Interesting........ 

 

That test they used is so stupid... so what music did she fail at?  Stuff that sounds like garbage to begin with... 

Yup - took the test - the two that I felt were more properly recorded (Murray Perahia and Suzanne Vega) were easy to pick out the wav - the others were so jacked to begin with it is just a guess. 

 

(and I should have gotten the Neil one right - what can I say - I've been sick)

Rick is a smart guy and an excellent music educator. I've learned a good bit about music from his videos.

Watching this video alone is a little out of context. His target audience are musicians, composers and music technicians. If you watch many of his other videos, he gets pretty deep into things like counterpoint,  jazz improvisation and mixing.

I think his point with this video is that working with music isn't dependent on the things that the audiophile press would like you to think is important. 

Understanding what makes those emotional connections between the music and the listener is what it's all about (just like any other art form). And the nuts and bolts of making sure that important elements have just enough spotlighting at just the right moment are one of the things that makes that happen.

That guy might know what he’s talking about when it comes to music theory, but (1) his appeal to authority fails because the producers he referred to mix music styles where — no shit — compression artifacts are often inaudible, and (2) he had his assistant run a statistically insignificant and poorly-designed test. And didn’t make a note of this fact. Maybe he doesn’t understand statsig testing.

A much better test is available here (http://abx.digitalfeed.net/), but watching someone run through that doesn’t make for a good clickbait video.

That said, I agree that distinguishing between 320kbps MP3s and lossless files is no joke. Strangely enough, I often hear a difference between my own local lossless rips and Tidal streams, but haven’t nailed down the reasons. Might be different masters, might be Tidal problems like subtle loudness reduction, might be my imagination.

Edited January 2, 20188 yr by gepardcv

Hmmm, low fi headphones and god only knows what upfront rig was used? Hardly a good "test". And as spritzer said, crappy music for the most part.

Edited January 2, 20188 yr by Audiojunkie

Yeah, I thought the 'phones could have been at least 3 steps better.

Would have been more appropriate to have at least used HD414's.......

On 1/2/2018 at 7:20 PM, gepardcv said:

That said, I agree that distinguishing between 320kbps MP3s and lossless files is no joke. Strangely enough, I often hear a difference between my own local lossless rips and Tidal streams, but haven’t nailed down the reasons. Might be different masters, might be Tidal problems like subtle loudness reduction, might be my imagination.

The other possibility, if it's one of the huge number of labels owned by UMG, is that you're hearing watermarks, which they insert into content for streaming services:

https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark

(Do not click this if you hate not being able to unhear bad things, it can drive you nuts.)

I wonder if her listening result would be different if he paired her with a Stax rather than an al cheapo ATH-M50x.