Like music? Fancy helping out with my degree?

[JackTraveller]

Hi everyone,

As part of my degree Im conducting a study on the relationship between listening fatigue, how we perceive audio quality, genre preference and listening experience.

Some studies have suggested a link between genre preference and how sensitive listeners are to audio quality, but little practical research has been done on it, so Im conducting my own study. There are also studies that point to a relationship between audio training and listening fatigue. According to studies in the AES journal by Pras, Hjortkjaer & others, It seems that more experienced listeners (i.e. an experienced mastering engineer) are much more sensitive to listening fatigue (that is to say, physical discomfort and loss of attention induced by certain pieces of music). Listening fatigue itself is poorly understood, but it is speculated that it is closely related to dynamic range in music and other factors like artefacts induced by lossy compression.

If anyone can spare two minutes to take this survey on the topic I'd really appreciate it, and you'd be helping contribute to research on a poorly understood topic in audio engineering. It's nothing too strenuous, only a few pages, and no sensitive data is required

Here's the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/listeningfatigue

I would ask that you answer all the questions though, please don't skip anything as I can only use complete answers in my data. I've embedded help for potentially confusing questions in the survey itself, but I'll put all the definitions and stuff here in a reply too.


If anyone has any questions about the specifics of the study, please feel free to ask and I can provide answers & sources.

thanks

- Jack

 

[JackTraveller]

heres the definitions for certain terms Im using in the survey and advice for answering any potentially confusing questions:

Q3 Do you work in the music industry? If so please describe your occupation

If you have multiple roles in the industry (for example, you are both a musician and producer) please select the role you have most experience with. If you are equally experienced, choose the role you prefer. For the purposes of this survey “working in the music industry” includes amateur and non professional work, this is dealt with in the next question.

Q4 If you work in the music industry, what is your level of experience?

If music industry work is not your main source of income or you only take it on very occasionally please select Amateur/Hobbyist. If you graduated with a music industry related degree and take minimal freelance work, or are in training for a full time music industry role, please select graduate or trainee.

Q9 Do you think listening fatigue has changed music consumption habits among ordinary consumers?

”Music consumption habits” refers to the way people buy and subsequently listen to music. For example, both a change in the amount of music a person buys and a change in how often they listen to that music would be changes to music consumption habits.

Q10 Do you think there is a correlation between how susceptible a person is to listening fatigue and their level of listening experience?

In this survey, ”Listening Experience” refers to a person’s ability to perceive artefacts in audio and nuances of production, NOT ability to perceive musical nuances. For example, a mastering engineer with 30 years experience could be said to have a high level of listening experience, while a musician with 30 years experience but no studio experience could be said to have a low level of listening experience.

Q13 What devices do you most often use to listen to music?

“Devices” refers to the kind of speakers you use to listen to music.
“Low end” refers to devices like ipod docks, shelf mounted speakers, portable CD players and car speakers.
“High end” refers to large, expensive or specialist domestic audio speakers, including home surround systems, freestanding floor mounted speakers, and electrostatic speakers. If you are unsure please choose ‘low end’.

If you listen an equal amount of time across multiple devices, please choose the device you prefer.


Q14 What is the audio format you most often use for listening to music?


“Format” refers to the way an audio file is stored. They include physical formats like vinyl, CD and tape and digital formats like mp3. Formats vary in quality.

Uncompressed formats like vinyl, CD quality audio, and .WAV files are high quality formats.

Formats with ‘lossy’ compression, for example mp3 and the formats used by spotify, youtube and other streaming services do not preserve the entirety of the audio information they encode and are low quality formats.

Q16 How noticeable do you find the difference between low and high quality audio formats?

For the purposes of this survey, an ‘obvious difference’ would mean you could tell the format within a few seconds of hearing the song (for example, experienced listeners can hear artefacts in audio induced by mp3 encoding). A ‘noticeable’ difference would be obvious after a brief comparison or extended listening time, and a ‘subtle’ difference would require the listener to concentrate hard on side by side comparisons of different formats.

Q17 How do you do most of your listening?


if you listen equal amounts of time in different ways, please choose your preferred listening method

Q20 Given the choice, how loud do prefer to play music when listening? (assume you would not be disturbing anybody)


If you mainly listen via headphones consider how loud you would have to play music via speakers to achieve the same volume you experience via headphones and choose the appropriate answer.