Jonathan Blow's presentation

[Patrick Schluter via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 9 May 2017 at 08:24:40 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:
> On 05/09/2017 02:10 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 9 May 2017 at 02:13:19 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
>> (Abscissa) wrote:
>>> On 05/08/2017 03:28 PM, Jack Stouffer wrote:
>>>>
>>> Uncompressed? Seriously? I assume that really means FLAC or 
>>> something
>>> rather than truly uncompressed, but even still...sounds more 
>>> like a
>>> bullet-list pandering^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hselling point to the 
>>> same
>>> suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"classy folk" who buy Monster-brand 
>>> cables for
>>> digital signals than a legit quality enhancement. Take a
>>> top-of-the-line $$$$ audio system, set down a room full of
>>> audiophiles, and compare lossless vs 320kbps Vorbis...in a 
>>> true
>>> double-blind, no WAY they'd be able to consistently spot the
>>> difference even if they try. Let alone while being detracted 
>>> by all
>>> the fun of causing mass mayhem and carnage. Unless maybe you 
>>> just
>>> happen to stumble upon some kind of audio savant.
>>
>> Don't need to go that high. c't did a double blind study some 
>> years ago
>> with the help of her sister magazine for audio equipment. So 
>> they made a
>> very good setup. What they discovered is that mp3 with 160 
>> kbit/s CBR
>> was already undistinguishable from CD for 99% of people for 
>> almost all
>> kind of music. mp3 is much better than its reputation, due to 
>> really bad
>
> Interesting. Any links? Not familiar with what "c't" is.

https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Kreuzverhoertest-287592.html

So, I got some details wrong in my recollection from memory. They 
compared 128 kbit/s, 256 kbit/s and CD. To remove bias, they 
burnt the mp3 after decompression on CD so that the testers 
couldn't distinguish between the 3 formats and played them in 
their high quality audio setup in their studios. The result was 
surprizing in that there was no difference between CD and 256K 
mp3, and only a slightly lower score for 128K mp3. They were also 
surprized that for some kind of music (classical), the mp3 128K 
was even favored by some testers over the other formats and they 
speculate that the encoding rounds out somehow some roughness of 
the music.
They also had one tester who was 100% accurate at recognizing mp3 
over CD, but the guy had had a hearing accident in his youth 
where he lost part of the hearing spectrum (around 8KHz) which 
breaks the psycho-acoustic model and allows him to hear noise 
that is suppressed for the not hearing impared.

I don't know where I got the 160 KBit part of my message.

>>
>
> Fair point. Also, I've heard that the big quality improvements 
> that aac/vorbis/etc have over mp3 are mainly just at lower 
> bitrates.