listening to the tests on KZread, they sounded exactly the same (strange that)

One of the comments you made really struck home with me was about how these engineers might not be able to hear above 14,000 KHz but can listen deep into a mix and hear things the average listener probably wouldn't. It reminded me of another video you posted some time ago where you were pulling out some of the different sections of Yes' "Roundabout" and it made me realize what a lazy listener I can be a lot of the time to music. For me it was a real revelation to actively engage with a recording and listen to it in different ways, sometimes maybe concentrating on the bass, sometimes percussion, etc. I've always been a huge and eclectic lover of music and I feel like that and other things I'm learning on your videos has really deepened my appreciation of what I listen to. I just want to thank you so much for these videos and giving me and all of us this gift! I wish I'd learned some of this in my younger years instead of at 52 :)

@phillipshearman5597

5 жыл бұрын

Education is as important as natural talent. We may both see the same painting but the educated artist will be able to point out what make it so special or so mediocre.

@timhall3160

5 жыл бұрын

Excellent post. I have a trained ear but not great hearing...I listen deeply and carefully to instrumentation and then lock on to a particular instrument and "mimic" it in my head ("pa-tingggg!") As if I'm going to imitate it vocally--i know it doesn't make sense but I really focus on isolating and memorizing a specific part of the mix, then A/B against that, then another part, etc. Recently I compared two universal disc players with a SACD. I heard a percussion instrument using the newer player that was simply absent in the older (but more expensive) player. Then I compared a DVD-A of a different album and could not discern any difference. My conclusion was that the newer player probably had a better implementation of the SACD decoding chip, which wasn't applicable to the DVD-A. Is that correct? I don't know, but the SACD difference was very clear to me while the DVD-A was identical to me. Just sharing some personal, non scientific experience about some of the factors that can affect my listening experience. Great discussion.

@kencenicola9476

5 жыл бұрын

Well said.

@wolverine3344

5 жыл бұрын

Tim Hall SACD and DVD-Audio are criminally under appreciated formats, what a lost opportunity for the music business, I was set to repurchase hundreds of albums, if not a thousand in high-resolution before the future turned cloudy and they lost support. Educated listeners here presumably have had the phenomenal engagement with 3 particular high-res must-hear discs: Fleetwood Mac Rumors (DVD-A), Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (both) and Pink Floyd DSOM (SACD) in 2-ch and surround mixes. Unbelievably emotional experience. Acoustic Sounds is a great place to buy now that big box guys no longer carry for $12-$15. Does anyone else know of high-res disc sites?

@KG-sy2vs

5 жыл бұрын

That is precisely what makes Yes, Yes... Same thing with Rush. People often do not appreciate complex music because it is overwhelming

The biggest thing is the quality of your speakers. 97% of people have crap speakers and have never really heard the music that they like. It's amazing to hear music like the artist intended, this can only be done on top quality speakers.

@Slaveknight_gael

3 жыл бұрын

I said the exact same thing after buying an expensive DAC and earphones: I have never heard my favorite music before. The first reaction of everyone who asked me to listen to something on my equipment was a huge smile and widened eyes.

@Neo5GT

3 жыл бұрын

How can people like music they’ve never heard?🧐

@Slaveknight_gael

3 жыл бұрын

@@Neo5GT They heard extremely limited versions of songs with cut depth, sounds, butchered panorama and still liked them. They'd be shocked to hear what these songs REALLY sound like on good equipment.

@TheHomeExpert5

3 жыл бұрын

@@Neo5GT they never heard it fully and completely. I experienced this myself when I got my self a top-of-the-line system. I started listening to anything and everything because everything sounded so amazingly clear.

what perfect pitch has to do with hearing the quality of music?! it’s like you don’t even know what you’re looking for here…

If I'm paying for an album, I want the lossless file so I'm free to re-encode it to any format I want with minimum loss. And not have layers of re-encoding that I don't need. If I'm converting to AAC, Vorbis or Opus, I don't want a previous MP3 encoding on top of that. I think a CD Quality FLAC is good enough. At least I won't feel like we got all this technology but today we are getting less quality than what we got from a CD in the 90s. (MP3's vs CDs). If you are giving away a free album, and you want to offer it at 128kbps, than I can't really complain because it's free.

@gwahli9620

3 жыл бұрын

FLAC is not "good enough", it is a lossless format. Lossless means that every single bit of data in the wav file is preserved and if you convert it back into a wav you'll get a file that is binary identical to the wav. It is like compressing files in a zip file, they come out identical to the way they come in. The other formats you mention are not compression, they use reduction -> some data is lost. There are arguments whether 44.1 KHZ / 16 bit is good enough, but that has nothing to do with FLAC, as you can encode higher sample rates and bit resolutions in FLAC just fine too.

I got 2/6. Since the test changes the answers, you should run the test 10 times to see if she can get 66% again

@-morrow

4 жыл бұрын

yes, he should have run the test more than once. 2/6 is what you'd expect on average by mere guessing, so it's likely you can't hear the difference (with your setup).

@cristic767

4 жыл бұрын

also we should take intro consideration the guessing. She said "yes!" for couple of time, so she was guessing, she wasn't sure. ;)

@paulm2467

4 жыл бұрын

@@-morrow one file was of a much lower quality so she could discount that straight away, so it was a 50/50 choice and you would expect 50% by guessing, as other commenters have said there is no reason not to run the test 10 times and if you wanted more statistical accuracy you would also use multiple subjects.

@lamper2

4 жыл бұрын

plus-he said TOO MUCH about the qualities of sounds she would be hearing!

I listened to the NPR audio test using the built in speakers on my computer. I found that the 128 kbps mp3 files were easy to pick out as being the worst as they always sound slightly muffled, but it was hard to distinguish between the 320 kbps mp3 files and the uncompressed WAV files. In fact to my ear I preferred the 320 kbps mp3 files the most as those were the files I chose the most.

This test has been done in Germany already back in 2000 with only 256kbif and very skilled people in a very good environment. ( m.heise.de/ct/artikel/Kreuzverhoertest-287592.html ). It turned out that it was more guessing than knowing. Musicians who claim to be cool, skilled and professional always say they can hear the difference, but none of them managed to get through my short tests. Then they usually say it was due to not ideal listening conditions. This discussion is as crucial as "but I CAN distinguish between a Kemper amp and the corresponding real amp", which always turns out not to be true - especially in a band context. Mythos - never dies! Funk on

@TAILORmoves

6 жыл бұрын

Danke, super aufschlussreich, und schmerzlich zu sehen, dass selbst die 128 kb mitunter besser als die CD eingeschätzt wurde!

@DogzDeDoggy

6 жыл бұрын

TAILORmoves gerne. Ich vermeide mittlerweile Diskussionen zum Thema. Ist halt zu viel 'Glauben' und 'Coolness' dabei.

@CyberChrist

6 жыл бұрын

+Doggy I'd be able to tell the difference between a Kemper and my Engl SE in a second: the Kemper wouldn't shriek past 3 gain because of (probably) old tubes going microphonic ^^

@DogzDeDoggy

6 жыл бұрын

lol .. okay, that way ... ;) But one of my guitarrists has a Kemper with the very same Profile of the amp he has ( I think it is MesaBoogie Mark V). And it is hard to tell the difference ;)

@taiefmiah

6 жыл бұрын

It depends. Look for archimogos blog. He conducted a similar test, which was more lossless vs lossy, including different formats of each using quite a few test subjects with varying backgrounds. It turned out the "audiophiles" who claimed to hear a difference had the greatest number of people who could tell between lossless and lossy. It's understandable, given that a lot of them have trained themselves to discern between subtle differences as a hobby would be the group which has more people which figured out what differences there are. From what I have heard, it's not a tone or timbre difference (meaning pitch perfect doesn't matter). They have said that it's the decays which differ. It's more obvious with tube amps where decay is typically longer due to the harmonic characteristics and it's a bit easier with headphones. I can't comment because I haven't actively tried to do this myself. My guess is that the algorithms which do lossy compression pick up some of the aspects of sound related to decay as noise, but again that's just an assumption as I don't have the Knowledge to tell

I don't obviously hear a frequency difference. But there's an undeniable dynamic/spacial difference with hi-res audio at an uncompressed 4+ Mbps vs. 320 Kbps even at 44.1. What people don't get is that you also need a DAC that supports 24-bit or higher to properly decode bit-for-bit digital files (unless it was recorded in 44.1 anyway). The original file must be recorded, mixed, and mastered in hi-res all through, otherwise there will be no difference. Playing hi-res audio on a normal 16-bit DAC will negate anything better than that even with speakers/headphones that can. It's like trying to see high definition video through an S-video cable. Another culprit is the shitty compression of today. Listen to an early Fleetwood Mac Rumours CD or record for example compared to the "remastered" version MP3. I agree 100% that higher frequencies don't make a difference. It's the bitrate, mastering, and data in the file that makes for a better sounding recording. Also that site doesn't state only certain browsers can playback uncompressed audio properly however, it does in the source code for the NPR page. Odd.

@franciscogomez5341

6 жыл бұрын

Stage B Very well explained. Thank you.

And back in the day you had to make sure your mono mix was spot on becauses many songs were on AM radio and FM. There are hit records that sound great in stereo and lifeless in mono and vice versa. I do my mixes for my Iphone these days, I want to hear how the sound punches through on speaker and adjust from there as I hear many kids listening to them just like a transistor radio back when I was a kid. ( What goes around comes around)

I also got 4/6 listening for subtle differences. The differences really are microscopic but it's also mindblowing to really listen for those sharp, subtle tonal qualities that are more developed and pronounced than in their compressed counterparts. Not something anyone would notice consistently but it's cool that it's there.

This is the music equivalent of that 'You Don't See in 4K' video. You *can* hear the difference, it depends on the equipment and the type of music. Especially if it's pretty reverb/drone heavy like the stuff I listen to.

@Mitch-Cumstein

5 жыл бұрын

Lol

The thing is the songs she got right are all the ones not affected by the loudness wars

I could tell the difference.The closest explanation I could come up with is that it's not the sounds that are improved, but the gaps in between them. Nothing becomes more detailed or anything, just a tiny bit clearer, and a lot of the time, it's worth it.

I don't think if there is any single channel that has taught me as much about music than this amazing channel. Thanks RB

I am 57 years old, and have recorded and mixed full-time for 30 years. I can usually tell the difference between a 320kbs mp3 and its loss-less original. I can always (100%) tell the difference between the 320 and the 128 mp3. But I can never tell the difference between 16-bit / 44.1 against its mix at a higher format (even when the multi-track is recorded super high), and I am tired of anyone who says they can... because they can NEVER prove it. Oh yes... I'm right.

@JimhawthorneNet

5 жыл бұрын

Don't even get me started about Monster-Cable!

@zogzog1063

5 жыл бұрын

"... because they can NEVER prove it [to you]." There are many reasons why live music sounds different from recorded music but one of those reasons is that the overtones are cut off. And even when they are not, in say properly recorded 96khz, people still can not hear it because 99% of tweeters are poor and / or do not go past about 20khz. If you compare a very high note on a violin on CD and the same note they will sound different. In part because of the extra information. The limit of hearing may be 14khz to 20khz but the frequencies above the limit of hearing go towards shaping the sound below. I believe this is true because it is the overtones that actually give the timbre to the instrument.

@Debonair.Aristocrat

5 жыл бұрын

For what it's worth I'm forty nine. For me there is an audible difference in sample rates. It seems to be a phase difference that affects the stereo field. I've noticed that the difference is emphasised if the speakers are wired out of phase. Try it and see, maybe you'll hear it.

@mikeforsythe9235

5 жыл бұрын

Nobody has to 'prove' anything to you. Either you hear it or you don't. I've auditioned high end DAC's playing 44.1k files vs 192k files and yes there is a sonic difference. Unfortunately you need very expensive gear to make that difference audible. For 99% of folks out there, they aren't going to detect the difference. Most folks are listening to Katy Perry on their laptops or iPhones - so none of this is relevant. Their gear is garbage so 128 or 320 will make not a lot of difference. I just replaced a low end Cambridge DACMagic with a damn expensive Bryston DAC. even my wife, who has shitty hearing, can detect the difference. One costs 10 times more than the other - is it 10 times 'better' ? No. Of course not. And the Cambridge will destroy any of the cheap 1$ DAC's in anyone's laptop or iPhone. So it's a case of diminishing returns for the amount of $$$ spent.

@mikeforsythe9235

5 жыл бұрын

Great advertising. So-so product.

You say no one uses CD players anymore, well I do, and I still buy Cd's...

@sceiron1

4 жыл бұрын

So do I and there's some bloody good remastered stuff out there, where you can hear the difference between the crappy transfer versions that first came out around '84.

@dougphoto

4 жыл бұрын

Me too

@freeman10000

4 жыл бұрын

I am 50 and buy more CD's (and vinyl) than I did back in the "day."

@davidmiller9485

3 жыл бұрын

add me to that list, i also buy CD-R and DVD-R for various purposes (usually for backing up my data since it will stay in a environmentally stable area)

@BradOlsonBemidji

3 жыл бұрын

@@sceiron1 There are many lousy remasters as well making the older CDs sound better than those remasters.

For me, a mp3 through a big rig or good speaker sounds bad, the bass kinda floats, bass guitar notes come in waves instead of steady tone. Once you hear it, you can never 'unhear' it.. ;)

It's super hard to tell between 320 vs uncompressed. Impressive she got so many. Even with studio headphones I only got 2.

I agree with everything said in this video (especially regarding the quality of 320kb/s MP3), however MP3/AAC is not an archival format. When I purchase music, I want it in a future-proof format that can be transcoded without causing further harm to the audio. For that reason, please consider offering your music in lossless formats such as FLAC or WAV.

@whocares973

6 жыл бұрын

Archive purposes is really the only reason to download in lossless 👍

@Dan-TechAndMusic

6 жыл бұрын

Exactly, I primarily download FLAC/WAV if it is available, or buy the CD to rip to FLAC in case it isn't for precisely this reason. Not offering it in 2018 because "you can't hear the difference anyways" is silly, when bandwidth and storage space is ever so expanding.

Exactly: it's what a listener has trained their ears to hear. Listening is a brain function, not an ear function. The thing is, it's so much more than just the frequency domain. Listen to depth & detail. In most cases any lossy format will randomly affect transient detail. The other unmentioned aspect is that all degradation from lossy encoding is so easily CUMULATIVE. Rip a track to MP3, process it more, play it on the radio and in terms of audio quality all bets are off! The fact remains: music artists do NOT release their music to be heard lossy only. And no KZread viewers seem to complain about having CHOICE of video quality. See (hear) the problem?

The first time I listened to classical music( Intro to Sheherazade) on my B&O Advanced, my first thought was: how glorious must the choirs of heaven sound! Changes the way you listen to music.

Boring-sounding speakers are good speakers. If they have "character", they're colo(u)ring the sound. Pretty sure I've ranted/raved about Quad "FireScreens" somewhere close to here, so I'll spare you a repeat, but... :-)

@TetsujinNijuhachigo

3 жыл бұрын

I used to mix on Genelecs… and I just couldn't make a portable mix. I swapped to dynAudios & then I could. My dynAudios are just the right kind of 'boring'. I still own NS10s but they're now providing the sound from the TV in my kitchen, not my studio ;) Every time I hear a mix from the 80s with the 1-2k missing, I think of the NS10s.

@Sharmac77

3 жыл бұрын

I had an old £400 panasonic 5.1 dvd surround unit which could be put into stereo mode. My friend would come use it to listen to his pro tools recordings because the speakers (shelf sized) had a more neutral sound than his expensive set up. As most of the bass went to the sub, panasonic didnt feel the need to over-bass the fronts it seemed.

@nevenpavlovic4448

Жыл бұрын

Pretty sure Rick is using boring to say 'narrow frequency range' here. No exciting lows or highs.

I choose to spend my time enjoying the music rather than analyzing it.

@ramiris4174

5 жыл бұрын

+1

@stephenbieth6713

4 жыл бұрын

Thank you, I am so tired of music fans not talking about music.

@ammoalamo6485

4 жыл бұрын

The music needs to be analyzed else we will fail to recognize good music when it presents itself, and be stuck forever with mix tracks of mix tracks of drum synths over faux piano played by computer programs and automated processes and tone generators playing slightly adjusted versions of the same basic chord changes over and over and over again. All the life of music is fading, and much has already faded - see Rick's rant on adjusting recordings in post-production just to produce records with perfect timing and perfect pitch. In the end, it's robot music, not a lot different from a toy wind-up monkey playing his little cymbals.

@drdj2626

4 жыл бұрын

you're a wise man

@ReitheOffbeatOtaku

4 жыл бұрын

Those two things aren't mutually-exclusive; you'll enjoy the music you enjoy more, and understand why you enjoy it, by analyzing it.

Perhaps if ALL examples were of well recorded ACOUSTIC instruments, especially of Percussion, cymbals etc she could have scored 80% up. Because the pop music with "dirty" synthy patches slant the test imho

@CATSELFmusic

6 жыл бұрын

I agree it would make a difference. I would add that it might depend on the quality of the mix and on the mastering. Because when choosing better quality, you would go for what sounds better to you, and when there is far too much at the high end and you have good ears, it will sound unpleasant to you in high quality and the mp3, with the high end reduced, might actually sound more pleasing! I always prefer wav - but there is an album by an independent musician I know that sounds better to me from mp3s because the wavs are far too sharp, it's all highs.

@practicalguy973

6 жыл бұрын

Thats very true. A symphony with many instruments or heavy metal the data in the mp3 can start to fall a part and you hear losses and holes in the highs mainly. Its also a matter of what people listen on. A pair of $150 Audio Technica's plugged into an on-board computer or phone is going to have a bottle-necked signal versus a great dac, amplifier and better speaker or headphone. I bet 90% of people taking that test are doing it on smart phones or motherboard audio outputs with a cheap set of headphones or speakers and they just can't hear the difference because of the system. I had a stereo receiver and some big box store bookshelf speakers a decade ago and they sounded great to me with my mp3s. I upgraded my stereo and know I have Onkyo A9010 and Q acoustics Concept 20 speakers playing from the ASUS Xonar STXII soundcard/dac and I had to get rid of all the mp3s and re-rip all my CD's to FLAC because of the compression I could now hear in the mp3s.

@carlosoliveira-rc2xt

6 жыл бұрын

Guy Hawke Or may be listening through a computer and headphones is not as revealing as good gear and totally eliminates imaging capabilities. Tests like this one are worthless even though she scored 66% correct.

@ethanburke8140

6 жыл бұрын

I love how many thumbs up this comment got, it's so pertinent to the whole thing. It never even occurred to me, but it was quite a selection they chose.

@lemeandre

6 жыл бұрын

right, but at the same time it doesn't help much to use recordings that the absolute majority of people don't usually listen to. Or in other words, doesn't really make very much difference if the recording sounds so different with acoustic instruments, when "99%" of music recorded and listened by people is NOT of acoustic instruments only.

I noticed that cymbals and other high pitch percussion get a bit sizzly on lower rates. Once I got a 160 iPod, I didn’t try to keep file sizes down, and these days it doesn’t mean much anyway, as storage is no longer a limitation.

@watamatafoyu

2 жыл бұрын

Yep, cymbals stand out on lower bitrates. Storage has become an issue again for me 😆 since expanding my palate, but Spotify covers most albums. I hate that I rely on streaming more now, but I just don't have the time and money to handle a greatly-increasing collection.

This still holds true even years after Rick posted it. As for my hearing, I treated it fairly well over the years, but by age 62 my left ear was losing higher frequencies, and at age 71 the left ear can't understand children and womwn with high voices. Now, for me, cutting down the background noise of women and young childred is a benefit, not a loss - a feature of aging, not a bug. Anyone I want to ignore I put over on my left side, then smile and nod once in awhile as if I can hear them properly.

This is a pretty good video, but there are a couple bits of misinformation. A minor thing is the comment that CDs play 16-bit/44.1kHz WAV files. WAV is a file format developed in 1991 by IBM and Microsoft specifically for computer storage. CD debuted as early as 1981 and uses what's called the "Red Book" specification, developed by Sony and Philips, that not only stipulates the bit depth (16 bits) and sampling frequency (44.1kHz), but also everything right down to the structure of how the physical disc is made. So while WAV and the bits stored on a CD following the same 16/44.1 bit depth and sampling frequency, they're not the same thing. Insofar as the tweeters that extend past 40kHz (many claim it, but few meet that, BTW) -- 100% true that no one is going to hear that high. What *can* be beneficial about these tweeters, however, is not that they extend that high in frequency; rather, it's how they perform WITHIN the audioband, which extends up to only 20kHz. Not that long ago, most metal-dome tweeters would resonate well within the audioband -- sometimes as low as 13kHz. If you measured them, you'd see a HUGE spike of energy that was typically very audible, because it's right in the range you can hear. When you create a tweeter that behaves well very high in frequency, you can usually be assured that within the range you can hear (up to 20kHz, max) is exceptionally well behaved and without "ringing."

@krane15

3 жыл бұрын

So a higher overall range will be better behaved within the audible range?

@Chopper153

3 жыл бұрын

@@krane15 yes, but only for speakers and headphones. A source with 44.1 kHz is fine.

@Ale-kc9pq

3 жыл бұрын

@@Chopper153 So what do i do with all of my 24/96 tracks? lol

@fordjc11

3 жыл бұрын

Nothing new here. A music CD ripped into a PC becomes an uncompressed WAV file. Both are 44.1/16 bit.

@fordjc11

3 жыл бұрын

@@Ale-kc9pq you can keep them and enjoy them. Unless you can’t afford the spce to store them

Back in the 80s there were people claiming they could hear the difference between a black painted or silver painted receiver.

@tee-jaythestereo-bargainph2120

6 жыл бұрын

lol I remember if it's not black it's wacked! but back in the day JVC was killing it in silver lol

@jdlech

6 жыл бұрын

Um, the phrase was "crack is whacked". Good ole Whitney Houston. Always going with the good white stuff.

@user-wu8sj3ee3d

5 жыл бұрын

Silver looks better.

@morganghetti

5 жыл бұрын

That's ridiculous. The only important difference is the cost.

@timcoker4685

5 жыл бұрын

80s stereos were trash,especially late 80s. Top end audio from the 70s...best ever made!!

Sorry for chiming in late, but YT decided to show me this video now. It also depends on the persons hearing level. To me 128kps MP3's sound flat, they sound the same as SiriusXM radio which I swear has to be transmitting their stuff at 128kbps. For you to understand this better, when I listen to my RUSH Gold album in FLAC vs the songs from the albums they originated from I can hear the range difference in the two and the Gold album sounds a lot better to me. I am using a good set of Sony $400 headphones when listening to them both. MP3 still doesn't sound as good as FLAC.

@Chopper153

3 жыл бұрын

128 kpbs mp3 sounds flat, but 320 kbps is almost transparent. However with cheap storage nowadays, it's better to rip CDs in FLAC/ALAC.

I thought Michelle did really well at 66%. With three choices per track, a random guess could be expected to come in at 33%, so she doubled that. I'd also say that highest quality makes a bigger difference on some music than others. The piano track, one that Michelle pegged, would be one that should take good advantage of higher quality. At the end of the day, I prefer to err on the side of higher than necessary digital quality, especially since computer memory is getting cheaper and cheaper. After all, there will almost certainly be people who can appreciate qualities that I may no longer be able to hear, and it really doesn't cost much to provide the theoretically better result. In production I think it's appropriate to go over the top in quality for individual tracks since the final product will contain the sum of all undesirable artifacts, so minimizing those matters. It's a bit like a physicist doing calculations to the maximum number of digits available in their computer even when the raw data doesn't support that precision, then doing the final rounding to the appropriate significant digits only at the very end.

Jimi Hendrix called Chet Atkins when he was recording ARE YOU EXPERIENCED and asked " How can I tell when I have the mix right?" And Chet said "Listen to it on a car radio and if it sounds good you have got it!"

@gregolsen4048

4 жыл бұрын

Neal Jones Maybe for producing commercial musical ‘product’ but not for truly reproducing the artistic intent. Sad testimony.

@utooberblooper

4 жыл бұрын

@@gregolsen4048 i smell a cork sniffer

@rhythmandmoose

4 жыл бұрын

@@gregolsen4048 No, he was right. You need different audio sources for mixing. Doing it on a 6k a peace monitor set in a studio is nice, but most people don't have that. You need to mix it for car radios, high end stereos, BT speakers etc, etc. It has to atleast sound good on any of them.

@redgrey1453

4 жыл бұрын

@@gregolsen4048 Several well-known producers agree with Atkins.

@WeWereYoungandCrazy

4 жыл бұрын

but did hendrix actually call chet and ask him that? I have my doubts.

It very much depends on the audio equipment used for playback.

@MrAhuraMazda

4 жыл бұрын

No it doesnt. Good equipment doesnt reveal what the human ear cant hear. 256, 320 mp3s will sound identical to Flac, but all of them will sound much better then on crap equipment. But good equipment will not reveal what's lost on lossy formats. It's simply won't, the human ear cant hear it. And thats been shown by ABX testing over and over.

@brotendo

4 жыл бұрын

MrAhuraMazda187 Get or of here with your logic

@peterf1

4 жыл бұрын

@@MrAhuraMazda Hold on, you're forgetting the original question. It's not "can you hear 'missing' things in the music that you can't on other file formats". It's which file format sounds better. Higher resolution doesn't reveal "hidden" sounds, it makes the sounds in the music more realistic by making an acoustic bass sound more like a vibrating string, or a symbol sounds more like a stick hitting a piece of metal. A better system of audio gear will allow the higher resolution file to sound more real, whereas it will all sound like crap when a listener plugs in a pair of headphones directly into a computer, as was apparently demonstrated.

@NewComer-hb5cu

4 жыл бұрын

@@peterf1 thank you. Perfectly explained

@Xsheaffer

4 жыл бұрын

Good comment Peter Franz, but you are perfectly describing the "missing things" lost in the music between formats. Higher resolution absolutely reveals the hidden sounds that make music sound "better".These are phase and positioning cues, inner details, reverb tails, echoes ; low level information that is greatly reduced by algorithm/media to varying extents. Not necessarily audible comissions, just missing information. The trouble always with these (sometimes believable) comparisons is exactly what you said about equipment specification. The vast majority of people have no exposure to good audio reproduction, but this is no deterrent to many of the self named experts. I have a great respect for Rick, but he is wrong here. It might make no detectable difference on his equipment, or could be the Berkeley chick is tin eared. I can't argue against people who genuinely cannot tell any difference, to them it truly does make no difference. These kinds of arguments about audio quality are akin to saying an F1 car performs no differently than a Hyundai because you tested it by hiring an automotive engineer to go to the store, and there was no difference in transit time. There it is, I proved it made no difference! Double blind! Its a real frustration.

I go 4 out of 6 right, too, and I'm old. The differences are very tiny. But the thing is, several of those recordings are so poorly mixed that they are just a blur in all three formats. I listened to see how many different things I could identify, because MP3 drops all the low-priority sounds.

I usually noticed that with decent iems or cans file formats matter more. I have those m50's and they do show qualitative difference in sound.

To my ears, it's not about the 'highs', it's about the soundstage. MP3's have a smaller soundstage, uncompressed have a wider soundstage with, dependent on the type of music you listen to, greater separation around the instruments.

@jamieanderson7757

6 жыл бұрын

Absolutely and you therefore need an excellent pair of loudspeakers (with an excellent dac) to do a proper test.

@muse-mech-moda

6 жыл бұрын

'excellent pair of loudspeakers (with an excellent dac)', will never hurt, but I am not sure where the cut off with this is. I have a Meridian DAC and various headphones plugged into a computer. Switching between Tidal, Spotify and iTunes*, there is a difference between all of them. Tidal MQA for the win. The sound is huge. The others much less so. *I have never been a fan of iTunes lossless _sound_ - that's a different story, I just use it to buy and therefore support artists - I then stream on the other two.

@call_me_stan5887

6 жыл бұрын

The "soundstage" you're talking about are basically stereo, joint stereo M/S, and dual mono settings in the encoder ;) The mp3 format always messes with the stereo image though - regardless of the settings. Only more or less aggressively.

@ronedwards8239

5 жыл бұрын

Here here

@gallo81

5 жыл бұрын

I'm considered an audiophile, I'd never tried a blind test though, I used a Leckerton DAC and Meze Classics 99 headphones, results were same as the test video, 4 of 6. It was funny and I found apart from SoundStage, I could really hear like more frequencies together on WAVs and were the flattest sound of the three options, nice test! I will test it again with my bookshelf speakers and I will also debug each file to verify if they are even like they say.

4/6, but I'm 53 and commuted on a motorcycle for 6 years. My strategy was listening for the quieter elements, like the reverb in Suzanne Vega, the snare in Coldplay, the BG moan vocal in Katy Perry or the glockenspiel in Neil Young. I know I can't really hear the high freqs anymore, but I can still hear the improvement that comes with increased bit depth. Sorta!

The stupid thing people miss is that even when you don't hear the sound , your ear still receive the wave therefore affecting the experience when you don't hear anything. I get why the first lady miss the last question because I heard there seems to be more details on the last file , and more details should be better quality file , seems like something strange is going on with mp3 there.

I still use a cd player with a DAC through a McIntosh MA-6200 & a pair of 1972 OHM Walsh F’s! Love the sound!

What if she knew the coldplay song from an mp3 at 128 so that one sounded "best" to her because it's the one she's used to hearing? Would need to test more than 6, and try arrangements or mixes that the person hasn't heard before, or else the familiarity effect will influence judgement.

@CATSELFmusic

6 жыл бұрын

Exactly! I wrote this in my comment too. In this case, I also think she chose the version she had heard before and was used to the most. Also, it was close to the end of the test, and her ears (and brain!) were already a little tired. The test would be more reliable if there were longer breaks in between.

@sagnier

6 жыл бұрын

i don't think that anyone (except maybe an 'audiophile') would suggest that such a casual test as is demonstrated here allows us to reach any firm conclusions.

@JPGroleau

6 жыл бұрын

Somehow, that song sound really bad. I don't like the mix / mastering at all. I actually thought that it sounded better at 128 because less crap was reproduced by the mp3. There is some crakles noises in 320 and wav that I didn't ear at 128.

@gavinreid8351

6 жыл бұрын

StoufSto yes, best is often what is familiar.

@MrNess2911

6 жыл бұрын

Yes her judgement was affected by the emotion that she expresses before listening that particular song. Probably she was influenced by her memory...

Personally I don't believe you can hear any difference in audio quality to a degree, but you can feel it. The pressure differences, how it changes to rooms to the overall sound environment of the studio or place it was recorded in and the pressure of that place translated into your space. The physical make-up of the individual instruments, imaging and staging and separation. I can definitely tell the difference. And I believe if your set-up is in focus you can too.

High frequency sounds above 12khz never appear as a "root" frequency, but as a part of more complex sound upper harmonics, I`ve lost ability to hear above 15khz, and in that sense I`m enjoying music more than before, it became less noisy and more enjoyable over time.

Well, short answer I could definitely hear the difference between mp3 and wav. long answer, I'm a video editor, so not having any training in music, makes me rely a lot in A/B testing and graphs. Once I set up my new editing suite in a semi treated room with a pair of Yamaha's HS5 I did the test and played the same pop/club songs in mp3 and flac versions and it was obvious that certain frequencies were "lost" from the compression algorithm. It was like missing 1-2 instruments... probably one can't hear the difference with audiophile or cheap speakers but with a set of studio monitors the difference was there.

I do think uncompressed WAV sounds better. *One* example of this would be when singers say a word with "S", it sounds more realistic, sharper, has more treble and the whole song sounds "fresher". Maybe it is because I'm listening with headphones, but they were cheap. Anyways I got 6/6 correct, so maybe I'm not crazy.

@embis3824

5 жыл бұрын

Maybe because mp3 cuts off higher frequencies which is generally where sibilance occurs?

@cornholio4ya

4 жыл бұрын

The tonal response takes a toll with compressed files so YES - although it's not something obvious, it doesn't mean it's not there. It's more obvious with hi-notes so that's why you can hear it. The info in this video is total crap and the statements are pretty idiotic.