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Cognitive or psychological effects on the perception of audio are fascinating. I had a friend in sound production tell me that he had the experience of ramping

Cognitive or psychological effects on the perception of audio are fascinating. I had a friend in sound production tell me that he had the experience of ramping up sliders to show an effect to a client and watching their faces brighten at the improvement. Then, he noticed something was misconfigured and the sliders were doing nothing. That said, there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, because they can sense the faint temporal errors that can make a sound a touch before the sound they should follow.

Sebb767 4y ago
> That said, there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, because they can sense the faint temporal errors that can make a sound a touch before the sound they should follow. This depends a lot on your setup. In perfect room with 5 digit sound equipment and encoded with a bad encoder? Sure. Good encoder on something like phone speakers, especially with examples not specifically crafted to show weaknesses? Never. Of course there is a lot of in-between, but for most people and setups, mp3 is not the limitation.
bayindirh 4y ago
> That said, there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, because they can sense the faint temporal errors that can make a sound a touch before the sound they should follow. The half of this ability lies in the audio system being listened to. As we like the say, the performance of something is capped by the weakest link in the system. If you have a good sound source feeding a semi-decent amplifier paired with a good set of speakers, you can feel the sound stage and depth difference between 320kbps MP3 and a CD. However, modern mastering techniques generally maximize loudness and erode some detail, so everything becomes disputable. I have some properly mastered CDs, and listening them blows my ears away every time, others don't do the same because they're compressed for the sake of loudness and they don't sound as spectacular.
quickthrowman 4y ago
> That said, there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, because they can sense the faint temporal errors that can make a sound a touch before the sound they should follow. You got a link to some independent blind listening test results showing someone has this ability? I’m extremely skeptical of the above claim.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  You can try it yourself: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ Moreover, there's a file which I just made [0] which shows the sound difference between a FLAC and a MP3 file. How I made this? 1. Rip the CD to FLAC. 2. Convert FLAC to MP3 with lame (320CBR, 44.1KHz, Compression level 5). 3. Load both to Audacity, subtract MP3 from FLAC. 4. Amplify remainder to 0.0dB. 5. Render to FLAC. So, yes, there's audible difference. P.S.: To verify I tried this process with two copies of the same FLAC file, and what remains from subtraction is a clear 0. So, the process is working. [0]: https://share.getcloudapp.com/5zurmeLz https://share.getcloudapp.com/5zurmeLz [0]: http://0x0.st/oBAz.flac http://0x0.st/oBAz.flac (alternative link if the first one dies).
  - roelschroeven 4y ago
    You found a difference between the same audio compressed losslessly and lossy. That's not a surprise; it would be a surprise if there weren't a difference. The whole point of lossy compression is that it throws away some information to get better compression rates. Of course it's not going to be identical. But that doesn't prove anything, and more specifically it doesn't prove that there is an audible difference. What matters is the perception of the sound. In the end, the only reliable differentiator is a properly set up double-blind listening test.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      > That's not a surprise; it would be a surprise if there weren't a difference. The surprise part is not the difference itself, but the amount and legibility of difference even with a state of the art compressor at maxed-out settings. > But that doesn't prove anything, and more specifically it doesn't prove that there is an audible difference. On the contrary, it proves that some audible information is stripped from an MP3 file, even at highest settings, and this stripped detail inevitably adds more information to the sound stage. It wouldn't be there if there was no contribution. Therefore, audibility of this information depends on the audio chain used. As I said before, a semi-decent amp with a good pair of speakers can render this, and the difference is not Oh, I hear a cymbal here, but Oh, this recording is really enjoyable and immersive. The equipment I cite here is not a 5-figure system either. A good vintage amp (Akai, Sony, Marantz, Technics, etc.) with an "affordable" high end speaker (Heco Celan GT/Revolution 302, which are smallest members of their respective families) is more than enough for hearing the difference. Investment in audio equipment has decent return in terms of quality up to a certain point. Past that point, it becomes meaningless for most people and scenarios. Also, music has layers, and one listens a song completely in "multiple passes", this is why ABX tests play the same song 5-10 times and ask for evaluation. Moreover, as per the study published in Audio Engineering Society in 2016 [0], MP3 changes the emotional perception of the songs, again verifying there's audible differences. [0]: (Open Access) https://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20220528/18523.pdf https://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20220528/18523.pdf
midislack 4y ago
For me it's incredibly easy to detect even a 320kbps MP3 because of various deficiencies especially in transients and high pitched cymbals and such noises. They become muddy or just disappear altogether. Once you point this out to somebody and A to B the same music, on the same system for them, they will hear how sloppy MP3s sound too. I've NEVER met a person who couldn't be trained to tell the difference in a few minutes.
quitit 4y ago
I was working with a client that was upset about the whiteness of the paper used for her new business stationery. After a lot of too’ing and fro’ing, I privately took a single sheet and cut it into 4 and gave the 4 “samples” to her as stock options. Despite all the options being completely identical, she chose option B as her definite preference, with option A as her second favourite. Also this wasn’t some regular idiot, but a client that had overseen a marketing agency for 15+ years, so really she should know better. As a bonus the paper I used for the experiment was the original stock that she was making a fuss over. (While paper is available in tints via different whitening approaches, those tints are noticeably different from one another.) So it seems sometimes people have moments of perfectionism, it’s good to keep this in mind if we notice ourselves being fussy about a decision that probably doesn’t matter. It’s almost always better to just get on with it, than be paralysed by decisions.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, I can *easily* hear the difference between MP3 at any bitrate and uncompressed on carefully-chosen programme material. In particular stuff that uses TR808 or TR606 hihats is absolutely destroyed by MP3. I do not claim to be a golden-eared purist, and would roundly debunk the claims of the gold-plated SATA cable brigade. MP3 genuinely sounds really bad.

Sebb767 4y ago

> That said, there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, because they can sense the faint temporal errors that can make a sound a touch before the sound they should follow. This depends a lot on your setup. In perfect room with 5 digit sound equipment and encoded with a bad encoder? Sure. Good encoder on something like phone speakers, especially with examples not specifically crafted to show weaknesses? Never. Of course there is a lot of in-between, but for most people and setups, mp3 is not the limitation.

bayindirh 4y ago

> That said, there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, because they can sense the faint temporal errors that can make a sound a touch before the sound they should follow. The half of this ability lies in the audio system being listened to. As we like the say, the performance of something is capped by the weakest link in the system. If you have a good sound source feeding a semi-decent amplifier paired with a good set of speakers, you can feel the sound stage and depth difference between 320kbps MP3 and a CD. However, modern mastering techniques generally maximize loudness and erode some detail, so everything becomes disputable. I have some properly mastered CDs, and listening them blows my ears away every time, others don't do the same because they're compressed for the sake of loudness and they don't sound as spectacular.

quickthrowman 4y ago

> That said, there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, because they can sense the faint temporal errors that can make a sound a touch before the sound they should follow. You got a link to some independent blind listening test results showing someone has this ability? I’m extremely skeptical of the above claim.

bayindirh 4y ago
You can try it yourself: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ Moreover, there's a file which I just made [0] which shows the sound difference between a FLAC and a MP3 file. How I made this? 1. Rip the CD to FLAC. 2. Convert FLAC to MP3 with lame (320CBR, 44.1KHz, Compression level 5). 3. Load both to Audacity, subtract MP3 from FLAC. 4. Amplify remainder to 0.0dB. 5. Render to FLAC. So, yes, there's audible difference. P.S.: To verify I tried this process with two copies of the same FLAC file, and what remains from subtraction is a clear 0. So, the process is working. [0]: https://share.getcloudapp.com/5zurmeLz https://share.getcloudapp.com/5zurmeLz [0]: http://0x0.st/oBAz.flac http://0x0.st/oBAz.flac (alternative link if the first one dies).
- roelschroeven 4y ago
  You found a difference between the same audio compressed losslessly and lossy. That's not a surprise; it would be a surprise if there weren't a difference. The whole point of lossy compression is that it throws away some information to get better compression rates. Of course it's not going to be identical. But that doesn't prove anything, and more specifically it doesn't prove that there is an audible difference. What matters is the perception of the sound. In the end, the only reliable differentiator is a properly set up double-blind listening test.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    > That's not a surprise; it would be a surprise if there weren't a difference. The surprise part is not the difference itself, but the amount and legibility of difference even with a state of the art compressor at maxed-out settings. > But that doesn't prove anything, and more specifically it doesn't prove that there is an audible difference. On the contrary, it proves that some audible information is stripped from an MP3 file, even at highest settings, and this stripped detail inevitably adds more information to the sound stage. It wouldn't be there if there was no contribution. Therefore, audibility of this information depends on the audio chain used. As I said before, a semi-decent amp with a good pair of speakers can render this, and the difference is not Oh, I hear a cymbal here, but Oh, this recording is really enjoyable and immersive. The equipment I cite here is not a 5-figure system either. A good vintage amp (Akai, Sony, Marantz, Technics, etc.) with an "affordable" high end speaker (Heco Celan GT/Revolution 302, which are smallest members of their respective families) is more than enough for hearing the difference. Investment in audio equipment has decent return in terms of quality up to a certain point. Past that point, it becomes meaningless for most people and scenarios. Also, music has layers, and one listens a song completely in "multiple passes", this is why ABX tests play the same song 5-10 times and ask for evaluation. Moreover, as per the study published in Audio Engineering Society in 2016 [0], MP3 changes the emotional perception of the songs, again verifying there's audible differences. [0]: (Open Access) https://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20220528/18523.pdf https://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20220528/18523.pdf

midislack 4y ago

For me it's incredibly easy to detect even a 320kbps MP3 because of various deficiencies especially in transients and high pitched cymbals and such noises. They become muddy or just disappear altogether. Once you point this out to somebody and A to B the same music, on the same system for them, they will hear how sloppy MP3s sound too. I've NEVER met a person who couldn't be trained to tell the difference in a few minutes.

quitit 4y ago

I was working with a client that was upset about the whiteness of the paper used for her new business stationery. After a lot of too’ing and fro’ing, I privately took a single sheet and cut it into 4 and gave the 4 “samples” to her as stock options. Despite all the options being completely identical, she chose option B as her definite preference, with option A as her second favourite. Also this wasn’t some regular idiot, but a client that had overseen a marketing agency for 15+ years, so really she should know better. As a bonus the paper I used for the experiment was the original stock that she was making a fuss over. (While paper is available in tints via different whitening approaches, those tints are noticeably different from one another.) So it seems sometimes people have moments of perfectionism, it’s good to keep this in mind if we notice ourselves being fussy about a decision that probably doesn’t matter. It’s almost always better to just get on with it, than be paralysed by decisions.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

> there are people who can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3s and uncompressed, I can *easily* hear the difference between MP3 at any bitrate and uncompressed on carefully-chosen programme material. In particular stuff that uses TR808 or TR606 hihats is absolutely destroyed by MP3. I do not claim to be a golden-eared purist, and would roundly debunk the claims of the gold-plated SATA cable brigade. MP3 genuinely sounds really bad.