DreamDropDistancia t1_j9usxlk wrote on February 24, 2023 at 6:38 PM

Reply to comment by ultra_prescriptivist in Having a hard time differentiating between Spotify and tidal hi-fi by Not-Icarus

>If your "coloration" theory were correct then it should make such a test much easier!

Unless a "vast majority of people" have subpar hearing, damaged by traffic noise, auto-immune issues due to modern diets, a great number of other physiological variables, etc. How many people tested/making claims of hearing no difference actually have undiagnosed/are unaware of their own tinnitus?

You can't know - especially when they don't even know, themselves.

Or, more reasonably, don't have as good of a listening environment as they think they have. If I had a dollar for every "audiophile" that listened to music while playing video games, or with a TV on in the background, or with computer fans going, or an air condition unit running, etc...

If you based everything on the words of the "vast majority", the fastest car in the world would, in fact, be the Toyota Camry.

>If people would just drop the obsession with lossless formats for their own sake and focus on things that really matter to sound quality, like better recording, production, and mastering, then I would consider that progress

...? The end user has no hand in the recording, production, or mastering of music/audio. If we're already achieved the best hardware our budgets allow, I see no problem moving on to the only other thing(s) we can affect.

Also, it bares noting - the audiophile community is already a niche within a niche. The cross-section of the community is neither diverse, nor a good enough sample size for anything.

And you're suggesting that, within that niche of a niche, that a small group of people saying "I don't hear anything" is proof that there's nothing to hear?

Come on. If we're going to science, let's science. But as long as we can't actually do good science, let's stop pretending like it's already been done well. Because it hasn't.

ultra_prescriptivist t1_j9uxve8 wrote on February 24, 2023 at 7:10 PM

>And you're suggesting that, within that niche of a niche, that a small group of people saying "I don't hear anything" is proof that there's nothing to hear?

>Come on. If we're going to science, let's science. But as long as we can't actually do good science, let's stop pretending like it's already been done well. Because it hasn't.

So let's weigh up the evidence, then.

In the "most people can't hear it" camp we have:

Scientific studies which show that people can't tell Hi-Res audio lossless from "regular" 16/44 lossless.
Large scale blind tests such as this one which show that regardless of age, musical training, or expensive equipment, the vast majority of people can't tell the difference between lossless and MP3
My own extensive testing which showed that not only can I personally not consistently hear any differences between Spotify and lossless streaming services, but none of the dozen or so people who contacted me with their test results could either
Various encounters that I have had with members of audiophile Reddit subs who challenged my findings, agreed to conduct their own ABX tests to provide some actual evidence for their claim but then mysteriously disappeared and never contacted me again.

And in the "can hear a difference" camp, we have:

A metric ton of people who claim they can but then offer no evidence whatsoever
Some people who actually managed to pass one of the flawed, easymode online tests such as the NPR one and, to a lesser extent, the digitalfeed.net one.
The handful of people who know the specific tells of lossy audio codecs and can genuinely ABX them consistently. These are super rare and I've maybe only seen one in my entire time on Reddit.

So, as you can see, the weight of evidence leans heavily towards the former rather than the latter group.

DreamDropDistancia t1_j9w4vd8 wrote on February 24, 2023 at 11:57 PM

> Scientific studies

Did you even read the study?

[I don't know how it include images or quotes correctly, I guess. See section 4 of the first "study"]

They didn't test headphones. This took place nearly twenty years ago. They admit that they were likely using less carefully mastered/recorded sources.

Yeah. Duh. Garbage in, garbage out.

Excuse me.

[See the "audio equipment quality graph from the Wordpress blog.]

You call this a control? Self-described, non-standardized, three-optioned meassure of the quality of audio equipment used in this blog-tier "test", which didn't control for jack?

Oh, well, if Gabriella says so.

[See the About page of that blog. Who even...]

I'm not that invested in this conversation that I'm going to even bother checking the other links. This is too much work, and I'm not getting paid. Let's just say "you win", because that's clearly what needs to happen here, and then I'm going to call it a day. GLHF

ultra_prescriptivist t1_j9w73rx wrote on February 25, 2023 at 12:13 AM

Sure, the large scale test data has some pretty obvious limitations but it's better than nothing. Official scientific literature on the subject is seriously scarce but what little data there is is heavily weighed in favour of people not being able to tell the difference, which also lines up with what my own personal testing has shown.

If people who claimed otherwise could actually provide some evidence to back it up rather than just anecdotal, subjective testimony, that would actually be a great help!

DreamDropDistancia t1_j9x3pwc wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:37 AM

Again, it's a niche within a niche. It's not going to happen / even large studies get it wrong, so what chance do individuals have at providing evidence any kind of evidence you would accept? What would that even look like?

In the end, "better than nothing" is how we end up having to live our lives, and, simultaneously, the foundation for many of the most widespread cases of misinformation in all of scientific history.

We can't know until we know. Until we do, I'm not so willing to say I'm convinced, and saying I'm not convinced doesn't change anything/affect my life, so it's fine, in my book.

ultra_prescriptivist t1_j9x51nh wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:49 AM

> so what chance do individuals have at providing evidence any kind of evidence you would accept? What would that even look like?

As I have often pointed out, proving it is actually fairly easy and pain-free. People who are willing to give up maybe ten minutes of their time and a little effort can use free software tools such as Foobar2000's excellent ABX comparator plugin (installation and usage instructions here) to conduct their own test using their own lossless source files on own their own setup.

The log that results from the test can be saved as .txt and can be verified using Foobar's ABX signature checker to confirm that the results are legitimate. It's not perfect, but it goes a long way to showing that people can actually hear what they claim to hear.

Plus, even more importantly that the result itself, the process of blind testing actually shows to people how small the difference actually is when they don't know which is which and how little it generally matters in the grand scheme of things.