High bitrate MP3 vs. Lossless ABX Tests?, Are there any studies...? Options

[Street Samurai]

Hi All,

I've been corrected before on this site for making the statement: "I can tell the difference between an MP3 and lossless". I've never ABX'ed myself but I was wondering if there has been a statistically significant (with regard to population) ABX study done with (say) Lame insane vs. Lossless?

Clearly for myself it makes more sense to do a personal ABX but I was wondering in general about the population.

I searched manually through the posts in this forum (since search seems useless for the term 'mp3') and didn't see anything.

Thanks for help,

ss.

This post has been edited by Street Samurai: Jun 2 2005, 01:02

[Lyx]

Why make it complicated:

Comparing lossy VS lossless is common practive when ABXing. This is because a lossy sample is usually compared against the original(which is lossless). So, what you are asking about is not an exception but just normal standard practice in almost every ABX-test.

Concerning numbers: taking high-bitrate ABXes on only this forum into account, they would total in hundreds if not come near thousand.

So yes, statistical evidence(for non-transparency in everyday-listening) after dozens of tests is quite low.

Of course, it is always possible to find single fragments of music, where a difference can be heard. However, most people dont care if of 10 full CDs there may be 10seconds where a difference can be noticed when listening to the 10sec sample in a loop a dozen times! The background noisefloor in your room in that case is a much bigger hazard.

So, the evidence currently is low enough that one could ask "Is the background-noise in your room(a room is almost never absolutely silent) a problem to you? If no, then properly encoded high-bitrate lossy audio should be transparent to you during everyday-listening."

- Lyx

Edit: notice that you are asking the question the wrong way around: It is not possible to prove that something doesn't exist with absolute certainity. It is only possible to prove that something DOES exist. So, the question should not be if there are enough negative ABXes, but instead if there are enough positive ABXes under conditions which can be applied to normal listening. Thus, you cannot ask others to prove non-existence - the burden is on the one who claims that there IS a difference.

This post has been edited by Lyx: Jun 2 2005, 19:33

[Street Samurai]

I've done the search I referred to you, and found several topics compating lame preset insane to wav. I suggest you do the same.

Why do you not post links to the studies you found? Saying that you found them does not benifit anyone. I have done similar searches are found individual results but no -studies- as I asked for at the beginning of this thread.

Edit: notice that you are asking the question the wrong way around: It is not possible to prove that something doesn't exist with absolute certainity. It is only possible to prove that something DOES exist. So, the question should not be if there are enough negative ABXes, but instead if there are enough positive ABXes under conditions which can be applied to normal listening. Thus, you cannot ask others to prove non-existence - the burden is on the one who claims that there IS a difference.

Thank you for the explanation. I agree with you completely. My quote from the original post was merely a summary of a viewpoint I expressed in another post not really the question I was trying to answer. I agree that you can not prove non-existence.

I guess I was hoping that there was some summarized data along these lines instead of having to go through a bunch of individual ABXs in order to determine how significant the differences were between the lossy and the lossless/original sample(s).

Comparing lossy VS lossless is common practive when ABXing.

This seems to be the case and indeed it is noted as a key part of the ABX by pab in his introduction to ABXing. However, all the studies I've found (including the extremely well constructed studies by rjamorim), these never show the results for the original sample in their results. The results always compare different formats but never give us a control to compare against... or perhaps I am reading the results incorrectly...?

ss.