Mythbusters I-Need volunteers- blind test b/w lossless/320/256/192 kbps MP3

[superczar]

just for the heck of it, i compared a 128 kbps rip of the same song with the 260+ vbr and the difference was huge

so i guess beyond 200kbps +, the difference plateaus out to become almost flat between 256+ and flac

 

[BIKeINSTEIN]

for all practical purposes, high bit rate MP3s remain an excellent choice given their easy availability (yeesh...:ashamed and relatively mucho lower space requirements...

Supey- you?? :O
Yeesh... :no:

Getting used to high bit-rate MP3s is a sin- i cannot touch the older stuff i had, a lot of which ain't there in the new ones i got from Zhops.
BTW- you seem to be having much more time on your hands these days.

 

[blr_p]

so i guess beyond 200kbps +, the difference plateaus out to become almost flat between 256+ and flac

But your abx score (and Rahul's) is still very high to support this.. isn't it ?

could it be that the test material used was very familiar to you, what happens if you are not so familiar with the material,

to support what you say then the expected score would be 5-6/10

 

[superczar]

Getting used to high bit-rate MP3s is a sin- i cannot touch the older stuff i had, a lot of which ain't there in the new ones i got from Zhops.

they are bad rips then,,,

ther are 3 ABX tests so far here, by Chaos, I and Rahul

all done on fairly high end equipment...despite that, the common binding thread in all three posts is that diffrentiating between high bit rate MP3 and FLACs (properly ripped and properl converted to MP3) is an excruciatingly painful task...

a task that is only academic, and not of any practical consequence

But your abx score (and Rahul's) is still very high to support this.. isn't it ?

could it be that the test material used was very familiar to you, what happens if you are not so familiar with the material,

to support what you say then the expected score would be 5-6/10

yes indeed...a single familiar track was used ... if you give me a new track, i doubt it'll be more than 5-6/10 (theres a 50% probability of guessing it right anyway)

and even to diffrentiate for this familar track, it took extreme amount of concentration...

all in all, there's near zero practical difference between FLACs and high bit rate mp3s

if you try very hard, you may notice very minute differences at some spots ...maybe you'll notice a single chord somewhere on the track that may reverberate for an extra 0.2 seconds

But then why in heaven's name would I try to search for delta differences while enjoying my music...

Also, I don't think this way of doing abx testing was fair....

going back to what I said above, once you have spotted that extra 0.2 seconds of reverberance, you can use the same to tell the difference over the next 9 trials thereby skewing the results

Ideally, an ABX test should have a mix of familiar and unfamiliar tracks with each not played more than once

 

[blr_p]

But then why in heaven's name would I try to search for delta differences while enjoying my music...

Not that you would do it normally, its to test the theory that one must use FLACs(or lossless) in exclusion to lossy, *all the time*.

In the case where you were downloading something, that in most probablilty you were not familiar with, then provided it was properly encoded (v0 is as good as it gets), you would not feel short-changed unless you had golden ears.

This has implications for selling music over the web. If the differences are so minute then you can say having a high quality mp3 is not so bad. There may be other reasons not to buy lossy music but sound quality would not be a major factor. Going on how successful the iTunes shop has been doing seems to support this assertion.

Good so far, but what about orchestral music, where there are lots of instruments each playing at different volumes. I think this is one of the few exceptions where lossless would be preferred, assuming of course that your sound equipment was at least middle of the range.

But for 95% of music, from other genres, i'm of the impression that you would not be too worse off going with high quality mp3.

Also, I don't think this way of doing abx testing was fair....
going back to what I said above, once you have spotted that extra 0.2 seconds of reverberance, you can use the same to tell the difference over the next 9 trials thereby skewing the results

Ideally, an ABX test should have a mix of familiar and unfamiliar tracks with each not played more than once

yep, i too missed this part of the test, so what are the chances of you & the others doing it again