6 ms·
Do 320kbps mp3 files really sound better? Take the test
- SwaroopH 14y agoLooks like I chose the higher one but you are right, hardly any difference.
- calciphus 14y agoMuch more interesting test: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/the-great-mp3-bitrate-experiment.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/the-great-mp3-bitra... And the outcome: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/concluding-the-great-mp3-bitrate-experiment.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/concluding-the-grea...
- lmm 14y agoAgain, not an ABX test. No wonder the first file did best - it sounded most like the first file. You can't do listening tests without a labelled original to compare to.
- oliwarner 14y agoThe difference is tiny but just about audible. To my ears neither sounded like a good quality recording and I think that's what made it so hard to tell the difference. Even with cheap speakers, it's easy to spot compression artifacts in poorly encoded audio but in these samples the drum tracks on both sound "mashed". That might be an instrumental trait but it sounds more like a production or postprocessing error to me.
- lmm 14y agoAsking which file sounds "better" is meaningless; some distortions sound good. The proper way to do this is an ABX test, where you compare both to a known original, and ask which sounds more like the original.
- cskau 14y agoDo you have any links?
- yungchin 14y agohttp://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ABX http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ABX - sadly, of all the links on that page only the Gnome ABX one is still live. But you can find/ask for more recent material in their forums: many of the people who work on lossy audio codecs hang out there.
- dsirijus 14y agoI may not disclose full details, but one of the engineers that made particular widely used audio decoder said that they've left the bug whose symptoms were slight high frequency noise. It was widely reported to sound "better" than other "by the book" implementations.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- InclinedPlane 14y agoThe entire exercise is predicated on the notion that if a person consciously listens to an audio recording for a while they will be able to provide a completely accurate estimation of the quality of the recording. To some degree that is true, but I dispute the idea that it is completely true. Yes, there are crazy audiophiles who will tell you that special crystal bullshit gives them a better sound, nevertheless there is an element of truth in a degree of audio fidelity than is immediately and consciously apparent upon a single casual listen. Sometimes it can take listening to a given recording a few times before you start to appreciate all of the nuances. Maybe you don't notice the little things like the squeak of the bass drum pedal the first few times you hear it, or the richness of the intonation of the clarinet. Or maybe you don't immediately notice that the cymbal crashes are all fuzzed out to hell and back by compression artifacts because you weren't paying close enough attention the first time you listened, but on the 10th listen it starts to become a real annoyance and you start to think seriously about acquire a better recording or encoding. Here's a perfect example. Pink has a very popular song called Raise Your Glass, you can listen to it on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjVNlG5cZyQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjVNlG5cZyQ. In that song there are many prominent and annoying high-pitched beeps (right in the middle of the chorus even), but I find that most people do not even know they are there, they do not consciously hear them, their brain just filters it out. But once you pick up on it, they become obvious, you can't help but hear them. And the same is true of things like encoding distortion. If you draw the bar at exactly the boundary where people will be able to consciously perceive a difference in quality based on a single listen then you will have placed the bar too low. People will have a slightly lower appreciation for the recordings due to factors they may not even consciously be aware of.
- lutusp 14y agoObviously for the author's signal source, the original CD sound tracks (sampled at 44.1 KHz * ) would limit the importance of a change from 128 to 320 kbps. * Corrected units
- lmm 14y agoNo, this is wrong. CDs are sampled at 44.1khz with 16-bit samples, making for (calculates) 706kbps. And that's ignoring stereo.
- lutusp 14y agoThe depth of the sample doesn't get around the Nyquist-Shannon sampling limitation. This means resampling a 44.1 KHz * recording at a higher bit rate is pointless. To be specific, a 44.1 KHz sampling rate provides a bandwidth of 22.05 KHz, period, full stop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_samplin... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate A quote: "The full range of human hearing is between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.[3] The minimum sampling rate that satisfies the sampling theorem for this full bandwidth is 40 kHz. The 44.1 kHz sampling rate used for Compact Disc was chosen for this and other technical reasons." * Corrected units
- ethereon 14y agoI believe you're messing up the units here. - The sampling rate, measured in kHz, for CD tracks is 44.1 kHz (not kbps), which determines the frequency range. Nyquist-Shannon applies to this. - The bit-depth, number of bits/sample, determines the SNR of the signal, but has no effect on the frequency range. A typical audio CD has a bit depth of 16. - The bit-rate, measured in kbps, is (sampling_rate * bit_depth * channel_count). So for an audio CD, this would be 441000 * 16 * 2 = 1411200 bps = 1411.2 kbps.
- lutusp 14y ago> The sampling rate, measured in kHz, for CD tracks is 44.1 kHz (not kbps) ... Yes, corrected, thank you. The original point stands -- the higher resampling rates are increasingly pointless. > The bit-depth, number of bits/sample, determines the SNR of the signal ... Yes, and is thought to be the source of the much-remarked, subtle difference between vinyl album music and CD music. But no one knows for sure. > The bit-rate, measured in kbps, is (sampling_rate * bit_depth * channel_count). So for an audio CD, this would be 441000 * 16 * 2 = 1411200 bps = 1411.2 kbps. True. Unfortunately, these numbers may motivate people to argue for higher and higher MP3 sampling rates, ignoring the fact that the original temporal sampling rate severely limits the usefulness of these efforts.
- zmitri 14y agoIf you have quality headphones I don't think it's very hard. On earbuds, or laptop speakers, almost impossible. Put it on a real stereo and you will also be able to. Perhaps the fact that music is now being produced and optimized to sound good on tinny speakers is altering what we perceive to be a "good sound."
- oe 14y agoI think the difference was noticeable even on laptop speakers.
- lucb1e 14y agoYup, tested this before. Also with quite good hardware (sound card, circumaural quality headphones), between 128kbps and 192 you're already not sure whether there a difference or not, but anything above 192 is really wasted effort.
- rustynails 14y ago128kbit sounds so poor that I get a headache from listening to it. There is a tinnyness and high pitched squeal that is like a drill through my head. Maybe it's like using a 14" monitor - if you're so used to hearing low bitrate, it may be hard to notice better quality when you hear it occasionally.
- danieldk 14y agoI picked the higher one correctly. Though, the difference is barely audible on my laptop (MacBook Pro aka worthless DAC, but quite ok Sennheiser microphones). Personally I like lossless for practical reasons (e.g. conversions without quality loss).
- aes256 14y ago> Personally I like lossless for practical reasons (e.g. conversions without quality loss). That was the clincher for me. At first my music collection was a mish-mash of different bitrates. I converted the whole lot to the LAME V2 preset (~192kbps VBR) a la the mp3 scene standard, then no sooner had I done that than the standard changed to V0 (~245kbps). Screw it, I figured. Storage is cheap. Might as well go lossless.
- dsirijus 14y agoYou just need to focus on percussion to get it right - it's much more complex frequency-wise. I personally break even at V2.
- tfb 14y agoYou're right. That's what I ended up focusing on after a few listens and chose the correct answer, which could probably be attributed to being an ex pro drummer. Most people were probably focusing on the vocals, not at all attuned to what quality percussion sounds like, which is why more people chose the wrong answer. One might even go far as to say that more people think vocals sound better at 128 than 320.
- dsirijus 14y agoThat's also why I spent more than half my budget on percussion in equipping my ex garage band. And that's also why you can see Jack White playing a $50 guitar and no drummer without some serious dough investment in their equipment.
- NickKampe 14y agoTerrible test case
- cabirum 14y agoIt's just the audio sample is not complex enough to hear the difference, from the encoder POV. Try doing the same test with some orchestra recording or any metal band of your preference, even 320 vs lossless would be noticable.
- klez 14y agoI cheated... the first one took a bit more to buffer, so I inferred it was the highest bitrate. Anyway, with the cheap headset I have at work, yeah, I didn't notice any difference.
- 1SaltwaterC 14y agoAt work, with crappy Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000 there's a barely noticeable difference. Can't tell which is which anyway. Need to try at home with a proper setup.
- andybak 14y agoAnd the audiophile loons start appearing in the comments: "on high end gear you can hear the difference between a factory and a copied CD.". No. You can't, sir.
- aes256 14y agoIt's fairly easy to tell between 192kbps CBR LAME and an original CD. 192kbps VBR is a bit hit or miss. High end gear can absolutely make the imperfections more noticeable. Personally I just got fed up of the goalposts being moved around (LAME codec constantly being updated, mp3 scene switching from 3.97 -V2 to 3.98 -V0, etc.) and now I just have all my music collection in lossless. ~300MB a CD? No problem.
- some1else 14y agoBasic DSP knowledge tells us that a digital audio copy is exactly the same quality as the original. Also, testing the difference between 128kbps and 320kbps MP3s over and over again is like drinking warm beer all the time to make sure it's really worse than the cold one.
- raverbashing 14y agoThanks so much for your last phrase.
- einmus 14y agoAudio CD is an old technology. It doesn't have advanced error correction method. With poor quality CD-R, it's true that the quality is not the same.
- andybak 14y agoExcluding from skipping and audible glitches that doesn't sound plausible. i.e. copying an audio CD can create gross errors but not a more subtle change in audio quality (loss of dynamics/frequencies etc). If you disagree could you point me towards some evidence?
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- andybak 14y ago192kbs VBR with a good encoder. There's been countless tests and this is indistinguishable to the vast majority of listeners (teens might have a slight edge as the ability to hear high frequencies diminishes with age). I don't have time to dig up citations but check out the Hydrogen Audio forums and other sane, non-cranky-audiophile, evidence based sources.
- rustynails 14y agoI would say that 192kbit (2 pass, VBR) is the minimum bitrate that one should encode music. I can pick lower than this without trying. I do struggle to hear more than 192kbit, except occasionally at the high end. In reality, disk is so cheap that I encode in flac. I'd rather keep myself future proof. Let's just say that my entire cd collection is smaller than 2 bluray rips at 1080p.
- stuaxo 14y agoShould test against lossless. Bus driver - imaginary places has really fast rapping, as mp3 its almost impossible to understand, on lossless you can grok it.
- nodesocket 14y agoBad choice for the sample. I however still picked #1. Choose a song with bass, and mids. The difference between 128kbps and 320kbps will become painfuly obvious.
- invisiblea 14y agoLaptop speakers: Nope. High Quality Headphones: Maybe. Loud sound system in a crowded club: Definitely. Also just because one track sounds acceptable at 192, doesn't mean another will. The only way to make sure tracks have the same 'opportunity' to sound good is to throw away less information.
- andrewfelix 14y agoDo the test with Thelonius Monk. I didn't think I was an audiophile, until I noticed a crispness missing from some of my jazz. I encode at 320kbps out of paranoia now, but what's an extra few megabytes per album? FYI if anyone is using Google Music, turn on HTML5 audio (via labs). I swear there is a perceptible improvement.
- antonios 14y agoThis is meaningless. Statistically meaningful tests are performed using ABX testing methods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test) with high-quality equipment. And, yes, many people have trained ears (and brains?) that can easily distinguish the artifacts made by the MP3 compression even in 320kbps. See this (http://listening-tests.hydrogenaudio.org/sebastian/mp3-128-1/results.htm http://listening-tests.hydrogenaudio.org/sebastian/mp3-128-1...) as an example of an ABX test. As for me, with my current medium-quality headphones, I can't distinguish between the original and an 128kbps mp3.
- simonbrown 14y agoSo if you end up listening to the music with your medium-quality headphones, it doesn't matter whether it's 128kbps or 320kbps.
- antonios 14y agoYes. For _me_, using _my headphones_, it doesn't matter. Everyone's experience is unique, as it depends on various factors.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- esolyt 14y agoI would argue this song is terrible for this test. I usually can instantly tell the difference between 320 and 128 kbps, but I wasn't able to with this test.
- jvdh 14y agoIt might be my bad quality headphones, but the song for me was so distorted on the 128kbps that I heard the difference in less than a second.
- palebluedot 14y agoVery interesting. This then set me off reading about ABX testing for longer than I wish to admit. For those looking to try some ABX testing between 320kbps and 128kbps mp3 files, this is the best in-browser one I've found so far: http://mp3ornot.com/ http://mp3ornot.com/
- ojiikun 14y agoA 10-second sample misses the point of HQ v. LQ: a very few sections of most albums will sound better at HQ. The vast, vast majority of songs will sound the same. The point isn't that HQ is a little better most the time, it's that some of the time it is much better. LTJ Bukem - Watercoulours comes to mind as a great example of the phenomenon.