Listening Test

  • Thread starter Thread starter NL5
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NL5

NL5

Unpossible!
Ok, I've been meaning to do this for a while - Ethan's comments in the Dither thread inspired me to throw this together. It's not super scientific, and won't really prove anything beyond any doubt, but it will reveal how well you think you can hear vs. how much you really can. I took a 24/44.1 audio clip and rendered it to 16 bit with dither and without. Took each of those and converted them to 128 and 320 MP3 (both from the original 16 bit files) - then put those back to 16 bit wav's. So, you will have the following files -

-16 bit with Dither
-16 bit without Dither
-320 MP3 with Dither
-320 MP3 without Dither
-128 with Dither
-128 without Dither

Please do not cheat. It kind of spoils the fun. You can PM me for the answers after you have guessed. Just don't reveal the answers to anyone please.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/upload/test.ZIP
 
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I just thought I'd throw something out to the listeners . . . the theory of dither is that it reduces signal distortion at low levels. So it should be more apparent if you listen loud enough to hear the quieter parts at least at nominal level (0dBFS = 96dBSPL or so, for an RMS of around 82-85dBSPL). If you listen to playback at 70dBSPL RMS, I wouldn't expect to hear much, if any, difference.
 
Thats a really tough clip to judge it on...... I can hear the 128 and 320 difference, but its hard to distinct the 3, let alone dithering on them all.....
 
I'll give it a shot, what the hay, I can only be so wrong :)

-16 bit with Dither-f
-16 bit without Dither-e
-320 MP3 with Dither-d
-320 MP3 without Dither-c
-128 with Dither-a
-128 without Dither-b

The longer I listened the more they sounded the same.:p
 
I have a hard time distinguishing them, but the 128 sounds obvious to me on the acoustic guitar, at least I hope or my ears are worse than I thought. :)

A & B sound like 128 MP3.

I have no idea which ones are 320 or WAV, I can't hear a difference between 320 KBPS MP3s and WAV files.

With that said, it should be obvious I can't hear dither either, and I'm not going to crank up my volume to try, especially on these computer speakers.

Here's my final guess:

A - 128 KBPS MP3
B - 128 KBPS MP3
C - 320 KBPS MP3
D - 16-bit WAV
E - 320 KBPS MP3
F - 16-bit WAV

I have no idea about the dither.
 
ok heres my guess after lots of squinting...

a+B 128 lowest???
d + e 320?
c+f 16 bit... i hear more 'room' anyways..on these tracks...

i didn't hear alot of difference and i would have thought an acoustic would make it easier to hear a difference...what with little transient pick attacks and plucked sounds...
i bet my 4 track would stand up and shout 'its me' i'm tape!!! in this test..
 
Any idea when we can find out how deaf we are? :D I'm interested in which is which.

I'd like to hear more responses though, from the people who said they can hear dither. ;)
 
A- 128 un-dithered.
E- 16 bit wave dithered.
F- 320kbps

Thats as far as I got. Pretty tricky really.
I probably could work it out using phase cancellation but that would be cheating.

The difference between 320kbps and 1644 wav is very slight that even the best MEs would have trouble telling them apart.

Eck
 
ecktronic said:
The difference between 320kbps and 1644 wav is very slight that even the best MEs would have trouble telling them apart.
Click to expand...

Agreed that they sound the same, I can't tell them apart at all.

But I have a suspicion that some ME's would be able to tell the difference.
 
danny.guitar said:
Agreed that they sound the same, I can't tell them apart at all.

But I have a suspicion that some ME's would be able to tell the difference.
Click to expand...

Yeah there will be a few audio quality addicts out their that can tell the difference but for me I don't think the difference between the 2 formats is big enough to worry about.
I mean do you think Joe Average could tell the difference? I don't think so!!
And Joe Average is the guy that buys the music, so its not that important.

Eck
 
Wow - nearly 300 views and only 4 guesses.........

I'll post the answers in a bit - anybody else wanna guess?
 
I'm interested.... but there's no way I'm going to bother guessing.

So it's not that the interest isn't there - people may just be like me, and know they have no hope in getting that challenge right.
 
NL5 said:
E-16 bit with Dither
F-16 bit without Dither
D-320 MP3 with Dither
C-320 MP3 without Dither
B-128 with Dither
A-128 without Dither
Click to expand...

Interesting results. Everybody picked the 128k's out. A few got the dither ones right (or atleast preferred them). Quackzed heard more "room" on the undithered tracks.

I wish more people would have participated. I'm gonna do another on with just the dither and see if anyone can tell. From the very small pool here I would say no, but on converter challenges, most people were just guessing, and a few nailed it exactly. I think very few people here have a proper listening environment, nor great converters. It does make a difference in these kind of tests. We are talking some pretty subtle differences that an average listener wouldn't hear individually - but they do add up.
 
I got 2 out of 3.
I was pretty sure of A and E.
F for me was a bit of a guess, and a wrong one at that! I kind of got fed up after my first 2 answers. :)

Thanks NL5.

Eck
 
ecktronic said:
I got 2 out of 3.
I was pretty sure of A and E.
F for me was a bit of a guess, and a wrong one at that! I kind of got fed up after my first 2 answers. :)

Thanks NL5.

Eck
Click to expand...

You guessed the undithered wav as being MP3 - interesting......
 
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