I found Can you tell 128kbps AAC from the original? Take the test! via Digg quite fascinating today.
Since the iTunes Music Store opened, a lot of people have complained about the DRM-infested low-quality music they sold. I’ve often countered that the vast majority of users couldn’t tell one level of high-quality music from another1.
Finally, it looks like this simple experiment has proven my point. If you look at the stats, on roughly every track about half of the people were wrong when they tried to pick the lower-quality and the original tracks apart. If you further take into account that there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll simply guess correctly every time, that means that in fact a huge majority of people don’t have a clue which track is the original - we’ll conservatively say 75% of the overall tested population.
Have you taken the Apple Challenge? Blindfold your ears and see if you can tell the difference between the encoding…
By the way, the site withstood the Digg effect by hosting their audio files on Amazon’s S3 service. Very cool!
- I used to have a friend that ripped all his CDs at outrageous bitrates - like 400+ - and claimed he could easily tell the difference. Personally, I think it was just the drugs having rotted his brain, but whatever… [back]
Totally agree, I know some people that won’t listen to any kind of compressed format at all, they just plug CDs into their computer. Quite inconvenient.
On an unrelated note, lose the SK2 and BB shit from your footer and while you’re at it, get a decent theme.
Rip? CD’s? Bah, the only good sound you get is from vinyl! Roy Orbison never sounded so good!
Just kidding. I do all my rips at 192, mainly because I can then down convert later if need be, and I have the disk space so why not.