SO YOU THINK YOU CAN HEAR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MP3 AND UNCOMPRESSED AUDIO

Fine, if you're going to be like that, I'll take matters into my own hands. what language is that? Swedish? it better be. okay, let's see what we get here..... 'None Valpropaganda Cheers'. What the fuck is that?!

From that terrible translation I'm guessing it roughly means 'No Whales Please'
 
stop trying to understand it, it's a (poor) pun in swedish that you won't be able to get unless you speak the language

and it has nothing to do with whales
 
Amen to this thread. It annoys me to no end too when people get all uptight about mp3s. Especially people who outright refuse to listen to anything that isn't lossless. The best ones though, are the idiots who trade live bootlegs in LOSSLESS format and insist that it remains lossless. Because yes, encoding a shitty sounding live bootleg recording in mp3 would obviously totally ruin the sound quality!

There was a great article in a Dutch computer magazine like two years ago or so where they did a test similar to what you did here where they got various industry professionals (like people who are recording engineers and such) and got them to judge various lossy and lossless encoded formats to see how much they got right and none of them even got remotely close to being right. Which pretty much confirmed for me that people who do think they can tell the difference are full of shit in most cases.

192k and above is impossible to discern from uncompressed or lossless compressed audio data unless you are Superman.
 
I rip my favorite owned CDs at 320 kbps. Why? Because I like having CD quality listening on my computer.

Everything else must be at least 128 kbps.
 
Yeah. 64 K is pretty bad. 128 K is the bear minimum for me (as in the lowest I can go without really being able to tell the difference).
 
Great experiment! It's suprising how most folks thought the first sample was the 128...perhaps I was just expecting it to be. The only one I could tell for sure was the uncompressed...I thought I could tell which one was 128. When I tried it, I was easily able to tell between 128 and 192. However, it was with an acoustical track from Opeth's Blackwater Park, #7 Patterns in the ivy. I could hear a discernable difference in the piano parts, as far as clarity and distinctiveness from the rest of the music. I was also using a set of sony MDR-v6 studio monitor headphones, and in this test I just used my computer speakers. They are damn fine computer speakers though - Klipsch 4.1's. At any rate, I've decided I can live without re-encoding my few albums that are currently ripped @128. Thanks for this little test, you rock! :headbang:
 
i wish i would have seen this earlier... i guessed completely right...


i've admitted before that with the production limitations that most metal has, there really isn't that much of a difference. but i swear to god if you listen to a Broken Social Scene or Six Organs Of Admittance album in 128 vs. 320 it's like reading with the lights off vs. on. music that isn't comprised of clicks and buzzing tends to lend itself better to expansive formats.
 
Teh Grimace said:
i've admitted before that with the production limitations that most metal has, there really isn't that much of a difference. but i swear to god if you listen to a Broken Social Scene or Six Organs Of Admittance album in 128 vs. 320 it's like reading with the lights off vs. on. music that isn't comprised of clicks and buzzing tends to lend itself better to expansive formats.

That much is true. It's sometimes even painful to listen to music like that in anything lower than 128.
 
don't let the nick fool you, i don't know shit about audio :p
On my first listen, I guessed.

128
192
vbr/wave
I gave up after the first three.
(ipod shuffle and ksc-75)

5 types of files is too confusing. I think this test would have been a lot fairer if 160 and vbr were taken out. thanks for this test anyways.