article about engineer doing blind test of 128mp3 vs wav...?

cloutier · Post by **cloutier** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 9:17 pm

is the video of this test done by slices online anywhere yet?

SLICES · Post by **SLICES** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 9:19 pm

it will be on the new Slices issue 1-11 which will be released on March 15. Before you will not find it online

pafufta816 · Post by **pafufta816** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:11 pm

SLICES wrote:next tuesday we talk to one of the developers of the MP3 format.
If you have questions please let us know via PM.

why do they keep a proprietary lock on the MP3 codec when everyone and their mum who writes software has MP3 codecs in them? what monetary gain do they have holding copyrights on what are now not only industry but consumer standard format codecs? will MP3 ever embrace the open-source community?

ChrisCV · Post by **ChrisCV** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 12:18 am

i think they make a fair bit on MP3...

MP3 players and other mp3 playing devices probably pay a license fee to be allowed to decode mp3s on their players...

i know a similar thing happens with the H.264 codec from MPEG for video... that's why google are trying to push their own open source version for video..

but MP3 does embrace the open source community.. if your software or device isn't sold for money and is open source then you don't need to pay for your mp3 license... fair enough if you ask me..

Phase Ghost · Post by **Phase Ghost** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:55 am

I can tell a 320 vs 128 every single time. This relates to modern (within the last 20-30 years) music. A stax records bootleg from the 60's is going to be more difficult to tell. This also refers to really lo-fi music, but I can still tell usually.

If you can tell the difference between a .wav and a 320, you have supersonic hearing. The difference between the two is mp3's don't go as high as wav's sonically. wav's go to 22k while 320's go to 18k. Human hearing only goes to 20k at the absolute top. This assumes you have no hearing loss or degradation of any kind. If you love techno music, this is probably not the case.

An 18k sounds like a grasshopper whistling. In other words, it's extremely extremely high pitched. I just generated an 18k sine for the hell of it and I had to really crank my monitors to hear it. It was nearly inaudible at regular listening levels or even what I would consider loud. Also, I'm not certain how much of that was just noise from the monitors, dac, etc.

SLICES · Post by **SLICES** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:07 am

You definitly need "Golden Ears" to hear a difference. And there are not many people around who have "golden ears". With intensive training you can probably hear some little differences after a while while doing the ABx test. But in a club situation or at home you never do that while consuming music ;-)

The encoding plays a main role in the process. There are intelligent and stupid encoders and that makes a big difference.
I personally didn´t hear any difference between a wav and a high quality encoded MP3 with 320 and 192 in the blind tes
t.
(I have 23 years experience in music business, produced and mixed lots of records and still work with music everyday)

There is definitly too much smattering around the MP3 thing, thats the problem.
Also important is how you ask the question - What sounds better? or can you hear a difference?. And expectations play a main role in the human brain. This was a really interesting part.

So we had a really interesting chat with one of the MP3 developers and iI guess it will be a nice Slices Tech Talk ;-)

ChrisCV · Post by **ChrisCV** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 10:15 am

thank god....some real objective sense has been injected to this thread....

slices, phase ghost - totally agree...

maks - also agree that some feeling could be changed/skewed due to differences on frequencies that you can't hear which have subtle nuances on feeling...

by the way did this blind test test between vinyl and digital.. as that's the biggie... be interesting to know if there was all that warmth that people talk about...

Post by **John Clees** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 6:03 am

ChrisCV wrote: between vinyl and digital.. as that's the biggie..

that's just it... everything is mentioned in forms of digital.. of course when your talking over a certain amount of decibels,
in the same format it's going to be extremely difficult to test from a human level..

I have a test for you digital vs. vinyl.... the previous dj plays all digital, I play one vinyl record at the exact same level on the mixer,
and the sound is 50% louder and crispier...

"the warm people talk about" certainly to say the least..

the end..