mp3 Listening Quiz

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merlyn
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mp3 Listening Quiz

Post by merlyn »

In @sue's thread about recording her piano the relative merits of mp3s came up.

This quiz is a practical comparison of different formats. :

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/ ... 6409202274

If you finish it you also get some history of mp3.
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bluebell
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Re: mp3 Listening Quiz

Post by bluebell »

My choices:

1: 320 kbps
2: 320 kbps
3: 320 kbps
4: 320 kbps
5: 128 kbps
6: 128 bps

I never hit the wav.

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turbidh20
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Re: mp3 Listening Quiz

Post by turbidh20 »

My hearing has never been "perfect", I know that for a fact. This proves it...
1. 320
2. 128
3. 128
4. WAV
5. 128
6. WAV

A bit worrying for my mixing abilities :lol:
Arch Linux (i7-4790k/GTX970); UMC204HD; MPK Mini MKII; Jack2 (QjackCtl) & Ardour/Mixbus
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Loki Harfagr
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Re: mp3 Listening Quiz

Post by Loki Harfagr »

K453 WAV
Coldplay WAV
Vega WAV
DarkHorse WAV
NeilYoung 320K
JayZ 128K

Well, I reckon that was quite fun, I only previously heard two pieces in the selection (Harvest and the massacre on Wolfgang) though I managed to be wrong especially on poor Neil Young :D)
I'd think that on the "JayZ" stuff I clicked at randow since I guess that dough might sound the same even on a black bakelite telephone :D

That was using the semi-open BD DT990 (I didn't dare to retry for bad luck with the DT770 or the F6301Bs ;-)


Round two.
(still the same old BD DT990 but different time of the day and after a few hours having a lot of noize in my ears while checking my new G.A.S.)

Vega 128K
Coldplay WAV
NeilYoung 320K
Perry WAV
K453 128K
Jayz WAV

then I dunno, is it that it really makes a difference or ot (on a subjective and self personal way I'd guess there's no confusion when I randomly scatter 128 or WAV to the two pieces of the test that are highly unmusical *to me* but I' wouldn't be that much surprised that in the end the site where the test is set would reveal that either the flabberflonked their database or, most prolly, that was a random shuffle all over :D
Last edited by Loki Harfagr on Fri Aug 23, 2019 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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sadko4u
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Re: mp3 Listening Quiz

Post by sadko4u »

Hmmm.
The difference between 128 kbps MP3 and WAV is mostly detectable by amount high frequencies.
In Coldplay, there is a lot of cracking sound in WAV. I've selected the least cracking, and it was... 128 kbps WAV.
So, actually, it's a bit of taste rather than 'quality feeling'.
1. 320
2. 128
3. 128
4. 320
5. 320
6. 320
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tavasti
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Re: mp3 Listening Quiz

Post by tavasti »

Half of the songs, I could not make any difference. For them I heard some slight difference, I go 128-320-wav. So I don't hear difference :-)
This is pretty much what I expected.

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