gizmodo.com: Here's a simple test that lets you toggle between an extremely high-quality file music file and a low-quality music file. Can you tell the difference?
We've been hearing for years that MP3 encoding ruins music with its lossy compression. But can you really tell the difference?
16 comments:
For one thing, I already can't talk the difference because the website will not function on my browser-unfortunate, but I think my music will work just fine. I think that the quality of your speakers or headphones makes such a big difference to the quality of the sound that the minute difference presented here wont make much of a difference unless your speakers are pretty good and you are listening closely. As someone who doesn't have great speakers or headphones and isn't that invested in music, I think I will stick with my mp3 files.
Well apparently my ears are definitely not made for this. I only got 1 out of the 5 correct on my dad's nice sound system. I know people that are big believers in Hi-Fi sound but I don't think there is really that much too it. Maybe others really can hear a huge difference, but unless you have a really really nice professional sound system, I doubt anybody can really tell a real difference.
I got 3 out of 5, but I didn't really hear much of a difference. I think that the quality of headphones and speakers would be as much of an effect as the person listening and the quality of the music. That being said, the difference was so small that I don't think it even matters. As long as there isn't a grainy sound in my music, I don't personally care.
Honestly, one of the things that scared me off of working in sound is that I'm a little worried I don't have an ear for it. I have the worst music quality recognition ever. If you tell me that one is worse than the other, I probably can pick out the artifacts that make it so, but on the whole I'm pretty oblivious to audio quality and high-fidelity in general, unless the distinction is huge. I can appreciate good sounding and quality systems with good reproduction across the range, but I feel somewhat clueless when comparing two clips "side by side." Maybe it just feels like sound is such an intangible thing that it is much harder to get a grasp on.
I got 4 out of 5 but I just guessed. I could not really hear that much of a difference. I think it has a lot to do with the device in which you are listing to the music from. I was just using my laptop speakers, which are not the best. I would be interested to take the test again with a better sound system. With that being said I am going to stick with what works.
I got 5 of 5 but i think thats because I'm a iTunes music perfectionist where I like all of my music to have all of the info and album artwork shown correctly. After going through and fixing my iTunes account/sound files many times i've had to make sure i was picking the right audio file. But with this I was able to hear the difference....but barely. If someone didn't tell me they were different and i specifically didn't listen for a difference i wouldn't notice at all. I'm perfectly fine with my music quality now and i see no need to upgrade to this. it just seems like a minor improvement that really needs no recognition because it doesn't revolutionize anything.
I think this is a gimmick for pretentious music lovers, but I won't try to preach that as the singular truth. Honestly I think I may have lost some hearing over the years of listening to music too loudly, that combined with the decent (but nowhere near high quality) headphones I have are probably why I only got 1 out of 5 correct on this test. I couldn't really hear any quality difference and it was more of a guessing game for me than anything. I suppose if I was a sound designer or avid musician I might be able to distinguish between compressed and uncompressed files, but for me theres no apparent difference. Like many others have said I think it matters more about the audio listening device you have than the files themselves. Even for slightly better sound quality this minuscule difference would not be enough for most people to pay for a special music service.
1/5 and I got that one right on luck alone. I am use to watching tv on my laptop and have never purchased high quality tv or speakers. People have complained while I'm driving that I am playing low quality music but I honestly have never been able to hear the difference so why should I pay for good stuff. I have an uncle that is a graphics designer for Intel and he does not watch things if they are not on blu ray because he spends all day trying to improve the quality of what we see so he can really tell the difference. Me? I will keep watching and listening on my "low quality" devices and continue to not notice or care that there is a difference.
While this is plenty fun and testing whether or not your ears/speakers are up to par is always going to be entertaining, this is honestly not too great of a marketing strategy. Showing people how hard it is to tell the difference between either low fidelity or mid fidelity and high fidelity music is just showing them that they don't really need the service you're trying to sell. I guess there might be a select few who really could tell the difference with ease, but from the looks of things, most people just have trouble trying to get any of it and it takes time and effort to try to figure it out.
This is a fun little test, but I wouldn't put much stock in it. I don't think that playing clips from 5 songs is an effective way to test a system or a listener, especially if there's no initial control test. It's one thing to have a sample and tell the listener which is which so they have some sort of awareness of what to listen for (although they did have a couple of tips), but for a lot of us most of the music that we've listened to during our lives has been compressed mp3s. I didn't do all that well on this, and I think a big part is that I could hear subtle differences but didn't know what to make of them. That's why at some point I want to take Ear Training, because I think it would be really cool to understand these subtleties in the music. I know that Sarah is always complaining about the amount of compression in mp3s and in the music that she hears us playing, and I wish that I could understand what she's talking about. Also, I agree with Stark in that the ad isn't very good at convincing people that you need this higher quality because it's basically saying that they're almost the same, but at the same time I think it is a cool ad, and the fact that guessing enough correct gets you a free trial does seem like it could be an effect ad.
I took the test and got 4/5 correct. The test was very difficult to tell the difference. It may have been my headphones. I do think that some devices reduce the sound quality in music. As technology advances, the quality in sound is getting a lot better. Certain mp3 players ruin the sound quality in music because they compress the sound waves. The type of headphones can also make a big difference in music. Usually the more expensive headphones have the higher quality because they have better systems inside that do not ruin the original sound of the music. Cheap headphones can create a weird song, which can sometimes sound like you are listening in a tunnel.
I think this test is interesting, but on a whole people listening to music don't really care about minor differences in quality. If, say, we were all sound designers, then we might think differently, but the average music listener buying albums from iTunes isn't going to compare the sound to a record player or recorded CD for quality. I suppose we all trust that the music we download is good, and for that assumption one could make an argument that this test is in fact needed. I found it was amusing to flip through the different qualities and test my ears in seeing where the bass was missing and so on.
I got 4/5 right listening through my headphones and I am honestly surprised I did that well. The differences between the chosen tracks were very minimal and if I had just listened with my computer speakers I'm not sure if I would've done as well as I did. I think that it is often difficult to tell the difference between lossless audio and MP3 files even as a sound "audiophile" because a lot of the time the loss is very insignificant. So much so that without actively listening you are unlikely to hear the difference. If you really want to see the difference between a lossless track and an MP3, open them up in an audio editor and look at the wave form. MP3s will seem to have a flat line across the top and bottom from the compression, if you open the same track in a lossless format you will see much more dynamic range. I still make the effort to buy all of my music on a CD or Vinyl for the purpose getting the lossless tracks.
Although I didn't use my headphones (they are decent, but not the greatest), I could still tell the difference while using my surface's speakers without much effort for three of the songs. The other two were a little more difficult. I got a 5/5, but the kind of speakers definitely does make a difference, I know if I did the test on my old HP laptop, I would have a much harder time telling the difference. Then again, I have always been picky about what I see and hear. For example, I avoid SD (Standard Definition) whenever I can, I just don't understand why the low quality is acceptable, but that's just me, I have always been picky about these things. That being said, this service is definitely geared towards a select few people, so unless they have another service for everybody else (or charge an arm and a leg), I am not sure how they will succeed.
Ok, I don't know what should I comment about this article. I was like.... hmmmm ear testing.... Hmmmmm Ok let's try... I'm I don't know how this work so I put on my head phone and pressing back and forth between A and B........ Oh well, I got 5/5 FANTASTIC.
I think this is a fun test, for me, honestly. I understand that the point is about introducing this new streaming music subscription service called "Tidal", which stated itself as one among the first to offer lossless audio, not lossy, or whatever it's called, which I understand as good quality music and bad mp3 quality music, just like you better buy a CD and don't download it because you will never get the best quality of music out of downloading. Which is true if you have a sensitive hearing.
I don't think I would be able to tell the difference. I have never been very into just listening to music on head phones, and though I fully appreciate musicality live I believe it loses its affect in other sources. This being said I choose not to listen to audio files often so I feel very confident that I would be able to hear much of a difference. But in some senses I guess that's better for me because I can be just as happy with an inexpensive compressed file as with an expensive clear file. The app is really cool for presenting this as such.
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