The Audiophile Challenge

[mcbpete]

4 hours ago, iococoi said:

 

Only going to listen to it if the files have gone through these cables:

and this cable cleaner:

[Dragon]

i've recently made a massive effort to organize my music collection and replace mp3/v0 copies with FLAC/WAVs. well overdue but at least three quarters of my collection (17+ years of snatching albums) is now lossless.

i come back to this thread at the age of 30 and find i simply cannot find the points in these sound files where it switches to lossy mp3. holy hell. i can't even remember the correct answers, which i seemly didn't post here.

now all i wanna know is whether 2023 has any more scientific knowledge on human hearing after yet another decade of insufferable audiophile gear. that, pitted against the mass consumption of lossy mp3 to stream music is well worth looking into (all youtube/spotify content, plus the majority of retail digital content, is lossy, plus many services will drop to a lower bitrate during playback where there are network issues).

[Dragon]

On 3/15/2011 at 8:07 AM, Guest Synthacat 9 said:

Sup.mp4  

 

 

 

On 3/15/2011 at 9:12 AM, jeremymacgregor87 said:

the face of watmm

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Dragon

[mcbpete]

2 hours ago, Dragon said:

i've recently made a massive effort to organize my music collection and replace mp3/v0 copies with FLAC/WAVs. well overdue but at least three quarters of my collection (17+ years of snatching albums) is now lossless.

i come back to this thread at the age of 30 and find i simply cannot find the points in these sound files where it switches to lossy mp3. holy hell. i can't even remember the correct answers, which i seemly didn't post here.

Have been planning to do exactly the same with my collection (replacing v0 mp3s with flac) for ages now though most of my collection is the other side of the country and whenever I head back to visit my family I can never be arsed to retrieve the CDs from the attic..... and my ears won't thank me for the extra work either !

Regarding your original post (the Phillip Glass one) - Definitely can't hear a difference (my ears are decade more busted than yours!) and actually just 'cheated' and loaded it into Audition. Not sure if I'm reading the spectral view right but it looks like you had switched between the two versions pretty darn quickly, like way over 30 times over the minute: The only major 'visual' difference being the loss of the >10Khz harmonics of those slower trumpets (the clarinet or oboe (or bassoon - I'm rubbish at reed instruments!) also have that 'hole' but their upper harmonics are pretty quiet at that frequency range so aren't very bright in the spectral view)

EDIT: The Autechre one half way down the page is actually still doable for my terrible tinnitus ears  Not so much from a frequency POV but the decay part of the transients in the super quick percussion definitely have that telltale sludgy/watery sound to them - Though this was 128kbps right? Doubt I could've  done it for 192kbps or above!

[iococoi]

15 minutes ago, mcbpete said:

like way over 30 times over the minute

i see something like 10 segments=5 flac, 5mp3 here over @sonic visualiser

[mcbpete]

52 minutes ago, iococoi said:

i see something like 10 segments=5 flac, 5mp3 here over @sonic visualiser

You're absolutely right - Sorry was using the office version of Audition (buncha shite that thing has become!), in Izotope RX it clearly shows the 10 segments !

[cruising for burgers]

On 3/8/2011 at 3:43 PM, Dragon said:

It's simple. I have uploaded a one-minute sample of "Dance V" by Philip Glass. Although the entire file is encoded in FLAC, it randomly switches between two different samples: A FLAC, and a 128kbps MP3. Both are exactly the same apart from the quality, and your job is to figure out exactly when it switches between the FLAC and the MP3.

 

If you really can't tell when it switches, congratulations! You're free! You can encode all your albums in 128kbps and have peace of mind. But if you notice the switches... well, maybe there's a good reason for FLAC encoding after all...

 

RULES:

Place ALL your guesses in spoiler tags

Ears ONLY (no computer analysis!)

 

Have fun!

Audiophile Challenge.flac 4.51 MB · 102 downloads

u guys just got hacked... the file is entirely in 128kbps...

[usagi]

15 minutes ago, cruising for burgers said:

u guys just got hacked