Jonathan Blow's presentation

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d]

On 05/09/2017 04:44 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:
> On Tuesday, 9 May 2017 at 08:24:40 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
>> On 05/09/2017 02:10 AM, Patrick Schluter wrote:
>>
>> 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.

Not surprised the 128k MP3 was noticeable. Even I've been able to notice 
that when I was listening for it (although, in retrospect, it was likely 
a bad encoder, now that I think about it...)

> 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.
>

Fascinating.

The 128k being sometimes favored for classical kinda reminds me of how 
some people prefer vinyl over CD/etc. Both are cases of audio data being 
lost, but in a way that is liked.

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

Your memory recall must've applied a low-pass filter over "128K" and 
"256K" ;)