Anybody Out There Who Hears a Difference Between 320 kbps MP3 and Red Book CD? What Differences Do You Hear?

[VMAT4]

I don't hear much, if any difference between 320 kbps MP3 streams and standard CDs. I consider myself blessed in this respect. I don't think there is an audible difference. And, I don't mind saying so. But, if you hear a difference, what is it?

 

[Blumlein 88]

There are some music tracks I can't hear a difference. There are some I can hear a difference.

So maybe in a jazz recording well done with some fast played trumpet notes yet with enough time for silence between some of them.

Something with tinkly triangles or tambourines where the sustained high energy sounds more swishy than like real treble.

Sometimes things you wouldn't think are difficult are in fact obviously different.

One of the infamous recordings used to fine tune MP3 encoding in early listening tests was this Susan Vega song. It proved very difficult to encode to MP3 without altering her vocal quality.

It was something of a compression encoding torture test. I would not have thought it hard to encode.

Yet if you know a few things about masking and such it shouldn't be surprising. The human ear actually has trouble with these kinds of differences when the music or sound is complex. On simpler material like Susan Vega or Jazz trios, your ear isn't over burdened and can pick out very small differences in quality much better. So simple vocals, simple trios, guitar/singers that sort of thing is better to hear a difference vs the full blown classical orchestra which everyone thinks is complex enough to overwhelm the encoder. Instead it overwhelms the human ear more than the encoder. In such simple recordings there isn't much to mask other aspects while complex music can do lots of masking in the human ear.

 

[andreasmaaan]

I don't hear much, if any difference between 320 kbps MP3 streams and standard CDs. I consider myself blessed in this respect. I don't think there is an audible difference. And, I don't mind saying so. But, if you hear a difference, what is it?

I don't either in casual listening. Generally, people who can hear a difference reliably manage to do so by finding particularly revealing excerpts, training themselves to identify subtle differences, and AB'ing between them very quickly. I've never tried to train myself to do this, but I accept that it's possible. I'm happy with 320Kbps MP3 for the most part...

 

[Blumlein 88]

This was another track used to develop MP3.

 

[Vincent Kars]

High bit rate MP3 is almost transparent but not 100%
You can provoke this by using the "killer samples" e.g. https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,77128.0.html

 

[Wombat]

This was another track used to develop MP3.

Her voice had a lot of natural distortion. I can't see how this would not affect comparisons

 

[Wombat]

High bit rate MP3 is almost transparent but not 100%
You can provoke this by using the "killer samples" e.g. https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,77128.0.html

But who can REALLY tell the difference and validate their claims. This should be an open-and-shut scientific case. Something amiss here. Is it lack of DBT trials or 'I can hear it' protests with no substantive back-up from that camp?
'Round and 'round we go ..................................... .

 

[andreasmaaan]

@amirm has reliably discerned a difference in ABX testing if I'm not mistaken...

 

[Wombat]

@amirm has reliably discerned a difference in ABX testing if I'm not mistaken...

320kbps? A trained listener? We need a Cochrane's review on this topic re general listening. Science wise, not many think it is more than a narrow-field indulgence.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Her voice had a lot of natural distortion. I can't see how this would not affect comparisons

I hear it too on this. I don't think that much is on the original CD. But hey, encoding obvious distortion can still distort the result.

 

[FrantzM]

I don't most of the time (99.99999%) but I can force myself into finding differences on some recording I know well ... Interestingly Western Orchestral Classical music passes the test for me and many friends , some of those .... audiophiles.

 

[Blumlein 88]

But who can REALLY tell the difference and validate their claims. This should be an open-and-shut scientific case. Something amiss here. Is it lack of DBT trials or 'I can hear it' protests with no substantive back-up from that camp?
'Round and 'round we go ..................................... .

I just did it on a sample I picked out. Ask J-J firstly mp3 was never claimed to be transparent. It has been tested and it isn't. It has gotten better, and it is very good, but it is discernible. Do we really need to test this again?

I just did a snippet of Ana Caram. Like 2 seconds worth. She sings a short clipped word. A guitar chord is struck at that time and decays for the rest of the 2 seconds. In the MP3 version you here almost an echo of her word modulate the guitar chord decay. Pretty obvious. One is a smooth guitar decay and the other is uneven.

Now you might play 30 seconds of the song and not much notice it. Once you've found it in a short snippet that and similar artifacts stick out like a sore thumb even in a 30 second sample.

 

[Wombat]

Next time you are at a bus-stop say you can smell fish. You will get some who can smell fish, too.

ASR, opinions are rife.

 

[svart-hvitt]

FWIW,

I never use low resolution for music in my home, but when I play music in my car, I have experienced on many occasions that music from the radio (DAB digital) sounds «unclearer» than the same music from a Tidal 16/44 stream in the same car.

So I wondered if a somewhat higher quality music stream is practical in a car where you have lots of other noise in addition. Does that make sense?

Maybe due to the background noise, I experience less fatigue playing 16/44 than DAB digital radio. I can also play on lower volume.

 

[andymok]

I tried it out myself many years ago, I could hear differences between MP3 and AAC @320kbps

 

[Grave]

As a teenager I was ABXing high bit rate lossy vs. lossless and I have not used lossy since. There is an obvious lack of audible information if you listen carefully. Maybe my hearing has gotten worse by now. There is no reason to use lossy any more because of ample storage.

 

[Veri]

FWIW,

I never use low resolution for music in my home, but when I play music in my car, I have experienced on many occasions that music from the radio (DAB digital) sounds «unclearer» than the same music from a Tidal 16/44 stream in the same car.

So I wondered if a somewhat higher quality music stream is practical in a car where you have lots of other noise in addition. Does that make sense?

Maybe due to the background noise, I experience less fatigue playing 16/44 than DAB digital radio. I can also play on lower volume.

Where I'm at, digital radio is encoded to 96kbps AAC,

furthermore, some FM radio stations (public announcement radio) use high quality audio as source, other commercial radio might have a gimmick set-up of their own which can definitely use some lossy source (which is quite apparent...) and gets then re-encoded which will of course sound like ass.

So yeah not every radio station will sound the same, you will have differences in how they are set up I'm sure.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Where I'm at, digital radio is encoded to 96kbps AAC,

furthermore, some FM radio stations (public announcement radio) use high quality audio as source, other commercial radio might have a gimmick set-up of their own which can definitely use some lossy source (which is quite apparent...) and gets then re-encoded which will of course sound like ass.

So yeah not every radio station will sound the same, you will have differences in how they are set up I'm sure.

This is Norwegian radio, national broadcaster NRK, a (very) high quality broadcaster.

 

[SIY]

But who can REALLY tell the difference and validate their claims. This should be an open-and-shut scientific case. Something amiss here. Is it lack of DBT trials or 'I can hear it' protests with no substantive back-up from that camp?
'Round and 'round we go ..................................... .

I did this as a sorting DBT about eight or nine years ago. Original 16/44 plus MP3 coded at different rates. No problem putting them in order with the right tracks as source material. Damn subtle once you got to 320 vs. original, but still audible with a lot of concentration on specific passages.

I'm serious about the criticality of source material- on Brubeck "Take 5," my orderings were random and I admitted up front that I couldn't really hear a difference. The killer track was some female pop vocalist doing a breathy and heavily studio-processed version of "Danny Boy," so the ones pointed out here don't surprise me.

Equipment was a Sony Discman and some Stax headphones.

 

[FrantzM]

People do you realize that many of you are losing their hard, patiently accumulated along the years ... audiophile creds ... You're a bunch of tin-eared audiophiles.

What!?!? You haven't noticed the not dark background, the collapsed soundstage, the mechanical tones and artificiality of 320 Kbs mp3!!!??? Come on! It is a night and day difference ...........