Rogue Keeper on 18/5/2007 at 15:11
I honestly can't say right now which one's which. :erg:
As an excuse I can say that I am listening them on my work computer with crappy onboard sound processor, older cheap open-design Sony headphones and after two hours of listening to music so perhaps my ears are little tired.
I'll take the files home and listen to them on better equipment, but I'm not sure it changes much.
Now I see most people are voting for the first one as 128kbps. I have offered this test to a friend with onboard chip and new Koss headphones and he said he's almost sure that the second one is 320kbps. So maybe the majority is right, but I will refrain from voting. :p
Would it be cheating to compare them by watching visual equalizer ?
ZylonBane on 18/5/2007 at 15:43
Dude, spoiler tags.
kodan50 on 18/5/2007 at 16:33
I don't want to vote yet, I was just listening to the 2 clips, is it just me or does one of the clips have a slightly higher tone?
I think its funny that people are looking at these files via spectrum analysis and bass and tone spikes etc... because if Im correct, this is simply supposed to be a "which sounds worse", i think its just trying to determine which has a better listening value over all.
IMO, here is what I can tell just from listening to the clips:
[spoiler] #1 seems to have a slighly lower tone. #2 seems to have a better bass to it, and the transition between the tones of the instruments are more smoothe, while #1 is more sharp, this implying that their is less actual sound in what is heard, as if some of it was "removed", which is what happens when you encode to a lower bitrate. [/spoiler]
In some of this I wanted to get technical, but didn't want to put in the time. Nontheless, this was a fun 5 minute test...
Kolya on 18/5/2007 at 16:42
What everyone is trying to find out (prematurely) is whether their vote was correct. As in: Can you trust what you hear? I think it's natural people would want to know this immediately.
ZylonBane on 18/5/2007 at 17:46
Quote Posted by kodan50
I think its funny that people are looking at these files via spectrum analysis and bass and tone spikes etc... because if Im correct, this is simply supposed to be a "which
sounds worse", i think its just trying to determine which has a better listening value over all.
Instead of guessing, maybe you should exert the effort to actually read the poll question. Here, I'll even repost it for you!
Quote:
Which is the lowly 128kbps encoded file?
You were saying?
Volca on 18/5/2007 at 18:19
Quote Posted by kodan50
[spoiler] #1 seems to have a slighly lower tone. #2 seems to have a better bass to it, and the transition between the tones of the instruments are more smoothe, while #1 is more sharp, this implying that their is less actual sound in what is heard, as if some of it was "removed", which is what happens when you encode to a lower bitrate. [/spoiler]
[SPOILER]IMO string sound should be sharp. The #2 sounds too soft. Tried with good headphones now, and still have the feeling #1 is more accurate - thus better quality.
[/SPOILER]
I believe there's only a small percentage of people which will hear the difference. 128kbps was designed to be enough for the majority of people.
Bjossi on 18/5/2007 at 18:23
Well, that depends on the listening gear, the audio format (128k ogg sounds much better than 128k mp3) and of course the ears.
kodan50 on 19/5/2007 at 04:46
Quote Posted by Kolya
The purpose is to find out if you really can
hear the difference between a MP3 file encoded in 128kbps and one in 320kbps.
*Ahem, sorry I read this and thought this was a hearing test .. my apologies.
Quote Posted by Volca
I believe there's only a small percentage of people which will hear the difference. 128kbps was designed to be enough for the majority of people.
Ill buy that for a dollar. I do agree, the 128 KB should be sufficient for any project... I can hear the difference, that is only because i've worked with some (home based) audio projects, so i've been decent at being able to tell the difference in tone, I'm just not any kind of expert, so I don't know which is the correct answer, i just can say that #2 sounds better than #1, but in any project, number one would be better, as number 2 would be much to large for project use, and most people would be too consumed in a game to consider listening to the songs like we have been, honestly in games, music is used to set a mood, merely that is it. It won't be the main focus point.. Well, it never was in any game/project I've ever played/worked on
Volca on 19/5/2007 at 08:50
Quote Posted by kodan50
i just can say that #2 sounds better than #1, but in any project, number one would be better, as number 2 would be much to large for project use
Well I never got the 1 and 2 mp3 files, i only got the wav files. I do not know which of them was bigger. Still, [SPOILER]I think the #2 is the 128k, thus it was smaller[/SPOILER]
I would bet that there is a bigger difference choosing a better codec than going to 192k from 128k on the worse codec. After all, OGG Vorbis is said to be better at 128k than mp3.
People who really care about quality will not choose mp3. Will probably choose FLAC or something similar (lossless compression).
steo on 19/5/2007 at 11:17
The only thing about FLAC is that it's fucking massive. Comparing one album which I have in both FLAC and 320kbps VBR mp3, the FLAC version is over seven times the size. A 20 gig music collection is very manageable, even on a laptop. A 140 gig music collection tends to make a somewhat larger dent in hard drive space, especially considering that you can barely tell the difference without listening carefully.
