Audiophilery

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mission
Posts: 2246
Joined: 04 Apr 2008, 13:39

Audiophilery

Postby mission » 05 Dec 2018, 04:56

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.
Goodness gracious me.

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driftin
Posts: 976
Joined: 15 Feb 2011, 03:23

Re: Audiophilery

Postby driftin » 05 Dec 2018, 14:34

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.

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Darkness_Fish
Posts: 7793
Joined: 27 Jul 2015, 09:58

Re: Audiophilery

Postby Darkness_Fish » 05 Dec 2018, 16:26

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.


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