Have you taken this test?
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/ ... io-quality
I did it at work - obviously - and was using the extraordinarily shitty single speaker Jabra headset to listen with.
I exclusively picked the allegedly crappy versions of each of the tunes.
Audiophilery
- driftin
- Posts: 976
- Joined: 15 Feb 2011, 03:23
Re: Audiophilery
I got 3 out of 6 right.
I found the differences in quality quite noticeable in the Neil Young track, Tom's Diner, and that piece of classical music (which are the ones I got right) but it was very difficult to hear the differences in the modern pop and rap music, almost as if they were made for listening on bass-heavy headphones and car stereos with massive subwoofers.
I have a pretty fancy setup involving expensive DACs and fancy monitor speakers.
I found the differences in quality quite noticeable in the Neil Young track, Tom's Diner, and that piece of classical music (which are the ones I got right) but it was very difficult to hear the differences in the modern pop and rap music, almost as if they were made for listening on bass-heavy headphones and car stereos with massive subwoofers.
I have a pretty fancy setup involving expensive DACs and fancy monitor speakers.
- Darkness_Fish
- Posts: 7793
- Joined: 27 Jul 2015, 09:58
Re: Audiophilery
I got 1 out of 6 right, but I picked the high bit rate mp3 every time, and I'm also using a crappy £10 headset plugged into my work desktop. As driftin says, a lot of modern music is made for listening on car stereos, loudness wars, blah blah blah, there's not much dynamic in a lot of digitally recorded/created music to discern. I couldn't hear any difference in any version of Tom's Diner, but the classical (and Coldplay, surprisingly) were the tracks were the low bit rate was more obvious.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.