A Small Test To See How Much Of An Audiophile You REALLY Are

[Duncan Glenday]

Try this, to see if your ears can really tell the difference between MP3 bitrates. It might be revealing...

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecor...m_term=nprnews

(And don't ask me for my score )

[markwoll]

Not so good. I second guessed a couple of times and chose poorly.

[luvyesmusic]

I'm biased, could only listen to two seconds of that crap from the first sample. For the rest, t.v. speakers didn't help.

btw, TMZ showed the employees of this American,"black-owned" company and not one brother or sister pictured and/or employed there let alone U.S. citizen; not that there's anything wrong with that. ;-)It's based in Denmark or some other Scandinavian country.

[zravkapt]

I got 2/6.

One thing: I never guessed the 128 option
Another thing: I don't think the Suzanne Vega example belongs (don't think the human voice sounds all that different in these kind of tests...I got that one wrong)
Yet another thing: this pretty much convinced me 320 Mp3 is good enough; I don't need .wav or FLAC files to enjoy the music.

[Dave (in MA)]

I got 2 out of the first 3 and picked the 320 on the other.

I saw what the next 3 things are and don't care enough about the test to inflict that crap on myself.

[Mister Triscuits]

I basically couldn't tell the difference between the 320 and the uncompressed--it was just a coin toss. On the 128s I could usually spot harshness on the sibilant sounds, although the Katy Perry example threw a curve by having a nasty artifact on the word "with" on all three versions.

[Dave]

I got 2/6.

One thing: I never guessed the 128 option
Another thing: I don't think the Suzanne Vega example belongs (don't think the human voice sounds all that different in these kind of tests...I got that one wrong)
Yet another thing: this pretty much convinced me 320 Mp3 is good enough; I don't need .wav or FLAC files to enjoy the music.

My ears are 53 years old and have some hearing loss, but I thought the Vega one was the easiest to spot based on the echo of her voice. I was listening on Grado SR60s through a computer. Agree with not guessing the 128 option. Got 3/6 and the ones I missed were 320.

[simon moon]

I've already done this.

I was able to tell every time on Neil Young, Mozart, Suzanne Vega.

On the modern pop crap, I was hit or miss. It is probably because the sound if any real instruments and vocals are so masked by modern production techniques (compression, noise gates, auto-tune, delays, etc) that any differences in the playback file formats are pretty much nonexistent.

I believe I can demonstrate to just about anyone that the differences are audible, on a decent system. If earbuds and an iWhatever is your listening engine, then probably not.

[yamishogun]

1/6

I blame that stadium-loud Kansas concert in a bar in 1996!

Or, maybe because I was using built in computer speakers on my laptop.

I picked 320 on all the wrong ones, though.

[progmeister]

3/6

[JKL2000]

I almost did well.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

MP3s don't bug me, but I try to avoid them if at all possible

[Duncan Glenday]

Each of these items has 3 options. So statistically, 2/6 (my score ) means you actually scored zero. I.e. that score is as good as a random selection.

Back to my MP3s now...

[Jerjo]

4/6 - couldn't tell what was happening on Jay Z or Katy Perry.

[Spiral]

Is it really a test of your ears or a test of your speakers/headphones?

I also chuckled to see that the top comment is from an experienced engineer complaining that they picked mostly crap recordings for the samples. If they'd had a few more good sound-of-the-room analog recordings like Five Leaves Left to quiz listeners on, maybe it'd be a different story.

[rob martino]

4/6 (320 for the other two) on a nice pair of Focal studio monitors, but I admit there was some guessing, they were so close. I've always thought the merits of hi-def music were more marketing hype than reality. The awful audible watermarking that Universal Music Group (a large percentage of music) puts on all their digital music far exceeds any degradation from hi-def or CD quality to 320 or even 256K MP3 - http://www.mattmontag.com/music/univ...ible-watermark

[Facelift]

This thing was great!

I only got 3/6, but for my misses, I always picked 320. This was using a good pair of headphones.

I would say that there virtually is no detectable difference between 320 and lossless. Which is good- I had started re-ripping some discs to lossless to upgrade my 320s, but now - forget it. If the difference is, at best, barely perceptible on a good pair of headphones, then it's not a difference worth the space on the hard drive.

[PotatoSolution]

I failed because I couldn't subject myself to listen to Neil Young and Jay Z.

[wideopenears]

5 out of 6 for me, no kidding. But I honestly guessed on three of them....

[Trane]

Try this, to see if your ears can really tell the difference between MP3 bitrates. It might be revealing...

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecor...m_term=nprnews

(And don't ask me for my score )

i'll try this at home this w-e with good headphones (we're forced to use IE at work, which do not support lossless format (so says the webpage).

I'd rather that chose more ecceptable music for progheads though.

[Dean Watson]

I got one right, all others I picked 320k, except Neil young. Just wondering if the older recording just wasn't that good? I don't feel bad about this I did it on my ipad.

[DrGoon]

4/6 - I got the 320 kb/s MP3s for Katy Perry and Neil Young. Some luck in my score - I can't tell the difference between 320kb/s and uncompressed for most music in one pass and there's a limit to how much I wanted to listen to those samples.

[trurl]

3/6, never picked the 128kbs... I split down the middle for 320kbs MP3 or WAV. I've always felt that a 320kbs MP3 is more than adequate if made with a good encoder. However, as someone pointed out this test was more about the fact that modern music often sounds so bad to begin with that no encoding can really render it any worse.

[Wilton Said...]

I did it a week ago and got most of it correct. However, the 128's didn't bother me at all and I didn't think the Wave's and uncommpressed were a huge enough difference. Maybe it's my thin 50ft computer cable running to my amp.

[Trane]

Had it right twice (sample 2 & 6) and I was quite certain of my choice

when I picked 320 twice (sample 5 & 3), I was hesitating with the right choice and those

I fucked up twice (128), and I'm angry at myself about the Neil Young one and to a lesser extent the Vega one... >> Oddly enough those were the only two pieces I knew before hand

Like Dean Watson, I'm wondering if it works well on older-recorded music since NY and SV are 70's & 80's (the rest being 90's and 00's) music