The AAC - MP3 - WAV Challenge!

[Emissary]

The question is can I (or you, or anyone else) perceive the difference?

Somehow, this is what I don't find too interesting. Everybody will want to find the difference, though, no question about that. Hehe.

Just out of interest, have you tried the test locojohn? Can you hear a difference?

No, I haven't tried this particular test, but I have been doing tests like this myself for weeks when I got interested in this subject. I have a few special reference CD's with rather complex and very well recorded choir/orchestral music which I used to compare when checking loudspeakers and mp3s vs wav's. This time I'd like to skip the test, if you let me please.

Andrejs

someone doesnt want to look like a tit methinks

[locojohn]

someone doesnt want to look like a tit methinks

Took me a couple of minutes to find out what a tit means in a slang dictionary. No, it is not important for me whether I appear to be an imbecile, an objectionable person here. What I am trying to understand is what do we gain with all results and opinions from this test? Why do you think the results of this test are so interesting, especially considering the source material like compressed MGMT snippet being far from excellent to base the judgement upon, and "Beethoven" samples featuring only a piano solo with a high noise floor? If you want to make fair judgements, at least you need to use music with rich dynamic range, low noise floor, preferably with a range of various acoustic instruments, such as cello, violins, piano, flutes, percussion (marimbas etc.), choir, all recorded in a very high quality, where you can hear clearly each particular instrument very well....

I am sorry, but the sounds from the reference CD's I have are copyrighted and I cannot simply upload them and share easily. But, I can share a few titles that I used for audio tests some time ago:

Igor Stravinsky - The Firebird Suite: Internal Dance (McIntosh Audiophile Test Reference CD)
Aaron Copland - The Red Pony: Happy Ending (McIntosh Audiophile Test Reference CD)
Claude Debussy - Clair de Lune (Bose Wave Music System Demonstration CD)

Andrejs

[anamexis]

Why do you think the results of this test are so interesting, especially considering the source material like compressed MGMT snippet being far from excellent to base the judgement upon, and "Beethoven" samples featuring only a piano solo with a high noise floor?

Well that's exactly my point with the MGMT snippet. The reason I picked it as the main one is because it is more representative of the stuff that is getting played and produced by the people who frequent this forum. I don't think a lot of symphonic music is getting mixed down in Ableton.

But I do concede that the Beethoven snippet is less than ideal - I just grabbed the first lossless bit I could find. Sinatra, though, I chose to compare vocal quality.

[anamexis]

Blump!

Come on people, do it for science

[anamexis]

Updated with 15 data sets from 7 people:

[fishmonkey]

Besides, I need more data, do it for the team

you need a LOT more data to draw any conclusions from this test... i'll try and brush up on my stats and work out some numbers sometime in the next couple of days...

"There are three types of lies --- lies, damn lies, and statistics..."

[condra]

mp3 is kickin ass.

[8O]

bump!

[Hardtoe]

I was one of the people who got the test "wrong" - The wav sounded the thinnest - why I dont know, but maybe this is some result of encoding such a heavily clipped master???

BTW I run a studio doing full time recording and producing with bands and I have a great monitoring set-up with proper acoustic treatment - I can clearly hear when I make MP3's of material I have produced, but not on this I guess....

[otnooishphoo]

all 3 of those mgmt ones sound aliased and squashed all to hell, i have a feeling they were going
for the crap sound anyways..

i'll listen to beethoven when i get home.

[otnooishphoo]

in conclusion most ableton live users are deaf!

[evernaut]

I flunked my test and picked the MP3 as sounding best. I'm slightly miffed, obviously but I do think - as others have noted - that the source audio is so heavily slammed in the mix and mastering that it's hard to hear much difference between any of them.

Maybe the lossy format is more flattering to this sort of music (in that it accentuates the lows and highs and disregards the rest?)

[JoshR]

Good thread. Will check it out when I'm home tomorrow.

[cbentley]

I only listened to the MGMT files through a pair of headphones late last night and the overall sound is so crunchy and distorted that picking them out was tough. I did nail which one was mp3 simply because it sounded like an mp3, less detailed and much nastier. The surprising thing is that I mis picked between Wav and AAC since the differences were slight at best. I thought the AAC sounded slightly better since it didn't quite seem as harsh to me but picked it as being the Wav thinking it could have been fidelity related. Differences were negligible between wav and aac with mp3 not even being in the same race... for me anyway.

Going to check out the other files later today when I have time.

[fishmonkey]

I was one of the people who got the test "wrong" - The wav sounded the thinnest - why I dont know, but maybe this is some result of encoding such a heavily clipped master???

BTW I run a studio doing full time recording and producing with bands and I have a great monitoring set-up with proper acoustic treatment - I can clearly hear when I make MP3's of material I have produced, but not on this I guess....

i won't be able to do the test on my system for a couple of days, but i think it is wrong to assume that one format will always sound "better" than another... i think the issue is more that each type of encoding effects sounds in different ways, which depends on what the source material is in the first place...

and then with everybody listening on completely different audio setups, well, there are so many variables...