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Topic: HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison) (Read 68494 times) previous topic - next topic
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HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #150 –
To Budgie,

1st) In any science, when you want to prove something, you got to support it with evidences that follow the scientific method.

When it comes to psychoacoustics the only valid objective testing methodology is BLIND testing through ABX comparison

2nd) Your choice of encoders is wide, but you forgot to include the MOST used encoder setting today, agreed by the community as the best GENERAL purpose encoder, tweaked and tuned to meet the highest audiophile ears.

That is:

                                  LAME 3.90.2 --alt-preset standard


It would be quite interesting to see how would this compare against the other top quality encoders in a *BLIND* testing to the ears of some trained professionals and audiophiles.


just my 0.02 cents

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #151 –
Quote
tweaked and tuned to meet the highest audiophile ears.

That is:

                                  LAME 3.90.2 --alt-preset standard

Meet highest audiophile ears.. Well that's maybe a bit exaggeration..
Juha Laaksonheimo

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #152 –
Well, I can see you have quite a good amusement on my account  Surely I won't get mad from your kind of humor... Back in the eighties there was a group named KRAFTWERK. I suppose most of you "wise men" was just pissing and shitting into the nappy back in these days  Or  you weren't even born... you "allknowingblindabxtestsworshippers"  Well, their concerts were famous for some experience you could undergo,  getting it all almost into the adventure. The band had a habit letting their audience wait and meantime they experimented with kinda subsonic and supersonic effects. You could feel a variety of feelings, a wide range of sensations... sometimes it was awful and sometimes it was like a magic. Sometimes it was like being on a trip. I never used any kind of drugs, though, except small amounts of alcohol. What I want to say and where I point to, is to explain, that music and sound alone isn't a sample in some f...king blind abx test! There is a lot of more, what together makes a final impression of music. There are vibrations, you can't hear them, sure, but you feel them in a very physiological way. If you take it away, what do you get? That's the point... why is, say, subwoofer used in home cinema? Just to boost basses?! No, no, no... a lot of you, boys, definitely don't understand neither a sound nor a music. You try to axe/curtail the music from a very significant parts. These frequencies you don't hear mold the final impression of what you hear! Imagine King Crimson at alt preset standard! You're surely joking... A lot of instruments give out vibrations you don't hear, but if you high- or lowpass them, the music sounds kinda different, mostly worse. And what about higher harmonics?! That's why I prefer all this rare settings in MPC and AAC, because they are near to this, what we are trying to achieve, when we record work of someone, who deserves quality, not just pack his effort into some kind of a can  And start to hear music, not just samples...

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #153 –
we kinda have some hope that part 3 my appear soon, its just not fun anymore
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Reply #154 –
Not fun anymore?  Aw come on, this has been entertaining and educational at the same time.  I love it.  Budgie sure has stirred thing up a bit, but look at the wealth of knowledge that's come from it.  Seven pages of excellent information.  Man, this place is great.

All of this has really proven, to me anyways, the importance of ABX'ing.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #155 –
Quote
Back in the eighties there was a group named KRAFTWERK. I suppose most of you "wise men" was just pissing and shitting into the nappy back in these days  Or you weren't even born... you "allknowingblindabxtestsworshippers"  Well, their concerts were famous for some experience you could undergo, getting it all almost into the adventure. The band had a habit letting their audience wait and meantime they experimented with kinda subsonic and supersonic effects. You could feel a variety of feelings, a wide range of sensations... sometimes it was awful and sometimes it was like a magic. Sometimes it was like being on a trip. I never used any kind of drugs, though, except small amounts of alcohol. What I want to say and where I point to, is to explain, that music and sound alone isn't a sample in some f...king blind abx test! There is a lot of more, what together makes a final impression of music.

It seems to me that you're basically comparing listening to a cd with going to a concert, then basically replacing "cd" with "mp3", and then saying that it possibly can't provide the same experience...  that's a bit cheap trick don't you think? 

By the way, we all know that (concert different as cd) !  So why don't you focus on comparing a CD with an MP3 (that is, Part III) instead ?

Quote
There are vibrations, you can't hear them, sure, but you feel them in a very physiological way. If you take it away, what do you get? That's the point... why is, say, subwoofer used in home cinema? Just to boost basses?! No, no, no... a lot of you, boys, definitely don't understand neither a sound nor a music. You try to axe/curtail the music from a very significant parts. These frequencies you don't hear mold the final impression of what you hear!

Subwoofers are there to reproduce low frequencies more accurately, when high energy is involved. One sure can feel these low frequencies, I agree.

What I don't agree with, is you saying we can feel ultrasonic frequencies. If we can feel low-energy ultrasonic signals, then:
- why can't we "feel" lower frequency signals, from say 5kHz to 20kHz, even when they contain high energy ?
- why isn't there a single test I know of, that would confirm your impression ?

Quote
A lot of instruments give out vibrations you don't hear, but if you high- or lowpass them, the music sounds kinda different, mostly worse. And what about higher harmonics?!

What about actually listening to the instrument instead of listening to a loudspeaker ? I mean, do you really think that the sound coming out of your speakers, is perfect ?

What would you really consider as the weakest link(s) in the following audio chain:
- a microphone with real-world physical constraints, thus far from perfect
- an A/D converter with real-world physical constraints, thus far from perfect
- an audio codec with no physical constraints at all. In practice in will be either: "awful", "nearly transparent", "transparent plus a margin of N bits/sample", "lossless"...
- a D/A converter with real-world physical constraints, thus far from perfect
- an amplifier with real-world physical constraints, thus far from perfect
- a set of loudspeakers with real-world physical constraints, thus far from perfect. Also, this includes all imperfect lowpass/highpass filters involved.

Please make a list of them.
See? All components, except the audio codec, have unavoidable physical limitations that make them imperfect..  guess where the biggest degradations will happen ?

For example, why wouldn't the microphone destroy the real-world experience ? What about the speakers ?
It's easy to criticize the only part you don't know ! -- which happens to be the only one that CAN scale up to be 100% perceptually lossless if needed.

If you won't answer this one straightfully, I guess you're just afraid to be honest..

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #156 –
Quote
What I want to say and where I point to, is to explain, that music and sound alone isn't a sample in some f...king blind abx test! There is a lot of more, what together makes a final impression of music. There are vibrations, you can't hear them, sure, but you feel them in a very physiological way.

Of course CD can't replace live concert. However there's in principle nothing stopping you ABXing these so called feelings. ABX can tell you if you distinguish a difference, whether it is only by hearing, or hearing and feeling combined..  There's not any rule that you have to "hear" a difference with ABX testing, as long as you distinguish a difference which is statistically significant. For example, if a deaf person can sense some difference in airflow from subwoofers between 2 files, and can ABX those, it's valid ABX imo.. 
Juha Laaksonheimo

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Reply #157 –
For endless debates over the theoretical benefits/deficiencies of double-blind testing, I heartily recommend the Usenet group rec.audio.high-end.

For the practical purpose of improving audio codecs, there is no substitute for a double-blind test of relatively short samples.  The alternative is potentially much wasted time arguing about whether or not something is really audible (kind of like now).

If one can't prove and pinpoint artifacting vs. the original to some agreed upon level of confidence, there's little point in continuing further.

ff123

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #158 –
Budgie,

  Do you know what a logical argument consists of? It's just thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

  Measurable experiments, facts, evidences and conclusions.

  Anything else is not professional.

  Can you spot the differences among WAV, MPC xtreme and LAME insane? I cannot. If you can, prove it with evidences and statistics, and that's ABX.

  You took a blind test before and failed. That's all the evidences we have from you for now.

  Before posting your results about your so called blind test with your audiophiles friends, I'd dare to say they couldn't spot the difference neither at least >75% of the time.

  We are not discussing poetry here.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #159 –
Quote

Quote
We are not discussing poetry here.


To be honest, I don't remember any discussion from you to be seen here 

For me is blind testing and ABX the same gimmick... You seem to forget that human ear is not very perfect and we don't live in the perfect world. But we should try it always make the best possible... The problem with human ear is, when you hear the same sample repeatedly, you really aren't able tell the difference, because the ear gets accustomed to what it is hearing. It just adapts. When you listen to the music deep in the night and you live in dwelling-house, you lower the volume not to disturb your neighbours. During the day you maybe wouldn't hear anything. But in the night the volume seems to be appropriate and after a while you seem the music plays eventually too loud. Your ears simply got adapted. This is why I prefer to know what I listen to. For me it is better to compare a song/composition I really know thoroughly and know, where to be exceptionally careful and watch for the moment I regard to be critical. From the sample I got no impression and impression from the music is many a times much more important than technical perfection. Because when the music doesn't "speak" to me, when it doesn't evoke any reaction, it may be as perfect as it can be achieved in this not so perfect world, I for my part, don't take a care about it. I don't believe this can be achieved from just a few seconds sample, ripped off from context...

This was all what I wanted outline... I should better close my appearance here, because we are not tuned on the same frequency  It doesn't matter, anyway, because the world is just because so nice, we are not the same... I lived in the world, where everything was just as gray as the keepers of the power wished and it was no uplift-feeling. It was boring, depressing and edging. I am glad you all are interested in music, because it is the only art, which really can move a man. Just keep on trying to do it the best you can and the way you reckon to be right. But be a little bit more open to another opinions and just more tolerant. That's all...

P.S. PART 3 will not appear nor here neither anywhere else, because I don't think it is the best idea to laugh in someone's sleeves just because somebody dares to testify another opinion. Those people who were involved in the test are highly educated, they are musicians, two among them being musical supervisors doing recordings explicitly of a classical music of exceptional sound and tonal quality. I couldn't bear somebody, perhaps thirty years younger than these men are, laughs from them just because they maybe (maybe not) got a little bit fooled by me, preparing a really tough test to undergo.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #160 –
Budgie, yo can do the tests the way you want, as long as they are blind, much better if they are double-blind (that means that neither you or anybody that you have contact with during the test knows what you are listening to).

ABX is a kind of double-blind test (DBT). There are other types of these such as abc/hr (see http://www.ff123.net ) and similars. Neither ABX, abc/hr, or any kind of DBT require that the test is done using short samples or computers. These are used for convenience, but are not a requisite, so you don't have to use them if you don't want. As you plan to do in the part 3 of the test, just ask somebody to burn some randomized music clips in a cd and try to identify them by yourself, taking as much time as you want.

It is important to perform a statistical analysis on the number of correct identifications of the signals, in order to know if plain chance can be discarded. There's more info about this at the refered ff123 page and at http://users.htdconnect.com/~djcarlst/abx.htm, besides the PCABX link provided in other posts.

If you don't use a blind method, there's a very high possibilty that the placebo effect (knowing in advance what you are listening to, and this influencing your perception) can invalidate your results, yielding the test not useful.

Edit: as to your comments in the previous post, the most useful test would be that one where you do the test as closest as possible as you do normally, with the one an only difference of not knowing in advance what you are listening to, at least for the musical clip you want to "test". Repeat this a few times more, no matter if you do it in other days, and you will have useful results.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #161 –
You weren't trying to 'fool' them but merely show them that 'audiophiles' usually have a subconcious decision on what is better and what isn't, be it 500$ cords or amps or psychoacoustic codecs. This has all been exhibited by you many many times in this thread, but you still don't seem to understand. You, and your friends, should be open to a real challenge. A challenge, that's all it was.

We aren't laughing at you, we're just watching this whole thing unravel like a play, we've all seen this same thing a hundred times, and its not a shocker to see you backing out, hell .. everyone else did.

Why not do something good for yourself and submit in your report, you've already gone alot farther than alot of them 'audiophiles' I know


OTOH.. Now that we'll never see this Part 3, I wonder what the results were 

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #162 –
Quote
For me is blind testing and ABX the same gimmick... You seem to forget that human ear is not very perfect and we don't live in the perfect world. But we should try it always make the best possible... The problem with human ear is, when you hear the same sample repeatedly, you really aren't able tell the difference, because the ear gets accustomed to what it is hearing. It just adapts. When you listen to the music deep in the night and you live in dwelling-house, you lower the volume not to disturb your neighbours. During the day you maybe wouldn't hear anything. But in the night the volume seems to be appropriate and after a while you seem the music plays eventually too loud. Your ears simply got adapted.

That's the reason why you have to quickly alternate between the two different samples, when doing an ABX test.

Quote
PART 3 will not appear nor here neither anywhere else, because I don't think it is the best idea to laugh in someone's sleeves just because somebody dares to testify another opinion. Those people who were involved in the test are highly educated, they are musicians, two among them being musical supervisors doing recordings explicitly of a classical music of exceptional sound and tonal quality. I couldn't bear somebody, perhaps thirty years younger than these men are, laughs from them just because they maybe (maybe not) got a little bit fooled by me, preparing a really tough test to undergo.

God. Do you really believe that say, Vorbis development would still be possible, if the testers got upset every time they couldn't hear the difference between two samples ?
Human hearing has limits, for Christ's sake. Accept it.
By the way, it's not about laughing at someone. It's just about learning.

For example, I've introduced audio compression to a couple of musicians I know, and they're very pleased with the results.
Yeah, they were happy they couldn't hear a difference. It's just not possible, we're humans, even musical supervisors should accept it, you know.
Why didn't you show your results yet ?  is it because you don't accept the truth ?

I'm out, until you change your reasoning.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #163 –
Quote
This is why I prefer to know what I listen to. For me it is better to compare a song/composition I really know thoroughly and know, where to be exceptionally careful and watch for the moment I regard to be critical.

First attempt:
And knowing what you are listening to is what make your test useless.

If that is the problem, choose just a couple of songs, and follow the advice provided by KikeG: have somebody else burn the cd for you without telling you what it is, and try to identify the tracks yourself. No time limit, and no chance to "cheat".

I think that you can find acceptable to be "exceptionally careful" 100% of the time if you are dealing with only a couple of songs...

Second attempt:
Perhaps you don't quite get that the goal of psychoacoustic lossy compression is precisely "fooling" the listener to have the same "feelings" as when listening to the original, that takes a lot more space.

So if you find out that you can be successfully "fooled" when you don't know what you are listening to, but suddenly start to "notice" clear and obvious differences when you find out that you are listening to lossy encoded music... well, that's exactly what the placebo effect is about. You don't know it, but you are creating those differences subconsciously because now you know what you are listening to. The purpose of blind testing is avoiding that subconsciously created differences that are actually not in the sound, but in your mind.

After this, I give up.

I don't think it's good for you in your job to trust your ears so much, and ignore that you are actually adding subconscious biases to the decisions you make, biases that should not be there, and that blind testing effectively removes. But then, that's my personal opinion, and you are perfectly free to disagree.

Good luck and all that. I hope you have now at least some doubts.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #164 –
For the time being I MUST STAY to answer on some proposals and ideas:

Quote
Why not do something good for yourself and submit in your report, you've already gone alot farther than alot of them 'audiophiles' I know


Maybe it's because my weak English I can't understand exactly what you want to tell me...

Quote
I don't think it's good for you in your job to trust your ears so much, and ignore that you are actually adding subconscious biases to the decisions you make, biases that should not be there, and that blind testing effectively removes.


Excuse me, but if I can't trust my ears I can't make my job anymore... who can I trust? Some listener from the street who happens to go around?! I am deeply convinced that I have enough experience and skill to do my job the best I can 

Quote
Why didn't you show your results yet ? is it because you don't accept the truth ?


Who's trust you have in my mind? Mine or yours? THE TRUTH IS ONLY ONE and can't be everywhere in one moment... 

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Reply #165 –
such blind tests have nothing to do with education, political statements, grey worlds,  having a diferent opinion and stuff like that, its just a listening test. it is as simple as:

I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I am adding and subtracting
I'm controlling and composing
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator

edit: i was quoting kraftwerk from memory, my bad
edit2: my favorite from that song: By pressing down a special key, it plays a little melody
 
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Reply #166 –
Budgie: Fine, ignore your subconscious biases. Your ears are fine, I never said they are not. It's your brain playing tricks on you.

And that is what you don't want to test.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #167 –
Quote
Who's trust you have in my mind? Mine or yours? THE TRUTH IS ONLY ONE and can't be everywhere in one moment...

Read my post properly, I have only mentioned THE truth... not two of them !
For your information:  the truth = the true result of the part 3 in your test.
By the way, I suspect that we both perfectly know the truth:  "you and your fellows couldn't hear any difference"..
Again, in the unlikely case where I'm wrong, then please provide the results.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #168 –
A little off topic, but I can definitively feel an sound lower than 20Hz.

It is really interesting, and a little strange.
It seems that I am unable to hear anything below 30Hz. I can not feel a 30Hz tone neither. To me it is like noting.
But I can feel 20 and 16Hz tones. I do not hear anything, but it is like a strong vibration inside my stomach.

However this does not work with my own speakers. They are probably unable to reproduce such frequencies, and in any way they are too small to be able to do it correctly.
But it works fine on my father's set.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #169 –
You can take days to do a bind test if you want. Weeks even.


btw, it often seems that musicians hear things in a different way. Some musicians have the worst hi-fi, and are very happy with it. Maybe some engineers listen more to the hi-fi that the music! I don't know.

Anyway, whenever someone comes along and say "This mp3/mpc/whatever is rubbish - it never sounds right" they suggest that they're concentrating or hearing different things from the people who usually hang around here.

That may be true on two counts. Firstly, some of us have learnt to hear artefacts very well. I am sure that we'll be MORE sensitive to the worst of mp3's faults than you are. Secondly, there may be effects on the music which we just aren't noticing, or are noticing but using a different vocabulary from you.

I'll give you an example - I was testing a very low bit-rate encoder once - when Apple first released something that would mantiain the full audio bandwidth down to 20kbps! And it sounded awful! But my friend, who plays a few instruments badly, also noticed that it was de-tuning the music. I hadn't noticed this, but I had no reason to doubt him - I didn't even solicit his opinion - he shouted across the room "What's that Sax player doing on that track you're playing?".

So maybe, just maybe, you will notice aspects of the coding that we won't.

But you've got to listen, WITHOUT knowing what you're listening to. Otherwise the whole thing is a joke and a waste of time, in terms of judging the effects of audio coding.


FWIW, people have detected changes in the dither at the 16th bit, so I remain open-minded.


btw - if you detect some laughing, or impatience in people's posts, it's because we've had people through here before with these kinds of claims, and they usually vanish at around this point. When they were checked out, it turned out to be the SAME person posting many claims under different names, and they were all false.


part 3...?

D.

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #170 –
Budgie,

You seem to take things personal, when neither me or anybody else that I read in this thread attacked you on a personal level.

We are not interested in political affairs, career resumes, age issues (in any case, it works the opposite, it's well known the fact that a 15 years old ear is much shaper than a 60 years old one),  level of education not even babies pissing and shitting to prove the validity of an argument.

  And now that you say, I can't think of anything else more democratic in this world than a blind listening test. A human being, no matter what his race, sex, country, career, age, education, or richness is. Just his two ears and his brain. Nothing else involved.

  And I agree that we all here share a common interest. We all love music, and like it delivered the best way it can be.
 
  King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man is a pretty hard to encode tune, which should expose and stress many flaws in any encoding algorithm. Feel free to do some blind listening with that or any other tune you feel good with and post your results. It's that simple.

  Don't worry, we knew the results beforehand. They couldn't tell the difference from a WAV, MPC xtreme or LAME insane >75% of the time. Almost nobody not specifically trained to spot artifacts can.

  Nobody here is laughing at you or your friends, not even at the way you seem to expose your ideas, we only care about facts, not personal issues.

  After all, this is an anonymous forum, nobody knows your real identity, you can freely post your results without fear of professional consequences. No one is going to be hurt here, not even egos...
   
  Oh, and incidentally, other than sharing a big love for music and a passion for King Crimson, I also have a NAD C320 at home, like you... 

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #171 –
Quote
Oh, and incidentally, other than sharing a big love for music and a passion for King Crimson, I also have a NAD C320 at home, like you...  ;)

Haaa! I have *2* NADs!! 

budgie, I meant by that quote that most 'audiophiles' I've seen with your arguments have left by now either claiming that blind/double blind testing is just plain wrong and will never even try it, whereas you seem to linger in and out of the ring.. why don't you just drop the results in here so we can discuss it in a adult manner  B)

HELP! Please URGENT (mp3 vs cd-audio comparison)

Reply #172 –
Quote

Quote
budgie, I meant by that quote that most 'audiophiles' I've seen with your arguments have left by now either claiming that blind/double blind testing is just plain wrong and will never even try it, whereas you seem to linger in and out of the ring.. why don't you just drop the results in here so we can discuss it in a adult manner  B)


Yeah, you are alright...  The problem is, I really don't see what's useful in doing exhausting blind/doubleblind/abx tests. I really have no spare time to waste with, I mean it. I wasted all the last weekend with auditing and I am not a lot more wise, I was before - just I'm better informed  The another thing is, I am not trained to hear/chase artifacts, I am trained and prepared to hear the music. My engagement in this business is to record and mix the work of another people the best way possible. I am not musical supervisor, that's kind of responsibility gets me into serious stress. I had the opportunity to do it a few times and I don't wish to repeat it... not with classical music again...  And in the studio you have probably no artifacts when you record at 24 bit 96 kHz on professional equipment... and if there was any, you should be able to detect it immediately 

I am not afraid to venture these tests. Problem is - and this is no elusion/excuse - I don't know anything about correct and proper abx tests. And I don't know, I am interested to learn everything about it. I don't need and it won't help me in anything I do. I am not convinced I should invest so much time and energy into something like this. What will it change? Should I change my attitude to music then? I don't want to use any lossy compression until it's near perfection, not even in my car, and as we all live in not so perfect world, it may take years to achieve this goal. I am no developer, so I would never be any help for anybody, who's involved in such a project. This is my problem: what useful will it bring me?  And what will we discuss then?

P.S. I forgot... I use a lossy compression  MiniDisc, of course! I am well satisfied with it. Even at home I use Sony JA50ES, sometimes I bring my work with me to hear it again under another conditions... because our ears are great tool, but sometimes man must get distance/offset from the things he does, to better understand the details. And this MD player is excellent, even by this level of compression.

That's all for the time being...

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Reply #173 –
Quote
For endless debates over the theoretical benefits/deficiencies of double-blind testing, I heartily recommend the Usenet group rec.audio.high-end.

You know they are arguing about the SAME things on rahe that they argued about 5 years ago. Nay, make that 8 years ago when I first posted there. It's unbelivable. I don't go there anymore because it's like Deja Vu. Groundhog Day. Blah, blah, you must perform your listening test double-blind, blah, blah, but the box introduces distortions and it gives me stress, blah, blah.

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Reply #174 –
Funny. I had the impression that the MiniDisc codec is noticeably worse than LAME --aps... However it seems to have the "audiophile seal of approval". It must be the nice Sony word on it giving it good vibrations...