Let’s see whether this audio quality stuff ads up. Listen here…
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
Audio quality – how did you do?
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I got 3/6 which surprised me in a good way as I have a bit of Tinnitus and generally reckon my ears aren’t that good (although listening to some front of house live mixes at gigs recently makes me think it could be worse). The quiz said i did well considering I was using laptop speakers.
Not much point unless you are listening to your computer through a decent sounds system
sound system even
Point of order… the article refers to “High Definition Audio”. Tidal take this to mean CD quality (16 bit 44.1kHz) rather than Normal (96kbps AAC+) or High Quality (320kbos AAC).
The term “High Definition Audio” normally refers to 24 bit often with higher sample rate.
Personally, I’m slightly tempted by Tidal or Qobuz lossless streaming, but I still prefer music I can hold or downloads I can own.
Agreed, I’ll save this for home. Earbuds and crappy soundcard in an open-plan office not the ideal listening environment.
Yes I’m going to listen tonight through my studio monitors.
I always rip my CDs in Apple Lossless. Not because I can hear the difference, but because hard-disk space isn’t that expensive, so there’s no real reason not to have as much information present in the rip as there is on the CD.
I’ve got cloth ears anyway but I got 50% right and of the others I only chose the lowest grade once.
Of course if you need expensive kit to hear the difference, does it matter?
The differences are usually easier to spot over headphones due to the lack of added room acoustics. The headphones need not be expensive to spot the difference.
As Poppy says, since storage space is so cheap, why not rip lossless.
5 out of 6. I did not get the Toms Diner one.
The difference between uncompressed & 320 is pretty minimal to these ears though.
same here. I got 2/6, but most times I was doing a mental coin toss between what turned out to be the WAV and the 320kbs. The lower rate was pretty easy to discard.
Fuck! You just made me listen to Jay-Z Twang, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over this.
I’m about to do a songwriting course and as prep we have to critically listen to a playlist of different songs they set up – 3 of them I was squirming to get through them. There’s some sh*te out there.
2/6 on the computer thru’ headphones. But I’m an old punk with a Dylan habit so I don’t think I’m probably the best judge!
2 out of 6, and like FR above on headphones through a computer. I really struggled to hear any kind of difference in most cases, and poor old Neil sounded muddy on all three samples.
Three out of six. Some were much more noticeable than others to me, and the Tom’s Diner one, which I got wrong, even knowing the answer I prefer the 128k version whatever that proves.
3/6 here, with B&W headphones and DAC. All the wrong answers were the 320 kbps version, don’t know what that proves, and they were the ‘densest’ tracks – Neil Young, Coldplay and Murray Perahia. ‘There’s a World’ was a lousy example to choose – it’s always sounded a mess.
3 out of the 6. Pretty much bears out what I’ve found before – the 128k was pretty obvious on the pop-ier tracks with more going on but its very difficult to distinguish between 320k and uncompressed. Perhaps if you’re 20 years younger than me and have a much bigger budget for kit your mileage may vary but I’ve done this sort of test enough to know that once I reach 320k I might as well not bother storing music at a “higher” quality except to be able to rip it again later perhaps in a different format.
2/6, using a decent pair of cans and absolutely trying my hole off. Gutted.
1/6 using a decent amp and good quality headphones. I couldn’t honestly tell between any of them to any degree. I’m blaming my hearing.
I couldn’t hear anything. I said I couldn’t………
Have they removed the link? Read all about it but nothing “here” to try it out.
3/6 through the computer speakers shows that I’m a good guesser.
I could always hear they were different, but not necessarily pick the uncompressed one. Some were much easier to hear than others, too.
4/6, I guessed the Katy P and JZ as they sounded horrible in all formats.
To be honest, the low bit-rate sounded better than I thought it would – more detail missing but fewer nasties than I was expecting.
I’ll be sticking with Flac.